Early Security Gadgets to Keep FDR Safe During World War II
Early Security Gadgets to Keep FDR Safe During World War II
The mission of the Secret Service is always tense and complicated. And in World War when for the first time in history the enemy was capable of sending bombers flying above the White House, dropping parachutists on the lawn, or, perhaps shooting missiles, the dangers facing the president were unprecedented.
How does one begin to keep the president safe from the invisible threats that surround him? How can an agency outwit what it does not yet know? With a look into the life of one man, the versatility and ingenuity of the Secret Service is revealed. NIGHT OF THE ASSASSINS explores exactly how Secret Service Agent Mike Reilly carried out this one, seemingly impossible mission: to keep President FDR, a man who couldn't walk, who spent his days largely in a wheel chair, safe in wartime.
On the brink of chaos at any moment, Mike Reilly was tasked with preserving the life of FDR in the face of his greatest enemies. Mike could arrange any safety protocol he deemed fit, but FDR was largely an immobile target, a man confined to a wheelchair--succeeding in his mission meant being resourceful. If he couldn’t bar the doors to the White House, then, he decided, he’d better fortify them. He resorted to what he came to dub with a sly relish his “gaudy collection” of “gadgets:” “talking fences, seeing-eye doors, pocket-sized radio senders and receivers.” The problem, however, was that some of these gadgets worked better than others.
The Alnor Door, for example, was one of his brainstorms. It was a free-standing passageway that let off a high-pitched alarm whenever someone concealing a gun or knife walked through the electrified, metal-sensitive portal. Standard equipment at prisons, Mike ventured that it’d work just as well at the White House (which, if Mike were to have his jumpy way, he’d have been only too happy to turn into a prison of sorts). On the eve of the tree lighting ceremony, Mike had a couple of the intimidating Alnors, each one weighing several hundred pounds, plunked down at the White House main gate, although in keeping with the Christmas season, he had each of them decked out with boughs of holly. Fifty thousand or so people walked through the makeshift passageways for the festivities, and there was a steady chorus of yelps from the machines. At the end of the evening all Mike had to show for his caution was a tall pile of confiscated metal flasks, which, to Mike’s way of looking at things, was an unanticipated, but nevertheless welcome fringe benefit. The Detail would enjoy some extra holiday cheer.
Encouraged, he had a smaller version (although still by most residential standards an ugly, gargantuan piece of machinery) of the Alcorn set-up inside the mansion. But every time the solid interior doors swung open, their decorative brass and ornamental locks would set off a sustained series of angry electronic yelps. The Alcorns were in place one day, and gone the next.
So Mike, tenacious, found an engineer who came up with another metal-detecting device – and this one weighed only eight ounces. It would be hidden away under the agent’s suit jacket, with a connecting buzzer on his lapel. And it worked well – just too well. It emitted a nearly non-stop cacophony of noise as the buzzer-wearing agents roamed through the mansion, passing by the many guard posts manned by gun-toting members of the Detail or the White House police.
That fiasco led an exasperated Mike to bring a fluoroscope machine to the building. A visitor would stand in front of the device and in an adjacent room an agent would be glancing at a screen that revealed whether a weapon was concealed under a guest’s coat. Or, the smirking agents quickly discovered, under a woman’s dress. And that struck a red-faced Mike as “just a little indecent.” The fluoroscope was quickly gone, too.
The “talking fence” also produced its share of indiscreet moments. Originally deployed at ammunition depots and secret radar installations, minute microphones were attached by a nearly invisible cable to the tall iron fence surrounding the White House grounds. If an intruder attempted to climb the fence, the microphones would pick up the activity and a storm of lights would start flashing on a guard house control board monitored by the Secret Service. An ancillary benefit, however, was that the sensitive concealed microphones would also pick up even the hushed conversations of the movers-and-shakers walking in tandem by the fence. In the interests of wartime security, Mike decided the Detail’s overhearing a few bits of salacious gossip, or, on occasion, the stray official secret, was an intrusive price worth paying for keeping the president safe.
The entire Detail, in fact, was on Mike’s orders wired-up for sound. Each agent carried a newly invented radio that was not much bigger than the package of Camels that Mike always had tucked in his suit jacket. This radio could receive messages from any transmitting station within one hundred and fifty miles or could send a message to any agent within three miles. That way, Mike very much wanted to believe, his men would be ready to respond in a flash to any emergency.
But while all his ingenious “gadgets” brought Mike a small measure of reassurance, he’d only have to look at the president to be reminded of what his Detail was up against, and how the odds were overwhelmingly stacked in the determined assassin’s favor. Attached to the president’s wheelchair was an unobtrusive black box about the size and shape of one of the tort books Mike had briefly lugged around campus. Inside was FDR’s gas mask, and he didn’t travel anywhere – either inside the White House, or beyond its gates - without it.
You can order the book now to find out how Secret Service agent Mike Reilly’s security measures outmaneuvered FDR’s assassins, saving the president’s life.
Night of the Assassins
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