Keeping the President Safe: FDR's Armored Car
Keeping the President Safe: FDR's Armored Car
As head of the Secret Service, Mike Reilly’s primary job was to keep President Roosevelt safe. FDR didn’t make it easy. In The Night of the Assassins, I write about Mike’s role in foiling an assassination plot against FDR during a secret meeting in Tehran—but his job of protecting the president started much closer to home.
A little-known piece of American history is that, according to Mike Reilly, FDR borrowed the famous gangster Al Capone’s armored car directly after the Pearl Harbor attack which catapulted the U.S. into World War II. Reilly’s own memoir, Reilly of the White House, tells the story of FDR using the car on December 9, 1941.
Before borrowing Capone's car, FDR rode in his own custom limousine, the Sunshine Special. This beauty was equipped with 2-way radio, a siren, and extra-wide running boards for Reilly and the other secret service agents to stand on. The problem with The Sunshine Special? The convertible top left the president vulnerable to attack. Capone’s armored vehicle was just one of the measures that Mike Reilly and the Secret Service took to protect Roosevelt during his presidency.
An excerpt from The Night of the Assassins:
Just twelve hours after learning of the Japanese attack, the president informed the detail he’d be riding from the White House to the Capitol to declare war against Japan. The entire journey was about a mile and a half, only a few minute’s drive. But Mike began to fear that FDR might not make it to his destination. In his open-topped car, the president would be a perfect target for enemy assassins.
Even before the war, Mike had argued that the Boss should travel in an armored car. Part of his job was to read the belligerent and too often threatening letters that arrived at the White House each day, and that disquieting duty had left him with the acute realization that “there were literally tens of thousands of Americans who would love to shoot the President of the United States.” It was a necessary, even common sense precaution, he’d pleaded, for the presidential limousine to be bullet-proof. His concern, however, was overruled by the Treasury Department. The problem, he was primly informed, was money.
Government regulations explicitly stated a maximum of $750 could be allotted for the president’s vehicle. And while $750 would purchase a pretty nifty roadster, it wouldn’t begin to cover the sticker price of a car that was as indestructible as a tank.
On the momentous day of FDR’s speech to Congress, then, the best Mike could do was line the route deep with soldiers, the taller the better. And he had Secret Service agents, the huskier the better, draped over the president’s limousine. After taking those small precautions, he could only, he recalled with a forlorn pang, “hope for the best.”
Wishful thinking, however, would not be sufficient to get the president safely through the remainder of the hostilities. Mike decided he’d need to improvise. He quickly came up with a resourceful plan, one that would have to suffice until the money could somehow be authorized to build the president a suitable wartime car. And he soon got the opportunity to try it out.
Two days later, FDR announced that he wanted to go for a ride. “I’m not going to spend the rest of the war in hiding,” he barked, glowering at Mike as if he expected him to object.
“Yes, sir. What time will you be ready?” Mike responded, a model of obedience.
Within the hour Mike was wheeling the president to the White House driveway as a car pulled up. It was a green Cadillac about the size of an Army truck, and at first glance, arguably twice as unwieldy.
“What’s that thing, Mike?” FDR demanded.
“Mr. President, I’ve taken the liberty of getting a new car,” Mike began, relishing his straight man’s role. “It’s armored. I’m afraid it’s a little uncomfortable. And I know it has a dubious reputation.”
“Dubious reputation?” the president repeated with impatience.
“Yes, sir. It belonged to Al Capone. The Treasury Department had a little trouble with Al, you know, and they got it from him in the subsequent legal complications. I got it from the Treasury.”
The president stared quizzically at the mammoth vehicle, 9,000 pounds of reinforced steel. Mike wondered if he wanted to kick the tires, or, for that matter, possibly kick him. But in the end, he simply accepted the situation. “I hope Mr. Capone doesn’t mind,” FDR said coyly. Then, fellow conspirators enjoying a shared joke, they went off for their ride in the new presidential limousine.
Night of the Assassins
The Untold Story of Hitler’s Plot to Kill FDR, Churchill, and Stalin.