Motorcades and the Secret Service agents who ride in them are charged with keeping the president safe; we all know that. And they work—even if most of the time we don’t hear about it.
On at least one occasion, they quietly saved former president Bill Clinton’s life.
Details of the little-known close call were revealed in historian Ken Gormley’s book, “The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr,” and reported in The Atlantic. The president was in Manila in 1996 for an economic summit, on his way to a meeting with a local official. The book says the president was not in the best of moods and wanted to get to his destination quickly. It continues:
“According to Gormley, just moments before the motorcade was about to move, agents using a special intelligence-gathering capacity—one that remains classified—picked up radio chatter mentioning the words wedding and bridge. Knowing well that wedding was often a code word for a terrorist hit, [then–Secret Service Director Lewis C. Merletti] changed the route, which happened to include a bridge. Clinton was angry at the decision, which would cause further delay, but he did not override it. When agents arrived at the bridge, they indeed found explosives: had Clinton taken the prescribed route, he very likely would have been killed.”
Smart move.
If you’re curious about how motorcades work and want a more in-depth look, here’s a story Liberal America wrote explaining it all. The Atlantic also published an infographic detailing the composition of a motorcade.
Here’s a video of Bill Clinton and his motorcade visiting The Hague, Holland, in 1997.
Featured video and featured image via YouTube.
