National
Security
Volunteers without
full background checks drive in Obama’s motorcade
Published
time: December 26, 2014 19:47
President
Barack Obama waves outside his presidential motorcade window (Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)
Outside
the nation’s capital, it's not highly trained Secret Service agents who drive
the vehicles at the tail end of the presidential motorcade. Instead, volunteers
with no training or security clearance shuttle around administration staff and
the press.
Natalie
Tyson, a 24-year-old San Francisco-area graduate student, drove a van in the
motorcade when President Barack Obama arrived in the City by the Bay for a
fundraiser this fall. She and other volunteers serve as “a link in the
middle of the fastest, and highest-profile, chain of vehicles in the country,”
the New York Times reported.
She
got the gig after a childhood friend ‒ who is now a White House staffer ‒
texted her to see if she was interested.
“He
just texted me and said, ‘Do you want to volunteer as part of this and drive in
the motorcade?’ ”Tyson said. “It was kind of
sudden. I didn’t even know the president was going to be in town.”
The
security risk for those shuttling around low-level administration staff and
reporters is far less important than their cost: “They are cheaper than the
Secret Service personnel or local police officers who surround them on the
road,” according to the Times.
As
her only payment, Tyson took a picture with the president.
Volunteer
driver Natalie Tyson in front of the president's limousine (Facebook)
The
practice of using volunteer drivers has been standard since at least the 1980s,
according to the Secret Service. They “are briefed by the Secret Service agent
responsible for the motorcade prior to any movements” about what to do in case
of an emergency, like an attack, a spokesman for the agency said.
But
in reality ‒ and despite a series of high-profile security breaches involving the Secret Service thatled to the agency director resigning ‒
Tyson said she received little instruction from the agents tasked with
protecting the president with their lives. What would she do if there was a
high-speed emergency? She assumed that she should just follow the car in front
of her no matter what happened, she told the Times’ Michael S. Schmidt in a
phone interview.
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