VIP security: Why US doesn't leave anything to chance whenever top officials go abroad

Secret service officer (right) keeps watch of Jill Biden's movements during Shujaaz Konnect Festival. Whenever top US officials visit, especially in developing nations, the Secret Service takes full control of the security. [Brenda Czeda Radido, Standard] On a bright January morning in 2008, the security officer cautiously approached my vehicle. His gun was held across his chest. His fingers rested nervously on the magazine. I slowly lowered the driver's window. He looked at me intently before asking me who I was and what business I had at the residence of the newly-appointed Vice President. The country was burning following violence that broke out in December 2007, after Mwai Kibaki was declared winner of Kenya's hotly contested presidential elections. "My name is Caleb Atemi. I have an appointment with Mheshimiwa. I am his biographer" I replied. He relayed the information to his colleague. After some minutes of silence and tension, I called one of the insider team members who came to my rescue. The gate was opened and I drove in. The Karen home of Kenya's 10th Vice President had been transformed. The kaiaple fence through which I would occasionally peep into his neighbour's compound while working on chapters of his book, had been replaced by a tall, concrete wall. Within days of being appointed Vice President and Minister for Home Affairs by President Mwai Kibaki, Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka's security had been heightened. Administration policemen that used to guard his residence had been replaced by General Service Unit (GSU) personnel. His life and that of his family had suddenly changed. I had covered President Daniel Moi for years. Whenever he had a functions outside Nairobi, I preferred travelling in advance to get the pulse on the ground. His security detail would always arrive in the town or village of his scheduled visit days ahead to conduct surveillance and secure certain buildings and venues. Security is a major global issue. Since the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, global security, especially for VVIPs, was dramatically enhanced. Militant Islamist extremist network, al Qaeda, carried out coordinated suicide terrorist attacks on New York City's World Trade Centre, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia outside Washington DC, and Shanksville Pennsylvania. Some 19 Al Qaeda militants hijacked four airplanes which they used to plunge into buildings. Close to 3,000 people were killed. US Secret Service agents disembark Executive One Foxtrot at the JKIA, February 24, 2023. US presidents, political leaders and their families are protected by the US Secret Service. [Kelly Ayodi, Standard] President George W Bush launched a massive war against terror, attacking countries and installations 'suspected' to be harbouring terrorists. Anger and fury mounted against the US, its allies and interests globally. The Bush administration succeeded in violently removing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power and having him killed. The purge, however, threw Iraq and the middle east into bloody chaos. In his memoir, A Promised Land, Barack Obama says that in "disbanding the Iraqi military and allowing the Shiite majority to aggressively remove large numbers of Sunni Muslims from government positions, US officials had created a situation that was chaotic and increasingly perilous - a sectarian conflict marked by escalating suicide assaults, road side explosions and car bombs detonating on crowded market streets." Obama was the first black president of the US. Before becoming president in 2008, Obama flew to Iraq where the US war on terror had turned ugly. He saw miserable, and impoverished children, many orphaned by the invasion. "I couldn't shake the thought of those kids paying the price for the arrogance of men like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who'd rushed us into war based on faulty information and refused to consider the consequences." Person of interest It is against this backdrop of global insecurity, that Dr Jill Biden, wife of US President Joe Biden, is visiting Kenya. To the global terrorist network, she is a person of interest; a gem; even a trophy! The White House says the First Lady's visit to Kenya and Namibia will strengthen US relations with African nations and advance US shared interests on the continent. At the 2022 US Africa Leaders' Summit, Jill hosted a two-day spousal programme. During her visit to Africa, Jill's "engagements will focus on empowerment of women and youth, food security and shared democratic values". Jill said on her Twitter handle before her departure; "Today, I am heading to Africa for my sixth visit to the continent, and my first as First Lady. I've always, believed that supporting women and youth across the world is critical to our common future with education, health, and empowerment at the heart of it all." Before her visit, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) announced closure of Terminal Two. Security at the airport was heightened. In a statement to the public, the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) said that: "Terminal Two should be cleared of any aircraft and vehicles on Friday February 24, 2023 as from 11am and 5pm hours local time. Again, on Sunday February 26, 2023, from 6am to 6pm local time. This is therefore to advise you to relocate your operations to terminal one within the stipulated time period to allow smooth facilitation of the VVIP and operations." I smiled when I read the KAA statement. I recalled the 2018 visit to Kenya by US President Barack Obama. I had tea with a top security aide of President Uhuru Kenyatta. The discussion slipped on to the impending Obama visit. Jill Biden's armoured Chevrolet Suburban at the JKIA, February 24, 2023. Before her visit, JKIA announced closure of Terminal Two. [Kelly Ayodi, Standard] "By the way do you know once the US president lands in Kenya, you guys will become irrelevant?" I told him "What do you mean?" he protested. "Whenever the US president visits, especially in developing nations, the Secret Service and US military take over the country's airspace, jams telecommunication services and takes full control of the security. We saw it when Bill Clinton visited Uganda in 1998," I told him. Numb with shock After some moments of silence, he shook his head in disbelief and said: "No way. That can never happen here." Soon after Obama had left, I met him again. He was still numb with shock. "I'm yet to recover from what you told me and what I experienced. These guys are brutal and arrogant. Can you imagine we were being pushed out of our own spaces at the airport and in Kasarani? Even our president was treated like an ordinary citizen." "That is the price you pay for hosting a super power. They are not arrogant; they just take security to another level," I told him as we parted. I told him that other African leaders have seen worse treatment with sniffer dogs being unleashed on them. Since the Cold War, the US has accumulated and grown millions of enemies around the world. Its stand on the Middle East Crisis and the Palestinian war, has turned many, especially militant Muslims into adversaries. The human rights atrocities caused by the US military have only worsened matters. US presidents, political leaders and their families are protected by the US Secret Service. Wherever the Air Force One presidential jet goes, its escorted by the air force. The US military dominates the airspace, land and water of the host nation. The Secret Service conducts counter surveillance, medical emergency responses, protection against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials. Advance teams visit host countries, states or towns days, weeks and even months before the scheduled visit. Their assignment is to access, tease out and neutralise potential risks. The US paranoia is informed not just by the September 11 terrorist attacks, but the country's own assassination history. Four sitting presidents have been killed in the US. In 1881, James A Garfield, was shot dead by a lone gunman Charles Guiteau. Abraham Lincoln died in 1865. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth. In 1901, Leon Czolgosz, shot and killed president William McKinley at the Pan-Am Expo in Buffalo. Then, in 1963, the charismatic John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. Before Lincoln was assassinated, there was no particular team or agency assigned to protect US presidents. In fact, a lone patrolman had been tasked to protect Lincoln but he sneaked out to find a vantage point in the theatre from where to watch the play, Lincoln was following. US Secret Service detailing Jill Biden and Rachel Ruto's security at the JKIA on February 24, 2023. [Kelly Ayodi, Standard] Then on March 30 1981, President Ronald Reagan, was shot and wounded. He was returning to his limousine after a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton when one John Hinckley Jr, shot him. The bullet from a pistol ricocheted off the side of the limousine and hit him in the left underarm. It broke a rib, punctured a lung and suffered internal bleeding. By the time they took him to George Washington University Hospital, he was close to death. After the first three assassinations, the US Congress assigned the Secret Service, the responsibility for the safety of the President. The Secret Service protects; past, present and future presidents, vice presidents and their families. US security is enhanced especially in countries considered to be prone to terrorist attacks. Kenya is one such country. In Kenya, homes of VIPs and Cabinet Secretaries are broken into almost at will. Gangsters walk into these tightly secured homes, ransack rooms, steal and injure family members with ease. With corruption and porous borders, with our inability to tame violence and crime across the country, with bandits who have made the killing security personnel a hobby running wild, who can trust us with the life and security of the wife of POTUS? Jill Biden's visit and the security inconvenience it will cause some Kenyans, is an indictment on our security failures. It should offer lessons on improvements we must make. Just like Kalonzo, Obama's life changed when he was elected in 2008. He says in, A Promised Land, that his life and that of his family changed when he was declared President elect. "Back home in Chicago, our lives had shifted sharply. In our house, things didn't feel so different, with mornings spent fixing breakfast and getting the girls ready for school, returning phone calls and talking to staffers. But once any of us stepped outside, it was a new world. Camera crews were stationed at the corner, behind recently erected concrete barriers. Secret Service counter sniper teams, clad in black, stood watch on rooftops. A visit to Marty and Anita's house, just a few blocks away, became a major endeavour; a trip to my old gym was now out of the question. ...All my entries and exits into buildings happened through loading docks and service elevators, cleared of everyone but a few security guards. It felt as if I now lived in my own portable perpetual ghost town." US Secret Service agents at the JKIA on February 24, 2023. [Kelly Ayodi, Standard] Sandy Beach Obama had a few moments to himself before he became 'property of the US government": "I even had a chance to bodysurf at Sandy Beach, one of my favourite haunts as a youth. Shooting down a gently breaking wave, the light curling with the sweep of water and the sky etched with a flight of birds. I could pretend for a moment that I wasn't surrounded by several wet suited Navy SEALs, that the Coast Guard cutter in the distance had nothing to do with me, that pictures of me shirtless wouldn't later end up on the front pages of newspapers around the world with headlines like FIT FOR OFFICE. When I finally signaled that I was ready to go, the leader of my security team that day- a sardonic agent named Dave Beach who'd been with me from the start and knew me as a friend- tilted his head, shook the water out of his ears, and said matter of factly; "I hope you enjoyed that, cause it's the last time you'll do it for a long long while' " Obama recalls that when he went into the White House, he had a prayer session led by Rev TD Jakes, which was followed by dinner. After dinner he excused himself from his family, walked upstairs to one of Blair House's many rooms. He had gone to receive a briefing from the director of the White House Military Office; "on the "football"-the small leather jacketed suitcase that accompanies the president at all times and contains the codes needed to launch a nuclear strike. One of the military sides responsible for carrying the football explained the protocols as calmly and methodically as someone might describe how to programme a DVR. The subtext was obvious. "I would soon be vested with the authority to blow up the world," he says. On the night before his inauguration, Michael Cherroff, President George W Bush's secretary of homeland security, called to inform Obama of intelligence that four Somalis were thought to be planning a terrorist attack on the inauguration ceremony. The massive security force around the National Mall, was beefed up. Only a small team of staffers knew of the terrorist threat. He even didn't tell his wife Michelle. Obama says: "No one had nuclear war or terrorism on their minds. No one except me.....I realised this was now part of my job maintaining an outward sense of normalcy, upholding for everyone the fiction that we live in a safe and orderly world even as I stared down the dark hole of chance and prepared as best I could for the possibility that at any given moment on any given day chaos might break through." He was amazed by his first time in "the Beast" which he described as; "the oversized black limousine used to transport the president. Reinforced to survive a bomb blast, the thing weighs several tons, with black leather seats and the presidential seal stitched on a leather panel above the phone and the armrest. Once closed, the doors of the Beast seal out all sound, and as our convoy slowly rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue, while I made small talk with President Bush, I looked out the bulletproof windows at the throngs of people who were still on their way to the Mall or had already taken seats along the parade route." Executive One Foxtrot. The military plane carries members of the "First Family", but not the President themself. [Kelly Ayodi, Standard] Then, there is the Airforce One, the Flying White House. It is the airborne global command centre. A spectacular and specialised Boeing 747. From this plane, the president and his staff can govern the country from the air. The Airforce One stands as tall as a six-storey-building and as long as a football field. It is a monument of American pride. There is a primary and back up Jumbo jet. There is a section that carries an array of; sensitive and secret features, radio and radar jamming, broad frequencies, sensors to track attacks from cyber space, and heat seeking missiles. Home comfort Airforce One, flies with four crew members; the pilot, co-pilot, an engineer and a navigator. It has a private airborne apartment with all the home comfort. It also has a presidential suite with two beds. To transport the president to the airport, is Presidential Helicopter Marine One which also operates with a twin. All runways are closed to Marine One whenever it lands. Airforce One carries the full White House team; the political and diplomatic, military attaches and the press. It has a sound proof conference room and the president's office. Obama humorously observes that; "I discovered that whenever the Secret Service agents whispered into their wrist microphones, they were broadcasting my movements over a staff monitored radio channel. "Renegade heading to residence" or "Renegade to Situation Room" or "Renegade to Secondary Hold," which was their discreet way of saying I was going to the bathroom." The US has invested millions of dollars into personnel and systems to secure its leaders and citizens. As the US first lady tours Kenya, the superpower must take control of certain aspects of our communication and transport. There are thousands of individuals around the world who would do anything to harm the US first lady just to score some political point.

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