Presidential Detail

REILLY OF THE WHITE HOUSE (248 pp.) --As told to William J. Slocum by Michael F. Reilly-- Simon and Schuster ($3).

On the morning of Pearl Harbor, Henry "The Morgue") Morgenthau Jr., Secretary of the Treasury and nominal head of the Secret Service, rushed to the White House like a county sheriff in pursuit of chicken thieves. "Peering through the White House windows in search of enemy aircraft," he was all for ordering machine guns issued to the Secret Service staff, including the office girls.

In the excitement, young (33) Mike Reilly found himself elevated to codirector of the White House Detail. His wartime stewardship of Franklin Roosevelt's safety is recorded in this sequel to Starling of the White House (TIME, March 11, 1946). Readers will find it an amusing, properly reverent account of the Detail's war of nerves against a largely nonexistent army of assassins.

A Grunt for the Boss. Like most Presidents, F.D.R. thought he was being overguarded (70 men on the regular White House Detail, hundreds when he went on speaking tours). The one & only serious attempt at assassination, despite some 5,000 threatening letters a month, was the Miami shooting in 1933 which resulted in the death of Chicago's Mayor Anton Cermak.

Roosevelt was cheered by most of those who saw him, though not in Wall Street ("They hate me and I welcome their hatred"). In his old stamping grounds around Hyde Park, he was generally ignored. Once when he got lost near Rhinebeck, he turned into a farm for directions. "The farmer was painting his barn and the Boss drove up beside him. 'Can you tell me where the Halton place is?' the President asked. The farmer looked down at . . . the President, spat a pint or so of tobacco juice past the car, and motioned. 'Down there, about a quarter of a mile.' 'Thank you,' said the Boss. The farmer grunted without turning, 'That's all right, Bub.' "

Hatches & Horrors. Twice the President had to duck objects hurled at him. One time a dagger was thrown; it was made of rubber. Another time, during a parade, a well-wrapped ham sandwich dropped into his lap from an apartment house in The Bronx.

For a while, Roosevelt rode in an armored car that had originally belonged to Al Capone. Later, improved models were carried (on presidential tours) in an oversized baggage car that had once hauled animals for Barnum & Bailey's circus. Few possibilities were overlooked by the Presidential Detail: F.D.R.'s special Pullman was watertight and equipped with submarine escape hatches.

Roosevelt was not only surrounded by Secret Service but often preceded by Geiger counters (to determine the possible presence of radioactivity) and usually shielded by a special speakers' stand which, when a button was pressed, threw up a sheet of armored steel. Says Agent Reilly: "I lived in horror of the day an Agent would accidentally press the remote control button and F.D.R. would find himself talking to a piece of steel where a moment before he had been addressing thousands of people. He wouldn't have been amused; there were very few things F.D.R. enjoyed more than talking to a large crowd."

A Gun for De Gaulle. Reilly provides an occasional--if oblique--glimpse into Roosevelt's personal relationships with the world's political bigwigs. F.D.R., knowing full well that smoking in the presence of Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud would be considered an insult, carefully refrained from doing so; just after the King left, Roosevelt lighted up--and gaily waved goodbye, the cigaret between his fingers. On another occasion, during a conversation between General de Gaulle and the Boss, Reilly sensed such ire in the General's manner that he says: "I was conscience-bound to remove my pistol from my holster and hold it unobtrusively in my hand for half an hour."

Stalin was something of an enigma and Churchill, says Reilly, was completely understood only by Fala, the President's photogenic Scottie. Churchill once sent Roosevelt a dozen records of his favorite speeches. They were smashed when Secret Service agents became suspicious of the package. "I told F.D.R. of his loss," Reilly reports, "and he resigned himself to it rather easily."

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