“Noone ever leaves the Bubble and gets back in”

by Brian O’Keefe

“Are we gonna make it?”, I desperately asked the young woman whose name I never did get, roaring her sportscar at 90 mph on a cement median, somewhere in Michigan, cutting the stopped traffic. “Don’t worry, my Dad’s a state trooper, I know what to do..”

She said she knew the back alley route that would get us back to the small airport so that I would be reunited with my fellow travelers in time before take off. Did I mention it was First Lady Laura Bush? F.L.O.T.U.S.? And her motorcade? Which included a press pool minus one? Minus one = me.

To the list of accomplishments: producing the famous Charlie Sheen’s “winning” interview, being on the Pope’s plane and sleeping or trying to sleep on Diana’s funeral route, interviewing OJ Simpson at his backyard “domestic violence fundraiser”..add this: I may be the only person to ever get separated from a White House traveling press pool motorcade..and let back in.

It all started because of a missing lavalier microphone windscreen. A frickin tiny windscreen. A lavalier microphone is one you wear around your neckline. The windscreen covers it in severe windy locales…like at Jones Beach..not a Sheraton Ballroom in mid Michigan. Honestly, the mere word or thought of a microphone windscreen had never occurred to me before this FLOTUS escapade …nor ever, EVER since. Til… I write this.

I don’t know how the hell this happened. I had asked a Secret Service guy if it was OK for me to leave the group and go back to the hotel room ballroom and go look for the little tiny black plastic windscreen. “How much time do we have?”   A good 20 minutes he told me, before F L O T US (First Lady of The United States) would be departing the hotel. Great…the 60 second walk both ways gave me 17   minutes and change.

Why..and since when did I care about a tiny windscreen when I had my own duties as producer. I, in fact, was a press motorcade adoptee to the pool…what they call a unilateral addition to the usual FLOTUS press pool joined with Kate Snow, then the GMA Weekend anchor and with us: a very special young legend and perhaps the greatest network camerawoman ever, Ginny Vicario. Barbara Walters, Peter Jennings…the best of the best loved her work. I love her more for holding my hand through this escapade as it unfolded despite our 20 minute separation that felt like 2 days!

It wasn’t my first experience getting thrown into or out of a Presidential motorcade. During a mindnumbing sleepless “48 Hour” day I was sent to Van Nuys airport, close to the epicenter of the Northridge quake in 1993. I’ll never forget standing 10 feet behind President Clinton as he shook hands with people, along a crowded line at the airports perimeter. Watching in their faces ..his charisma reflecting onto their faces…and in their eyes… and seeing him nodding, as it was once called “aerobic listening.” Incredible human relations to witness. Though quickly interrupted. As Clinton prepared to depart, everyone was ordered back into “their motorcade car”. Only my problem was I didn’t have one.

You don’t want to be the guy on the tarmac yelling back at a brawny and yes, gorgeous, Secret Service agent saying,” I don’t have a motorcade seat”   I guess the rule is when P. O.T.U.S. (President Of The United States) gets in his car there shan’t be any pedestrians extraneously hanging around. Solution: “Get in a car RIGHT NOW”   I had stumbled innocently into this situation but noone is innocent particularly if they don’t necessarily belong in the motorcade.

Next thing I know…the Secret Service agent opens a limo door, physically body slams me and literally throws me into the car……right onto Dee Dee Meyers’ lap. I was shocked…as was she. “Oh, hello!” of all people the only recognizable person in Car number Three in POTUS’s earthquake motorcade. She was not happy. At all. At the next stop I was thrown into Car Number Seven…..ordered so by Miss Dee Dee herself. I could never like her either in person or on television ever again….after the quakecade.

But back to Michigan and chasing down FLOTUS (First Lady of The United States). I had last seen my colleague Kate Snow waving to me out the window as she and Mrs. Bush and her motorcade pulled away…in front of me…with a kinda “It is what it is” look.  Ouch!

The way it works is when Mrs. Bush gets in her car, everyone is in place ready to go. Noones waiting for that “lavalier windscreen guy”. From the Secret Service perspective FLOTUS AND POTUS wait for noone… they must always be moving…not sitting anywhere and waiting which is a huge security risk. Just like at earthquakeland motorcade: we don’t stop and figure out who this guy is. We throw him into the car so the motorcade doesn’t stop and wait. I get it. Really.

When a motorcade moves through a city, local cops close down roads to allow FLOTUS or POTUS to move around and so they don’t HAVE TO STOP*** for any reason. Its fascinating to be inside that secured protected bubble. Particularly quake-rocked Los Angeles that day…a metropolitan area paralyzed as people line the streets waving to their Washington leader whose come to lend support. A bit moving, actually. I’ve experienced three. Quakecade, the Windscreen FLOTUS three state book tour in a 12 hour day. …and a very unique “doublecade” traveling with Pope John Paul II through Newark, NJ WITH President Clinton’s motorcade within it. It was cool to be double credentialed.

Back to my special secret service wannabe driver, the daughter of a State trooper, she knew what roads to take to get me to the back gate of the municipal airport. Her father had shut down these very roads for other POTUS trips…so she plotted our manic drive as I texted Ginny my superhero camerawoman that I was coming. “They won’t hold the plane…Hurry!” I think she texted me back.

My Indy 500 daughter of Michigan hits every backroad, always over 70 mph. Remember I’m catching up to a motorcade that goes straight to the airport – without ever stopping. The odds are impossible….Even with this woman’s genius alternative route and high speeds, we barely made it.

We get there…I run…the local airport people knew I was coming. They were about to close the rear staircase…literally were beginning to lift it as I ran to it and climbed the steps….breathless. Ready to die.

I see Ginny, truly a veteran journalist who has seen it all…with all the blood drained from her face, in shock, dumbstruck that I had made it back considering how motorcades stop all other traffic. Unreal but true. A flight attendant was slowly closing all the overhead compartments above and whispered to me as I jumped back into the comfort of an Air Force Two or Three seat, “we liked you…so we took our time preparing for takeoff…would you like a drink? !”   Even Mrs. Bush smiled as if it was all OK. She always smiles. TANGENT ALERT!

I would meet Mrs. Bush years later after she and 43 retired to Texas, with the magnificent Maria Shriver who by the way may be the coolest, most down to Earth, gem of a human being.. I mean her mother founded the Special Olympics and her dad…the Peace Corps. Mrs. Bush helped Maria and I with a lovely interview about Alzheimer’s Disease which claimed her father …and Maria’s. She couldn’t have been more pleasant and polite to all of us in our crew.

As we were about to depart, the head Secret Service guy came up to me….to apologize on behalf of the NEW Secret Service guy who had misinformed me, allowing me to leave the protected bubble and incorrect info about the departure time.   I was just relieved to be back. I never saw the other NEW guy at all the rest of the trip. Maybe he got separated?

“Never”, said Ginny…finally speaking. “This has never happened before”. I didn’t know if I should be proud or embarrassed or fearful of getting in trouble.   If I hadn’t made it, it would have been a fiasco at work being separated from your anchorwoman and crew for something we were crashing for the next day or day after. Windscreen excuse or not, it would’ve been a disaster to be separated from my team mid-shoot

I love my job…in fact, every single one of them that I’ve had. I always say after doing this kind of stuff…. Making things happen…getting it done…against all odds…you feel like you can do anything for any business, particularly after the Missing Lavalier Windscreen fiasco.

The windscreen? I don’t think we ever did find it.

((PS:  Despite the irresistable blog entry title…the”TRAIN” STORY didnt fit  but for a later blog entry…))