Youve got to frame this in the context of a bigger and you do that already. Which i tried to do in the book. There was a wonderful description of jim rhoades, he said he looked like a Football Player turned mortician. [laughter] that was just a a great description. Youve been a wonderful audience, i would be glad to sign books. Thank you very much for coming, i appreciate it. [applause] so the book signing is out in the rotunda, and there are refreshments out there as well. [inaudible conversations] this is booktv on cspan2, and we want to know whats on your Summer Reading list. Send us your choices. booktv is our twitter handle. You can also post it on our facebook page, facebook. Com booktv. Or you can send an email to booktv cspan. Org. Whats on your Summer Reading list . Booktv wants to know. [inaudible conversations] good evening and welcome to barnes noble. Tonight we will be hearing from gary byrne, and here to introduce him is his publicist, sarah falter. [applause] [laughter] oh, thank you. For the first time, a veteran secret Service Officer in the Clinton White house is publicly speaking out about the erratic, uncontrollable and occasionally violent behavior displayed by Hillary Clinton which he witnessed firsthand. On we half of Center Street behalf of Center Street and hachette book group, im pleased to introduce gary byrne. He served in federal Law Enforcement for nearly 30 years in the Uniformed Division of secret service and most recently as a federal air marshal. While serving as a secret Service Officer, gary protected president bill clinton and the first family in the white house. A note from the office of bill clintons chief of state included praise of byrne. Your knowledge of the oval office, the president and the presidency is enviable. Because of his dedication to the duty and bythebook mentality, he was unofficially dubbed mayor of the west wing by his colleagues. In 1995 byrne received an evaluation from his superiors praising him as a mature and dependable employee whos an exceptionally wellinformed member of the west wing detail who consistently performs in a highly efficient and conscientious manner. In march 1996, the secret service issued a letter of communication on the professionalism and the knowledge displayed by officer byrne. In july 1996 he received a letter of appreciation from the secret service for his commitment, dedication and professional performance. Because of his direct knowledge and access to the clintons, unclouding being assigned outside including being assigned outside the oval office, he was subpoenaed during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He everied a certificate of appreciation can be received a certificate of appreciation during the nato summit in washington d. C. He served as a federal air marshal until his retirement in july 2016. He has been praised by oh, excuse me, not july. He has been praised by the acting director of the federal air Marshal Service for his distinguished career, commitment to Public Service and contributions to facilitate professional Law Enforcement environments. He spent much of his time in the white house also trying to protect the clintons from their own worst impulses. During this closelyfought president ial election when questions of character and temperament have become paramount, his best selling book will provide evidence for those who question whether Hillary Clinton has the temperament and character to serve as commander in chief. And now id like to welcome gary byrne. [applause] wow. Thank you for coming. How much did they pay you . [laughter] i greatly appreciate you coming. So im going to tell you a little bit about myself. I was actually born in, excuse me. [laughter] [inaudible] yes. I was born in ridley park, pennsylvania. And i grew up probably like most everybody else. I had two participants parents, i went to school. I was fascinated with the military. When we moved down to virginia in the early 70s, all neighbors in the Virginia Area where we lived in newport news were all military, marines, air force officers, army officers, and i was fascinated with the military. And the first day i saw my neighbor come out in his uniform, i knew i was hooked. Writing the book, the crisis of character, needless to say, extremely hard. I never thought id take these i was pretty sure that the things that i saw and witnessed that i would take, you know, with me on my death. But i decided a couple years ago that it was important that the American People know exactly how, what i witnessed when i worked in the west wing and what i saw in the secret service. And at some point i decided a couple years ago that i was going to have to tell this story. So with the help of some very good friends, i was able to do that. Im grateful for everybodys help, our publisher and my friends that have helped me and my agent, javelin and the publisher excuse me, hachette. So what brings me here today, im grateful for you guys coming and, hopefully, purchasing my book and listening to me. And the, the main thing i want you to understand about my book when you get a chance to read it is the people that do those jobs, theyre good, dedicated people. And its not easy to do quite jobs that they have to do sometimes. And what really drove me, im catching my breath here. What really drove me to write the book was, as i said before, i want the American People to know what the clintons were really like. And i want you to understand that, you know, it doesnt matter be they were democrats or republicans. If they were republicans and they behaved like that, god as my witness, i would be telling the same story. Its the truth, its my life, and obviously i had a hard time writing it. But i did. So let me go back to my life a little bit when i was younger. Lived in born in pennsylvania, lived in virginia. Joined the air force at 19. Went to Lack Land Air Force Base and then to turkey, and i lived in turkey for about a year. I loved it. My mothers side of the family is lebanese, so the food was pretty similar, which was nice. And i had a good time there. And then we did, got a we had a good mission there. We worked with the turkish military. I came back, i was stationed at Langley Air Force base down in virginia, and that was great because that was close to the area that i lived when i was growing up, in newport news, virginia. So i got to hang out with childhood friends, and that was a nice time. They were going to college, and i was in the air force. A bunch of my friends and i, we got an apartment together, and we had a good life. And then i got out of the air force, and i was looking for a job, and i got a job for a short period of time with the boeing Helicopter Company up in pennsylvania outside of philadelphia. And i was building aircraft for a couple years. And then one day my wife saw this advertisement in the paper. She said did you ever hear of the secret Service Uniform division . I said, no, i never heard of it. I heard of the secret service. When i first got out of the service, i contacted them, and they said you have to have a college degree. I said, well, thats not going to work, so i went to work at boeing. Things at boeing were slowing down, so i filled out this application for the secret Service Uniform division. It took about six months, and i finally got a phone call back. It took me two and a half years to get to the point where, you know, they did enough background check where they thought i was a reliable person. So then they started, you know, giving the tests. You have to, you know, give urine tests and a polygraph test. Polygraph test took me five of and a half hours. Yeah. [laughter] and you would think after five and a half hours they would have given up. [laughter] so i finally got through that. Next thing i knew i was down in beltsville, maryland, learning to be a Police Officer for the secret service. Went to georgia for about six weeks eight weeks and then back to maryland to finish up my training. And then the next thing you know i was at the white house. It was, it was very special. First family that i protected was of George Herbert walker bush and his family x that was really nice. It was a lot of fun. They were really nice people. In hindsight, i will tell you that they set me up for a really big shock when the next administration came in. [laughter] so without sounding too derogatory, which i guess that ships already sailed, so the bush family was great. We, one with of the most memorable things i can remember about working with them was i was a new rookie standing my post outside on the south lawn of the white house, and thats the side where the Washington Monument is. And called i look over all of a sudden i look over and here comes president bush. He has a tray in his hand full of food, and one of the stewards has another tray full of food, and i guess they were barbecuing. He walks over, and they hand me the trays, and i set them down on this little cubbyhole, and i was really confused. I didnt understand why the president and the steward were bringing me food, the houseman. The president said, you know, help yourself and then feed the rest of the guys on the south lawn, you know . I was new, and i said, well, mr. President , were not allowed to eat, you know . [laughter] and the houseman goes just follow his directions, and its fine, you know . [laughter] so i did. And i thanked him, and he walked off. I called my coworkers and said walk to the edge of your post, and ill walk over. So i took what i wanted, and i put moved the one tray over and met the guy. I go back to my post, and as soon as i picked up the sandwich to eat, my sergeant and lieutenant walked up, and theyre like youre not supposed to be eating on post. [laughter] im like, he told me too. [laughter] the president of the United States told me to eat. As he was berating me, the houseman came out with this tray of water and gave me this really nice glass of ice water. So that was any that was my kind of introduction to the white house. It was a good time. I worked with them for about a year and a half, two years. And then, you know, just after i went to work there is kind of when the campaign spun off, and then we went to started traveling around the United States with the metal detectors. Thats one of the jobs of the secret service Uniformed Division, the snipers up on the roof in the dark clothes, dont wave at them. They wont wave back. And then they also, the Uniformed Division did, like i said, metal detectors around the country. The world, really. And they also do the physical outer Perimeter Security of the white house. And i loved it. It was great. And then as the campaign went on and then eventually a new president came into town, things changed at the white house greatly. So at first, you know, you heard all these rumors of president clintons behavior in arkansas, and you tried to give it a, you know, it is what it is type of thing or, you know, who believes it. And then as time went on, it became pretty clear that, you know, they werent just rumors, it wasnt just tabloid, there were some strange things going on. Which i, you know, once you get a chance to read the book, myself and my cowriter, grant schmidt, did a pretty good job of getting it down just right. So one of the things that also compelled me to write this book is when the scandal broke and ill be very careful how i talk about these things because i see some really young people in the audience, and, you know, part of the things that i ended up having to testify were probably rrated. So well skip over some of that. But the, one of the things that compelled me to write this book is when the scandal broke, the secret service and i love the secret service, but they were, the higherups in that agency, obviously, were trying to protect themselves. And they kind of pushed forward this group of agents, young officers like myself, some junior agents. And one senior guy that was an agent that wasnt each on detail at the time frame that the starr investigation was looking to interview people and to get information for. And so, you know, in the position we were in, you cant tell the secret service no. You cant really say anything to the investigators without their permission. And it went on for months. The rules changed how we could testify almost by the week. And it was so confusing because we were all government employees, so there was no Attorney Client privilege. So the lawyers that were supposedly representing me had no bond to not tell anybody. So is after a while it kind of became clear on some of the things that we saw that one part of the Justice Department was eating dinner at the same place as the other side. And things got very confusing for us, for the officers like myself and for the agents that were involved in it. Eventually, i was subpoenaed six times, and we didnt actually fight the subpoenas, we kind of stalled them. As the secret service tried to invent this thing could the protective function privilege which would be similar to, you know, they cant compel a wife to testify against a husband type of thing. And it went all the way up to the supreme court, and it failed. So by that time were, like, in the middle of the summer. And so eventually e we had to go and testify. And by this time myself and these other officers and agents had probably given anywhere between three to ten hours of testimony on camera. And if you actually, its kind of funny that its being taped by cspan, because all that video is on cspan. And so when i heard cspan was taping this, i thought, oh, my old friend, cspan. You can actually google my name in cspan and bring up, i think, three hours of deposition. But anyway, just so you know, ive never watched the whole thing. My coworker watched it a couple times as we were writing the book. Excuse me, my cowriter. So, but it was a tough time. And when you put all these things together, the stress, you know, that happening and basically when you look at it from my perspective, everything that happened to us was caused by the same bad behavior that we saw, that we heard about in arkansas and then we saw in washington d. C. And my fear is that if mrs. Clinton becomes president , were going to see that same type of behavior. And it concerns me for the country. So thats one of things that compelled me to write the book. The other one was [laughter] and this will be tough. Excuse me just a second. Other one was that i want my kids to know i did right thing. So now if anybody has my questions, id love to answer them. Sir. Yeah. We doing a microphone . Or you can hear me from where im atsome. Actually, i dont know. Were good . Okay. Glad to meet you, mr. Byrne. Thank you. I just want to ask you if you think writing this book makes it tougher for those who are in protection because in order to do their job they have to have a certain level of trust with the we cant hear you. Can you talk louder . So his question is the fact that im writing book, is it going to make it harder for the secret service to do their job now, is that correct . Conversely, does it also make it easier knowing that future president s would have greater accountability knowing that people are out there writing books . Right. I hope that future president s do have better accountability and do behave better. Is me doing this going to make it harder on my former coworkers . It will. And the word you used, trust, is a big deal. And im a big fan of trust. But the trust goes two ways. And i realized that im defending myself with this, but trust goes two ways. I trusted when they swore president clinton in that. When it was first presented to me and i decided to do it and i worked with my cowriter, my wife knew. And when i actually first started it, i told the we had a meeting, and i said, listen, in four months im going to come back to you guys, and im going to tell you that this is over. Four months later we had about 100 pages, and by that time i had, i was had made peace with it. I saw what was coming, and i knew what i was going to be up against, but i thought it was worth doing. So does that answer your question . [inaudible] okay. Thank you. Similar to the young ladys question up front, what sort of vetting process did the book have, like this have to go through because of all the navy seal right, right. Kind of books coming out and being vetted by the pentagon. Right. Did your work have to be vetted by anyone . So i actually left part of your question out, im sorry. Im going to answer it right now. So heres the deal. Back then secret Service Employees werent asked to sign confidentiality agreements. And i will tell you, as much as i try to tell myself that i dont have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder about the whole thing that happened, my attitude was a little bit like, well, you know, this happened to me, this is what you guys, you know, the secret service and the protectee, you know, caused to other people. Im not really worried about that. So i didnt let anybody review it. I just wrote the book, and we edited it, and we went forward with it. And, which is, you know, one of reasons its in the configuration that it is today. Nobody got to say that wasnt, it couldnt be in there or not. Now, i will tell you that i was, my books about 280 pages roughly in thats roughly . Thats half of what we wrote roughly, and thats half of what happened. I left out a lot of stuff because it gives away too many, too much information about secret service procedures. And it inadvertently ends up kind of slamming some people that, you know, in hindsight, i dont want any more damage to come to them. So i, you know, i left a lot of material out and a lot of incidences out. But this is the true story as it happened x pretty much its just the story about my life. But it does mostly revolve around my time in the secret service. Does that get it pretty good i