When I worked for President Clinton, I would jog with him early in the morning. I was among a small cadre that included the doctor and the Secret Service jogging detail. I would run just behind the president as part of the Secret Service phalanx posted around him. We’d plod about three miles or so. Through many a jogging morning, the president and I became informal and comfortable with each other.
These jogging sessions came to an abrupt end during the early morning of March 14, 1997. The president, senior staff, and I arrived at golfer Greg Norman’s compound at Hobe Sound, just outside of West Palm Beach, Florida, at about midnight. The president had developed a friendship with Norman and was visiting to play in a three-day charity golf tournament. Once we helicoptered in, the president dismissed the doctor and myself to our bungalow and some sleep after what had been a very long day. Clinton was ending the day with the Normans over a nightcap and would prepare for an early start in the golf tournament the next morning.
Just after one in the morning, I was startled awake by a Secret Service agent banging on my door, shouting, “Get up, get up, the president’s down!” The doctor and I looked at each other in shock, fearing the absolute worst. We jumped to our feet, and I threw on the closest clothing I could find-jogging shorts and shoes, a University of North Carolina T-shirt, and a blue blazer.
We ran out into Norman’s front yard and found the president sitting on the walkway, pants leg pulled above his knee, in obvious pain. “Buzz,” he said, “I think I hurt myself.” Major Bill Lang, the White House on-duty doctor and an officer in the US Army, looked him over. “Sir,” Bill said, “you’ve torn a tendon in your knee, and we need to get you to the hospital fairly quickly.”
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Problem was, almost all of the White House staff and most of the support vehicles were miles away in Palm Beach. The staff had chosen creature comforts over proximity and potential presidential contingency, and was nowhere near the Norman compound. As a result, the Secret Service agents, Bruce Lindsey, the doctor, and I quickly assembled a makeshift motorcade of rental cars, gingerly placed the president into an awaiting ambulance, and motored off to the hospital some 45 minutes away.
If the president’s injury had been more serious, it wouldn’t have been funny. But the whole episode was a bit comical, given the president’s injury appeared to be the result of having a bit too much to drink. The lead Secret Service agent led the procession at high speeds down dark beach roads in his rental car.
I threw myself in the back of the Counter Assault Team’s black truck, head over heels, and started the emergency notification process on my cell phone. There’s not a lot of cell phone connectivity on the roads along the beach in rural eastern Florida. Through lack of forethought on all our parts, there were no secure communications, no protective cover of presidential limousines, no police escort.
Later that morning, after several hours at the Palm Beach hospital, we would all board Air Force One and fly back to Bethesda, Maryland, for the president’s surgery. His jogging days, as president, were over.
