Behind the Scenes: In the Line of Fire (Petersen, 1993) with Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich

Yeah. Frank Morgan, you were JFK's favorite. Tell us, what happened to you that day? I see you, Frank. I see you standing over the grave of another dead president. That's not gonna happen. The Darcy, the only act of evasion who ever lost a president. Do you really have the guts to take a bullet, Frank? Now, isn't it possible that this guy's pushed some buttons in you? I can spot them. I can anticipate him. I think maybe you're too close to all this, Frank. He's right across the street, Lafayette Park. I have a rendezvous with death. And so does the president. And so do you, Frank. Gun! This summer, Clint Eastwood is in the line of fire. Rated R. If you were to ask me what is in the line of fire about, in the beginning, I would have told you it's a secret, it's the best secret service agent going up against the best assassin. Later on, I began to realize that these are like two sides of the same man and they've both been trained by the same government. One is, is assigned to protect the other to destroy. It was a story of redemption of this man that Clint Eastwood character who had failed miserably in his mind. And the whole story is driving toward, you know, can he ever overcome this horrible burden that he's bearing his whole life? And we also relate to it because it dealt with a very real event that, you know, it was important event in all of our lives, you know, the assassination of John Kennedy. And I think it took, you know, a fictional story, placed it in some historical context and, and it just, you know, it grabbed you at the beginning and just, you know, I was with it all the way. I have always been fascinated by the secret service and their function, and I've always been fascinated with the kind of mentality it takes to be a protectorate of officials or government presidency. And I think that the kind of mentality that means you're going to sacrifice yourself if somebody makes an assault on them. The genesis of the idea started with Jeff Apple, who was the producer on the project and who had for years, I guess, I think throughout the 80s, been trying to put together a film project based on the secret service. He'd met with various actors and directors and had come close to putting it together, but never quite pulled it off. He was never able to get a good script. But he had the idea of a secret service agent who had lost Kennedy in Dallas and who now wanted to redeem himself by protecting the current president. He also had the title In the Line of Fire, and he came to me in probably around 1990 or so. I had done another project for him and said, you know, I have access to the secret service. They're willing to take us in and show us around, give us access to their facilities. If you can come up with a story, I think we could pitch it and get it set up at a studio. The script for In the Line of Fire came to the secret service about 10 years before it actually went to production. And the the writer, Jeff McGuire and Jeff Apple came to the secret service. They had this proposed script. They said, would you read it? If he ever goes to production, would the secret service cooperate? And I was in a position at that time where I had to review scripts and tell the production companies whether or not we would cooperate. We like this script because for a Hollywood script that really portrayed many of the problems of the secret service. The secret service was enormously supportive of all our efforts. We when we first got involved in the project, we met with them in Washington. We obviously toured their facility and we talked to many of them about what they do on a daily basis, how they do it. And they were with us all the time. The scripts continue down. There was a two or three rewrites. We helped them in some of the areas in their rewrites. And finally, at actually two months after I retired is when the script was sold, Clint Eastwood was signed down as a major character. They called me and asked me if I could be the technical advisor. I had never been on a movie set, so I had no idea what that meant. I figured I could tell them everything that I knew in the side of a couple of weeks. And once it went to production, pre-production, I went through the entire process with them. It was nine months of work working as the technical advisor on the movie. Bob was great because, I mean, he he was the real deal. There's always that one guy on the set who's the real deal. All of us actors are trying to play the role. But I think with Bob, I mean, he was he was the real deal and he kind of walked us through it and showed us what it was really like to be a Secret Service agent. So it's always great to have somebody like that, especially Bob, because he was, again, you know, top notch and and right there to show us what we should really do. Bob Snow was invaluable. He's you know, and I know he started a little cottage industry in Hollywood advising people on movies that deal with the Secret Service or anything to do with Washington, D.C. He he was he was very important. He he was with us every day. He sat there and whenever there was a question, he was there to answer it and say, well, this is how it's done. Yeah. You might have to change it a little bit for dramatic purposes, and so that would be OK. And, you know, he basically is what we're looking for in an expert like that is to tell us exactly how it's done. And if we felt we needed to change things dramatically, what was within reason and would work and still come across as being realistic to someone like him or other Secret Service agents? I've been able to talk to a lot of Secret Service women since I've been here, and that's been helpful just to know what they do and what's expected of them and how they dress and things like that. The agents are recruited through our field offices throughout the country. Then they are sent to a nine week training course in Glencoe, Georgia, which all federal agents go to initially. It's just a very basic. And then they are brought up to our own training center at Beltsville, Maryland, where they go through another nine or ten weeks of training there. And then really their first year on the job is total training. They're returned to a field office. They're assigned to a training agent, somebody that's an older agent, that will then take them through some more steps through that first year. So really the first year on the job is considered a training year. Every agent begins his career in the field. That's where he cuts his teeth. That's where he learns how to do criminal investigations. That's where he gains the experience and he matures into an agent who ultimately will transfer to a protection detail. And those skills truly serve him well because that's where you develop what I call the knack. You know that you can deal with any problem. You know that you can deal with the eventual and inevitable twists and turns in a protection assignment. And ultimately you get your legs. You learn from senior agents. You also learn the culture and that's critical to the Secret Service. I mean what we're about is 130 year history, a tradition I think that speaks loudly for where we've been and what we've done. Typically once an agent has completed his training he or she is assigned to a field office where they're exposed to a myriad of situations. They learn the basic to hone their investigative skills which they've learned in school. They're exposed to our financial crimes investigations or counterfeit currency investigations. And then after they've gained some experience and expertise we work them into the protective intelligence cases. You get an emotional attachment to the job and of course the Kennedy assassination that was a very emotional issue for the Secret Service. We lost a president and we took that very emotionally as not so much as a Kennedy that we lost but we lost the president which was our job to protect the president. So that was a very emotional for everybody not only the agents that were actually assigned to the detail but to every agent in the service. But what we did here is there was some manipulation of reality. We took we took some real footage of Kennedy arriving at the airport in Dallas and we placed you know a young Clint Eastwood who we had given kind of a haircut to digitally into the footage so that we could place him there realistically as realistically as we could you know in 1963. We also you know used the famous footage of the assassination and you know I mean those are sort of sacred sacred events in American history and I think we tried to be as cautious and careful as we could about it. This fella that I play has been involved in an assassination many years ago and he still has very bad feelings about it and he feels inadequacies about it so he has to overcome that plus try to ward off a possible one that would come within the story. We go into every every protective stop with the idea that we need to create a safe and secure environment at every level both in terms of logistics routes where he walks what he does natural hazards all those things have to be considered and ultimately we work very closely with with our law enforcement counterparts to get the lay of the land to understand the site to script his movements to know where he's going to go to ensure that we've created as best we can that bubble and ultimately to always anticipate you know where there may be a hole where there may be a gap. Aside from protection being our most critical mission the responsibility of protecting the president are to make sure on a 24 hour basis that we look out for his personal safety the safety of his family we do environmental monitoring to make sure the air is safe the water is safe and generally just to make sure that the president can can carry off the responsibilities of his office. When you're working a protective detail your mindset is such that you're engaged in all the possibilities you have trust in the advance agent that they've done everything they can to prepare that site prepare the way for you but you're also aware that we can only get at best 98 percent you've got to be always aware of the fact that there may be mitigating factors that situations will arise you'll have to take actions that you may put yourself in harm. Typically we've all made that decision long ago before we even entered training academy. If you have to stop and think about it when you're faced with it it's too late. What our role is is to ensure that we keep our democratically elected leaders and those who visit our country safe. And I think I speak for every man and woman in this organization when I tell you that the job doesn't pay you enough to do what may be required to do which ultimately is to lay down your life for protecting. But that's what we'll do and that's what we're committed to do. No matter what you feel about the president or whoever you're protecting you sort of have to take that bullet. That's your job. And that's kind of a tall order. This role was much more about the interior world of this guy that I was playing. You know I was much more concerned about you know who he was and what his fears were and what his and what his life was. You know I was much more concerned about what his inner world was and why was he so frightened. You know what was his what was his his darkness. When you're a sign of the presidential detail or any time you're protecting someone you know your your total focus and your total ideas is to make sure that the president is this in secure environment and you're part of establishing that secure environment. So it's a serious job. The agents take it very seriously and it's the mindset has to be total concentration on what you're doing because at least a little bit of change at least a little bit of an incident you have to be able to react and be you know set to do what you have to do whatever the situation might be and you have no idea what kind of situations come up in a motorcade for example as you see in this in this movie the motorcade is moving it can't go too fast because the agents have to run alongside of it but they're looking for anybody that might be throwing something coming out of the crowd coming at the at the car doing what they might do that would be considered a threat to the president and that's why they're there. But usually they just go up alongside of the car and eventually of course as the car speeds up in the motorcade then they'll drop back and jump onto the running board or jump into the follow up cars. You may recall in the movie where Clint Eastwood is working the rope line when the president's motorcade stops and they have to jump out and work the rope line and we had to work teach Clint how to actually do that how to run alongside of the car I mean how to have to keep your hand on the car so the car turns left you don't want to be turning right and have your car drive away the way the agents would stay along the side of the car how they how they operate there the way that the agents would respond to a incident where they thought there was a gun threat or something like that when you call out gun and they respond in the way the agents would protect the president you cover and evacuate the man. Every agent assigned to a protective detail is in constant communication with every other agent. I mean we in a motorcade environment we have an internal radio system in the vehicle and we also have personal radios that each agent wears that so we keep each each of us stays in constant contact and receives the same information about ongoing events. Constantly in any kind of protective mode you have to think about what the possibilities are and what might happen and what somebody could think up to do when you're you're you're actually it it's almost like a locksmith I mean you invent a lock and then somebody vents a way to thwart that lock well it's the same way in protection no matter what you do in protection you'd like to be able to do a little bit more you'd like to be but it has to be politically acceptable particularly with the president I mean the president is a person that wears many hats he's the head of a political party he's the commander in chief he has to be seen by the public he's a great politician and yet we would from a protective standpoint would like to very much house them and just take them from point A to point B in a tank but that's not going to happen so we have to adjust our security around that kind of a of a an atmosphere but so we're constantly thinking what the bad guy what somebody that might want to hurt the president or what might want to hurt one of our protectees what they could do and then we try to thwart that by changing our procedures or doing this or doing that to to change what we might do so we make sure that it's that's secure and safe for the threats are taken seriously because threats if they translate into action obviously will test and challenge us and that's why we're here I mean we're here to to provide a safe and secure environment and we would be remiss if we didn't take every threat regardless of the source from and we don't care whether it's you know something that someone said in jest once we get to them or something obviously we do care about which is the person who who says it and tends to follow it out we follow up on every threat we investigate every individual who who unfortunately utters those words it's a federal offense to threaten the president in any any fashion so it's a that's a federal offense and it's a it's prosecuted we don't make a big issue of prosecution very often because we don't want copycats we don't want to publicize it much of the work that Secret Service does doesn't get publicized in the way of thwarting an attempt on a president or doing something because we just don't operate that way we don't want people to know that we have these people out there that are doing the kind of things that that might spark somebody else to want to do the same thing one problem I think with a lot of movies is that if you get too technological the audience starts to feel that it's getting into science fiction and I think that one of the the nice things about in line of fire was that you could watch it and feel and identify with both characters I mean it sounds a little gruesome to identify with a killer but I think that you could watch Malkovich his character you know what what he did in order to get close to the president say oh yeah that could happen oh yeah I could even do that you know and I think that if I'd gotten too much into a scientific mastermind a guy who knew how to hack into top secret Secret Service files and that kind of stuff then it gets into that realm of could somebody really do that I don't know probably our most important weapon is called the electronic crime special agent program 144 today highly trained skilled computer forensic experts that can know what they're looking at when they find it they know what to do with it they know how to preserve the evidence and how to interpret that evidence and they provide us with the clues that ultimately will lead us down the path hopefully to apprehension or prevention you have to realize that when we lost Kennedy the Secret Service was a very very small organization where I think we only had less than 450 agents that were in the entire country in the entire world but we now have over 2200 agents we have the kind of resources now that we had asked for for years it it's too bad that it has to take such a tragedy as a Kennedy assassination to start getting some of the resources that the Secret Service had been asking for for years and and I think protection very often is a reaction to what happened yesterday. The most important variable in this agency is is the agent he or she may make the ultimate sacrifice he or she may take an action to prevent a threat from manifesting itself in in the face of a protectee. Today's threats posed by technology are also offset by technology. I mean we're very in tune with the technologies that can be directed against us and we try to develop countermeasures that can offset those technologies and give us the edge. Obviously we want to be portrayed in as accurate a light as possible. I mean I understand it's entertainment. Sometimes the stuff we do doesn't sell but more important than these that we're treated with dignity. I refer to the the name of this building. I refer to the 135 year tradition and history that we have. What we hope is that the public really gets a good picture of what we do and how we do it and I mean I think we owe it to the men and women of the organization to be sure that that you know that we are what we do and how we do it as best you can is portrayed in the most positive light. The Secret Service is one of the few areas of law enforcement as opposed to the FBI or the CIA that really hasn't had the kind of scandals and the kind of problems that some of the other agencies have had. They're pretty upright outstanding guys and they have great senses of humor too and I think that helped in getting their cooperation for this movie. We basically gave Secret Service lessons to our actors and you know talked about it with them over and over again to to make sure that everything we were doing was as accurate as possible. You know the public may not know it but we wanted to make sure that the Secret Service would watch the movie and say yeah that's the way it's done.