Secret agents keep keen eye on P.M.

Press, 8 March 1984, Page 26

Secret agents keep keen eye on P.M.

NZPA staff correspondent Washington

Security for the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, is tight in the United States, with secret agents armed with Uzi sub-machine-guns accompanying him everywhere he goes. At a game ranch in Texas, the Secret Service made a discreet reconnoitre of the terrain — and then posted sharpshooters in the hills — before the convoy of panel vans and pick-ups moved off to tour the ranch.

In New Orleans, Sir Robert’s motorcade swept through red lights, sirens howling, as the police blocked crossroads, and outriders on motor-cycles roared up and down the convoy. The Secret Service men all carry loaded pistols, smile seldom, and talk less. They rarely looked at Sir Robert, scanning the crowds, the bridges, and the roof-tops instead. In Washington, members of the New Zealand party

had to walk through a metal detector gate to get into the White House and were then frisked with a hand-held metal detector which was so sensitive that everyone ended up emptying their pockets. At one lunch in Austin, Texas, a Secret Service man, refusing a glass of wine, pointed out that even the one glass, might cost him the fraction of a second of reaction time that might be vital if anyone attempted to assassinate Sir Robert In Texas, Sir Robert rode in a nondescript brown car with clear windows. It was the Ambassador to Washington, Mr Lance Adams-Schneider, who was the decoy, riding in an impressive stretched black limousine with smoked windows. Mrs Adams-Schneider rode with him. The Ambassador admitted that it took him only about a second to work out why he got the best car.

Sir Robert told NZPA in San Antonio, Texas, that he

had two options in the United States on security.

“The Secret Service rule is that you either have them, or you do not have v them, in which case you sign a waiver that the United States Government is not responsible for any of your security,” he said. “I have found in recent years that it is better to have them, because they do I facilitate travel.” (The ■ Secret Service, in fact, got ; down to such mundane tasks as collecting the luggage for the entire New Zealand party.) Protecting Sir Robert is a popular position among the Secret Service men. Sir Robert tells of his visit to the United Sttes in 1977 when the secret agents told him at the end of the visit that they had all put in for his detail because they knew there would not be any trouble, and the next week the Shah of Iran was Incoming and Iranians in the United States had publicly made threats that he would be assassinated.