CBS News
Golf: The presidential pastime that’s a nightmare for the Secret Service
Before President William Howard Taft ever stepped on a golf course as commander-in-chief, he was cautioned by his predecessor to avoid the sport altogether.
“I have received hundreds of letters protesting it,” then-President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Taft, who was his secretary of war. Roosevelt warned that photo-ops of political leaders’ leisure-time activities could damage their public image. “Photographs of me on horseback, yes. Tennis, no,” he wrote. “And golf is fatal.”
Roosevelt was speaking figuratively, but the U.S. Secret Service views presidential golfing as a literal physical threat. While former President Donald Trump was on the fairway of the fifth hole at Trump International Golf Club last Sunday in West Palm Beach last Sunday, an advance agent spotted the barrel of a rifle jutting through barbed wire fencing along the tree line bordering the sixth-hole putting green. The gunman was apprehended, and the FBI is still investigating the apparent attempt on Trump’s life — the second in about two months.
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Secret Service agents were given little time to survey the course for threats to Trump’s safety. According to two people familiar with the events, Trump’s protective detail was given roughly a 30-minute heads-up that he would play a round at his course Sunday, sending them scrambling to accommodate the unplanned outing.
“The president wasn’t even really supposed to go there,” Acting U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe told reporters this week. “It was not on his official schedule. And so we put together a security plan, and that security plan worked.”
“Off-the-record movements”
Trump’s round of golf is what the Secret Service calls an “off the record” or unplanned movement, an outing excluded from any public schedule. It’s the kind of excursion that usually offers far less time to prepare for agents tasked with shielding a president or former president from threats. Current and former agents likened it to President Biden’s last-minute pit stops for ice cream or President Barack Obama’s unannounced visits to nearby restaurants.
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“But if somebody’s going to lay down a bet in Vegas on a Sunday afternoon, they may just wager that the president’s going to play golf,” offered former Secret Service Deputy Director A.T. Smith, noting that while serving as an agent on then President Bill Clinton’s detail, he used to carry around three outfits in anticipation of his weekend ritual.
“We’d pack one outfit to go running, one to go to church, and a third to play golf,” Smith recounted.
Presidential respite turns into crisis
Golf outings offer the commander-in chief a rare respite from the churning demands of the Oval Office, but for the Secret Service agents who must scan fairways and putting greens, the assignment is a nightmare.
“In a perfect world, the Secret Service would rather the protectee never leave the house,” he added. “And that includes the White House.”
That nightmare first became a reality in October of 1983, when an armed man wielding a .38 caliber pistol pummeled his truck through an unmanned security gate and rumbled into the clubhouse, holding five hostages — including two Reagan aides — while demanding to speak with the president. The Secret Service reportedly whisked Reagan off the 16th hole and into a bulletproof limousine, but not before the president phoned the clubhouse to try and negotiate with his assailant. Charles Harris served five years in jail, but no one was injured.
A presidential putting green and namesake course
Since Taft first pierced the “green curtain” more than a century ago, sixteen presidents have stepped onto a golf course while in office, with President Dwight D. Eisenhower carding more than 800 rounds, according to the USGA. The avid golfer installed a putting green on the White House grounds in 1954.
Clinton — notorious for his “mulligans” — later moved it south of the Rose Garden, a short jaunt from the Oval Office, but nixed the sand bunker at the request of the U.S. Secret Service, who feared the president might knock a wedge shot through a West Wing window, according to Golf.com.
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While in office, Trump preferred his namesake golf courses. According to a count by former CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, Trump played golf at his heavily trafficked club in West Palm Beach 89 times during his presidency, with frequent outings to his other courses in Sterling, Virginia, and Bedminster, New Jersey, too. The latter suffered tens of thousands of dollars in damages back in 2017, after Clifford Tillotson allegedly used chemicals to etch anti-Trump messages in the greens, first reported by Bloomberg, at the time.
The day after Sunday’s incident at his Florida course, Rowe advised Trump during a closed-door meeting that it is unsafe for the former president to keep golfing without additional security measures, a senior official with the Trump campaign confirmed to CBS News.
The protective bubble
“The Secret Service isn’t authorized to protect the former president’s golf courses 24 hours a day,” said Paul Eckloff, a former Secret Service agent and assistant detail leader for Trump, who has protected him at golf courses “dozens of times,” including at the club in West Palm Beach.
Trump’s 27-hole course, an 8-minute drive from his residence at Mar-a-Lago, features wide open spaces interspersed with rows of swaying coconut palms and a 58-foot waterfall. Those terrain features offer cover to the former president when he plays, but they also conceal potential threats, current and former agents tell CBS News.
“On a golf course, the detail needs to stay a terrain feature ahead and a terrain feature behind to create that perimeter of protection for the former president or whoever it is that we’re protecting,” said Mike Matranga, a former U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to Obama’s detail.
But while Matranga considers Sunday’s response “a win” for the agency, he added, “The Secret Service should have had a counter surveillance or additional tactical element in that wood line with a K-9 sweeping the area,” a reference to where Ryan Routh lingered in the brush for nearly 12 hours, according to evidence retrieved by the FBI from the suspect’s cell phone. Routh currently faces two firearms charges over the incident.
During his U.S. Secret Service training, Matranga ran drills simulating an attack on a protectee at the links on Andrews Air Force Base, the same golf course where he routinely accompanied Obama for weekend rounds.
After retiring from the agency, the 12-year-veteran of the U.S. Secret Service admitted he sold his clubs. “I never wanted to step foot on a golf course again.”
contributed to this report.
The Biden administration will provide Ukraine with controversial anti-personnel mines in its war against Russia, a U.S. official confirmed to CBS News Tuesday night.
Anti-personnel mines, or APLs, are designed to be used against people, not vehicles. They can be rapidly deployed and are meant to blunt the advances of ground forces, making them useful for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s advances in Eastern Ukraine, the official said.
The U.S. sought commitments from the Ukrainians on their use to further limit the risk to civilians, the official said, noting that Ukrainians are committed to not employing the mines in areas populated with their own civilians.
The U.S.-provided APLs are different than the thousands of landmines being employed by Russia in eastern Ukraine in that they are “non-persistent,” meaning they become inert over a preset period of time, usually between four hours and two weeks, the official said. They are electrically fused and require battery power to detonate. Once the battery runs out, they will not detonate.
Tuesday marked 1,000 days since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. CBS News learned Sunday that President Biden had lifted restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S. weapons to conduct strikes deep inside Russia.
U.S.-supplied ATACMS were used Tuesday on targets inside Russia, U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News.
Ukraine has been one of the most mined countries in the world since Russia’s invasion in 2022, and Ukraine is inundated with APLs. They are known by deceptively innocent names such as “butterfly” or “petal” mines because they scatter like flower petals when they drop from the sky.
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“Typically, several hundred of these at a time will just be liberally and indiscriminately spread across the territory,” Pete Smith, the Ukraine program manager for the HALO Trust, a nonprofit organization focused on ridding warzones of landmines, told “60 Minutes” in August. “They can rest on the roofs. They can sit in guttering. They can take years before they come back into society and into view.”
To date, 164 nations, including Ukraine, have signed onto the Mine Ban Treaty which prohibits the use of APLs. However, three dozen countries have not agreed to it, including Russia and the U.S.
In January 2020, then-President Donald Trump reversed an Obama-era policy which banned the use of APLs anywhere except on the Korean Peninsula. However, in June 2022, Mr. Biden reinstated the ban, except for APLs “required for the defense of the Republic of Korea.”
contributed to this report.
ORION TOWNSHIP, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) – At least two people were injured after a possible gas explosion and ensuing fire destroyed a condominium building Tuesday evening in Orion Township, Michigan, officials said. Another two people remain unaccounted for.
According to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, the explosion was reported at about 6:30 p.m. local time in the Keatington New Town Association condominium complex on Waldon Road, between Joslyn and Baldwin roads.
Orion Township Fire Chief Ryan Allen says the explosion destroyed a four-unit building, causing significant damage to one building and minimal damage to a few others. Allen says crews worked with utility providers DTE and Consumers Energy to control a gas leak.
Photo submitted by Orion Township resident
Allen says the two people hospitalized, a 72-year-old man and a 75-year-old woman, suffered critical injuries. Their current condition is unknown. An unknown number of others suffered minor injuries, he added.
Allen said crews were working to make contact with two people who are unaccounted for.
The sheriff’s office said no fatalities have so far been reported.
“Preliminary indications are it was a gas explosion but the exact cause has not been determined,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
Orion Township is located just north of Detroit.
One resident who lives nearby told CBS News Detroit he was home with family when the explosion happened.
“We just heard this big boom [It] shuck my entire house. I look out the window, I see flares, I see fire just popping through the sky,” the resident said. “It felt like it was going to take a wall down. It felt like it happened at my house. I was terrified. It was so strong.”
Consumers Energy said in a statement that because firefighters were still battling the blaze, it did “not have additional information about the cause of the explosion or about the status of anyone in the building.”
The company said its crews will get on site once they are given the greenlight that it is safe to do so.
CBS News
Comedian Katt Williams often brags about passing Marine boot camp. The Marines say they have no record of it.
Los Angeles — Katt Williams, the Emmy-winning actor and renowned stand-up comedian, for years has claimed to have joined the U.S. Marine Corps as a teenager and successfully navigated the rigorous training only to be drummed out of the military when his superiors discovered he was a minor. The Marines told CBS News they have no record of him.
Dating back to at least 2016, Williams has claimed association with the U.S. Marine Corps when talking about his personal biography in video blogs, in his stand-up routines and in interviews viewed and heard by tens of millions of people. His claims of military service seem to not be attached to any of his critically acclaimed jokes or characters he has created for stage and screen but instead, a part of his journey towards comedy.
The U.S. Marine Corps tells CBS News there’s no record of Williams ever entering military service or attending any Marine Corps recruit training camps.
Multiple emails and phone calls were sent to Williams’ publicist, Amy Sisoyev, and his representatives at Creative Artists Agency, but no reply was returned for almost two weeks.
Earlier this year, Williams sat down for a nearly 3-hour interview with ESPN’s “First Take” correspondent Shannon Sharpe on his podcast, “Club Shay Shay.” The interview has racked up more than 83 million views on YouTube as of publication and is the most watched interview in YouTube’s history.
Sharpe, a former Denver Bronco and ex-NFL analyst for CBS Sports, asked Williams about being raised in Florida.
“I try to join the Marine Corps and they won’t accept me because I’m too young, and I’ve lied and told them I’m 16 and my family is moving down and I don’t have my ID but it’s coming. And so they [the Marines] let me go to the boot camp,” said Williams.
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
Similarly, on comedian Marc Maron’s podcast last year, Williams said, “And then I attempt to join the Marine Corps, and I go off to boot camp and I pass, and then they reveal that I’m too young, and they give me a little ceremony because I did pass, you know, oo-Rah.”
He added: “I wasn’t even 16. I wasn’t even 16. I was already — I had miscalculated it wrong. I thought that you know, by the time I got back I would be good, but I hadn’t turned 16 by the time boot camp was over.”
Maron, whose “WTF” podcast garners more than 55 million listens per year, asked Williams if he got through boot camp and about his ceremony.
Williams reaffirmed that he passed boot camp, saying, “When you come back everybody gets the ceremony and I was supposed to have been, probably put in the brig or court-martialed or something, but they didn’t treat me like that. … As far as the Marine Corps thing, whatever those commercials were selling, you remember those commercials back in that time … if you wanted to join a gang, the Marines was the gang to join.”
On Saturday, CBS News attended the Vulture Festival in Los Angeles where Williams was interviewed about his life and career by Jesse David Fox, a Vulture writer and host of “Good One: The Podcast About Jokes.” Williams is set to launch his multistate “Heaven on Earth” tour next year.
While Williams did not discuss his alleged short stint in the Marines, the comedian said “Thank God I tell the truth” when asked by Fox about his past statements in interviews.
CBS News filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records pertaining to Williams’ alleged enlistment in the Marine Corps.
Marine Corps officials searched for records pertaining to Williams using his full name — Micah Sierra Williams — and other identifying information such as his date of birth and social security number. Officials told CBS News that their database of official military personnel files dates back to the 1960s, housed at the National Personnel Records Center of the National Archives.
“We searched the files maintained by the Manpower Management Performance Branch but were unable to identify Mr. Williams as a member or former member of the U.S. Marine Corps,” wrote an official in response to CBS News’ public records request.
Marine Corps officials told CBS News that if Williams’ story was accurate, there would be records showing his entry into military service, his graduation and discharge, even if he fraudulently enlisted as a minor.
Army veteran Anthony Anderson, who runs “Guardians of Valor,” a popular social media website that investigates service member records, told CBS News that Williams’ claims are a “slap in the face of people who have earned the title of Marine.”
“Boot camp for the Marine Corps is not an easy task. To call yourself a Marine, you have to go through at least 13 weeks of boot camp and successfully navigate the crucible … people have died in training at boot camp trying to earn the title of Marine,” said Anderson.
While it’s unclear when exactly Williams began to claim he graduated from Marine boot camp, the earliest examples CBS News could find stemmed from Williams’ 2016 feud with actor and comedian Kevin Hart.
In a video that appears to have been recorded by Williams, addressing drug abuse allegations, the comedian says, “Ever since I got out of the Marine Corps, I can only breathe out of one nostril.”
That same year, Williams was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and battery charges after a fight at an apartment complex in Gainesville, Georgia, with a 17-year-old high school wrestler who was also charged, according to previous news reports. Williams pleaded not guilty and the case lingered on until earlier this year when local prosecutors decided to drop the case against Williams.
Soon after his arrest Williams spoke about the episode on stage, suggesting that he wasn’t actually put into a chokehold by the teenager and in fact, that Williams had let him win, adding, “I’m Semper Fi till I die, Marine Corps b—-. I passed motherf—ing boot camp at 16.”
Williams’ routine was removed from YouTube due to copyright infringement issues, but the video still exists in the reader forum on Military.com, a military news and culture website. A user posted the video to the website in 2016 and asked: “Katt Williams a Marine?”
