Telephone Support for President Reagan | |||
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Type Of Activity | Presidential Travel Support | ||
Location | |||
Location | Travel communications support | ||
Date of Activity | 1985 | ||
Coordinates | |||
Telephone Support for President Reagan by Kenneth W. Barbi KC3OYM kenbarbi@verizon.net (WHCA Trip Officer 1983 - 1986)
SECURE VOICE
The White House Communications
Agency (WHCA) provided secure voice telephone support on the 18 Acre White
House Grounds, and at all Trip Sites for President Reagan. Our secure switchboard was called Cartwheel - - a water tower (Figure 1)
- - located in
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Cartwheel Water Tower
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Figure 3. STU - I Hardware with
Instrument On Top of Cabinet |
By 1986, we were using the new STU-III phones (Figures 4 and 5). They came in two colors - white and black. WHCA personnel had them in their homes with a White House security key for their work. Both styles encoded voice into analog signals for transmission over copper wire on standard dial-up telephone lines. The STU-III was very easy to install anywhere where there was a standard telephone line.
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Figure 4. STU - III Phone Photo from the
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The only cellular phones at WHCA in
the 1980's were the Motorola "Get
Smart shoe size" DynaTAC 8000X
phones (Figure 6) used as part of the original cellular
feasibility study. There was only
service in
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Figure 6. Original Motorola DynaTAC 8000X Cell Phone |
PAGING SYSTEM
In town and on the road, WHCA had a Motorola Paging System located at the Old Executive Office Building (EOB) Switchboard and at the Trip Site Hotel Command Post. Both White House and WHCA Staff members were assigned a Motorola Pageboy II Pager (Figure 7). The system worked very well although women had difficulty wearing the devices, as their clothing styles generally had no belts to clip them on, and they often fell from where they were clipped.
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Figure 7. Motorola Pageboy II Pager |
NON-SECURE VOICE
In the 1980's, our primary voice communications was non-secure analog voice over the same copper wire standard dial-up telephone lines we used for secure voice.
At the White House, there were two switchboards. One was run by White House civilian staff operators
for the public to call. The other was the
WHCA "Signal Board" for
official use and for foreign governments to use to get in touch with the
principals. This latter facility (referred to as CROWN) was also the White House VHF, UHF, Nationwide, and the
Motorola Paging System main control.
Nationwide was a UHF CONUS full duplex Air/Ground radio connection to
Air Force One operated by WHCA, and supported by AT&T ground radios
throughout the
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Figure 8. C&P Number 5 Crossbar
Switch |
President Reagan never dialed a single number. If he picked up the phone to call someone, our operators always answered by saying "yes please" because he might have been on a different phone or it might have been someone else, so they always wanted to be polite. He might ask to speak to an old college buddy - John Smith - who he had never called before. Through some sort of magic, our operators would figure out who John Smith was, where he was, his phone number, and get him on the line!
When wife, Nancy, called, it went
right through. If any foreign leader or head of state called, it went right
through, albeit, a bit slower, because those kind of calls got allot of senior
staff attention. An interesting event
occurred once when I was out of town. My wife called the Signal Board and asked
to talk to me because our cat was stuck atop a tree in
At Trip Sites, before the AT&T divestiture, things were easy because our AT&T representative would deal with all the individual companies. We had an AT&T Washington Headquarters representative travel with us on trips. Our central command post hub was a portable leased Dimension PBX (Figure 9) that was set up in a bedroom at the hotel where the White House Staff, Secret Service, WHCA, and the President stayed.
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Figure 9. AT&T Dimension PBX |
Setting up voice communications
became trickier after the divestiture or if we were overseas. US Telephone
Company (Telco) contacts were identified to us in
In our hotel bedroom Command Post
next to our
The Dimension Trip Site Switchboard would have one local published number with multiple central office trunk lines, one non-published number for emergency use (which Trip Officers could connect remotely from any phone such as a public coin-operated or private phone by dialing our access code to get full telephone connectivity for the President), trunk tie lines to other Trip Sites if it was a regional swing, and numerous trunk tie lines back to Washington. To call a Trip Site Extension, you would dial the three digit number. To call a Washington Extension you would dial 45 - wait for a dial tone - then dial your number. To call the White House Signal Switchboard, you would dial 8. To call a local number, you would dial 9 - wait for a dial tone - then dial. For long distance or the Trip Site Switchboard, you would dial 0.
Beyond that, Telephone Companies had their hands full. We ordered dedicated analog dry-pair circuits from the Dimension Trip Site Switchboard to every phone we wanted in town. Most trips had over 100 lines. The Dimension provided the battery and ground to operate these instruments. There were many phone lines to the airport for Air Force One's arrival, emergency medical facilities where the President might have to be taken, event sites, holding rooms, under bleacher seats at sports venues, Marine One landing locations, White House Staff/Secret Service Agent/WHCA Personnel hotel rooms, event halls, and McDonald's Restaurants (if the President planned to eat a Big Mac).
Western Electric 500 Series phones
(Figure 10) were installed. It was a large grid of copper connected spoke
and hub, which usually took a week or more to set up. Every line had to tested,
and have a phone plugged into it. After
the trip, we had to go out and reclaim every one of the phones. Woe to someone who absconded with a WHCA
phone.
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Figure 10. Western Electric 500 Series WHCA Telephone with Appropriate
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Figure 11. DO NOT HANG UP LABEL from
a Trip Officer Trip Book |
We
carried roles of labels (Figure 12) to affix to phones.
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Figure 12. Roles of Labels for Any
Occasion |
We had what many called a Bluff Label (shown in a role at the bottom right of the above stack) (Figure 13) to discourage theft which did reduce our losses!
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| Figure 13. Bluff Label |
AIR
FORCE ONE TELEPHONE SERVICE
Air Force One is operated by the 89th Airlift Wing of the United States Air Force at Joint Base Andrews. Whenever Air Force One landed, the plane - then a VC-137C Boeing 707-353B tail number 27000 - was met by a WHCA Trip Officer. The Trip Officer would plug two land lines (always Extension 201 and 202 connected to the Dimension Trip Site Switchboard) into a small compartment under the cockpit in front of the wheel well of the plane. This was a job I did many times as depicted in Figure 14. The President's pilot, USAF Col Robert Ruddick, never wanted a "follow me" truck to meet him at airports. He was pre-briefed and knew exactly where to taxi to his precise parking spot. That's where a Trip Officer would stand (the target perhaps) with the plane coming straight at them ready to plug it into the Dimension Trip Site Switchboard. No one ever got run over!
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| Figure 14. Major Barbi Plugging AF
One Immediately After Landing in |
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Figure 15. Four-Prong Two Circuit
Phone Plug |
The two phone lines would be
connected to the on-board communications center (Figure 16) operated by Air
Force personnel and made available to everyone on the plane. CMSgt Jimmy Bull
and SMSgt Jerry Rankin were President Reagan's operators. Those local
"land lines" were a real savior on many occasions for Air Force One
according to crew members.
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Figure 16. President Reagan Visiting
the AF |
The telephone element of a Trip Site
puzzle was a small piece of the action. Our gear load filled a C-141
aircraft and took 50 or more WHCA troops to implement. It still does today and is a marvel to see. I hope more WHCA personnel will write about
their experiences in future postings.
Ken Barbi is an Electrical Engineer and
radio amateur KC3OYM who
graduated from the
