Telephone Support for President | |||
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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 2. STU - I Instrument Photo from the |
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Figure 3. STU - I Hardware with
Instrument On Top of Cabinet Photo from the |
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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Figure 5. President Reagan on a STU - III Phone Official White House Photo |
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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Occasionally, we would have to commandeer a public coin-operated or private phone to establish a connection to the Dimension Trip Site Switchboard for the President should he stop somewhere unexpectedly. We placed this label (Figure 11) on the phone to protect it from getting hung up, and left it off-hook lying there ready for use.
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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
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