Anti-piracy force thwarts attack on ship

SAN’A, Yemen — An international anti-piracy force thwarted the attempted takeover of a Chinese cargo ship off the Somali coast on Wednesday, sending in attack helicopters that fired on the bandits and forced them to abandon the ship they had boarded.

In another blow to the region’s thriving piracy trade, the Indian navy handed over 23 pirates it caught at sea to authorities in Yemen.

In Wednesday’s assault, nine pirates armed with guns overtook the Chinese ship with speedboats and boarded the vessel, said Noel Choong, who heads the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

He said the 30-member crew sent a distress message to the bureau as it saw the pirates approaching, then barricaded themselves inside their living quarters. Choong said the bureau quickly alerted the international naval force, which dispatched two helicopters and a warship.

“Two helicopters arrived at the scene first and helped deter the hijacking. They fired at the pirates, forcing them to flee the ship,” he said. There were no injuries during the five-hour ordeal.

“The Chinese ship is very fortunate to have escaped. This is a rare case where pirates have successfully boarded the ship but failed to hijack it,” he added.

Somali pirates, spurred by widespread poverty in their homeland, have hijacked more than 40 vessels off their country’s coastline this year. Many of the seizures have taken place in the Gulf of Aden, which lies between Somalia and Yemen and is one of the world’s busiest waterways. Many of the vessels are taken to pirate-controlled regions in Somalia, where they are held for ransom.

China’s official Xinhua News Agency identified the boat involved in the latest attempt as the Zhenhua 4 and said it belonged to China Communications Construction Co. and was registered in the Caribbean island of St. Vincent.

It was the latest in a series of attacks by Somali pirates on Chinese vessels. On Tuesday, said it was considering sending warships to the area to help battle piracy.

The announcement came during a unanimous U.N. Security Council vote to authorize nations to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases on the coast of Somalia.

“The area is just too wide to patrol. Hopefully with the U.N. resolution, there will be more firm action to stop this menace,” Choong said.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei told the council that China was considering sending warships to the Gulf of Aden to join ships from the U.S., Russia, Denmark, Italy and other countries.

In Yemen, meanwhile, the Indian navy handed over 23 pirates arrested in the Gulf of Aden last Saturday after they threatened a merchant vessel in the lawless waters off the Yemeni coast, a Yemeni security official said.

The Indian sailors boarded two pirate boats and seized what was described as a substantial arms cache and equipment at the time. The security official said the pirates included 12 Somalis and 11 Yemenis.

The handover took place in the southern port of Aden, and the pirates were to be interrogated and charged in court. He stressed that Yemen has the right to try Somali pirates because their arrest took place inside Yemeni waters.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media pending a government statement. He spoke to The Associated Press by telephone from Aden.

———

Associated Press writers Henry Sanderson in Beijing, and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to the report.

From a Recon Marine in Afghanistan

It’s freezing here.  I’m sitting on hard, cold dirt between rocks and shrubs
at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains along the Dar ‘yoi Pomir River
watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave.  Stake out, my
friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles.

I also glance at the area around my ass every ten to fifteen seconds to
avoid another scorpion sting.  I’ve actually given up battling the chiggers
and sand fleas, but them scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod.  Hurts
like a bastard.  The antidote tastes like transmission fluid but God bless
the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.

 tunnel entrances and storage facilities,type the info into the handheld,
shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders
where to drop the hardware, we bash some heads for a while, then I track and 

I’ve been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks and Turkmen and even a couple
of Pushtins for over a month and a half now and this much I can say for
sure: These guys, all of ’em, are Huns…actual, living Huns.  They LIVE to
fight.  It’s what they do.  It’s ALL they do.  They have no respect for
anything, not for their families or for each other or for themselves.

They claw at one another as a way of life.  They play polo with dead calves
and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the
family honor.  Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on
each other’s barbarism.  Cavemen with AK47’s.  Then again, maybe I’m just
cranky.

I’m freezing my ass off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is running
out of juice and I can’t recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours.

Oh yeah!  You like to write letters, right?  Do me a favor, Bizarre.  Write
a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful, sneering, pompous
Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban ‘smart.’  They are not smart.  I
suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the word they are looking for is
‘cunning.’  The Taliban are cunning, like jackals and hyenas and wolverines.
They are sneaky and ruthless and, when confronted, cowardly.  They are
hateful, malevolent parasites who create nothing and destroy  everything
else.  Smart.  Pfft.  Yeah, they’re real smart.

They’ve spent their entire lives reading only one book(and not a very good
one, as books go) and consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of
the devil.  They’re still figuring out how to work a Bic lighter.  Talking
to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of life is like trying to
teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he just gets frustrated and
sticks you in the eye with it.

OK, enough. Snuffle will be up soon so I have to get back to my hole.
Covering my tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice but I’m good at it.
Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move
on with your lives.

The story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is utter
bullshit and designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep you glued to
the screen through the commercials.  We’ve got this one under control.  The
worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we’re
doing over here because you have no idea what we’re doing and, really, you
don’t want to know.  We are your military and we are doing what you sent us
here to do.

You wanna help?  Buy Bonds America.

Saucy Jack

Baltimore “Unit One… Signal 13″

Baltimore Sun via YellowBrix

January 03, 2009

BALTIMORE, MD – Baltimore police dispatchers put out a call just after midnight yesterday that captured everyone’s attention: Unit One … Signal 13.

In other words, the police commissioner needs help – fast.

The city’s top cop, Frederick H. Bealefeld III, was alone in the basement of a Southwest Baltimore rowhouse holding a suspect at gunpoint.

A member of his executive protection unit, Peter Sullivan, was upstairs searching the house for a second man with a gun.

“I was worried about him,” Bealefeld said yesterday, referring to his fellow officer. “I’m sure he was worried about me.”

A hands-on leader, Bealefeld is known to ride around the city and has chased down the occasional suspect.

But ordinarily, at midnight on New Year’s Eve, Baltimore’s police commissioner is downtown overseeing officers assigned to the Inner Harbor during the annual fireworks display. The department bulks up its ranks, canceling all leaves so there are enough officers on hand to help with the crowds and an anticipated spike in crime because of the city’s tradition of celebratory gunfire.

With the fireworks postponed this year because of high winds, Bealefeld took advantage of the extra 1,100 officers on duty and sent them throughout the city. That meant 1,500 officers working the streets, up from about 400 on a typical night.

“You either send people home and tell people come back tomorrow, or you make use of those resources,” he said. “The overwhelming consensus was let’s make use of the resources we already had programmed and let’s put them in the neighborhoods.”

The result: In addition to the pair of guns Bealefeld seized, city officers took 46 other firearms between midnight and 3 a.m. They arrested 44 suspects on gun charges, police said. But even with the extra officers on the street, one city man was shot in East Baltimore about 1 a.m. yesterday and was on life support yesterday evening. This morning, police said the man has died.

Bealefeld participated in the patrols and initially drove with his two-member protection detail and his communications director around east-side neighborhoods.

Satisfied with coverage there, they headed to the Bridgeview-Greenlawn community on the west side, where a man had shot five people on Sunday.

“We figured that people would be on edge,” he said. “It is not rocket science. We do this every day.”

As midnight approached, Bealefeld heard gunfire.

The group drove toward it, heading to Catherine Street near Bon Secours Hospital.

Bealefeld and Sullivan jumped from the car. “We’re looking west up the alley,” Bealefeld said. “A guy walked out and started shooting. You could see the muzzle flash. You know it is a gun, a big gun.”

The men ducked into the basement of a rowhouse in the 2500 block of W. Fairmount Ave., with Bealefeld and Sullivan in pursuit.

Inside, Bealefeld and Sullivan encountered a roomful of people. The police commissioner spotted one of the suspects there and held him downstairs. Sullivan went upstairs to find the other.

“For a little minute, we were in there by ourselves,” Bealefeld said.

The second member of the commissioner’s protection unit, Annie Miller, had called for backup. She was outside and did not know which rowhouse the commissioner had entered.

Bealefeld got on the radio, too, and called in the address for the rowhouse. “I was on the radio saying Unit One,” he said.

He then added the code that set the whole force on edge: “Signal 13.”

So many cars responded to the distress call that Bealefeld worried about protection in other parts of the city, causing him to have mixed feelings about the incident.

“This is the professional dilemma of being the police commissioner and being out on the street. I was grateful for the backup. But we have other cops in the city. We have to be covering them too.”

In the end, police arrested Davon Rogers, 23, and Devin Rogers, 18. Each was charged with illegally firing a gun in the city, records show. And officers seized two sawed-off shotguns, a Remington and a Mossberg, police said.

Shortly afterward, Bealefeld fielded an angry phone call from his wife, who had become worried when he did not call her at midnight on New Year’s Eve as he normally does.

Her first question was whether he was wearing a bullet-resistant vest. He told her he was.

Why should you and I buy American?
This is not another patriotic statement without foundation, it just makes sense.

Simply for peace of mind. A label that says “Made in USA” is proof of unsurpassed quality, it says “this is the best there is” Such items are coveted everywhere around the world, but why not in our own country anymore?

In fact, our raw materials and our manufacturing methods remain far superior to the competition. So why settle for anything else? Our future depends on the choices we make now. Companies that once stood as American icons to the eyes of the world are now exporting the manufacturing of goods previously made here in the USA. What is happening to us? Every time we settle for an import we cheat a fellow American out of work. Big corporations are planning on very short term investments. By exporting their business, they save on labor and materials but sacrifice quality. When Americans go broke who will by the imports? Certainly not the people who produce them. A strong economy makes a strong country, it is very simple: if person A can work, person A does not have to resort to crime to feed his family.As more and more jobs go overseas, we can expect a rise in violent crimes. Our country will be made of a very few rich people and a lot of very poor people, just like a third world country.

The objective here is not to name a certain nation or to point out specific companies.( just go to any large retailer, pick up anything under $50.00 and read the label) Furthermore, we are not urging anybody to boycott anything that is not made in the USA. The truth is,competition is healthy ,it forces us to improve ,and sometimes there is no going around it: Some things are simply not made here at all. But for two items of the same nature, please demand “Made in USA” if you re tired of living in a “disposable” world.
There are two forms of terrorism. The one that we are unfortunately familiar with targets our way of life to weaken our economy. The other kind has a longer lasting effect, because of its slow nature it is almost invisible. This type of terrorism targets our economy directly. How can we compete with governments that offer 500% savings on labor and materials? Human rights are not respected in those countries. Privately owned companies do not exist. Our money is used to build armies or fund a space program. if we do not want to sell our way of life, we need to wake up and fight back. We need to work harder and whenever possible WE NEED TO BUY AMERICAN!

Last days for Marine were true Finest hours

By Denis Hamill, The New York Daily News, Tuesday, December 9th, 2008

Tuesday, December 9th 2008, 6:49 PM

Sometimes when old Marines die they do fade away into unmarked graves in Potter’s Field.

Such might have been the case for Gaspar Musso, USMC 925050, who fought in the Battle of Tinian in the Marianas Islands in 1944 and who died Nov. 15 at age 84 in a Brooklyn nursing home.

Enter Police Officer Susan Porcello, a PBA delegate at the 68th Precinct in Bay Ridge and one of those big-hearted New Yorkers who still make this the best city on Earth.

“No way was I going to let this brave old Marine who fought for his country in WWII get buried in Potter’s Field,” she says.

Porcello first met Musso back in July when she responded to a 911 ambulance call to the retired insurance broker’s one-bedroom apartment on, appropriately, Marine Ave.

“When my partner, Eddie Ennis, and I arrived at his apartment Gaspar seemed a little bit down about himself,” Porcello says. “He said he felt alone in the world. We talked to him a bit and as I looked around his tidy apartment I noticed that he had served in the military – the Marines to be exact.”

Porcello asked him about family and friends. “Look around you, what do you see?” Musso said. “I have no family or friends.”

To which Porcello said, “Well, I’m your friend.”

Right there, with those four beautiful words, Gaspar Musso was destined to die with the dignity he’d earned with a rifle in his hands, fighting in a USMC uniform, in a war that saved civilization.

If she didn’t already wear a badge, you’d want to pin a star on Susan Porcello.

Musso, a diabetic with a host of other age-related maladies, had accidentally overdosed on his prescription medications. Porcello accompanied him to Lutheran Medical Center.

“I told him I’d be back to visit him and take him to a senior center where he could make some friends,” said Porcello, who comes from a big Italian family with a mom, dad, three sisters and a brother.

“I told him I was making him my ‘Grandpa,’ and if he liked, he could spend Thanksgiving with my family. Eddie and I discussed alternating holidays with Gaspar so he wouldn’t be alone for any of them.”

Two days later Musso was placed in critical care. Porcello asked hospital staff where he’d be buried if he didn’t make it. “Potter’s Field,” said one administrator.

“This infuriated me,” said Porcello. “There was no way I was going to let a man who fought for our country be buried in Potter’s Field. Not on my watch!”

Porcello told the hospital to keep her apprised of Musso’s condition. She had a local priest visit him. Porcello even asked NYPD‘s Missing Person’s Squad to search for next of kin.

No luck.

Musso had been an only child to Anthony and Marie Musso, both deceased. He had no other relatives. Musso’s only friend, an upstairs neighbor, had died the year before.

After his health improved, Musso asked Porcello to become his official health proxy.

She transferred him to Caton Park Nursing Home, where he was treated extremely well. She visited him often, learning that Musso was born May 7, 1924, joined the USMC in December 1943, finished training at Camp Lejune in March 1944 and was fighting with the 2nd Marines on Tinian Island by July 1944.

“I visited Gaspar on Nov. 13, bringing him rosary beads, a Bible, and his reading glasses,” she said.

“The next day, Nov. 14, I returned and found Gaspar sitting up in a chair, dressed in his own clothes. Looking great.”

Porcello washed his hands and face, trimmed his nails and eyebrows and asked if he was coming to her house for Thanksgiving. “I’m trying!” he said. He also asked Porcello to bring him a Christmas wreath for his room.

The next morning Porcello received a phone call saying that Gaspar Musso had died peacefully in his sleep.

No way was she going to let her good friend be toe-tagged and buried in Potter’s Field.

Porcello paid out of her own pocket for a wake at McLaughlin’s on Third Ave. and a mass at St. Patrick’s Church in Bay Ridge, where a crowd of good-hearted cops from the 68th Precinct filled the pews, six serving as pallbearers. Sgt. Angel Rosa of the 68th, also a Marine, arranged for a USMC honor guard at Musso’s funeral.

Then taps blew over Gaspar Musso, United States Marine, as he was buried next to his mother at Resurrection Cemetery in Staten Island.

With the dignity he deserved.

Semper Fi.

FORMER SECRET SERVICE, PRESIDENTIAL PROTECTION

J.A. LaSorsa & Associates
1645 SE 3rd Ct., Suite 102
Deerfield Beach, FL 33441
(U.S. SECRET SERVICE – RET.)
954-783-5020 (24 hour contact)
www.lasorsa.com
e-mail: jal@lasorsa.com
Providing Global services: Security Expert Witness, Anti-Wiretap and Audio Countermeasures, Consulting, Investigative, Polygraph, Executive Protection Estate & Yacht Security Systems & Consulting, Workplace Violence Training & Intervention and Executive Protection Training.
Specializing in Europe, Central and South America.

We provide Confidential Private Investigator Services to insurance companies, businesses, financial institutions, andprivate citizens. Our team of highly experienced private investigators can provide law firms of any size with the Litigation Support Resources necessary to secure the evidence they need for any case. We provide both domestic and international security and Protection Services, to include the following areas: Antigua, Anguilla, Aruba, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Dominica, St. John, St. Thomas, St. Croix, Grenada, Montserrat, Netherland Antilles, Nevis, St. Vincent, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, Turks & Caicos and Trinidad & Tobago, Bermuda, Bahamas, Puerto Rico, New York, Los Angeles, U.S. and British Virgin Islands, Cayman, Trinidad, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, Mexico, El Salvador,Venezuela and South America, Europe, Italy, Rome, Milan, Paris, Geneva, Zurich, Asia, China, the Far East, India, etc.

FORMER SECRET SERVICE, PRESIDENTIAL PROTECTION

J.A. LaSorsa & Associates
1645 SE 3rd Ct., Suite 102
Deerfield Beach, FL 33441
(U.S. SECRET SERVICE – RET.)
954-783-5020 (24 hour contact)
www.lasorsa.com
e-mail: jal@lasorsa.com
Providing Global services: Security Expert Witness, Anti-Wiretap and Audio Countermeasures, Consulting, Investigative, Polygraph, Executive Protection Estate & Yacht Security Systems & Consulting, Workplace Violence Training & Intervention and Executive Protection Training.
Specializing in Europe, Central and South America.

We provide Confidential Private Investigator Services to insurance companies, businesses, financial institutions, andprivate citizens. Our team of highly experienced private investigators can provide law firms of any size with the Litigation Support Resources necessary to secure the evidence they need for any case. We provide both domestic andinternational services, to include: Antigua, Anguilla, Aruba, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Dominica, St. John, St. Thomas, St. Croix, Grenada, Montserrat, Netherland Antilles, Nevis, St. Vincent, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, Turks & Caicos and Trinidad & Tobago, Bermuda, Bahamas, Puerto Rico, New York, Los Angeles, U.S. and British Virgin Islands, Cayman, Trinidad, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, Mexico, El Salvador,Venezuela and South America, Europe, Italy, Rome, Milan, Paris, Geneva, Zurich, Asia, China, the Far East, India, etc.

Inside the Presidency
Few outsiders ever see the President’s private enclave.
By Elisabeth Bumiller

History always makes a sharp turn in Washington when a new American President takes the oath of office, and so it will once again on January 20, 2009. There will be new Cabinet members, a new Congress, a new foreign policy, a new style in the East Wing, new embarrassing relatives (if the past is any guide), and new first friends.

But many other things in the private world of the President of the United States will stay remarkably the same. The maids on the permanent White House housekeeping staff will make the presidential bed, just as they always have. The kitchen staff will still peel potatoes and scramble eggs. The gardeners will have planted 3,500 tulip bulbs to bloom in the Rose Garden in the spring.

The permanent care and feeding of the President of the United States is an industry staffed by hundreds of people, largely supported by taxpayers, and little understood beyond the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. First families move in and out—”They get a four- or eight-year lease,” says Gary Walters, former chief usher of the Executive Mansion. But the staff, customs, and mechanics surrounding the world’s most powerful chief executive endure, often for generations.

Walters knows this well. As a deputy manager and then manager of the most famous address in the U.S. for 31 years, from Gerald Ford to the second President Bush, Walters spanned six presidencies and crises both global and domestic until his retirement in 2007. He ran a house with a 90-member residence staff of butlers, maids, chefs, maître d’s, elevator operators, florists, curators, carpenters, electricians, and plumbers. In some ways it was like running the world’s most exclusive hotel, except that Walters was in charge of a building with four major and often conflicting functions: home, office, grand museum, ultimate event site. Incredibly, the White House has welcomed up to 30,000 guests in a single week.

Walters, an Army veteran and a former officer in the old Executive Protective Service (now known as the Secret Service Uniformed Division), brought military precision and the utmost discretion to a job that was never 9 to 5. His worst times, he recalls, were when one first family moved out, typically around 10 a.m. on January 20, and the other moved in—by 4 p.m. the same day.

Walters’s goal was to have the departing family’s possessions out and the new socks in dresser drawers, personal furniture arranged, pictures hung, family photos displayed, favorite snacks in the kitchen—all in that six-hour time frame. There is no chance to get a head start, since the new President does not officially take office until January 20 at noon, two hours after his moving van pulls up under escort in the White House driveway as the outgoing President leaves for the Capitol. To make the deadline, Walters would deploy the entire 90-member staff at once, divided into teams with specific tasks. Months of planning included repeat verbal dry runs. (No such rehearsals took place before Richard Nixon’s early departure, however. Word went out that the First Lady had made a request through the usher’s office for packing boxes. “That’s how we knew,” said Betty C. Monkman, a former White House curator.)

Some transitions were especially rocky. Bill Clinton stayed in the Oval Office until 4 a.m. on January 20, 2001. “Then he had his desk that had to be cleaned out,” Walters recalls. He had to wait until the President went to bed before he could swoop in and help Clinton’s staff clear out the office to make way for George W. Bush.

But once things settle down, “the White House is first and foremost a family home,” Walters says. “It is the responsibility of the residence staff to change to the needs of every family, and not pigeonhole the family to the White House.”

To ensure such comfort, Walters would begin questioning the First-Lady-to-be after the election in November, as soon as the outgoing President had invited the new one to visit. What rooms would you like to use for your bedrooms? What time do you want to get up in the morning? What kind of toothpaste should be in the bathroom? What snacks would you prefer stocked in the pantry?

Bush 43 said pretzels, which got him into trouble in 2002, when he choked on one while watching a football game in his White House bedroom, lost consciousness, hit the floor, then came to, with only the presidential dogs as witnesses. Bush’s father requested easier to swallow Texas Blue Bell ice cream. He did not, however, request pork rinds, despite making a regular-guy show of nibbling them in public. “It was totally bogus,” Walters says. “He didn’t eat them.”

The second Bush also liked to keep a stainless steel water dish at the foot of the South Portico’s curved granite staircase, and Dale Haney, the superintendent of the White House grounds, could be seen moonlighting as the walker of the presidential terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley. Chelsea Clinton had her friends over for pizza in the State Dining Room. Susan Ford hosted her junior prom in the East Room. In the Reagan Administration, known publicly for its old Hollywood glamour, the President and First Lady liked their private, just-the-two-of-them dinners served on trays in front of the television.

So what’s for dinner? First Ladies and Presidents generally haven’t cooked at the White House, although they have a second-floor kitchen in the family quarters, separate from the main kitchen on the mansion’s ground level. The Clintons liked to use their kitchen for post-party glasses of champagne and raided its refrigerator for leftovers. But most families have simply selected a weekly menu from choices offered by the White House chef. State dinners, barbecues for Congress, and holiday receptions for the diplomatic corps are paid for by taxpayers, but the President is billed for all food consumed by his family and his personal guests. In the first months of a new administration, sticker shock is routine.

“I can’t remember anybody not complaining,” Walters says, recalling in particular Rosalynn Carter’s astonishment at the size of the bills. “Mrs. Carter came from Georgia. Things were a little cheaper there at the time. But let’s face it, you’ve got world-class chefs. The garnishes they put on foods, the way they dress them up, it’s like eating in a restaurant.”

Food comes from various Secret Service–approved commercial suppliers, but also from farmers markets and occasionally just the grocery store. Sometimes the White House chef will stop in at a local butcher on the way to work and pick up a last-minute chop for the President’s dinner. Wine, always American—the White House stopped serving French wine in the Ford Administration—comes directly from the wineries and includes offerings from Virginia and Idaho as well as California. (White House Francophile customs died hard: Mamie Eisenhower once had her favorite apple brown Betty listed on a state dinner menu as Betty Brune de Pommes.)

The first family pays its own dry cleaning bills, although the staff takes care of sending out the clothes to high-end establishments in town. The President’s shirts are done in-house, as are all the family’s sheets and towels. The President’s valet keeps his shoes shined and deals directly with the housekeepers to replace missing buttons. Presidents select their own suits from the closet each day, although staff members have been known to reject presidential ties as too busy for television. “I can’t think of any President who had somebody else pick out his clothes,” Walters says.

When the President leaves the White House, he travels within an enormous, ever secure bubble, whether seated in the armor-plated limousine referred to internally as “the Beast,” flying on Air Force One, or sleeping in one of the 600 to 800 hotel rooms required for each stop on a foreign trip.

The President’s road show includes a caravan of White House staff, State Department officials, Secret Service agents, communications technicians, crews for Air Force One and Marine One (the presidential helicopter), Department of Defense staff, and press. A big foreign trip typically includes up to 800 people, among them 30 White House staff members, more than a hundred members of the Secret Service, and some 150 representatives of the media—television and radio correspondents, camera crews, sound technicians, print journalists, wire service reporters, and still photographers.

The group is actually transported in two planes: Air Force One for the President, his staff, his Secret Service agents, and a small pool of reporters in the back; and the White House press charter, usually a United 747, for the rest of the media. (Reporters are rotated in and out of the 14 press seats on Air Force One, but on either plane, media organizations pay dearly for the seats, typically the price of first-class airfare or more.) The entourage is accompanied by cargo planes that transport the President’s limousine and a spare, plus sometimes Marine One, to each stop.

The nucleus of the bubble, referred to within the White House as “the package,” consists of the President, his senior staff, the Secret Service detail assigned specifically to him, and a small pool of reporters. The package essentially isolates the President from the rest of the bubble and the outside world. Inside the package life is serene; humming outside is the 24/7 infrastructure required to keep the peace.

The head of the road show in the Bush 43 Administration was Joe Hagin, former deputy chief of staff in charge of operations, who believes in striking a balance between protecting the President and allowing him some exposure in public. “You can’t lock him in a steel box and move him around,” Hagin says. “You have to get him out.”

Hagin would begin planning Bush’s foreign trips up to a year ahead. Every November or December, he’d sit down with the White House chief of staff and national security adviser to block out what usually amounted to five or six annual presidential trips overseas. Some were built-in, such as the yearly Group of Eight meeting of industrialized nations or the NATO summits, both must-attends for the American President. But others, like Bush’s trip to Africa in February 2008, were designed to highlight administration policies and to show the White House flag.

“My geography’s not good enough to do it without a map,” Hagin says. So with maps unfolded all over the conference table in the national security adviser’s office, and with the Air Force One pilots on hand to consult, the group would figure out what stops made geographic sense. There were all-important political considerations as well. Bush 43, who grew increasingly unpopular overseas as his administration progressed, often augmented his European trips with stops in former Soviet-bloc nations like Albania, where he could count on pro-democracy, pro-American crowds to cheer him on.

The White House Communications Agency, or WHCA, builds its own communication system for each destination, and on foreign trips the leader of the free world can push a button on the telephone in his hotel suite and be instantly connected to a direct-dial U.S. system. Bush hasn’t carried a personal cell phone for security reasons, but he had access to any number of them while traveling.

One cell is specifically for the presidential limousine, where there is never a problem with background noise. People who have been inside say that the limo is eerily serene, as if the outside world were on mute. The President can see the crowd, but he can’t hear it, especially not over the deep rumble of the Beast’s big V-8.

Air Force One is the President’s refuge. He can sleep in his cabin, a suite in the nose of the plane with a shower and two daybeds. Or he can work out; before Bush’s knees gave out and he abandoned running, he had a treadmill set up in the Air Force One office on foreign trips. The jet’s kitchen serves full dinners prepared by military stewards, but they are unlikely to win culinary or nutrition awards. Steak, chicken, and pork chops are normal fare. In June 2002, when Bush was on a trip to Florida to promote dietary and physical fitness, the Air Force One lunch menu, printed on gold-edged cards for all passengers, was corned beef sandwich, steak fries, and strawberry cheesecake.

As the President moves with ease from meeting to meeting, an intense choreography churns around him, all outlined in hundreds of pages of briefing books. “We can go to the other side of the world and land precisely to the minute,” Hagin says. “But you’ve got to know what you’re doing. These trips are not for the faint of heart.” Only experienced staff members go overseas, and they are expected to know where to stand, what to wear, how to address foreign dignitaries, and when, literally, to run.

In spite of the briefing books and the overall efficiency of Hagin and his team, travel foul-ups occasionally occur. In May 2005, only a malfunction in a live hand grenade, tossed into an ebullient crowd of tens of thousands in Tbilisi, Georgia, averted what could have been a lethal attack. In 2004, Bush waded on his own into a group of security agents to pull a Secret Service agent out of a shoving match with the Chilean police. In 2002, the Beast came to such a sudden stop en route to lunch in Beijing with then President Jiang Zemin of China that the wire services reported a blowout, conjuring images of Secret Service agents rummaging through the trunk for a jack. The problem was in fact mechanical, and the President was moved to the spare limo within moments.

Not surprisingly, the President, like everyone else, is happy to get home. Although Ronald Reagan said he often felt captive in the fishbowl of the White House, many other Presidents and their families have loved it there.

And why not? There is, after all, a recently refurbished movie theater, suitable for viewing major Hollywood films sent overnight from the studios. (In the past couple years Bush saw The Kite Runner and The Perfect Game.) There is a swimming pool, the same one where Gerald Ford spoke to the press in his bathing suit. There is a tennis court, too, and the Children’s Garden, a shady spot created by Lady Bird Johnson, its walkway lined with bronzed handprints and footprints of presidential grandchildren.

Most of all, there is a sense of home and history, coupled with the knowledge that a first family, however well cared for and fed, can only pass through. Or as one of the permanent household staff gently reminded Barbara Bush during her time as First Lady: “Presidents come and go. Butlers stay.”