CONFESSIONS OF AN EX-SECRET SERVICE AGENT: The Marty Venker Story

by George Rush ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1988

Presidential ears will burn when this brisk, gossipy memoir hits the racks. After more than a decade in the Service, Marty Venker knew that his agent's days were numbered when he started wearing a wig to work to cover his punk haircut. For years he'd led a double life, guarding Presidents by day and hanging out at swing clubs and discos at night. His decision to finally quit and turn N.Y. rock-club disc jockey surprised no one; after all, it was his liberalism, inflamed by the murders of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, that drew him to the Service in the first place. As told by Rush in colorful swaths of first- and third-person narrative, Venker's personal odyssey is bizarre enough to grip--as do his lowdowns on Service methods and mores (e.g., ""We used to run through basketball-style plays for moving the President through the crowd. It was called 'working the man' ""). But the real and raw appeal here is the dirt on the high and mighty--and it comes in shovelfuls. There's the time the alarms went off in Nixon's town house and Venker and other agents charged up to the roof with Uzis: ""We found Nixon poking a screwdriver into the air conditioning unit. Sparks were flying everywhere. He had almost electrocuted himself. But he kept saying, 'I can get it to go!' "" There's Venker's eyewitness account of Carter, whom the agent says ""treated you like a maggot,"" staving off the infamous killer rabbit; there are Nicaraguan dictator Somoza cruising the Waldorf for hookers; Venker saving Gerald Ford from falling into an orchestra pit and impaling himself on a clarinet; Imelda Marcos literally wallowing in suitcasefuls of jewels at the Waldorf--and more and more. Gourmet chow for gossip hounds, and a nifty, twisty life story to boot: great, sleazy fun.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Donald Fine

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION