Ep. 61: 5/11/05 White House Evacuation EXPLAINED 🔥 [by Secret Service Officer]

In today’s episode, Host Jeff Hopeck (Former U.S. Secret Service Officer) gives a detailed account of May 11, 2005 (he was standing post on the North grounds of the White House). It was the day an airplane disaster caused a panicked, chaos-filled White House evacuation. Being only a few short years after 9/11, it was a charged atmosphere. 

“All the training in the world can’t properly prepare you for the radio transmission that turned a blue-sky, cloudless day, into what felt like the last couple minutes on earth.” — Jeff Hopeck

👉 Host: Jeff Hopeck. To learn more about my ventures and the conversations I care about, find me at www.JeffHopeckBrand.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys, Jeff Hopeck here. I'm the host of Interesting Humans Podcast and 20-minute MBA podcast as well. Also the original founder and CEO of Killer Shark Marketing. But in my past, I had a pretty cool job working at the White House. And from 2003 to 2006, I worked for George W. Bush as an officer for the U.S. Secret Service and did protection there at the White House as well as advanced details for him, traveled the world and traveled 44 states, I believe, in that short period of time. It was an incredible career, and it goes from tedious days working where there's not a threat to you know not a threat around all the way up to the story I'm gonna share today, which is the epitome of chaos, scrambling, and just absolute fear. Um, lots of it stemming from just recently 9-11 happening, right? So the year is 2005, the day's May 11th, a day that I'll never ever forget. Do you remember what you were doing that day? Probably not, because it's a just a normal day. And there wasn't a cloud in the sky, there was it was just absolutely perfect. We were about two hours from shift change, and I remember having a just a great afternoon plan, and it was gonna, it was just an easy day at work for whatever reason. Tourism in DC, there's a feel to it. If you're out there, you live in DC, and you if you know what I mean by like there's just a feel that it's buzzing, and just it's really cool. Well, that's what the day was. Blue sky, no rain around, awesome, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere comes a radio communication that says all units stand by, no communication, uh, no communication allowed basically over the radio. And we're currently working a P-56 intrusion, which is the protected airspace around DC and other places. An aircraft entered that that uh zone and is non-responsive. Now, had 9-11 not happened, this would be this would be frightening, but we wouldn't have all those pictures in in mind, especially some of the people have the smells in mind of 9-11. So the communication comes across, and basically what it is is our our command center that is working on a threat, communicating the threat to everybody who's on shift, saying, don't talk, there's nothing that's more important than this. The command center owns the airwaves, but at the same time, there's there's a threat uh like a continuum, like a stair stepping that we go through in DC. It starts at starts at green and then it goes to yellow, and then it goes to orange and then it goes to red, like a threat assessment. And we're pretty much in green most of the time. Well, very quickly they escalate it right up to yellow that we're working on something. And I didn't know how quickly yellow goes to red. And if you look out on the internet and Google this this story, they downplay it a lot, and they probably don't have all the details, and that's okay. And I also don't think this story was ever told before. At least I've never seen it told out on online. So we go into yellow, and what happens is what happens is there's no communication from this aircraft, and we're now like on the ground frightened in so many ways, right? You're calm, I mean you look you look calm and collected, but your mind's going, well, wait, we're currently being trained for diversion attacks. Well, what's a diversion attack? A diversion attack is when you distract over here to attack over here. So the most frightening in the post I happen to be on that day is in the front, the front part of the White House, the part that was the highest threat because it's closest to the door, right? The north grounds. And the concern is that there's this air, this air diversion happening. And then backpack bombers are gonna charge the north grounds and easily get to the White House. So you're looking up, you're looking down, you're looking all around. All of a sudden, communications on the radio continue happening. We're now evacuating. Keep in mind, folks, the grounds of the White House, the grounds, which is not just the White House building, there's other buildings, has about 10,000 people employed. We're so we're talking midday, it's it's 11:59 when all the communication happens. They start evacuating the capital, the White House. Imagine the taxpayer dollars at waste here after how tedious of a silly and silly this ended up being. But we're taking people all over the place, we're scrambling, all this is happening. We go into orange. Orange basically is the start of the rules are out the window, and they have to be out the window. So you gotta we gotta stay safe, right? So break gun lockers, get as much ammunition, as many, as many guns and other things you can to protect yourself, to protect others, but most importantly to protect the White House and and the people in it, the people you're hired to protect. So we're quickly moving up. All of a sudden, this this military branch is patched in, and now they take over radio communications. They're the ones in charge of launching fighter jets. So fighters are launched. Now it's like this whole next level that we never trained for, I was never exposed to, especially here in a fighter jet, right overhead. You hear the miles above, and you know how loud they are. So they're launched from Andrews Air Force Base, which is about 11 miles the way the crow flies from the White House. They're launched, I don't think 10 seconds went by that they were overhead, and they were so low that when they went up 17th Street, plenty of great stories out there of with window storefronts, glass smashed, windshield smashed, all that kind of stuff. Because again, rules are out the window, right? We're in we're we're still in non-communication, zero communication with an aircraft that's traveling directly to the White House, just a couple years after 9-11, right? And it's a it's totally irrelevant because 9-11 now in 2025 still seems like it wasn't that long ago. We're just a couple years after, and honestly, go back to those years, we didn't even really have answers. We we had some direction. So you can imagine we have an aircraft coming now. You're here's the what's going on in my mind, and others. Are there other aircraft? Are we gonna start hearing others? If we start moving our attention over this way, is something gonna happen over here? Do we have enough people right now? We don't even have enough people for this. What's gonna happen? Is there another airplane? Is now the Capitol gonna be reporting the same thing? Is the Pentagon gonna be? I get goosebumps still telling this story. It's like incredible. If you just look at the details alone online, it just it's pretty much one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. But the behind the scenes in this stuff is absolutely just just mind-boggling. So here we are now. Fighters come over straight up 17th Street, and then the the the message of messages that I've never in my life been exposed to, and I'll never forget it. It was the it was what I heard as the shoot down order, but I didn't know that there was one step in between, and that was the firing of the flares. So it was something to the effect of all units stand by, and then there was a direct communication to the pilots that of the of the fighter jets of uh units will engage. And that's like there's like I guess a last command to throw out a flare that now if the plane does not does not do a 180, then I guess there's a shoot down after that. But that was the command. And so you can imagine when this is given, and that's all you hear. It's like silence, blue sky, no people around. It is so calm that it's disturbing how calm it is. Everybody's like pushed out many blocks. You don't, you you it's crazy. And you hear this command, and you're like, oh my gosh, if this is a shoot down and this happens, there's definitely other stuff. There's gonna be people running from here, there's gonna be people coming from this angle. Oh my goodness, what do we do? Right, and here you are, you you don't have enough protection. Yeah, you have like a box that you're in, and it's you know, fireproof and all that other stuff, and it can take some rounds, but you're not prepared for an attack like this, so you're exposed. Now I remember staring at my own mortality, which is crazy, going, I don't I don't have a way out, and this is what I signed up for, but I don't even know what it is. Like, what is it? Like, okay, great. The fighters are up there fighting an air fight, winning, and they've but and we're down here getting ready for something we think is gonna happen, but thank goodness it never did happen, but that's not what's happening when you're on the ground. So the plane just listens like a little puppy dog, turns right around, and all of a sudden it's over. Didn't take long after that to figure out what was going on. A hus a dad and his son left Pennsylvania to fly to South Carolina, their radio equipment went out, and they caused uh probably tens and tens of thousands, 50, 60, maybe even higher, thousands of evacuations of of missed work, of you know, in DC, decisions have to be made sometimes by the minute. Well, these decision makers had no time to go, like whether they were tunneled or whether they were driven off, like did were they separated from how they communicate. You just there's so many things happen over one innocent little silly situation, and I just hope that there's been resolution there in the aviation world that there has to be some kind of constant testing, especially when you're flying around protected air spaces, which there aren't many, but there are several others outside of DC. You should have to do some kind of testing to enter the airspace because to cause that is just mind-boggling. But again, back to May 11th, 2005, 1159 was the start of the communication. Um, you probably don't remember that day, but it's definitely one that I will never ever forget. So I want to say thank you for listening. I want to say thank you for being part of this community, the interesting humans podcast community. It certainly means the world to me. And I encourage you, go out and leave us a review. Reviews help more than probably anything else to get the podcast continually watched, continually served up in the algorithms and into people's hands that I feel should should have it. These are just great stories. Um, and lastly, is follow us on social. Love to love to connect with you out there. So thanks again for listening to the story, and we'll see you all out on the internet somewhere.