Last line of defence: inside the AFP’s elite bodyguard unit

WHO protects our leaders? For the first time, a behind-the-scenes look at the elite unit of federal agents who form the last line of defence.

OUR destination has no address. Like heaven, you tell yourself. Like hell.

Left at the lights, drive to the end of the street, two U-turns, through a snaking bend, reverse, brake, phone the Australian Federal Police for directions, left down a long concrete driveway and when you reach the place you are sure they are not, that is precisely where they are. The back of an empty Canberra industrial precinct, a giant silver tin shed, big as an aeroplane hangar. No names, no sound. Four rusting forklifts ­resting in a car park outside. No movement. Then a man steps out of a thin white door built into the shed. Bone and muscle and two scanning eyes. “Welcome,” he says.

Lucas Atkins, federal agent. He was 17 years old and weighed 71kg when he passed an Australian Army Reserve commando test. He’s 33 now and has seen every corner of the world while standing in a crisp black suit off the shoulder of highest-level politicians and dignitaries, his gun hand never straying too far from a Glock pistol tucked discreetly by his waist belt.

“Come on in,” he says. For the first time in its 35-year history the Australian Federal Police is allowing outside media into the world of its elite Close Personal Protection (CPP) unit, those blank-faced federal agents who spend 16-hour work days operating on an unbreakable vow to Protect the P – the principal, their designated Australian or foreign dignitary or politician. They’re the men in black, the suited sentinels in the line of fire.

Outside, there’s something volatile in the air. Tony Abbott and Education Minister Christopher Pyne will soon cancel a university visit citing security risks as thousands of people rally against higher education Budget cuts in campuses and city streets across the country. Sydney protesters will bark “Get the animals off their horses!” at mounted police as 800 protesters break through a Town Hall police guard. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop will be pushed and shoved by a hostile mob at the University of Sydney. Former Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella will be forced to flee a University of Melbourne classroom stormed by protesters.

“Threat front!” barks a man in a blue polo, spinning around a colleague and driving a swift right punch into the face of an invisible assassin. Nine more men lined along a matted floor ­mirror his actions. “Police, don’t move!” they scream, their hollering echoing around a shed with silver insulation climbing its high walls, as much to keep the heat in as the sound.

These men have climbed through the ranks of state and federal police services and are in the eighth week of a nine-week CPP entry course that has brought them to the edge of their ­mental and physical capacities. Inside this shed they’ve been thrown into street gunfight simulations; been deprived of sight and sound and light and time; been thrust into mid-air terrorist attacks on a hulking aeroplane simulator wheeled inside the shed, all so Atkins and a fellow course instructor, Chris*, can produce men who react quickly under extreme pressure.

“Where’s your pivot point?” barks Chris, pacing the training mat back and forth, hammering the trainees with questions. “What’s your secondary threat? What are your points of cover?”

Three steel shipping containers sit in the centre of the shed, filled with bullet-proof vests and training Glocks and safety masks and punching pads. A group of 12 grey, man-sized dummies wait in the corner to be pulled out and shot at. On the shed’s rear wall are paper human targets with hundreds of bullet holes clustered in the head and the heart. A whiteboard details “Keys to Success”. Identification (potential weapons, hands, environment), Distance (try to gain as much distance as environment allows), Keep ­Moving, Counter Attack (immediate, aggressive, with 100% effort).

“A still target is a dead target,” barks Chris. “Remember your muzzle awareness. Keep moving, always.”

Atkins trains his eyes on the men as they ­perform a series of fluid counterattack moves. “This is about vetting people,” he says. “Putting them through controlled, stressful environments. In six months, some of these guys could be standing on the shoulder of a high-office principal. So we need to make sure we’re getting the right product to keep that person safe.

“You’re the last line of defence between a threat and the leader of a country. We’re walking around in 16-hour shifts, four or five days in a row, all over the country, all over the world. And on day five when you’re at your tiredest and you haven’t had a coffee and you haven’t eaten and you haven’t had water for eight hours, there could be a hit on you. And you could be two or three guys versus 12. And, basically, your job is to turn the tide, regain the initiative and extract the human being out of trouble. We believe it’s the most difficult form of any tactical policing. You’re outmanned and outgunned so you have to train yourself to be better than any threat against the principal.”

These men are dads and husbands and uncles who spend their off days manning ­barbecues and watching football and their on days walking through dense crowds with ­British royals, presidents, scanning faces and hands, faces and hands, faces and hands for anything out of the ordinary, the smallest sign of something not quite right.

They can give you detailed travel reviews of jaunts to Copenhagen, Paris, Madrid: the ­colours of hotel carpets, the width of corridors, the ­number of windows in hotel suites, the ­colour of bitumen on night-time drives between convention centres and airports. To talk to them candidly is to be reduced to a boy spouting clichés.

“So, like, could you disable me with two ­fingers to my collarbone?”

“Well … yeah.”

And any one of them could direct me around this shed in abject submission simply by applying pressure to a thoughtfully placed thumb at the nape of my neck.

“So, like, would you take a bullet for the Prime Minister?”

“Well… yeah. But that’s not what it’s about.”

Watching from the sidelines is a seasoned agent and instructor, Brian*, who recently ­completed a three-year watch over the former governor-­general. “Close protection is the unknown risk,” he says. “It’s what you can’t see. You’re always scanning, looking for something not quite right. Situational awareness. You could be standing there for 16 hours and you must stay alert the entire time. The minute you think nothing will happen, that’s when something will happen.”

Few people spent more time than Brian in his principal’s presence in those three years of ­protection. “You live and breathe with them,” he says. “Church, barbecues, funerals, family events, you’re there for everything. Anyone who has protection, it changes their life as well. You’re a part of their life, 24-7. They know if they’re going for a walk, you’re going with them. It changes everybody’s life.”

CPP is not about taking a bullet for the ­principal. “If you die, the principal is going to die,” says Chris. A successful principal extraction means all parties survive the conflict. But Brian doesn’t hesitate when asked if he would have gone that far to protect his principal. “That’s what I’m paid to do,” he says. “But, for her, the person she is, absolutely. She was the loveliest lady I’ve ever met.”

Chris calls: “End of ex.” End of exercise. He clears the floor for the next one. He wears a ­wedding ring. He has two kids and an understanding wife who knows a CPP agent’s life entails being away for 60 out of every 90 days to protect the P from a moment that may never come and if it does will unfold in a matter of ­seconds. “Just two seconds,” Chris says. It’s the name of a book by pioneering American security analyst Gavin de Becker.

“De Becker analysed 100 assassinations in the last 200 years and he worked out that 92 per cent of all the attacks were over between two and five seconds,” Chris says. “We train these guys to say, ‘If you can’t get to the principal within two seconds it could be over’. That’s what we’re ­looking at, two to five seconds.”

His eyes make a 360-degree circle around the shed. “Are you familiar with the OODA loop?” he asks. “Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.” It’s a response method developed by Colonel John Boyd, an American fighter pilot and Pentagon consultant. “Boyd was a fighter pilot in the Korean War who realised American pilots were winning all the dogfights because their canopies were bigger than the Korean MiGs,” Chris says. “They could see more and go through their thought process quicker and then change their attack.

“For us, orientation is in your head, going through previous training, orientating to what you know: ‘I know what this situation is; this is what I’m going to do.’”

A threat’s thought process is already in motion. It might have been in motion for months. A gun is raised and pointed at the ­principal from afar. An obsessed individual lunges from a crowded barricade. “When someone is attacking you with a knife, they’re in action,” Chris says. “The only way to stop the action is to reset their thought process. If you grab at the knife they’re still in action.”

He moves into a swift counterattack position, driving a right punch into his invisible threat. “You have to stop and strike at the same time to reset the thought process. In CPP, we move and move and move. When a person moves, an attacker has to reset their thought process. It’s 0.25 seconds between Observe, Orient, Decide. That buys you time, and time and distance is what can save us.”

Of the very few attacks on local dignitaries throughout Australian history, the most remarkable occurred on June 21, 1966, when the then leader of the ALP, Arthur Calwell, left a heated anti-conscription rally at Mosman Town Hall in Sydney. Calwell had just sat down inside his waiting vehicle when a 19-year-old factory worker named Peter Raymond Kocan fired a sawn-off rifle through the closed passenger side window at point-blank range. Miraculously, Calwell sustained only minor injuries. Kocan was sentenced to life imprisonment before being transferred to a mental health facility. Calwell wrote to Kocan in 1968: “If there is anything I can do to help you in future in the matter of the mitigation of your sentence … I will do it.” Kocan, now an author, was released in 1976.

“Around 62 per cent of attacks occur around the principal’s vehicle,” Chris says. “Drop-offs and pick-ups.”

The team run role-plays based on real ­assassinations. Through this course they have developed scenarios based around the 1995 assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was shot by an Israeli ultra­nationalist, Yigal Amir, at a peace rally at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv while stepping towards the open door of his waiting ­vehicle. “He knew Rabin was coming back to the motorcade. If CPP are too close, the gun can come straight over and shoot,” says Chris.

“Dropping off and picking up, the most worrying threat. The idea is to have your vehicles drop off somewhere and pick up somewhere else. If you’re an assassin, you would just wait where the vehicles are. As in Rabin, [Amir] just sat on a concrete planter box, knowing Rabin was coming back to that vehicle. He knew his opportunity was coming and he took it.”

Identification. Distance. Keep moving. Counter attack.

“There are threats in Australia,” Chris says. “Not even we hear about those threats. But if you do your job well, you create a presence where the threat isn’t going to attack you because it will cost them their life. Nothing has happened in Australia because people have done their job properly.”

He smiles wide, hands me a mask and a flak jacket. “Now you’re the principal,” he says.

I’m the people’s prime minister. I’m the kind of workingclass, baby-kissing, touchy-feely PM who bowls a flipper at a charity cricket match then celebrates victory by breaking the club beer-swilling record; unafraid to wander down a blind alley or head-first into the angriest rabble in search of an errant vote. “G’day,” I say to my mock constituents in this mock shopping centre meet-and-greet. Atkins and a group of trainees pose as potential threats mixed into the crowd, concealing guns and knives.

“Think about it,” Chris says. “For us, it’s hotel rooms, corridors, shopping centres, cafes and restaurants. We go where the principals go. We have to be mindful; if we draw a gun then where is that round going to go? Where’s the crowd? You may not be able to use the gun if there are women and children around.”

Off my shoulders is my CPP detail, two suited men keeping a distance of about 2m. Two mock constituents bark abuse in my face. My heart skips, momentarily stunned. “Aggression is disabling,” Chris says. “You can’t make a decision. Can’t act. That’s when people shut down.”

My CPP agents move me on through the crowd. More trainees push me, get up in my face. I’m Bernie Madoff in a room full of jilted investors. Push, shove. I’m Mel Gibson at a Bar Mitzvah. Atkins approaches me, smiling. We shake hands, then he turns on me. “Hello, Prime Minister,” he spits, and from his right hip he raises a training knife. My immediate tactical response is to yelp a brief and high-pitched “Faaark”. But my CPP react instantly, one agent spinning me backwards with a hand on my right shoulder and in the same motion guiding me into a crouch position. The other agent pivots around my left hip to block the threat and change my attacker’s thought process with a boot to his stomach. In less than half a second I’m running towards an exit to safety, where I make a note to my prime ministerial sec­retary to give these men a healthy pay rise.

Later, in a quiet moment, I confess to Atkins my brief body- crippling terror at the sight of his stabbing knife. He smiles warmly. He’s pleased with how my CPP detail reacted. He’s pleased with the progress of all the trainees. “This is my first real crack at training CPP full time and it’s bringing back a lot of memories of Australia Day,” he says.

He means Australia Day 2012, when his team found themselves trapped inside a Canberra restaurant, surrounded by protesters. (CPP protocols mean Atkins can’t discuss specific details or state the names of the principals extracted that infamous Australia Day, no matter how high-profile the principals were or how widely discussed the incident was.)

It was very real aggression that day. The agents registered threats that were sincere, violent and direct. “For us, that’s a threat on the principal’s life,” Atkins says. “We decided the integrity of the premises was going. We decided the best thing to do was to remove the principal from the threat. It was very calm. From the door to the car, all I remember thinking is, ‘Keep that body cover on’.” The body cover hold keeps the principal low while allowing Atkins to fend off attackers.

“It’s not the movies,” he says. “No extraction is ever clean. We protect the principal’s security and dignity but when you have protestors jumping over the back fence making threats, the ­dignity is out the window. We need to get the principal to the car. And that’s what we did.”

In the wake of the incident Atkins’ image was splashed across the world. “Here’s Australia’s answer to Kevin Costner,” ran headlines. Breakfast TV shows spliced footage of the incident with scenes from The Bodyguard to the background of Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You. He cringes at the memory. In truth, there was an element of heartbreak for Atkins wrapped up in the exposure. “I kinda waved goodbye to a future covert career after that,” he says.

He watches the trainees go to a box of “FX” ammunition – training rounds that mark the target upon impact – and reload for the next exercise. “I kept asking myself, ‘Well, how do I top that?’ But this… this has. It’s kind of re-­energised me, passing on everything I know to these guys. Maybe I could train 30 guys to help 30 prime ministers.”

Instructor Chris calls across the shed. “All right guys, let’s bring in the Territory.”

Across town, in his office in the figure-eight concrete fortress of the Australian Federal Police headquarters on Kings Avenue, Assistant Commissioner and National Manager Protection Michael Outram considers the past 12 months in which he has overseen the AFP’s role – alongside Queensland Police – in arguably the biggest security operation undertaken in Australia, the G20 leaders’ summit in Brisbane this November. Principals don’t come more important: Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, David Cameron, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel.

“From a CPP perspective, it’s massive,” says Outram. “When President Obama visits on his own it’s big. Here, you’ve got 20-plus heads of state, plus all their delegates and media. It’s huge.The environment is not benign. The sorts of people we look after, we look after them for a reason. It’s because they are at risk. Because of the profile they have or what it is they represent and who. So we do take it very seriously.”

Outram learnt a thing or two about volatile public spaces beginning his career with London’s Metropolitan Police in the Thatcher years. He learnt to “observe, orient, decide” in the heat of the UK miners’ strike, in a world of IRA assassinations and bombings.

“We do a lot of work to try and understand what the threat or the risk might be,” he says. “We have a lot of partners in that space – state and territory police, other national security partners. We have an eye on a number of threat ­vectors. The one thing that does keep you awake at night are fixated and threatening ­individuals. They’re the ones who are off the radar… The nutcase who comes out of left field who has capability and intent and who you never saw coming. That’s where these guys are the last line of defence.”

He points across a coffee table to David Bell, a 48-year-old father-of-two and AFP officer whose warm expression at present is nothing like the searing game-face he wore during a stellar CPP career protecting the likes of Barack Obama and Prince Charles. “And we’re always looking for that sort of thing,” Bell says. “Every function, that’s why we’re watching everyone. Faces and hands, faces and hands. Especially with the higher-threat people, you have to be really switched on. You always have to keep on reminding yourself that today could be the day.”

Outram recalls a shot he once saw of Bell on assignment, protecting a visiting Prince Charles, capturing what Bell’s kids call “Dad’s serious face”. “It’s a sensational photograph because it shows David’s attention isn’t on Charles, it’s on the crowd,” he says. “And all those people are wanting to get close to Charles.”

“I’m just looking for anyone standing out,” Bell adds. “Anything that people are doing that’s not quite fitting in. That thing that’s not right. And even then there’s no guarantee. You’re also thinking, ‘OK, if something happens right now, what am I going to do?’ You’re always trying to pre-empt but not pre-empt too much. When you’ve been in the police service as long as I have, you start to pick up on things that don’t fit. It’s a bit of a sixth sense.”

Outram nods. “You can have as much technology as you want around you, but the art is about understanding people,” he says.

Bell remembers when he was like the 10 men Atkins is training in the nameless silver shed, a fit, capable young man about to venture into a job that would bring rewards like no other and challenges, too; mixing with legends of the game – agents stretching back to the days of Whitlam and Hawke and Keating – who would turn to him on jobs and whisper eternal wisdoms like “Smooth is fast”; a young man with the weight of a human life on his shoulders balancing the demands of the job and a marriage that didn’t last the distance.

“The police force has an impact on a family, and CPP is a step further on that,” Bell says. “It’s variable hours, extended hours. I always say to the new guys coming through, ‘Learn the craft. Always be open to change and to bettering yourself and never be complacent because you’ll never know when something is going to happen. And try and find a partner who is really understanding… and talk to them.’”

Bell spent five years of his CPP career assigned to the same Australian dignitary. “It’s about building trust,” he says. “You’re with these people every day. You’re seeing them in the public life. You’re seeing them in the ­private life. You’re in a car with them, their family. I’ve had two principals that I looked after for quite some time and I miss them both very much. But you still have to maintain that professional arm’s length. It’s a very fine line to walk and you have to make sure you don’t overstep the mark. I would love to see those two principals again and catch up but it will probably never happen.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“It’s just not done,” he says.

They are anonymous. They fall into the background. When it was time for Bell to move on from CPP into other areas of the AFP, he did so with little fanfare. Smooth is fast.

“Once you’ve been doing CPP for four or five years I think you need to go and do something else,” says Outram. “You think about what they do: 99 per cent of the time it’s about protocol, making sure the interests and the ­dignity of the principals are managed, but all the time preparing for that 60 seconds if it goes really bad. And all of a sudden it’s a different skill set. That’s what we prepare for. All the travel. All the hours. After five years or thereabouts you have to go and do something else and refresh.”

Outram leans into the table. “What keeps me awake at night is that 60 seconds,” he says. “They do the other stuff really well. We get letters all the time from principals saying they do it really, really well. But what you can’t really test is that 60 seconds, unless it actually happens.”

The rear door of the white Ford Territory SUV is open, blaring gunshots and human screams and military calls from its stereo. It’s a deafening montage of real-life gun battle recordings from conflict zones, used to rattle the two trainees extracting me – the principal – amid a hail of FX bullets that whizz across the shed. Atkins and another instructor – the threat – fire from behind a vehicle while the two extractors initiate a gun-battle peel technique developed by Australian soldiers in the Vietnam War. “Covering!” screams one agent, blasting a storm of bullets at Atkins. “Moving!” screams his partner as he peels off to the right behind shelter, with a body cover hold on me, his extracted principal.

Bullets zing past my head. Too much movement, too much noise. The agent shoves my head down into a box shelter, fires a round. I can’t focus. My mind searches for my OODA loop but all it finds is… oompa loompas. Blasted little green-haired men marching around in my mind.

“MOVING!” screams my CPP, wrenching me backwards.

“Down, down,” the agent barks. “Stay down!”

We scramble behind cover. Atkins rains ­bullets on us but none make contact.

“End ex!” hollers Chris. “Weapons away. Helmets off.”

My CPP agent removes his helmet, smiles. The perfect extraction of a mind-addled and ­disoriented principal. “Thanks,” I say. I ask if I can mention his name in my story. “Nah,” he says, drifting back into the group of trainees, perfectly anonymous.

“If we’re doing a good job then you won’t hear about us,” says Outram.

A little after 4pm the agents and trainees leave the shed, drift off to their cars parked throughout the empty industrial precinct, back to their homes and their wives and children. They’re all gone in minutes, vanished. Smooth is fast. And you’re left outside in that empty car park again and there’s no sound, no movement, just four rusting forklifts and a nameless silver shed with no address.

*Some names have been changed