The closest contact that Byrne could have had, according to [association president Jan] Gilhooly and others, is seeing the president or the first lady pass in the hallway — far from the intimate access he would have needed to catch Bill Clinton in the act or see Hillary Clinton fly into the cursing rages he now writes have convinced him that she doesn't have the "integrity and temperament" to be president.

"There could be a circumstance where a uniformed officer might be in the proximity. It's not as if it never happens," Gilhooly said. "It is possible but not on a continuum."

The former supervisor of the presidential protective division said that at best Byrne is working from office rumors that he's cinematically written himself into. People spend decades on presidential details and don't rack up the number of amazing scenes Byrne claims to have witnessed in just a few years as a uniformed officer.