Security guard at CDC says he was fired for taking president's photo

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — The security guard fired for carrying a gun while escorting President Barrack Obama during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the real reason he got fired is he took a photograph for his 81-year-old mother.
 
Channel 2's Mark Winne was the only local television reporter to talk to the security guard, Kenneth Tate, who now says he can't get a job.
 
"Were you told not to carry your weapon on the day of the president's visit?" Winne asked Tate.

"No sir," Tate said.
 
Tate said escorting President Obama on the elevator and elsewhere at the CDC was the high point of his 11-year career providing security at the CDC.
 
"I felt excited, I felt pleased, I felt special that I was able to do that detail, that I was chosen to be the one to do that detail," Tate said.
 
But that day led to the low point and, unless things change dramatically, the end -- unfairly, he says -- of his career at the CDC.
 
"You [have] been looking for a job?" Winne asked Tate.
 
"I have been looking, but who's going to hire me with this record that they put on me?" Tate answered.
 
"His family's suffering. He's suffering. All because of lies," Tate's attorney, Chris Chestnut, said.
 
An online Washington Post report now says the armed man who rode an elevator Sept. 16 in Atlanta with Obama is "not a convicted felon, as an earlier version reported."
 
"(I've) never been charged with a felony," Tate told Winne.
 
"(He) wakes up one morning to find lies have been spread about him. He's been wrongly terminated," Tate's attorney said.
 
"You have no misdemeanors?" Winne asked Tate.  
 
"I have nothing. No record," Tate said.
 
A CDC representative said the CDC asked that he be reassigned away from the CDC because Tate breached some procedures and protocols and did not follow orders for his post, including when he took pictures of the president.
 
The representative said the decision to terminate Tate's employment was made by his employer, Professional Security Corporation, which holds a security contract with the CDC.
 
"I tried to take a picture of them leaving so I could have some memento to give to my mom, my 81-year-old mom," Tate said.
 
"We're prepared to take whatever legal action is necessary to get justice for Mr. Tate," Chestnut said.