WASHINGTON: Tuesday’s presidential inauguration will be a historic occasion, and also a tempting target. The presence of huge crowds, not to mention the president, president-elect, and nearly every member of Congress and the Cabinet, make for a lot of concerns about security. The secret service is in charge of security for this event, but the police, the FBI and over 12,000 members of the military will provide backup.
Days before Barack Obama was elected the nation’s 44th president, federal agents broke up an alleged plot by two neo-Nazi skinheads to kill him. Then on Tuesday Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader issued a tape blaming Obama for Israel’s recent attacks on the militant Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
These are just two of the reasons why President-elect Barack Obama will be sworn in under the tightest security ever. The US government plans to close all bridges from Virginia into the District of Columbia except for bus traffic on the day Obama takes the oath as president.
The bridge closures were announced Wednesday by the Secret Service, which released a map showing about 3.5 square miles of downtown Washington closed to traffic starting mid-afternoon on Monday, the day before the inauguration.
The Secret Service released pictures today of the new armored presidential limousine that Obama will use during the inauguration and as president.
“Although many of the vehicles’ security enhancements cannot be discussed, it is safe to say that this car’s security and coded communications systems make it the most technologically advanced protection vehicle in the world,” said Nicholas Trotta, assistant director for the Office of Protective Operations.
Obama will use the limousine during the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue after his swearing-in on the west side of the Capitol.
Another company provided the heavy armor for the vehicle that is reportedly at least five inches thick. The limousine also has run-flat tires, bulletproof glass and a completely sealed interior to ward off a chemical attack, among many other high-tech security features.
Secret Service agents are training with the new limousine at a facility near Washington. They wouldn’t give specifications in the new limousine, a customized Cadillac made by General Motors. Other facts also are secret, like the vehicle’s curb weight, though GM disclosed that the limo has a 10-disc CD player and hand-stitched leather interiors.
In the sky there will be helicopters and fighter planes; on the ground, Secret Service SWAT teams toting automatic weapons will be on display to ward off any would-be attackers.
The level of protection is no surprise, given that the throng stretching two miles from the west lawn of the US Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial is expected to be around two million — with some estimates much higher.
Estimates are that this inauguration will be four times larger than usual.
Inauguration-goers will be turned away from the inaugural parade route once crowds reach a certain capacity, the overflow will be diverted to the National Mall. Nondescript boxes that can detect the airborne releases of chemical or biological weapons such as lethal anthrax spores will be scattered among the crowds.
The parade route has a capacity of 280,000 to 300,000 people, and that once that number is reached, checkpoints will be closed and no one else can enter the area around the parade route. That number does not include the 5,000 lucky early-arrivers who will be allowed to sit on bleachers along the route.
US officials — boasting a daunting array of high-tech defenses, some of them developed since Sept. 11 — say the event poses a massive challenge for the Secret Service and some 10,000 officers from more than 100 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, “in part because of the large numbers of people converging on the nation’s capital,” retired Secret Service agent Robert Rodriguez said.
