Those whose job it is to worry about security in the nation’s capital have always known that there’s no stopping someone like shooting suspect Russell E. Weston Jr.
For all of the metal detectors, bag checks, barricades and motion sensors, a person with a bent mind and a blazing gun stands a good chance of wreaking havoc.
That predicament comes with the makeup of the place. The city is one of open plazas, great marble monuments, accessible museums with broad steps. Permanent residents long ago became inured to security officers, siren-blaring motorcades and metal detectors, while the constant stream of visitors quickly adapt to the sideways glances of uniformed guards and the lines that form behind X-ray machines.
The grandstand for this show is the U.S. Capitol, where each year 4 million people meet lawmakers and wander the warmly lit hallways filled with statues, grand murals and the feel of history in progress. Anyone can get at least to the doorway the way the gunman did.
Almost daily, in fact, the building is approached by its share of “people who are not of a right mind,” District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said. “But these people shouldn’t be kept out of the Capitol. We just need to make sure that they don’t have weapons.”
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The task of making sure of just that may rival governance as official Washington’s top priority. There are more than two dozen police agencies in Washington, ranging from the Capitol Police involved in Friday’s shooting to the U.S. Park Police to the Secret Service, which protects the president. Even the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, the National Zoo and the Internal Revenue Service have their own forces.
Violence against Washington’s officials and its sites is a looming concern, even if infrequent: A member of Congress was shot and killed in the last century, and attacks this century include a shooting by Puerto Rican nationalists in 1954 in the House chamber, an early-morning bombing in the Senate wing in 1971, and a late-night bombing in the Senate chamber in 1983.
That last attack came not long after a truck bomb exploded outside a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983, killing 241. Suddenly, a new perceived threat existed, one that security experts say changed the face of freedom of Washington. The police presence was increased, and frosted glass in the Senate chamber was replaced with metal. Most important, the type of security now common at airports was installed.
“The systems in effect today at the Capitol were put into effect at that time,” said Neil Livingstone, who runs a crisis-management firm in Washington. “That includes the magnetometers, X-ray machines and barriers that were put up around the Capitol building. They are pretty unsightly.”
In addition, only properly registered cars are allowed into the plaza near the door that Weston entered, and those vehicles have to negotiate a number of barriers. Officers also began using mirrors on poles to examine underneath autos, and hydraulic barricades were installed to stop unwanted vehicles.
It wasn’t long before the Capitol’s increased security began to pop up all over Washington. Concrete, or “Jersey,” barriers and giant concrete planters were put in place, and metal detectors were installed in many federal buildings.
The Capitol Police, once a force built largely on patronage, became professional. It doubled in size to its current 1,300 officers, who began receiving police training at a federal law-enforcement center in Brunswick, Ga. Today, the force is capable of SWAT team, countersurveillance and anti-sniper operations, and it patrols a wide area of the neighborhoods around the Capitol.
Still, police work on the Capitol grounds seems downright sleepy compared with the racing security work of the Secret Service, at least when the president or vice president leave the White House. When that happens, Washingtonians and visitors are treated to a siren-blaring, traffic-clogging, racing motorcade.
The typical presidential retinue includes a phalanx of motorcycle officers, followed by a string of limousines–some of them decoys–and black, four-wheel-drive vehicles known as “war wagons.” Inside each are armored and armed Secret Service agents whose job it is stop any intrusion into the motorcade. A helicopter usually hovers slightly ahead of the procession, a sign to savvy commuters to find an alternate route.
Recent events had resulted in new, extensive security measures, especially at the White House. A month after a truck bomb in Oklahoma City killed 168 people in April 1995 and seven months after a deranged gunman fired shots at the White House from Pennsylvania Avenue, President Clinton agreed to close the portion of the street in front of the executive mansion. The fear was that a bomb of the same size would devastate the place.
Most federal buildings never approach that level of protection. Because so many were built in different eras, each poses a different problem. The stunning, glass-filled diplomatic entrance at the State Department is more vulnerable and better protected than the great stone edifices that line Constitution Avenue.
“There are a lot of challenges for protecting a lot of different federal buildings,” said Jeff Beatty, president of Total Security Services International, a Virginia firm that correctly predicted a bombing would occur at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. “There are buildings that have to have public access, buildings that are in close proximity to major thoroughfares. It’s quite a challenge, and they are not done implementing their plans.”
There is little doubt that Friday’s tragedy will bring a re-evaluation of procedures on Capitol Hill and throughout Washington. Livingstone said federal authorities recently received funding to install technology that will track license plates as cars approach the Capitol.
In April, the Congress approved $20 million for improved security at the Capitol. Lawmakers vowed Saturday to keep the place accessible to the public through four doors, including the one the gunman used. Many of the hundreds of people wandering through the building a day after the shooting, though, knew what Friday’s tragedy proved that security can only go so far.
“It’s too bad that we have to deal with the kind of terrorism that Europe is used to,” said Jorge Gomez of Chicago. “I don’t know what more we can do to cure ourselves.”