Security Breach May Cause Enlarged “Buffer Zone” Around the White House
Who could have predicted such a thing? One blogger did.
After a man jumped the fence and actually made it through the front door of the White House last weekend, the Secret Service is thinking of beefing up the security area around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Carol D. Leonnig of the Washington Post reported Monday:
Secret Service considers a larger buffer zone around the White House
After an unprecedented security breach Friday night at the White House, the U.S. Secret Service is weighing a series of measures that would move tourists and D.C. residents farther away from the complex to reduce the chances of intruders piercing its security perimeter and endangering the president.
One proposal is to keep people off the sidewalks around the White House fence and create several yards of additional barrier around the compound’s perimeter. Another is to screen visitors as far as a block away from the entrance gates.
The plans for enhanced security come after an incident Friday that exposed gaps in the Secret Service’s ability to secure the formal seat of the executive and the home of the first family. A man jumped over the White House fence just after 7:20 p.m. and was able to sprint unimpeded to the North Portico and enter the unlocked front door of the White House.
When I read Leonnig’s report, all I could think of was this post by Moe Lane of Red State which was published shortly after the incident:
A cynical blogger might think that these White House security breaches were deliberate.
But it’s a good thing that I’m not a cynical blogger, because then I can conclude that the sudden rash of security lapses is completely coincidental. And that, of course, the White House will not restrict further the People’s* access to it. Because if they did, why: that would mean that the Democrats really and truly don’t have a single drop of populist sentiment in their veins at all. …Or at least that Barack Obama doesn’t.
Someone give the man a cigar.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons.
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Comments
We don’t need a buffer zone. The White House doesn’t belong to any President. The Prez and his family can be moved elsewhere to an area that’s easier to control if there are security concerns. The answer isn’t to treat the owners of the White House like terrorists.
Huh? What? Isn’t the White House the ‘official residence’ of presidents and their families, when they’re in Washington? If you move them elsewhere when in DC, it wouldn’t be an official residence, it would be a sad icon of past times when elected presidents could steep themselves in the mutual shared history of our past.
>> the mutual shared history of our past.
eschew prolixity.
Why did it take a WHOLE WEEK PLUS for them to come up with their fairy tale on this one?
Oh….time to plant all that evidence I guess……..
The people of the United States need to treat the tenants of the White House like the parasitic vermin they are. Evict them!
Impeach!!
The White House, where our President lives with his family, should be at least as secure as our embassy in Benghazi. They deserve no less.
Perhaps they could contract with Hillary as a security advisor. I hear she is hurting for money and would probably appreciate the work. At a minimum it would help supplement her social security check.
Why don’t they just improve the fence in order to make it impassable? Just dig a deep moat inside the the outer fence so when people jump over it they’re stuck in the moat and hopefully have broken legs.
Why doesn’t the Secret Service get off their asses and do their job? A pix of Gonzalez running across the lawn shows two uniformed agents in the back ground standing there
twiddling their ……..!
Naw. Give them lawn chairs, a 70″ TV and a couple dozen 24-packs. Keep the pizza flowing, served by babes in bikinis.
This was would have yielded a much more beneficial outcome for The people.
…and after the pizza and beer how about a couple of Columbian hookers! After all the White House is in the District of Columbia.
It would be a little harder to be cynical if we didn’t have the example of the Fast & Furious scandal, where the US government allowed weapons to be purchased and taken to Mexico in violation of US law, where they were then used to kill hundreds of Mexicans, all for the purpose of obtaining stricter US gun laws.
How about a new inner fence instead of a new outer one?
And if Ted Cruz is president, a 25 foot high brick isolationist wall around the entire grounds. And if Chris Christie, the installation of GW-bridge-like toll booths at the gates, rarely opened.
You make our point for us: Were this a republican president this would be viewed as to his lack of popularity, the jumper as a “brave protester”, and any further security measures a sign of conservative paranoia.
They can build a better fence, and, while one dude was joking, yes, a moat (10′ across and 5′ deep would slow ANYONE down), and hire more guards.
But, wait, why don’t we just declare it a “gun free zone” and if anyone makes it inside offer them amnesty?
Heh. Why not declare it a Fast and Furious Zone instead? Then keep our fingers crossed that they make it inside.
You also have to remember this is the same security detail that let two unauthorized persons into a party and they got to shake hands with Obama. The Secret Service only found out about it after then two went public with what they had done for cripes sake.
“You make our point for us: Were this a republican president this would be viewed as to his lack of popularity, the jumper as a “brave protester”, and any further security measures a sign of conservative paranoia.”
What point? That partisans on the left and the right will continue to be a-holes? I don’t like Obama, never have, was a critic when he ran in the Democratic primaries, more of a critic as time passed; but I don’t want to see the White House breached, by anyone for any cause.
Yesterday the Washington Post published a story cataloging at least 32 similar incidents of White House breeches since the mid 1970s, during Republican and Democratic administrations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/09/22/35-breaches-of-white-house-security-mapped/
And nobody was applauding those perpetrators, except maybe the gargoyles on either side of the political divide. Does the shoe fit?
Perhaps that would make the king feel as though his fiefdom was being shrunk rather than expanded.
How sad. “Progress”. Grover Cleveland liked to answer the WH door himself, and sometimes would chat through the window with people on the White House lawn. Too long ago? Harry and Bess Truman drove themselves on a road trip in ’53 without Secret Service agents or other company.
What explains changes like these?
More dangerous times, more dangerous weapons, more terrorists and psychotics roaming free.
It changed during WWII, when increased threats against FDR were made, and uniformed armed soldiers began patrolling the grounds. And outside security was increased during the Reagan administration, when police built barricades on the streets surrounding the White House in 1983. The fence was was expanded by one block to move traffic farther from the White House in the 1990s after the World Trade Center truck-bomb attack and others like it world-wide.
The English acted similarly to safeguard 10 Downing Street, installing gates at both ends of the street, after the IRA used a van to launch launch a mortar shell at Number 10 when Thatcher was Prime Minister.
On a technicality: I think you will find it was John Major who was PM at the time of the IRA attack on Downing Street.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_mortar_attack
More Dangerous Democrats??????
You’re right — Major during the mortar attack; the gates installed prior to that, during Thatcher’s premiership. The IRA launched the mortar shell over those gates into a garden. Major was inside during the attack holding a Cabinet meeting.
The British supposedly took subsequent precautions to prevent that – and one can only hope we have taken preventative measures against that kind of attack too.
And so it begins, the elite cutting themselves off from the lessers. It seems like good reasoning at the time but then it snowballs.
“And so it begins.” Begins?
Huh? Have you been marooned on a deserted island somewhere for the last six years?
The dude should be immediately given the Lincoln bedroom, with more rooms being dusted and cleaned for the arrival of the rest of his family. Give him the Border Wall Treatment!! We should demand that he be allowed to stay. Obamullah’s illegal alien relatives are in this country living off the public trough. Why not this guy? He made it over the fence; time to roll out the red carpet.
No Wall? No Fence! No Wall? No Fence! No Wall? No Fence.
You suggesting he’s an illegal?
I though Omar Gonzalez is a Puerto Rican vet (that means American Citizen), who served 15 years in the US Army, including three tours in Iraq, where he had part of his foot blown off by a homemade explosive device, and suffering from PTS, and no doubt schizophrenic — He thought “the atmosphere was collapsing and needed to get the information to the president of the United States so that he could get the word out to the people -.”
An American with stress related mental problems — so why are you badmouthing him with that Border Wall Treatment remark?
Ay-yi-yi…..
I’m not badmouthing the guy who jumped the fence at all. It’s satire about the hypocrisy of this administration, via the Secret Service, wanting to wall up the White House to protect His Royal Highness while His Royal Highness encourages the overrun of our southern border with all manner of criminals, drugs, diseases and parasitic ne’er-do-wells that we peons have to contend with, defend ourselves from, support, dodge, bob and weave.
Get it? (face palm)
This is so rich with irony it’s laughable.
This was not a security breach. It was an Unscheduled Visitor Event.
Just lock the da*n door
Any word yet on whether the intru-, er, undocumented visitor will be allowed to live and work in the White House? When deciding what to do we must take into account the rich and vibrant culture that the jumper had (whatever it is) and also that he probably only did it to do the menial jobs Americans won’t do. After all: we are a nation of fence jumpers, so it would be unfair to single out this guy for punishment.
I demand White House fence reform that is both compassionate and fair! Senator McCain, call your office!
He was only seeking asylum from the charges he’s facing back in his home country, the United States. And they cuffed him and carried him off like a dog. They don’t even have to let him in the White House. They couldn’t give him a bush in the Rose Garden to live under or something? Heartless.
And let us never forget Miriam Carey, who was cornered and shot to death by the Secret Service and Capitol Police for driving through a barrier and racing off haphazardly around various capitol streets and buildings. She had her toddler in the back seat. She was a small black woman who immigrated from Somalia. She thought obamullah was sending messages to or about her through the TV and wanted to talk to him or someone about it. I think she was a dental hygienist or something.
The cops got a standing O from congress for shooting Carey to death, brave souls that they are. The family still doesn’t understand why she had to be shot.
I don’t understand, either.
Ten feet back from the fence, erect a 10′ high glass wall. The top rail could have all kinds of security gizmos in it.
It would stop bullets, eggs, and tomatoes well and delay those sneaking into the state dinner long enough that their invitations could be checked.