On 3/28/2015, the New York Times (
visit link) reported the following story:
Wanted at the White House: A Fence That Says Halt! (With Curb Appeal)
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and MICHAEL D. SHEARMARCH 28, 2015
WASHINGTON — Just after a Secret Service official shouted “Go!” and started a stopwatch, an agent hurtled toward a 10-foot-high fence with curving rods at the top.
Intended to slow any climber, the rods unexpectedly served as handholds that allowed the agent to hoist himself over the fence, a variation of the cast iron barricade at the White House. The feat took under seven seconds, even less time than it took two intruders to jump the seven-foot fence surrounding the Executive Mansion last year.
Since fall, the Secret Service has conducted dozens of tests on possible modifications to the White House fence, recruiting some of the agency’s best athletes — including tall, short, hefty and thin volunteers — to serve as pretend fence jumpers at a rural training ground outside Washington. The agency, officials said, has tweaked and winnowed the options and should be ready to add extra safety features to the current fence by this summer, with a newly designed fence to be installed a year later.
Though improved security was deemed an urgent priority after an intruder climbed the fence along Pennsylvania Avenue in September and made his way inside the White House, the fence enhancements have been many months in the making in large part because of competing requirements from at least a dozen government agencies and organizations. This is Washington, after all, and the nation’s most important residence.
“Do you want it to look like a fortress?” said Thomas E. Luebke, the secretary of the United States Commission of Fine Arts, one of the groups reviewing designs of security enhancements at historic buildings in Washington. “How can we accommodate what we deem to be necessary protections without spoiling the civic experience?”
The Secret Service, which has been under siege for a series of safety lapses and agent misconduct in recent years, is leading the effort to revamp the fence. But the fence is controlled by the National Park Service. The sections that extend to the Treasury Building next to the White House are overseen by that department, while the stretches around the Eisenhower Executive Office Building are governed by the General Services Administration.
Altering the Barrier
Improving the security fence around the White House will require balancing a dozen potentially conflicting interests. Several agencies, including the National Park Service and the Washington police, control areas around the grounds. The Secret Service is responsible for security, including new temporary barriers along Pennsylvania Avenue. Three government commissions have a say over aesthetic changes.
Omar J. Gonzalez, who jumped the White House fence this month, reportedly got as far as the entrance to the Green Room before being stopped.Armed Intruder at White House Got to East RoomSEPT. 29, 2014
The groups focused on architecture — like the Commission of Fine Arts and Washington’s Historic Preservation Office — are trying to ensure that the people’s house, as the White House is sometimes called, stays true to Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s original design for the capital city. Those groups want tourists to be able to walk up to the fence, which has been prohibited since the September intrusion by bicycle racks that keep visitors at least 10 feet away.
Secret Service officials acknowledge that they cannot make the fence foolproof; that would require an aesthetically unacceptable and politically incorrect barrier. Prison or Soviet-style design is out, and so is anything that could hurt visitors, like sharp edges or protuberances. Instead, the goal is to deter climbers or at least delay them so that officers and attack dogs have a few more seconds to apprehend them.
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The changes to the fence are just one of several security improvements that have been made to the White House since last fall. More uniformed officers are on duty and are receiving more training. There is also a new lock on the White House front door.
And the Secret Service is asking Congress for $8 million to build a full-scale replica of the White House at the training center to give agents and officers a more realistic way to train for attacks that might come.
Secret Service officials said they had learned more about fences in recent months than they ever imagined. They are reluctant to provide many details about their tests, but they said their initial notion of making the fence higher turned out to make it easier and faster for climbers because the longer bars gave climbers more to grip.
The agents posing as intruders ran up to test fences to start their climb, or just began from a standing start, the officials said. They did not wear any protective gear and dressed in ordinary clothing, just as someone might do to avoid suspicion.
Modifications to the fence will be bolted or soldered on the existing fence. In addition, there might be alterations to the White House grounds — not a moat, as plenty of citizens have suggested, but other barriers.
“When I hear moat, I think medieval times,” said William Callahan, assistant director for the office of protective operation at the Secret Service. He said it was more likely that changes would be made to the landscaping and topography on the South Lawn to improve security. A contractor has been named to come up with designs, based on the testing in recent months, for a replacement fence that agency officials hope will be ready to install in the summer of 2016.
The Fine Arts Commission has urged the Secret Service to think more broadly about improvements to public spaces around the White House complex. By doing that, the group said, officials could make security improvements even as they rid the area around the White House of ugly cement barriers in places now.
Some existing security measures resulted from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when many government buildings in the capital quickly sought to bulk up their perimeters. In 1995, vehicle traffic in front of the White House was cut off soon after the Oklahoma City truck bombing.
“The best solution is the one that intrudes the least, and offers in return for its fortifying function the reminder that the public is welcome — and safe — at the national seats of power,” Mr. Luebke wrote in a blog post on the commission’s website.
Getting the fence right is particularly important for the Secret Service, which has been marred by scandals and embarrassments in recent years.
In 2012, a dozen agents and officers were caught with prostitutes in Colombia shortly before President Obama arrived there for a summit meeting. After wide criticism of the agency’s response to the September fence jumping, the director, Julia Pierson, resigned. Now the new director, Joseph P. Clancy, the former head of the president’s security detail, is under fire after reports that two senior agents drove a government car around the White House after drinking at a party.
Plans for a new fence have forced the Secret Service to think beyond just the threats from jumpers. Analysts and agents are imagining other ways the residence could come under siege. They are studying how the fence and other measures at the White House could thwart terrorists and others.
“We want a solution that will stand the test of time,” Mr. Callahan said. “We can’t just come back in a few years and say, ‘Oh, we didn’t think of this or that threat,’ and change it again.'”