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Jewish World Review Feb. 12, 2001 / 19 Shevat 5761
Philip Terzian
As everyone now knows, not too much. Just as I arrived at the north entrance to the White
House an ambulance was speeding north on Fifteenth Street. I guessed that it contained the man
with a gun -- dead or alive? -- and I was right: The ambulance turned west on Pennsylvania
Avenue toward George Washington Hospital. Cops of all shapes and police jurisdictions were
milling about, and yellow tape was stretching across various intersections.
The block between the Treasury building, which is next door to the White House, and my
office, which is two blocks east of the Treasury, was cordoned off by police cars -- who were
still there blocking traffic when I left the office for the evening.
This was exactly the sort of incident that nourishes our new, 24-hour cable news cycle, and
the networks didn't fail us. All day the "Breaking News" logo was stripped across television
screens, long after every available detail had been learned. We are now expert in the life and
times of poor, demented Robert Pickett, 47, of Evansville, Indiana, who climbed the fence on
the south lawn of the White House, fired some shots, put a pistol in his mouth, and aimed his
weapon at the Secret Service, who then shot him in the leg.
It was also the sort of incident that reminds us how vulnerable presidents can be: You
never know where and when tragedy lurks.
As it turns out, President Bush was exercising in the White House gym when the shooting
broke out, and Mrs. Bush was in Texas. The President was never i danger. Even if Mr. Pickett
has succeeded in scaling the fence, and run firing toward the White House -- several hundred
yards away -- he would have been gunned down by a) snipers on the White House roof, b)
uniformed agents patrolling the sidewalks or c) Secret Service men who wander unobserved among
the trees. Moreover, there are all sorts of sensors and booby traps buried in the lawn to alert
the several hundred heavily armed ladies and gentlemen who guard the White House.
Still, people with a suicidal impulse aren't always deterred. In September 1994 a man stole
a light plane, buzzed around the Washington Monument, and crashed on the White House lawn,
killing himself at two in the morning. A month later another man, standing on the Pennsylvania
Avenue sidewalk, fired a volley of shots from a semi-automatic rifle toward the White House
before being tackled by passersby. Two months after that a homeless man brandishing a knife on
the same sidewalk was shot and killed by the U.S. Park Police. And in May 1995 an intruder
climbed over the fence and ran toward the White House brandishing an unloaded pistol before
Secret Service agents shot him in the arm.
That was a month after Timothy McVeigh exploded his lethal bomb at the federal building in
Oklahoma City, and the Secret Service, mindful of President Bill Clinton's sense of insecurity,
seized the moment. Traffic was abruptly sealed off from Pennsylvania Avenue, the nation's main
street, and several surrounding boulevards, leaving the White House behind an ever-expanding
perimeter of security, and downtown Washington in ever-growing gridlock.
Of course, this latest incident took place just as President Bush was pondering how to
honor his campaign pledge to reopen Pennsylvania Avenue "as a symbolic expression of our
confidence in the restoration of the rule of law." And it is the received wisdom, at the
moment, that Robert Pickett's lunatic act might have persuaded Mr. Bush that keeping
Pennsylvania Avenue closed is a good idea. That, certainy, was the consensus of cable TV
"security experts" and retired Secret Service agents.
But there is another side to the story. Not a single one of these incidents, including
Pickett's charge, would have been prevented by blocking traffic from Pennsylvania Avenue and
surrounding streets. And the truth is that, if the Secret Service had its way, the President
would serve out his term in a bunker, protected from any public contact whatsoever. The White
House is already cordoned off from the citizens of our democracy by huge gates, high iron
fences, concrete barriers and growing arsenals of weaponry and cannon fodder.
This is neither appropriate nor desirable in a free society. Public life carries some
risks, which every candidate for the presidency weighs in the balance. The truth is that no
president can be guaranteed absolute safety, and the instinct to protect our leaders from harm
must be measured against the dangers of police state procedures. Given America's size, and the
nature of our open, unfettered society, it is a wonder that so few incidents actually
02/08/01: The wrong man
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