GlobalSecurity.org In the News

Terrorism changes the face of Washington
From trash cans to barricades, it's a vigilant mind-set

By Mike Soraghan, Denver Post Washington Bureau,

WASHINGTON - Sometimes it's the things that aren't there that you notice first. Trash cans and recycling bins have been pulled from subway stations here, leaving commuters without a place for their gum wrappers or old newspapers, for fear that someone might toss in a bomb instead. Precautions such as that have woven themselves into the fabric of the nation's capital since last month's attacks brought terror to the city's doorstep and made it the command center for a war.

'Sept. 11, it seems, was a line of demarcation between more easy, carefree times and now a more vigilant time,' said Cheryl Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which runs the subway. 'People can't hear an airplane or a helicopter without wondering, 'What is that?'' Washingtonians now run a daily gantlet of closed streets, concrete barriers, idling police cars and security officers pushing mirrors under cars. There are new X-ray machines in buildings and fighter jets overhead. Visitors find that popular tours of the White House, Capitol, FBI and the Pentagon have been shut down as anthrax exposures add to the jitters.

For D.C.-area residents, the traffic jams and delays caused by the attacks offer a mixture of frustration and reassurance. And there's a recognition that some freedoms have been lost.

'On one hand, you're inconvenienced,' said Chris Changery, a former Senate staffer turned consultant, who's finding it tougher to get around Capitol Hill. 'Then there's a part of you that asks, 'Why couldn't we do this in the first place?'' In doing away with trash cans and in sliding mirrors beneath cars, Washington is using methods long familiar to European nations.

'Everybody has talked about globalization and how the rest of the world is becoming like America,' said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a national security analysis firm. 'There's also ways in which globalization harms America, and we become more like the rest of the world.'

But others say Washington security has a long way to go before it matches the atmosphere of a European capital. 'It's nowhere like Paris was when I was there,' said Kevin Reis, who works at an accounting firm downtown. 'There were lots of cops on the street with rifles. That's weird.'

And Washington as a whole is hardly an armed camp. While the closed streets and security checkpoints spawn traffic jams that leave drivers fuming, there's plenty of places where the only change since Sept. 11 is more flags in the windows. For example, in the blocks between the White House and the Capitol, there's little obvious change in security in the downtown core of federal office buildings including the Department of Justice.

'I can't detect that anyone has taken a systematic look at physical security in the federal complex,' Pike said.

If there is an armed camp, though, it's the Capitol and the office buildings surrounding it where Congress works. Even before the Capitol complex was temporarily emptied by the anthrax scare, concrete barriers had been sprouting steadily across a widening network of nearby streets. The barriers sealed some streets and turned others into obstacle courses to slow the advance of a potential attacker. Two main thoroughfares that run past the Capitol are open but have been blocked to truck traffic.

Capitol police have expanded their jurisdiction around the complex, and officers have been working 72-hour weeks to keep the area carpeted in blue uniforms. Inside, windows have been coated with Mylar to make them blast-resistant. And security will only get tighter. The Bush administration is proposing to spend another $ 256 million on security upgrades around the Capitol.

Earlier this week during a routine public-lands hearing chaired by U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, a Grand Junction Republican, in a House office building, a window crashed open. In an odd twist, it hadn't been closed tightly after being treated with Mylar. Heads snapped around and people lifted in their seats, if just a bit. 'Around here,' McInnis quipped, 'any noise'll send you diving under your desk.'