15 February 2011

The presidential motorcade


This illustration (click for bigger) accompanied a recent article in The Atlantic explaining how the Secret Service protects the President.
It is a sorely underappreciated fact that both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were the subjects of relatively close-call assassination attempts. During a speech Bush gave at Tbilisi’s Freedom Square in Georgia on May 10, 2005, an assailant threw a live grenade at the president... Luckily, the grenade fell more than 30 yards away from Bush, outside of its effective range, and it did not explode. The Secret Service had warned the president and his staff that it was not able to screen everyone within the standard range, and that as a result, he was potentially in danger. According to former administration officials, Bush insisted on giving the speech anyway.

Clinton’s brush with death was closer still, and his life may have been saved by a gut decision made by his detail leader... in 1996, President Clinton was in Manila for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, and had on his agenda a visit with a local official. He was running late, in a surly mood, and eager to get going. According to Gormley, just moments before the motorcade was about to move, agents using a special intelligence-gathering capacity—one that remains classified—picked up radio chatter mentioning the words wedding and bridge. Knowing well that wedding was often a code word for a terrorist hit, Merletti changed the route, which happened to include a bridge. Clinton was angry at the decision, which would cause further delay, but he did not override it. When agents arrived at the bridge, they indeed found explosives: had Clinton taken the prescribed route, he very likely would have been killed. (Within the past decade, the service has added an electronic-countermeasures vehicle— theoretically capable of jamming remotely controlled explosives—to the presidential protection package.) 
I understand the President needs protection and continuous/instantaneous communication with everyone.  But the full panoply of the motorcade gives me unpleasant associations with an "imperial" presidency.

6 comments:

  1. I am not interested to debate who might need what level of protection, but this piece of speculation is a very common fallacy:

    "theoretically capable of jamming remotely controlled explosives"

    A proper attack would include test circuits to know in advance if any jamming takes place. Also, it would be trivial to maintain a constant communication with any remote triggers. Either you can activate them directly or they would detonate X seconds after losing contact. Add a second or third communication path to make sure you don't get any false positives when your connection dies.

    Long story short: Never assume that jamming anything is protection per se; there's usually a different attack that gains from whatever you try to do.

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  2. I work near the Israeli Prime Minister offices. Often I have wondered if all this was necessary.

    I think that in an age when heads of state are not kings or queens, the "system" needs a way to announce their importance.

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  3. I was standing in the mall parking lot yesterday and the president flew over in one of 4 identical helicopters.

    They were flying very low and and at low speed.

    Very cool sight

    I know it was him because I live in between DC and the maryland school he was talking at yesterday

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  4. I hate it when writers are accused of racial comments when none were intended, But the Title... Driving Mr. Obama could very well be taken as offensive.
    If I innocently put that title on a graphic, I'd apologize.

    I did not know about the Clinton Bridge thing.

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  5. @krikkit--I live on the Jersey shore about 20 miles south of NYC, a block from the beach. Whenever the pres goes to or returns from the city, I can expect those choppers to pass by, very low and hugging the coast. As you say, an impressive sight, and VERY loud. I can always tell when they're approaching; no other choppers that go by here sound like that--WHUMPWHUMPWHUMPWHUMPWHUMP.

    --Swift Loris

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  6. While I don't really relate to your feelings of unease due to the imperialistic nature of the motorcades, i can say that they are a pretty routine annoyance for me during my commutes around downtown dc. The presence of a motorcade at a busy intersection can often make the difference between being on time and being late for work.

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