News

 

Francis' stops in Wash­ing­ton, Phil­adelphia, and New York are des­ig­nated as na­tion­al spe­cial se­cur­ity events, a con­sid­er­a­tion that’s been giv­en to in­aug­ur­a­tions, pres­id­en­tial nom­in­at­ing con­ven­tions, some ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al meet­ings, and even the Winter Olympics. And col­lab­or­at­ing agen­cies have been practicing: from dry runs at the Cap­it­ol with a fake pope on Sept. 1 and Sept. 14 to tab­letop ex­er­cises in the three cit­ies that the pope will visit from Tuesday until Sunday.

Of­fi­cials are tak­ing an abund­ance of se­cur­ity pre­cau­tions. All at­tendees will un­der­go a se­cur­ity screen­ing be­fore en­ter­ing the pope’s D.C. events and his mo­tor­cade route. Tick­ets are re­quired for all Wash­ing­ton events, ex­cept the parade. Streets with­in a three-block ra­di­us of the Cap­it­ol will be closed start­ing Thursday at mid­night in an­ti­cip­a­tion of Fran­cis’s ad­dress to Con­gress, with a host of oth­er road clos­ures throughout the pope’s time in Wash­ing­ton.

The Secret Ser­vice will have cov­ert as­sets, said Mickey Nel­son, a former as­sist­ant dir­ect­or now at Com­mand Con­sult­ing Group, al­though per­haps not of the fake monk vari­ety.

“I don’t think there will be a need to go to that ex­tent … this time. But they will be us­ing a lot of things that are not vis­ible that the gen­er­al pub­lic—any­body at­tend­ing the event—will nev­er see and nev­er have the need to see, as far as se­cur­ity as­sets [go].

The Secret Ser­vice nev­er wants se­cur­ity to be the fo­cus of any event,

To read the full article please go to: The National Journal