Secret Service Challenged by Reagan Event

The dedication ceremonies for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library next month present a logistics nightmare for the U.S. Secret Service in charge of security at the historic event.

Not only do Secret Service agents have to protect President Bush, they will have to watch out for as many as four former Presidents and an array of foreign dignitaries.

The remote hilltop location of the presidential library offers some advantages to security forces that will include an array of federal, state and police officials, said Douglas J. Carver, a veteran Secret Service agent coordinating the event.

“It is so wide open up there, you can see almost anybody walking up there from a long ways away,” Carver said.

“If it was a problem, it is taken care of.”

The biggest challenge comes with moving dozens of distinguished visitors and their entourages from the headquarters hotel, the J.W. Marriott in Century City, to the library perched on a hilltop just outside the Simi Valley city limits.

“We’ve got nine Secret Service-protected motorcades,” said James Hooley, former director of the White House office that arranged presidential trips for Reagan.

Hooley, who rejoined Reagan’s staff to assist with the Nov. 4 library opening, said there is no room at the library site to shuttle the former Presidents and other distinguished visitors in by helicopter.

To complicate matters, Bush, all of the four former Presidents, Lady Bird Johnson and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney all have their own security details that must be coordinated with an overall security force.

“The logistics of it all are the most difficult,” Carver said. “There are so many varied and different people involved (with) getting everyone where they are supposed to be.”

About 4,200 former Reagan aides, political contributors and other invited guests are expected to attend the ceremony.

Simi Valley police plan to shut down a section of nearby Madera Road and Wood Ranch Parkway for parking. All of the guests will be shuttled in trams up Presidential Drive. At the top of the hill, “everyone will pass through metal detectors,” Hooley said.

The dais, which will be filled with as many as 60 prominent guests and their families, is vulnerable to only one overlooking hill, Hooley said. He said Secret Service agents and other police will take control of the entire area.

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department will set up a command post next to the library with the Secret Service and Ventura County fire and medical services, said Cmdr. William Wade, head of the sheriff’s East Valley Division.