Location Makes White House Hard to Protect

In the frantic moments after a Cessna airplane plowed into the South lawn of the White House, some law enforcement officials feared that it was a District of Columbia police helicopter which had been hunting for fugitives in the streets nearby.

A restaurant had been robbed near FBI headquarters, less than a mile from the White House, and the helicopter was using its searchlight to try to spot the fleeing gunmen.

The officials’ confusion points up the exceptional difficulty involved in providing protection from the air for the nation’s most important residence in one of the most daunting security environments anywhere.

Close on one flank of the White House is a corridor to a major airport that buzzes with airline traffic day and night. Not far away are urban and suburban air parks and military facilities that shuttle small craft and helicopters. And on all sides are residential neighborhoods, businesses and public buildings that could make the cost very high if any craft were shot down or crashed.

“What do you do about the poor guy whose engines quit, with three kids and his wife aboard, and he’s looking for an open space?” asked security consultant Neil Livingstone.

Officials acknowledged Monday that it was uniformed White House Secret Service police who spotted the Cessna heading toward the White House from the direction of the nearby Washington Monument. The police only had “enough time to run for cover,” Secret Service spokesman Carl Meyer said, adding that he did not know if radar had detected the low-flying plane.

During the Ronald Reagan and George Bush admininistrations, the Treasury Department or the Office of Management and Budget turned down three of four Secret Service requests for research and development funds for radar specifically tailored to the area to protect the White House, according to Joan Logue-Kinder, assistant Treasury secretary for public affairs.

In 1988, some $350,000 was requested and appropriated, but an additional $600,000 was denied the following year, Logue-Kinder said. She could not specify whether any money was spent to develop radar in later years, because the spending could have been incorporated into a larger line-item in the budget.

Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), who heads a subcommittee that oversees Secret Service funds, said Monday that he wants to know why the Federal Aviation Administration cannot deploy radar to pick up low-level aircraft.

“The Army has ground radar to detect low-level” planes attempting to smuggle illicit drugs in his home state, he said, and he questioned why similar devices could not ring the White House.

But even with earlier detection, how do you respond to an aircraft headed for White House at tree-top level? experts asked. Any miss with a ground-to-air missile could land on an apartment house or hotel across the Potomac River or bring down a commercial airliner.

Brian M. Jenkins, deputy chairman of Kroll Associates, an international investigative and security consulting firm, acknowledged that there are “marginal improvements” that can be made with radar and related measures. But if an aircraft were flying down the Potomac River toward National Airport, which is out of the “no-fly zone” that protects the White House and other federal buildings, “takes a left turn at the Watergate, how long would it take” to reach the White House? he asked.

Only seconds. “You can put in all the sophisticated radar in the world, and you’re still going to have that basic vulnerability,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins, former director of the Santa Monica-based RAND think tank’s program on political violence and terrorism, noted that the idea of using an aircraft as a terrorist tool is not new. The most difficult aircraft to deal with would be a plane that suddenly veers off an acceptable course and heads for the White House, giving authorities only a few seconds warning.

Moving the President to “places of safety that are close at hand” would be the response, rather than any attempt to shoot down the aircraft, Jenkins said. With all the planes that regularly fly near the no fly zone, “and I suspect regularly violate airspace, you would have a pile of wreckage surrounding the White House and a lot of casualties” if attempts were made to shoot down aircraft.

Moreover, given the array of threats against the President, the aircraft veering off its course at the last minute “falls into the category of an exotic one out on the edge,” Jenkins said. “If someone wants to make a kamikaze attack on the President, he doesn’t have to go to such an elaborate scheme.”

Jenkins cited the fact that four of the last six presidents have been shot at, with one of them killed and another seriously wounded. If terrorists wanted to “go after the President, it’s a lot easier for them simply to take a shot at him at some public appearance,” especially if a would-be assassin was not concerned with his own safety.

“If security to the President were the paramount concern, then we would be putting the President in the middle of a mountain somewhere in Colorado and he would address the nation only over television,” Jenkins said. “That’s not the way politics works.”

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Secure but Not Impenetrable

Some highlights in White House security history:

1818: First White House fence goes up along north side of the building along Pennsylvania Avenue.

1950: Puerto Rican terrorists assault Blair House, across the street from the White House, when President Harry Truman is living there.

1974: A young Army private steals a helicopter from Ft. Meade, Md., and swoops down on the White House lawn. The man was treated for shotgun wounds and held for psychiatric examination.

1976: A man tries to ram his beat-up pickup truck through the White House gate. The solid steel bars stop him cold.

CURRENT MEASURES

White House precautions include:

* Electronic detectors line the 10-foot-high fence

* Visitors having to pass through metal detectors

* Ground-to-air missiles are available to fend off attack

* Heavy concrete barriers line the nearby streets to deter auto-borne suicide attacks

Sources: Times staff and wire reports