A Bizarre Event’s Potential Value

The astonishing crash of a light plane on the White House lawn Monday morning has prompted several top-level investigations, and rightly so. A thorough and serious review of presidential security procedures is clearly warranted. But is it possible to conduct such a study without the sophomoric finger-pointing or ritualistic scapegoating that is so common in Washington?

Investigators will want to know what can be done to prevent airborne threats to the White House in the future. An apparently despondent amateur pilot--possibly drunk and bent on suicide--who steals a plane and aims it at the White House, as Frank Eugene Corder did early Monday, is one thing; a terrorist bent on penetrating the highly restricted airspace around the White House in an attempt to assassinate a President is obviously quite another. The latter might well have lethal resources and information that could prove to be catastrophic.

All that can be said now about White House security in this case is that there are too many questions. When did the Federal Aviation Administration know something was amiss? If the plane was observed by air traffic controllers, either at National Airport or elsewhere in the Washington area, did they know they were supposed to notify the Secret Service? If the Secret Service had been warned, should the President have been moved out of the danger area?

Secret Service sharpshooters, stationed on the roof of the White House and the old Executive Office Building, are reportedly armed with shoulder-fired Stinger antiaircraft missiles. But if a fired missile were to miss its target, might it hit something in the congested neighborhoods around the White House? Could it endanger other aircraft flying nearby?

Protecting the President from many kinds of assault in the middle of a city is an onerous responsibility that demands the utmost organization and planning. That an airplane could be flown to within feet of the White House is disturbing. This bizarre incident will have value only if investigators look beyond its specifics to conduct a probing examination of what is being done to shield the nation’s leader.