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GOP Security (fwd)
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>From [email protected] Sun Aug 11 07:25:25 1996
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1996 12:46:19 -0700 (PDT)
Reply-To: Moderator of conference "justice.polabuse" <[email protected]>
From: Bob Witanek <[email protected]>
Subject: GOP Security
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Posted: Michael Novick <[email protected]>
Philadelphia Inquirer: Page One
Sunday, August 4, 1996
Next security test: GOP's convention
Even before the Atlanta bombing, San Diego had battened down for
the Republican s' meeting.
By Carol Morello
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
SAN DIEGO -- For all the festive bunting and wacky elephants
springing up around town, the Republican National Convention will
open here in a grim atmosphere of no-nonsense security.
With a week left to go, Harbor Street, six lanes sweeping past the
convention center, already has been closed to traffic. Owners of
boats docked in the marina adjoining the center have been notified
that their vessels will be swept and boarded for ``consensual
searches.''
Tall chain-link fences ring the convention center itself. But
metal detectors like the ones the delegates will pass through were
deemed too unwieldy for the parking lot across the street, where
65 protest groups have been assigned carefully choreographed time
slots. Instead, a sign at the entrance will advise that satchels
and backpacks may be searched, and police have leased 200 pieces
of high-tech equipment to detect firearms and explosives.
Police also have gathered floor plans and photographs of every
hotel and party site where delegates will be lodged and feted, all
considered potential targets. They have even pressed the Retired
Senior Citizens Patrol into service, and encouraged abortion
doctors to ``take a vacation.''
Authorities in Chicago, where the Democrats will meet the last
week of August, are taking similar precautions. Metal detectors,
bomb-sniffing dogs and surveillance cameras will be in force, along
with thousands of police. Coast Guard cutters will patrol Lake
Michigan. Chicago police are sealing an eight-block area around the
United Center sports arena, the main convention site, to all
unauthorized cars, trucks and pedestrians. As the 20th century
nears an end, wary, pervasive security is as much a part of the
convention scene as Old Glory and silly hats. San Diego has been
preparing convention security for more than a year. Then a bomber
on the other side of the country suddenly made everyone wonder if
the next big public event could be free of mayhem and terror.
In an emergency meeting called the day after a pipe bomb exploded
at the Olympics in Atlanta, convention security planners assured
Mayor Susan Golding that plans already in place were adequate. They
said they neither made, nor expect to make, any significant
changes. They have devised more than 100 scenarios that could
threaten a peaceful convention, from an earthquake to a building
collapse to a bomb like the one that twisted Atlanta's moment of
glory.
Carl Truscott, head of convention security for the Secret Service,
said he had reached a ``comfort level'' for security within the
center itself. His agents are conducting sweeps of the 800 to 1,000
sites around San Diego County where party potentates will appear.
But he said the sweeps began before Atlanta's bombing. ``It
certainly raised our awareness level and concern,'' said Capt. Dave
Bejarano, head of the San Diego Police Department's convention
security planning unit, which is coordinating the deployment of law
enforcement from 18 different agencies. ``But we've made no
significant changes. We'll just be more proactive. We're planning
for the worst-case scenario, and hoping for the best.''
After two failed bids, San Diego fought hard for this moment in
the sun. But even before it's begun the clouds are out.
Television networks and party poo-bahs have groused about the
convention center's puny dimensions. Protesters went to court to
guarantee a demonstration zone where delegates can hear and see
them after the Republicans tried to shuffle them down the street.
With equal amounts of anticipation and trepidation, San Diegans
are prepared to host 50,000 visitors who can charitably be
described as intense -- 8,000 conventioneers, 12,000 media
representatives and tens of thousands of protesters. They know the
GOP gathering will showcase this city of 1.2 million people more
than all previous events held here, from the Super Bowl to the
World Series.
Twice before, San Diego was an also-ran in the convention
sweepstakes. In 1972, the convention that nominated Richard Nixon
to a second term was moved to Miami when a leaked memo by ITT
lobbyist Dita Beard disclosed that the Justice Department dropped
an antitrust lawsuit against the corporation after it donated
$400,00 to the San Diego convention campaign. And in 1992,
Republicans encouraged the city to make a costly bid, only to pick
Houston in George Bush's home state.
With the conventions-that-almost-were behind them, the city that
alternately describes itself as ``America's Finest City'' and the
``City of the 21st Century'' hopes to prove to the country -- and
itself -- that it has more going for it than the weather.
``We believe in a lot of outside feedback,'' said Francine
Phillips, author of America's Finest City -- If We Say It Enough
We'll Believe It. ``We've long felt that if we do it here, it's not
really good enough.
``For years and years, we were second to Los Angeles in size and
second to San Francisco in sophistication. Now San Diego is coming
into its own. It's an opportunity, and a risk. We're going to get
exposure, and we feel vulnerable.''
Jack Ford, son of former President Gerald Ford, is responsible for
setting the stage in the compact bayside convention center, built
in 1989. It was designed to hold 13,000, but it's been reconfigured
to hold 19,600. That still falls well short of 50,000 in Houston's
Astrodome and 40,000 in New Orleans' Superdome, site of the 1988
convention.
Seating is so tight that it has helped the price for nondelegate
tickets soar through the convention center's tentlike roof. In
Houston, anyone who donated $1,000 to the party got two floor
passes. In San Diego, donors have to pony up $100,000 to qualify
for the same two tickets.
The host committee's head of protocol, Bill Black, couldn't even
secure enough seats for the 92 foreign ambassadors and their
spouses he's entrusted with shepherding around the convention and
to social events. Since most are smokers, however, he figures he
can rotate them in and out of seats when they sneak to the terrace
for a smoke. It will look more cramped than recent conventions.
A CBS executive complained the convention will come across on TV
screens like ``a postage stamp with a bunch of ants crawling around
on it.'' Ford, executive director of the host committee, put the
best face on the situation as he walked around the convention floor
recently.
``It's the Camden Yards of conventions centers,'' he said, as
stagehands hammered away on temporary skyboxes. ``It will be more
intimate, not big and sterile like Veterans Stadium.''
As for all the carping about not having a dramatic balloon drop
from the 27-foot ceiling, Ford said jovially: ``There are lots of
other possibilities, not the least of which is having a balloon
rise.''
An array of protesters has lined up to get a rise out of
delegates. To control them, police drew up 55-minute slots spread
over five days, with 15-minute breaks to rotate protest groups.
Groups stood in line for up to 72 hours to have first crack at the
65 spots. Thirteen protest groups identify themselves as Democrats.
At least eight spots were reserved by gay and lesbian groups.
``This is going to be the largest mobilization of lesbians and gays
ever in this country,'' said Brenda Schumacher, a spokesman for a
group called Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Voices '96.
``We've faced an extremely hostile political environment ever since
'92. We want to expose the lies and show an accurate picture of who
we are.'' The Republican National Committee tried to confine all
the protesters to a sit e three blocks from the convention center.
It said the parking lot across the street should be reserved for
handicapped parking.
But the ACLU sued, and a federal judge agreed the Republican
proposal would violate the protesters' right to be seen and heard
by delegates. Police, who estimate 10,000 protesters at a time can
wedge onto the two-acre parking lot, had drawn up the time slots
for protest groups wherever they wound up.
Parking will be at a premium. The Secret Service has banned
underground parking at the convention center. And the Republican
National Committee has reserved every spare parking space in town
for its people.
The host committee raised about $12 million to put on this party,
more than double what any other city contributed before. In return,
it's counting on $160 million to be spread around town during
convention week and good publicity to pull in even more economic
benefits.
Knowing the Republican reputation for big spending, every business
in the vicinity, from Hooters restaurant to the Goodwill Industries
store, is decking itself out with GOP paraphernalia.
The Cuban Cigar Factory laid on extra tobacco rollers in early
January. Limousine companies lined up cars from Arizona and Nevada.
One bar opened its doors just two months ago, unabashedly calling
itself the Grand Old Party, complete with a pink neon elephant in
the window. Even Carol the Painting Elephant at the San Diego Zoo
is getting into the act, readying an exhibit of the brush strokes
created by her swinging trunk.
Still, a few San Diegans profess to be unfazed about all the
hoopla.
``This is not the biggest convention we've ever had,'' said
Stephen Cushman, a Mazda and Jaguar auto dealer who is deputy
chairman of the host committee. ``Alcoholics Anonymous and the
Baptist ministers both held bigger conventions here. We handled
those just fine.''
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--
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims
may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons
than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may
sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who
torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with
the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis, _God in the Dock_
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