Secret Service Plans New Fence, Full Scale White House Replica, But No Moat

HughPickens.com writes The NYT reports that the Secret Service is recruiting some of its best athletes to serve as pretend fence jumpers at a rural training ground outside Washington in a program to develop a new fence around the White House that will keep intruders out without looking like a prison. Secret Service officials acknowledge that they cannot make the fence foolproof; that would require an aesthetically unacceptable and politically incorrect barrier. Prison or Soviet-style design is out, and so is anything that could hurt visitors, like sharp edges or protuberances. Instead, the goal is to deter climbers or at least delay them so that officers and attack dogs have a few more seconds to apprehend them. In addition, there might be alterations to the White House grounds but no moat, as recently suggested by Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee. "When I hear moat, I think medieval times," says William Callahan, assistant director for the office of protective operation at the Secret Service.

The Times also reports that the Secret Service wants to spend $8 million to build a detailed replica of the White House in Beltsville, Maryland to aid in training officers and agents to protect the real thing. "Right now, we train on a parking lot, basically," says Joseph P. Clancy, the director of the Secret Service. "We put up a makeshift fence and walk off the distance between the fence at the White House and the actual house itself. We don't have the bushes, we don't have the fountains, we don't get a realistic look at the White House." The proposed replica would provide what Clancy describes as a "more realistic environment, conducive to scenario-based training exercises," for instructing those who must protect the president's home. It would mimic the facade of the White House residence, the East and West Wings, guard booths, and the surrounding grounds and roads. The request comes six months after an intruder scaled a wrought-iron fence around the White House and ran through an unlocked front door of the residence and into the East Room before officers tackled him.

Comments

Call Disney's zoo design team....

[bob_grahame]

The Animal Kingdom park has lots of cool visual tricks so you can't see the things keeping the animals from eating the visitors (and/or vice versa). Things like ha-has can be made almost invisible from both sides, with good landscaping.

Ideas

[Thanshin]

Transparent : tall invisible bars are aesthetically acceptable.

Fragile : make it seem easy and simple but fragile in a way that once broken it becomes hard to climb. If you break something and hurt yourself few people will blame the inanimate object.

Sticky: as soon as you touch it, it secretes superglue. The guards come with an innocuous solvent.

Hidden : fill the moat with a "non-Newtonian" dirt colored fluid. Doesn't look like a moat, but people do fall inside and it's hard to move fast through it.

Ditch the White House

[Celarent Darii]

For that kind of money it would be more economical to actually build a real work residence for the president. Why stay in a 18th century mansion when you can build a modern facility with serious infrastructure. Keep the White House for tourists and perhaps as a museum or special press meetings, but let real work take place in a secure environment that is actually designed for the modern state.

But I guess 8 million for a full-scale doll house is better for morale.

Re:Ditch the White House

[cavreader]

The WH has plenty of very secure infrastructure but you can't see it because it is underground. Infrastructure supposedly capable of surviving a nuclear attack on Washington. All of the secure meeting rooms are located several levels down to help protect against electronic surveillance.

Re:Secret?

[RabidReindeer]

I think that the only thing that was ever really "secret" about it was that its agents didn't wear uniforms.

The US Secret Service historically has carried 2 primary mandates. To protect heads of state and to protect the reputation of US currency.

Tells you where priorities lie.

Re:But without moat...

[gstoddart]

Unless you're stockpiling Mongols, then it would, in fact, be Mongol Horde.

Just sayin'.

Re:Moats are still a good idea

[andrewbaldwin]

Agreed.

I can think of a few modern large buildings in the UK with linked duck ponds with ducks, water lillies, fountains etc. in landscaped grounds. They look attractive and it's only when you stop and really look you realise their main functionis a moden day moat.

Indeed apart from protection, the visual amenity is worthwhile (relatively low cost to provide a place to feast your eyes at lunchtime) and they also offer the potential for a heat sink for cooling.

Just make sure you keep a view on expenses though (see parliamentary expenses scandal a few years back - Douglas Hogg claiming moat cleaning on his family's ancestral home or Peter Viggers claiming for a duck house)

The man in the high castle

[DCFC]

As a loyal citizen o Her Britannic Majesty, I ind this whole thing hilarious.

You need a castle mate.
All this bollocks about fences "looking like a prison" is failure of imagination on a galactic scale.
For centuries people from less happy lands have crossed our silver sea to raise the hand of war against out kings and queens but their knavish tricks have been frustrated by our castles.

They are so aesthetically pleasing that millions of tourists flock to them, The Tower of London has no moat but would remain fast against any plausible attack. We use it to store the Crown Jewels.

If your Mr. Obama would care to contact Her Majesty then I'm sure she would supply the plans as a gift, I have her address if you need it.

Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Queen of Canada,Queen of Australia,Lord of Man,Overlord of Sark Defender of the Faith
Buckingham Palace
London
SW1A 1AA

Four words:

[Rambo Tribble]

"Ring of rose bushes." In fact, such was a common element in medieval fortifications, perhaps just as much as moats.

Re:Cock lube and genital electrocution?

[thedonger]

Why don't they just put up a normal sized fence, but cover it in cock lube so that it's really slippery and anyone who tries to climb it will just fall off?

To prevent people from jumping over, they should put tasers along the top, with computer-guided targeting systems that will shoot the tasers into the genitalia of anyone jumping the fence.

If somebody does make it over, they can just beat the person in the groin with sticks.

Sure, then the White House grounds would be inundated with masochists getting their jollies by scaling the fence; soon, as the prisons fill with them the ACLU gets involved, declaring the security practice "discriminatory," and our courts are clogged with lawsuits declaring the right to have one's testicles electrocuted is guaranteed in the Constitution. The Department of Health and Human Services will find some US code that can be interpreted loosely to agree with that assertion and circumvent Congress, forcing states to provide Testicle Electrocution centers. Due to cost concerns the states will be allowed to make electric car charging stations dual purpose ("charge your electric car...or your nuts"), but soon angry parents will protest because charging stations near schools will have to allow guys to pull out their nuts in public. The teachers' unions won't allow the government to move the charging stations because they are in bed with the "green" movement, so now regular old perverts will hang out at the stations and pretend they are electrocuting their nuts.

In conclusion, your idea will lead to perverts showing their balls to school girls, you insensitive clod.