Attack on the White House Correspondent's Dinner 


I was watching a movie when the texts started coming in regarding the attack.  A flash of memory.  The Garland, Texas attack.  We were kept safe.  And when I arrived home after midnight, having ride-shared in a taxi with the official photographer for the event,  I thanked God for his goodness.  

Everything had been done properly.  Our press credentials were vetted before we entered the parking lot.  I placed my items in a bowl and passed through a magnetometer.  Everything was great... until it wasn't great anymore.

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15766553/White-House-shooter-Cole-Allen-suspect-motive-revealed.html


I remain grateful that only one member of the Secret Service team was injured.  It could have been a murderous rampage.   But this statement is incorrect:

'He failed,' Blanche said. 'Law enforcement did their jobs.'  

He didn't fail. He breached the security perimeter.  And what if - what if, he had assembled an explosive device in his room?  The debriefing will be interesting.  Because whilst an entire floor will be secured for the visit of a foreign dignitary, how do we properly secure an entire hotel?  We are limited by our imaginations.  And it is when we have a failure of imagination, that breaches occur.

Copied from "The Guardian".

The ‘multi-layered’ security measures in place at the dinner

The suspect detained after a shooting is believed to have made it past the outermost layer of security at the event because he was a guest of the hotel, officials said.

Security for the annual event is always tight when the president attends and law enforcement argued that their “multi-layered protection” at the Washington Hilton worked as designed.

Jeffery Carroll, the interim Metropolitan police chief, told reporters said investigators believe the suspect was staying in the hotel and that appears to be how he was able to enter the hotel at the time of the event.

The hotel was closed to the public from 2pm in anticipation of the dinner, which began at 8pm.

Access to the hotel was restricted to hotel guests, people with tickets to the dinner itself, an invitation to one of the receptions that are held at the hotel before or after the dinner, or documents from the White House Correspondents’ Association indicating affiliation with the dinner.

* Take my tax dollars. Take the tax dollars of the hundreds of millions of us who do not want to mourn a presidential assassination. Reserve every damn room and suite in the hotel for the evening. And then offer the rooms to the members of the security flanks after President Trump is safely delivered back to the White House. It is preferable to the assassination of an American President and his Cabinet members.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Charlie Kirk Marcus Aurelius "Meditations" would not exist if he had been assassinated for his thoughts at age thirty-one. I would have never read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" if he had been assassinated for his political thoughts at thirty-one years of age. Winston Churchill would have never written "Hinge of Fate" (one of my favorite selections) had he been assassinated at thirty-one years of age. Ernest Hemingway was fifty-three years old when "The Old Man and the Sea" was published. Leon Uris was thirty-four years old when his novel "Exodus" was published. The average age of the delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention was forty-two.  Benjamin Franklin was 81 years of age at this time. The famous Persian poet Ferdowsi began writing "Shahnameh" when he was 37 years old and did not complete it until he was about seventy years of age.  This would be a tremendous loss not to have access to his though...
Read more
Image
Mohamed Elhassan He is powerful, made up of imperceptible layers.  He was only in his mid-teens when he first heeded the call to political action traveling to the Republic Palace of President Jafar Nimeiri seeking justice for his family. He is a well-respected Sufi.  In June,  he was awarded a Masters Degree in Islamic Studies from Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Qatar).  A recognized leader of the Kwahla tribe - with 16 million members.   Fast forward to 2010 and 2015 when he ran for President of the Sudan.  In 2015, it was my privilege to serve in a minor advisory role.  In recent years, he has given an enviable one hundred interviews with Al Jazeera Mobasha (life).   His name is Mohamed Elhassan.  I merely call him "friend". Mohamed Elhassan is president of the Sudanese Gathering Accord.  He is a man who knows his business, takes care of his business, and more importantly, takes care of his people. Less than a month ago he tra...
Read more
State of the Union:  Live Blogging Tammy and Blackfoot will begin live blogging shortly.  Grab your favorite drink and your BINGO cards and get ready to settle in for two hours of our POTUS speaking at SOTU.  We hope to keep this fun! https://opinionbytammy.blogspot.com/2026/02/state-of-union-bingo-cards.html __________________ Here we go, gang! "Gang" in the friendly family way, not in the Tren de Aragua way. President Trump and Mrs. Trump have left the White House and are on their way to the Capitol. I'm sure these past few days have been chock full of leafing through journals and diaries, and holding meetings with the inner circle for messaging strategies. Regardless of how much input his team gives him, we can always rely on our POTUS to not mince words, to lay the facts on the table and give us straight talk. Recently saw Newsom talking about Trump being an actor, and that he's a different person in different situations. Once again, Gavin is projecting his weakne...
Read more