Secret Service considers a larger buffer zone around the White House

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-considers-screening-tourists-outside-white-house-adding-barriers/2014/09/21/f4edb4a4-41f1-11e4-b437-1a7368204804_story.html

 

After an unprecedented security breach Friday night at the White House, the U.S. Secret Service is weighing a series of measures that would move tourists and D.C. residents farther away from the complex to reduce the chances of intruders piercing its security perimeter and endangering the president.

 

One proposal is to keep people off the sidewalks around the White House fence and create several yards of additional barrier around the compound’s perimeter. Another is to screen visitors as far as a block away from the entrance gates.

 

The plans for enhanced security come after an incident Friday that exposed gaps in the Secret Service’s ability to secure the formal seat of the executive and the home of the first family. A man jumped over the White House fence just after 7:20 p.m. and was able to sprint unimpeded to the North Portico and enter the unlocked front door of the White House.

 

It happened less than 10 minutes after President Obama left on his Marine One helicopter, and officers responding to the alarm for a fence-jumping could not reach the intruder before he reached the mansion. When he stepped inside the foyer, an officer stationed there subdued him.

 

 

All the security ideas being floated in the wake of the event are “notional at this point,” said an official familiar with the talks. The National Park Service controls much of the property on the border, so all ideas will have to be reviewed by multiple agencies as well as the Obama administration.