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From notes@igc.org Sun Aug 11 07:25:25 1996 Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1996 12:46:19 -0700 (PDT) Reply-To: Moderator of conference "justice.polabuse" <bwitanek@igc.apc.org> From: Bob Witanek <bwitanek@igc.apc.org> Subject: GOP Security To: Recipients of pol-abuse <pol-abuse@igc.apc.org> Message-ID: <APC&1'0'a9f98b16'b93@igc.apc.org> X-Gateway: conf2mail@igc.apc.org Errors-To: owner-pol-abuse@igc.apc.org Precedence: bulk Lines: 201
Posted: Michael Novick <mnovickttt@igc.apc.org> 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.'' Posted in pol-abuse@igc.apc.org To subscribe, send this message: subscribe pol-abuse To this address: majordomo@igc.apc.org -- "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_ +---------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------+ |Julian Assange RSO | PO Box 2031 BARKER | Secret Analytic Guy Union | |proff@suburbia.net | VIC 3122 AUSTRALIA | finger for PGP key hash ID = | |proff@gnu.ai.mit.edu | FAX +61-3-98199066 | 0619737CCC143F6DEA73E27378933690 | +---------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------+