Reaction
Yeas & Nays on Tuesday told readers about White House reporter Connie Lawn, who has been asking the administration why official motorcades need to be so long and travel so fast.
We heard back from Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren, who told us, “No two motorcades are exactly the same. … The number of vehicles is always a balancing act.” He said it depends on policies that local jurisdictions put in place, in addition to whether there are press vehicles or other people who need to be transported.
The White House pool report revealed that over the long weekend, President Bush had only a two-car motorcade on his way to Andrews Air Force Base for his surprise trip to Iraq.
“It can be done, but it is situational,” said Zahren, who noted that the service doesn’t “get out very far in terms of talking about our methods of protecting.”
He said when you use “lights and sirens and the full dog-and-pony show, you’re drawing a lot of attention to yourself.” But if you scale it down and blend into traffic, “then you sacrifice some of the security.”
“We’ve been very saddened” by the two deaths of police officers in motorcades over the past year, Zahren said. “Safety is always a concern for us, and we’re constantly taking a look at how we can do it better,” he said.
