Social security
Posted: Friday, January 09, 2009 4:06 PM by Sam Singal
By Brian Williams, Anchor and managing editor
There's a striking sight -- maybe just to me -- when visiting Washington these days. The machinery of security has been so thoroughly "baked in" to life there -- my friends who live there don't see it as much (because its been phased in incrementally) as the occasional visitor from New York. Metropolitan Police cruisers (many of them, at least) now drive around the City with their roof-mounted strobes on and flashing, the way they do in Israel and parts of Europe (apparently that's exactly where the idea came from, after a former D.C. police chief returned from an overseas trip). Federal Protection Service/Homeland Security SUV's are now ubiquitous on the Streets. Street closures (often for no apparent reason) are now in the "part of life" category. The area around the Hay Adams Hotel (the temporary home of the Obama Family) looks like the main gate at Fort Bragg, North Carolina...right in the middle of Washington. All of it, obviously, is part of our post-9-11 world and our new reality. It will be interesting to see if it changes in any way with a new Administration and a new policy outlook. It was interesting as well today to read the comments from Secretary Chertoff about the security situation surrounding the President-elect. Yesterday a friend of mine who's been a Washington journalist for several decades called security "the elephant in the room" where the upcoming Inauguration is concerned. Driving through downtown D.C. yesterday, the elephant was huge.
We're back in our New York studio tonight. I hope you can join us.