Capitol Police Were Warned of Holes in Security

No one was guarding a door at the top of the Capitol steps that the gunman ran through shortly before 8 a.m. Monday -- an entrance that was being used mostly by construction personnel. McGaffin said an officer had been at that post early in the morning but had left to assist on the Capitol periphery, apparently because of a construction delivery.

Other law enforcement officials, however, said the post had not been staffed for days, or perhaps weeks.

"Someone made a judgment call that that was a post not needed," said one source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss results of an ongoing internal investigation.

McGaffin said he wasn't sure whether the post was continuously staffed and added that he assigned his inspector general to get to the bottom of that and other problems exposed by Monday's incident.

"This is part of the exercise we're going through with this internal investigation, to just find out: Was that decision made? Was the decision made to move a post, or move an officer, and if so, what was the basis of the decision?" he said yesterday evening, adding that he did not yet have the answers.

It was the worst security breach since July 24, 1998, when a former mental patient stormed past a magnetometer and killed Capitol Police officers Jacob J. Chestnut and John M. Gibson. The patient, Russell Eugene Weston Jr., was arrested after he was shot during gunfire with police.

The Capitol Police has about as many officers as does Cleveland -- roughly 1,600. Including civilians, the department has about 2,300 personnel, an increase of about 50 percent in five years.

Its annual budget has roughly tripled during that period, reaching $257 million in 2006. In addition, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on facilities and equipment to increase security at the Capitol, from underground bunkers to a sophisticated hazmat unit.

As the force has grown rapidly, it has dealt with an increasing range of threats that go far beyond the 200-square-block area in and around the Capitol. The Sept. 11 al-Qaeda strike and the subsequent anthrax attacks put Capitol Police on the front lines of the anti-terror fight.

Terrance W. Gainer, the former Capitol Police chief who resigned last spring, said the demands have increased so much that "we have not gotten ahead."

Still, Monday's incident showed not just potential problems with staffing levels, but also with oversight of personnel, he said. In June and July, as fences were dismantled on the East Front of the Capitol to permit construction work, "there should have been a lot of dialogue about how many people you have out there and who is responsible for those folks," Gainer said.

Some officers have complained of drift in the department since Gainer left.