Remnants Of a Trial Prompt a Crusade

Va. Man Seeks End To Security Measures

Alexandria resident Jim Savage calls the security barriers near his condo building are an eyesore. The measures were added for Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui's trial, which ended in May. (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

Jim Savage has been living in a world of guard shacks, green security poles and Jersey barricades lining the street outside his home next to the federal courthouse in Alexandria.

They were put there for the trial of a terrorist, Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, and they were supposed to come down when the trial was over. Seven months after it ended, they are still there.

So Savage, who calls the security measures an eyesore, mounted a one-man crusade to have them removed. He retrieved a judge's order saying the additional security was supposed to be temporary and tried to meet with the judge. He contacted the City of Alexandria, but was told the federal government has jurisdiction over his street.

Yesterday, Savage learned that his campaign will probably meet with only mixed success. The U.S. Marshals Service said plans are in the works to remove most of the barricades and to replace them with a permanent security wall near the courthouse. Officials said the wall will be more attractive than the faded concrete barricades and will fit with the neighborhood's architecture.

"This idea of some sort of a Berlin Wall really fits. It will be like Checkpoint Charlie," Savage, a former criminal investigator for the U.S. Army, said when told about the plans by a reporter. "The fact is that a court order allows these security measures to be present, and the basis for that order is over. To put up something permanent with the expectation that maybe you might have a terrorist trial in the future is really stretching things."

John Hackman, the acting U.S. marshal for Alexandria, said he understood the concerns of Savage and other residents at the Carlyle Towers condominium complex. "We are doing our best to reach a balance that will provide security as well as the aesthetic that the neighborhood requires," Hackman said. "But terrorism is not something where we say okay, we had a trial, and it goes away. We need to be constantly vigilant, and obviously the Alexandria court has high-profile cases."

Michael Kulstad, a marshal's spokesman, said the agency investigated 1,111 threats or "inappropriate communications" to members of the judiciary nationwide in fiscal 2006, including to judges, prosecutors and witnesses. Just last week, a federal prisoner was indicted in Richmond on charges of sending a letter bomb to the federal courthouse there.

The Alexandria federal courthouse has been a focus of additional security since the Justice Department made it the venue of choice for terrorism trials after Sept. 11. Officials have said they chose Alexandria for the Moussaoui case in part because Northern Virginia's jury pool is viewed as more conservative than New York's and because the Richmond-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit has been considered the nation's most conservative appellate court.

The Alexandria courthouse is not the first in Northern Virginia to wrestle with enhanced security. In 1998, the Fairfax County courthouse added metal detectors and barricades for the sentencing hearing of Mir Aimal Kasi, a Pakistani man who opened fire outside CIA headquarters, killing two people. When the trial ended, the security stayed.

"Nobody wants this stuff, but when security experts say it's necessary, I think it's irresponsible not to do it," said F. Bruce Bach, who as chief circuit judge at the time approved the security measures. "We're living in a different day and age today."

In 2002, Alexandria faced the prospect of two high-profile trials starting within days: Moussaoui's and that of John Walker Lindh, a Californian accused of fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

On June 18, 2002, U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton, then the chief judge, ordered marshals to take all necessary security measures but specified they would be "during the pending of these cases." Lindh pleaded guilty soon after. Moussaoui's case dragged on, but he pleaded guilty last year.

Moussaoui's death penalty trial this year featured rooftop snipers and bomb-sniffing dogs. That level of security ended with the trial, during which Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison.

But guard shacks and barricades still dot two streets surrounding the courthouse, with green security poles dug into the sidewalks. Traffic outside Savage's apartment building, which is across the street from the courthouse, must squeeze into small lanes around the shacks and a series of in-ground, collapsible metal security barricades. Federal officials did remove some of the barricades further up the street after the Moussaoui trial.

Savage was outraged when he pulled Hilton's 2002 order from the federal court clerk's office. Learning that U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer in Richmond is now the chief judge, Savage tried to meet with him to seek an order overturning the original one but said he was told to express his concerns in writing. Spencer did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

Although several other Carlyle Towers residents said they want the barricades taken down -- and the condo association board is seeking their removal -- Savage has been working mostly alone.

His next step? Writing the letter to Spencer, but delivering it to "his boss" -- U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Then, Savage said, "it may be time to move."