Officials Increase Patrols, Tighten Parking Rules
By Mary Beth Sheridan, Spencer S. Hsu and Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Authorities in Washington and other U.S. cities announced increased security measures yesterday to thwart the possibility of a car bomb targeted at Fourth of July celebrations, after three terrorism attempts in London and Glasgow last week.
D.C. police officers announced extra restrictions on parking, urged local companies to report unusual sales of propane and said they are even enlisting parking enforcement workers to report cars that appear to be sagging or emitting an acrid odor.
U.S. Homeland Security and local law enforcement officials said there is no credible intelligence of a threat on U.S. soil. But they said similarities between the London bombing attempts and past foiled plots targeting nightclubs and other "soft" targets in the United States and Britain had prompted a greater sense of urgency -- especially with hundreds of thousands of people expected to jam downtown Washington today for the traditional July 4 parade, concert and fireworks.
"The situation in London and Glasgow is very concerning," said Kip Hawley, administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, which is providing special teams to Washington and other cities this week to patrol airports, train stations and subways.
"You always have to wonder and be concerned about copycats or if there might be other folks in the planning stages," Hawley said.
Major U.S. cities are taking unusual precautions. New York has intensified the use of vehicle checkpoints and expanded police patrols at Herald, Union and Times squares and in the theater and financial districts.
Los Angeles has increased security around large nightclubs, financial institutions and several high-rise buildings as well as airports and ports, officials said.
Hundreds of D.C. police, U.S. Park Police, Capitol Police and other emergency responders will be on duty for today's festivities at the Capitol and on the Mall. As with most major events in the District since the 2001 terrorist attacks, authorities have worked for months on extensive security plans. But officials have intensified their efforts in the past week, after the U.K. car-bombing attempts.
D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said officers will be extra-vigilant to ensure people don't stop their cars on bridges or downtown streets to gawk at the fireworks.
"We are going to be very diligent to keep vehicles moving," she said. Parking restrictions will be further tightened, she said.
City police are urging all personnel -- including ticket-writers -- to be on the alert for vehicles with suspicious characteristics, such as protruding wires, a bitter odor or an unusual sag. Police also are enlisting employees at the Department of Public Works to watch for such oddities.
"The more eyes we've got on the street, the better," said Cmdr. Patrick Burke of the D.C. police department's Homeland Security and Special Operations Division.
British police discovered a car rigged with gas-cylinder bombs near a London nightclub Friday after an ambulance crew on an unrelated call reported smoke in the vehicle. A second, similar car was found in the area hours later. In the third attempt, two men rammed a flaming Jeep into a terminal at Glasgow Airport on Saturday.
In recent days, D.C. police have been contacting local businesses, asking them to report unusual sales of propane tanks, fertilizer or other materials that could be used to make crude bombs such as those used in Britain, Lanier said.
"We do not have a specific heightened threat" for today, Joseph Persichini Jr., head of the FBI's Washington field office, said at a news conference held with local and federal law enforcement officials.
But he called on businesses to notify authorities about "individuals who may be buying propane, gasoline" in unusual quantities.
Since Friday, federal officials have issued several intelligence assessments of the London and Glasgow incidents and the potential threat of an Independence Day attack in the United States. One update included a list of about 10 large vehicle-bomb indicators, such as size, weight and unusual odors, one U.S. counterterrorism official said.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has noted the similarity of the bomb attempts in Britain to a "Gas Limos Project" uncovered in July 2004. The plot involved Dhiren Barot, an al-Qaeda operative and British citizen who had cased targets in New York, Newark and Washington. Another British investigation, Operation Crevice, disrupted a 2004 plot to bomb a London nightclub, power plants and a shopping mall.
"The thing in the United Kingdom we saw was very similar to what Barot planned, and the fact that he was here in the U.S. concerns us, and what he surveiled and targeted concerns us," said Michael Downing, deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Teams of TSA screeners, inspectors and air marshals were dispatched early yesterday to begin patrolling the Metro, Union Station and Reagan National Airport.
Members of the squads -- known as Visible Intermodal Protection and Response teams -- are trained to spot suspicious behavior and often work with explosive-sniffing dogs, officials said. Some members are in uniform, and others wear plain clothes to blend into crowds.
TSA officials said they had planned to deploy the teams in the D.C. area as part of their normal response to the Fourth of July festivities, as they did last year. But they increased the number of patrols in response to the London incidents, officials said.
Additional security measures could include random vehicle searches on airport approach roads, said Jonathan Dean, spokesman for Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
Hawley said the TSA is experimenting with the size of its patrols, boosting some to as many as 40 people.
"The best way to deal with [the threat] is to go on offense and have unpredictable security measures," Hawley said in a telephone interview from Paris, where he was meeting with his European counterparts.
Law enforcement officials said residents shouldn't be so unnerved that they stay away from the Mall festivities.
"This is probably the biggest and best-coordinated effort I've seen" for a major public event in the D.C. area, said Christopher Geldart, who heads the National Capital Region office at the Department of Homeland Security.
But the U.K. incidents have left some Americans wary.
Fort Belvoir barred the public from its July 4 fireworks display and moved it from the north side of Route 1 to Pullen Field on the southern part of the post. The decision was "a precautionary measure following events in the United Kingdom," the announcement said.
Arlington Fire Chief James Schwartz said law enforcement officials are concerned that seemingly amateurish plots such as the ones in Britain could be a way to "test our response, be a surveillance of our response efforts."
Is he worried about trouble on the Fourth of July?
"We're worried every day we come to work," he said. "We always try to remain vigilant."
Staff writers Bill Brubaker, Daniela Deane, Maria Glod and Eric M. Weiss and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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