Will the fences ever come down? Some worry Capitol security surge will be permanent

WASHINGTON

A security surge that has turned the once-open grounds of the U.S. Capitol into a veritable fortress could become a permanent — and to many, discomforting — reality for the nation’s seat of government.

Security experts and longtime Washington officials are grappling with the likelihood, in their view, that the Capitol and other marquee federal buildings will inevitably receive new and significant added layers of security, after a mob overran the Capitol Police in an attack that forced the building’s evacuation and left five people dead.

But the extra precautions are also raising difficult questions about the importance of safety versus the value of an open and accessible seat of government.

“I don’t know if those fences will ever come down again,” said Bill Hoagland, who worked in Congress for more than 30 years before becoming a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

“I pray they do come down. But obviously we’re going to need something in addition to what we put up there after 2001,” he said, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks.

It wouldn’t be the first time that an attack on the federal building caused security to tighten. Over the last 50 years, a series of violent events in the Capitol and elsewhere in Washington have convinced officials to gradually restrict access to the public, most of which were never relaxed later.

The Capitol insurrection, however, is expected to have more far-reaching security ramifications for the nation’s capital than any event since 9/11.

“I don’t think anyone wants it to be a fortress that’s impossible to visit and get into,” said John Farmer, former attorney general of New Jersey and senior counsel for the 9/11 Commission. “But the balance that has to be struck is that the people’s representatives have to be safe when they’re doing their job. And on January 6th, they weren’t safe.”

The increase in security was evident — and stark — this week. Twenty thousand armed members of the National Guard were called up to protect Washington ahead of the inauguration, many of them deployed in or near the Capitol, where lawmakers are now required to walk through metal detectors before entering the House floor.

Outside, fences now enclose an area many people used to jog through or walk their dog. And some city streets leading to the Capitol have now been blocked by large military vehicles.

Security near the White House has similarly intensified, with concrete barriers blocking some roads as far as several blocks away. The White House had already received a larger security perimeter after last year’s George Floyd protests, one that prevents pedestrians from walking through the normally open Lafayette Square across the street. Additional fencing was erected this week around the Treasury Building and south of the White House.

And at the Washington Monument, where tours have been halted until the inauguration, a fence now encircles the surrounding lawn.

THE ‘FRAME FOR EVERYBODY HAS TO RESET’

Many of the changes are not expected to be permanent, particularly the influx of thousands of armed troops. But officials in charge of security say they will maintain a presence in the District of Columbia after next week’s inauguration.

“The secretary’s commitment is to provide the support necessary through the inauguration, past the inauguration as the new administration sees fit and if a threat exists,” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman told reporters in a call this week.

“We’re not looking at January 20th as the last day and then we can pack up and go home,” Hoffman said. “There will be some element that will remain for a brief period to ensure safety and security in the days following the inauguration as well.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, in a press conference following the Jan. 6 attack, questioned whether the whole security footprint for the city needs to be reviewed and said one of her top priorities would be to press Congress to transfer control of the D.C. National Guard from the Army to place it under local government control. Such a change would put the D.C. Guard on par with state governors’ control of their National Guard forces.

Bowser said she wanted D.C. residents and visitors to prepare for more substantive changes in the future.

“I think that frame for everybody has to reset, because it [unrest] may not end on the 20th,” Bowser said at a press conference with the Army Secretary and D.C. police chief the day after the riot.

Political and security experts say they aren’t sure, little more than a week since the mob attacked Congress, what specific long-term measures will be taken to beef up security. Hoagland said he thinks a permanent fence might extend not just around the Capitol but to all of the surrounding office buildings, a perimeter that would also include the Supreme Court.

Farmer said “nothing should be off the table,” while others argued the changes will be widespread across the capital.

“You hope not, I don’t think people would like it,” said former Republican Rep. Tom Davis. “But you’ve gotta protect the people working there.”

NO ‘WHOLLY SATISFACTORY ANSWERS’

Security at the Capitol has gradually tightened since the era before the Vietnam War, when people were often allowed to come and go from the domed building without passing a single security checkpoint.

A bomb explosion in the Senate in 1983, for instance, led to the implementation of universal security checks and metal detectors at all Capitol entrances and those of the nearby office buildings, according to a 1984 Washington Post story supplied by the Senate Historical Office. People who worked in the Capitol and the Senate and House office buildings, including journalists and lobbyists, were also required to wear colorcoded passes, the paper reported, while some concrete barriers were added outside to restrict traffic.

Security checkpoints at some entrances to the Capitol complex had been installed only a dozen years earlier, after a bomb exploded in 1971 in the Senate wing. Neither explosion killed anyone, but they did elicit a newly burgeoning debate about the importance of making the legislative branch safer while retaining its symbol of an open democracy.

“How, then, should these buildings, which historically have always been open to the public and should remain so, be protected against those who would desecrate and destroy them?” the late Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia said during a floor speech in 1971, according to the Congressional Record.

He said the debate had no “wholly satisfactory answers.”

The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 led officials to close part of Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House to vehicular traffic.

And the 9/11 attacks led to some of the most sweeping security changes in the Capitol, including the eventual creation of the Capitol Visitor Center which prevented the public from entering directly into the halls of the building where lawmakers conduct official business.

More often than not, the restrictions and barriers put into place became permanent.

“Each time these events happen ... the ratchet gets a little tighter,” Hoagland said. “And it’s harder to turn it back down.”

Hoagland said that he had an “extremely heavy heart” about the prospect of greater security around the Capitol, even if he thought it was inevitable.

Other longtime Washington officials predicted the size of the Capitol Police would increase, while some said they expected intelligence operations of potential security threats would increase exponentially.

Farmer, now the director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, said congressional officials need to receive a full accounting of last week’s failures before making decisions.

“What are the lasting security ramifications of January 6th going to be?” said Farmer. “That’s going to be determined, and it really does depend on an assessment of everything that went wrong.”