NationalJournal.com's Amy Harder recently interviewed Secret Service agent and spokesman Malcolm Wiley on how the agency is leading security efforts for President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. Almost 60 law enforcement agencies are teaming up for the event and related festivities; Wiley discussed the comprehensive nature of security planning and the necessity of a "360-degree plan" -- "we want to protect everything around us, everything above us and everything below us."
Read the complete interview here. Edited excerpts follow. Visit the archives page for more Insider Interviews.
NJ:How do you go about coordinating security for such a large event with so many different agencies?
Wiley: One of the first things we do is to create a steering committee. That steering committee is made up of command-level folks from the different agencies who are going to have a hand in putting together the plan. What's done after that is we create a set of subcommittees. For this particular event, there are 23 different subcommittees, each who have a piece of the security puzzle. So for instance, we have subcommittees that are responsible for air space security, for civil disturbance, for prisoner processing, for credentialing.
NJ: Nick Trotta, assistant director of the Secret Service's Protective Division, was quoted in a recent article saying that race is a factor, but not a security factor. How has Obama's race factored into the Service's approach to this inauguration?
Wiley: The fact that Barack Obama is an African-American is something that's not lost on us as an agency. We understand the historic nature of this event.... But again, what that means is that we look at it as just a part of our larger security puzzle. There are several things that we look at, and several things that we consider when putting together a plan. Him being an African-American and factors related to that are just a piece of that larger puzzle.
