In case you missed it, a recreational drone penetrated the White House perimeter and crash landed accidentally on its grounds, causing the usual panic about Secret Service inadequacies, dangers to the First Family, etc. etc. Here, however, was the strange thing -- for me at least. Nowhere did I see a comment about the fact that the White House has itself been sending out drones across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa on endless assassination missions that were anything but recreational and endangered all sorts of families. You just might have thought, under the circumstances, that this -- call it an irony -- would have come into someones mind amid all the worry about White House safety. Tom The intrusion by a recreational drone early Monday onto the White House lawn exposed a security gap at the compound that the Secret Service has spent years studying but has so far been unable to fix, according to several officials familiar with the concern. The episode came just four days after lawmakers examining White House security had been warned by a panel of experts that the Secret Service’s inability to identify and disable drones remained one of the leading vulnerabilities at the complex, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. Just after 3 a.m. Monday, the drone flew at a low altitude over the south grounds of the White House without setting off alarms and was spotted by a Secret Service officer standing guard. The quadcopter device, approximately two feet in diameter, then crashed on the southeast corner of the property, prompting a lockdown at the complex until the device was examined and determined not to pose a danger. Officers and agents with flashlights scoured the complex and surrounding area for clues. washingtonpost/politics/drone-incident-at-white-house-highlights-long-studied-still-unsolved-security-gap/2015/01/26/ed2e7f9e-a594-11e4-a7c2-03d37af98440_story.html
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 16:00:57 +0000
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