On Saturday night, a heavily armed shooter was able to easily access areas close to the ballroom where the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was being held, leading to a rushed evacuation of the president and senior officials and a hectic, scary evening for attendees. Why wasn’t the event safe from this kind of a situation? It’s a fair question, but perhaps the wrong one. The more realistic inquiry is whether this kind of event can be made safer.
This coming summer, the United States will host two major multicity events: celebrations for the 250th anniversary of America’s founding and the World Cup. Both are highly complex efforts, attracting large domestic and international audiences, including political leaders. In two years, Los Angeles will host the Summer Olympics. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is convening a meeting this week with various officials to discuss security at events that the president attends. How should we think about safety at these kinds of large gatherings going forward?
[Shane Harris: The Correspondents’ Dinner was a security success*]
For the past several years, I have worked with the public and private sectors to support what the safety industry calls mega-event planning—for big sporting events such as the Olympics, for example, but also smaller gatherings such as industry conventions or local concerts. I run a program at Harvard that does the same kind of work. I’ll let you in on a secret: In this kind of event planning, the realistic guiding principle is not to eliminate risk but to reduce it as much as possible.
Each event is different and complex in its own way, not merely because of variation in scope and scale but because the standard of success is tied to the purpose of the event. A world with no risk whatsoever would be nice to live in, but that isn’t achievable. Success, instead, should be measured by whether a threat that unfolds is mitigated by the planning and the response of those who are entrusted to secure the scene.
“Less bad” is hardly a rallying cry; nor is it an excuse for political violence, an overly permissive gun culture, or negligent planning. It is simply an acknowledgment that vulnerability is a natural consequence of the freedom we crave and often demand.
For security officials, building a fortress is relatively easy. Planners deploy what are often called “the three g’s”—guns, guards, and gates—to make a place hard to target. Our society often accepts such burdens because we have calculated that the friction caused by them is worth it. Nobody visiting a nuclear facility complains about the onerous security features. But even a hard target will bump up against soft areas—think of the roads leading to the nuclear facility or dangers from the sky—that can make the hard target vulnerable.
Instead, free movement—of people, things, goods—presents the greatest challenge to event planners. Access, connection, and community are what we pay for, what we dress up for, what our democracy deserves.
Mega-event organizers must balance and constantly assess many different kinds of plans, including site logistics, risk assessment, emergency response, community engagement, crisis communications, weather events, crowd management, and transportation. To bring some order to these efforts, organizers can imagine a triangle representing complementary goals. One lower corner is the obligation to reduce the impact of all risks: terror, violence, storms, cyberattacks, health scares, drones. The other lower corner is the planning for how to coordinate various defenses: community, city, state, federal, and military forces, as well as private- and nonprofit-sector actors. But the top point of the triangle is a goal that has equal weight to the others: fun, joy, togetherness, celebration, spectacle, purpose. That might be fans getting to watch an athletic performance, or journalists having a chance to shine in front of a government administration that seeks to undermine them, or a fractious democracy celebrating its birthday. Every gathering has an essence—some are silly, some heroic, some grand—that is also worth preserving.
This balance is the challenge for the summer. The World Cup will occur across three countries—the United States, Mexico, and Canada—in 16 host cities, over six weeks and four time zones. Conflict in Iran, border-enforcement controversies, cartels in Mexico, as well as dangerous weather and gun violence will be persistent risks throughout. The July 4 celebrations for America’s 250th will comprise public events in every state, including high-profile extravaganzas and pavilions in Washington, D.C., and a Naval Review parade in New York and New Jersey involving 30 tall ships from different countries. Safety planning for both has been in the works for years, but the level of openness and security overall might need to be recalibrated in light of the WHCD shooting, and ongoing political violence. Organizers must ensure that they are prepared for any possible risk and should shore up their law-enforcement defenses, without taking away from the meaning of the events.
The protective planning at the WHCD this year was not sufficient. The ballroom itself, which required electronic scanning to enter, was never breached, although it was far more secure than areas accessed by the public and hotel guests, as well as partygoers attending pre-events. The gunman entered the hotel by simply reserving a room there, and gained easy access through one layer of defenses but not beyond that.
[Graeme Wood: The most frightening shooters are the smart ones]
Perhaps in future years, the WHCD location should be moved to a convention center or a stand-alone facility where access is limited to ticketed attendees who must go through more security than they have in the past. The answer isn’t, however, the one promoted by Donald Trump and a chorus of his supporters in the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s attack—that the incident is proof that Trump needs his own ballroom at the White House. Putting aside the controversies surrounding his destruction of the East Wing in that pursuit, the dinner is not named the White House’s Correspondents Dinner.
The gathering is meant to celebrate an institution preserved in our Constitution as an essential component of our democracy: the free press. A future dinner at the Trump White House would mock the media’s very essence, even if—or because—it is more secure.
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