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Could Bush keep his campaign promise to reopen Pennsylvania?
Thursday, February 08, 2001
By Ann McFeatters, Post-Gazette Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Despite security that includes ground-to-air missiles and a platoon of armed guards, the White House has been subject in recent years to a remarkable number of assaults, from armed men and actual shooters to suicidal plane pilots.
The number of recent incidents has dampened President Bush's resolve for a quick reopening of Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicular traffic in front of the White House. Former President Bill Clinton shut the street to through traffic in 1995, after the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.
Many of the attacks and violent incidents at the White House remarkably parallel yesterday's shooting involving a 47-year-old Evansville, Ind., man named Robert Pickett. A Secret Service agent shot Pickett in the right knee about 15 minutes before noon outside the gate surrounding the White House South Lawn after he allegedly brandished and fired a pistol.
The most recent prior incident happened May 23, 1995, when a fired pizza delivery man, Leland William Modjeski, who at onetime had studied for a doctorate in psychology, was shot in the arm on White House grounds by a Secret Service agent after he had scaled the fence about 10:45 p.m. Another agent grappling with Modjeski also suffered an arm wound from the same bullet. Modjeski was carrying an unloaded .38-caliber revolver, but agents decided that he had not intended to harm the president.
Just five months earlier, on Dec. 20, 1994, a homeless man, Marcelino Corniel, 33, who was brandishing a knife outside the executive mansion, was shot and killed by a U.S. Park Police officer.
Three days before that, on Dec. 17, six shots were fired at the White House from the south side, roughly the same location where yesterday's gunfire occurred. Clinton was inside the residence then, but the gunman was never identified.
The worst recent assault on the White House occurred Oct. 29, 1994, when a Colorado man, Francisco Martin Duran, 26, fired 29 rifle shots at the building with an SKS semi-automatic rifle as he ran down Pennsylvania Avenue. After tourists tackled him, police found more ammunition in his pockets and a note indicating his intention to kill the president. A jury rejected his insanity defense and convicted him the following year of trying to assassinate Clinton. He's now serving a 40-year prison term.
Suicide was the apparent motive of the man who crashed his small, single-engine Cessna plane into the White House the previous month.
The air space over the White House is restricted to all air traffic (it's known as Area P-56, and helicopter tours through it are never permitted). But just before 2 a.m. on Sept. 12, 1994, Frank Eugene Corder, a 38-year-old truck driver from Maryland under the influence of alcohol and cocaine, flew a stolen Cessna 150L low down 17th Street, a block from the White House, made a U-turn near the Washington Monument and flew into the White House.
His plane struck the mansion two stories below Clinton's bedroom, although the first family was not in the residence then. Secret Service agents had to scramble out of the way, and the plane damaged a giant magnolia tree planted by former President Andrew Jackson.
Corder was killed. His relatives said he had been distraught over the breakup of his third marriage and his father's death. He had reportedly said his life was so hopeless that he might as well ram a plane into the White House.
Radar didn't spot the small plane, and that fact frightened officials because it could have been loaded with explosives. There have been commercial airlines that have flown directly over the White House in violation of federal law; the number of such violations has doubled each year since 1996.
Trying to improve security at the White House, officials have changed some landing patterns at nearby Reagan National Airport. But the missiles that protect the White House have never been fired out of fear that they might strike a downtown city block.
There has been a spate of similar security incidents in recent decades that raised significant concerns.
In 1985, David Mahonski, known to the Secret Service for making threats against former President Ronald Reagan, was shot in the arm outside the South Lawn fence when he waved a sawed-off shotgun. That same year, a man entered the White House by walking in with the Marine Band and explored the house for about 15 minutes before he was noticed and arrested.
In 1978, a man carrying a Bible jumped the fence to protest having "In God We Trust" on American currency. He pulled a knife from the Bible, cut two officers and was arrested.
In 1976, a taxi driver climbed the White House fence brandishing a metal pipe and was shot and killed by Secret Service agents.
There were three dangerous incidents involving White House security in 1974.
In one, an unemployed Philadelphia salesman, Samuel Byck, got into a shootout with airports guards at Baltimore-Washington International Airport when he tried to hijack a Delta commercial airliner. After he committed suicide, officials learned that he had planned to crash the plane into the White House.
Army Pvt. Robert Preston got further with a similar plan that year. He stole a helicopter from Fort Meade, Md., flew to the White House, touched down briefly near the West Wing, then flew back toward Fort Meade with Maryland State Police helicopters in pursuit, returned to the White House and was shot down on the South Lawn.
And it was also in 1974 that a man with flares strapped to his body crashed through the northwest gate and drove up to the North Portico. He surrendered four hours later.
Asked yesterday whether Bush intends to keep his campaign promise to reopen Pennsylvania Avenue, spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president has discussed the issue with the Secret Service, which opposes the idea, and with Washington Mayor Anthony Williams, who wants the street reopened. Fleischer said Bush hasn't decided yet which course to follow.