Security Incompetence

Just over two years ago, someone jumped the White House fence and got into the building.  Last night, someone tried to repeat that.  Where the last fellow had a knife, this one had a backpack that, happily enough, did not contain a bomb (only mace, a laptop, a book by Trump, and a letter for President Trump).  If there is any place in government that one would expect to be secure, the White House is high on the list.  If this 'troubled' fellow could get so close to the White House, imagine what would happen if a professional tried it.  After the 2014 incident, one expected a shakeup with the Secret Service.  Apparently, that didn't happen.

The Secret Service has seen a lot of scandals in recent years and is in desperate need of reform.  Until a few years ago, I had a great deal of respect for the Secret Service.  Indeed, it is hard not to admire men and women who volunteer to take a bullet for those they protect.  I don't know if the agency is actually in decline or a long pattern of bad behavior has finally leaked out.  Perhaps when the Department of Homeland Security is disbanded (wishful thinking, I know), the Secret Service can return to the Treasury Department.

White House Down

Having just watched Olympus Has Fallen, I decided to watch its competitor.  The events are surprisingly similar - not only do we have another president held hostage in the White House, we have a Speaker of the House become President.  However, this one is extremely political.  Whereas I did not know the party affiliation of the characters in Olympus, that is not the case here.  President Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) is a thinly veiled Barack Obama.  Really, the guy wants to pull troops out of the Middle East and is having high level talks with Iran!  The Speaker of the House is a wicked evil traitor who is in the pocket of the military industrial complex; his first order of business is to keep US troops in the Middle East.  Of course, President Sawyer's plan to withdraw all US forces from the Middle East is declared a success in the film's epilogue, with both Iran and Israel jumping eagerly at the opportunity.  All you need to do is give peace a chance.

Thanks to high-level traitors in the government, this White House take-over comes across as less ludicrous.  Agent Walker (James Woods), head of the Secret Service in the White House, would have the best chance of sneaking a special ops team into the White House.  Such a command position allowed him to undermine a proper response - misdirecting responders - so long as he was still viewed as loyal.  However, it seems highly unlikely that a man whose son was killed on an operation ordered by the president would retain that position.

 

The action was great and it was funny to see the buddy cop vibe between the president and John Cale (Channing Tatum).  There was a surprising amount of comedy in the movie.  The President switching to sneakers in the residence, a villain putting a call on hold, the Vice President's aide hanging up on the president's call, and even the White House Tour Guide was funny: "Tour's over."  If not for the overt political message, I'd have liked this film a lot more.

Olympus Has Fallen

One of two movies to premiere in 2013 with the premise of the White House being captured by terrorists, I found it generally disappointing though not as far-fetched as such an idea should be.  The fact that a lone man jumped the fence and got into the White House last year makes this much more plausible.

 

The movie supposes an impossible attack on the White House occurs.  An enemy airplane briefly dominates the Washington DC airspace and strafes the White House, killing most of the defensive forces on the roof and many on the ground.  Then a ground assault takes place with forty men with automatic weapons charging across the south lawn while being supported by 50 caliber emplacements from the street.  RPGs and suicide vests are used to breach fences and doorways.  Meanwhile, the President has retreated to his bunker, taking the South Korean Premier and his entourage with him.  Not surprisingly, the premier's security team are all plants and quickly subdue everyone in the bunker; Olympus has fallen.

The president (Aaron Eckhart) demonstrates repeated bad judgment that leads to a near catastrophe for the country at the end.  He ordered that the South Korean security team be included in the bunker despite a protest from a Secret Service agent.  He ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to reveal a top secret code, since it was useless without the other two codes.  Then he ordered his Secretary of Defense to reveal the second code, since it was useless without the other code.  Then the enemy hacker broke the third code.  Who saw that coming?  But it gets worse.

The military has finally arrived on scene only a couple of minutes after the last Secret Service agent died in the White House and signaled, "Olympus has fallen."  Do they charge in to retake the place?  No, the bad guy tells them to stand down or he will start killing hostages.  The President, in a rare moment of good judgment, said," Don't negotiate" before he was shoved out of the camera.  General Clegg (Robert Forster) did not negotiate; he immediately acceded to the terrorist's demands.  He stood down his forces on the scene and allowed the terrorists to secure the perimeter and put together an anti-air defense system.  Speaker Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) arrives at the Pentagon to learn he is the acting president.  He also decides not to attack the White House and even complies with the terrorist demands that the 7th Fleet be withdrawn from the Sea of Japan and that US troops withdraw from South Korea.  He knows this will likely result in a war that will cost thousands upon thousands of lives but, in order to save a few hostages in the president's bunker, he does it anyway.  By their decisions, President Asher, General Clegg, and Acting-President Trumbull allow the terrorists to nearly achieve a national apocalypse.  Why didn't they resist?  To save a dozen hostages.  Only 2 hostages survived with their chosen path.

Of course, much of this happens on the fringe of the main story which follows Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) stalking about the ruins of the White House and, Die Hard style, killing off the terrorists.  That part was a lot of fun with guns, knives, and fisticuffs galore.

Again, the very premise of the movie is ludicrous.  Such an attack could not have hoped to succeed.  The enemy aircraft would not have been able to dispatch the US interceptors and the Secret Service agents at the White House would not have stood on the lawn - like sitting ducks - armed only with pistols.  But if it did happen this way, the President would be impeached when it came to light that he ordered the release of codes and that he broke protocol to allow the terrorists into his bunker.  General Clegg was in a hard situation with the civilian chain-of-command broken and might have felt an assault on the White House wasn't his decision to make (if only the president had said "attack" instead of "don't negotiate").  Even so, he would likely loose his job in the aftermath.  Speaker Trumbull was Acting President.  He did not act in the interest of the country but in the interest of a dozen hostages in the president's bunker.  He does not deserve a leadership position.  I guess that part didn't make it into the movie.  Maybe in the sequel.

Security Breach

A man jumped the fence and made it into the White House.  How could that possibly happen?  That is a failure of such a magnitude that I have a hard time believing it.  I would sooner have thought someone had gotten into Fort Knox and run off with a few gold ingots.  With this kind of failure, there had best be a handful of firings at the Secret Service.

This is a timely breech of security.  Access to the White House is controlled to make sure that no one who intends harm to the President is allowed to enter.  By the same reasoning, we have borders and immigration laws.  It has been reported that Middle Easterners have been captured crossing the southern border.  Most likely, those who have been caught - and the inevitable fraction who slipped through - are only seeking a better life.  But we don't know for sure.