Word: westons
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...depth security study in 1996. "Maintenance is a problem. Finding parts is a problem. It was considered to be an emergency." A supplemental appropriations bill, passed earlier this year, included $20 million for improved Capitol perimeter security. But it is unlikely any of that would have ensured that Weston would be blocked. In the hours after the shooting, lawmakers were united in their determination not to shut down access in response to the incident. Late that night Nichols announced that the Capitol would be open for tours and business as usual the following morning. "We don't want to dissuade...
...officer's wife and children. Gingrich told them their father was a hero. But tragedy did not distract some politicians from the opportunities at hand: by 6:30, staff members for New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli were distributing a press release to reporters calling for tighter gun control. Weston, after emergency surgery during the night, lapsed into a coma and was placed on a ventilator. On Saturday morning doctors gave him a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. He was charged with the murder of two federal police officers, a death-penalty crime. Police and FBI agents blocked access...
...hard to get the attention of the Secret Service. Write threatening letters to the White House. Or do as Russell Weston did--keep telling people you want to harm the President until someone calls the police. If all goes by the book, the Service is alerted, agents are dispatched, and the maker of the threats is interrogated and evaluated...
...Weston is not the first person involved in a murderous incident who had earlier found his way into the Service's files. Samuel Byck first caught agents' attention after making a threat against President Nixon's life in 1972. In 1974 Byck killed a policeman, an airline pilot, then himself in a failed effort to hijack a DC-9 that he planned to crash into the White House. In 1975 agents evaluated Sarah Jane Moore and decided she was not dangerous. Then she fired a gun at President Ford. "Washington is kind of a mecca for nuts," says a federal...
...Weston fits another profile the Secret Service is used to encountering. Potential assassins, especially delusional ones, often change targets, making it difficult to predict who is in danger. Only after Arthur Bremmer shot and seriously wounded presidential candidate George Wallace in 1972 did the Service learn--from Bremmer's diary--that the would-be assassin had stalked Nixon before turning to the less protected Wallace. So it was with Weston. He made threats against a President, but he took his gun to Capitol Hill...