Inauguration Day
will be game day, and you practiced on offense
and you practiced on defense
so that when game day came, you were well prepared
to win the game.
Mike White was a member of the Secret Service
for almost three decades.
He was the special agent in charge
of presidential protection under President Obama
and stayed on when President Trump took office in 2017.
That meant he was front
and center during president Trump's inauguration.
On that day, from my recollection,
I was more concerned about a threat from the air,
a drone or an aircraft. But I was just as concerned
that somebody could throw something from the crowd
or that somebody could, in one way or another, infiltrate
the security posture that had been set up.
Presidential inaugurations
have always been targets.
In 2009, President Obama's first inauguration faced threats
from the terror group Al-Shabaab.
Back in 1861,
there was even an unsuccessful white supremacist plot
to assassinate President Lincoln en route
to his first inauguration.
In 2005, officers along President Bush's parade route
even confiscated apples and bananas from the crowd
so nothing could be thrown.
It's the job of the Secret Service to prepare for
and prevent any of these potential threats,
from nuclear attacks to civil disobedience.
And this year, the events
of January 6 meant security threats were top of mind.
This year, I think things are extremely heightened
because of the events that took place at the Capitol.
For president Trump's 2017 inauguration,
there were almost 8,000 National Guard troops stationed
around DC.
This year brought in over 25,000.
That's more than the number
of Guardsmen currently deployed overseas.
You can see them throughout the district forming checkpoints
and blocking off access to sites
like the Washington Monument.
Inauguration planning starts about a year in advance
as a type of National Special Security Event, or NSSE.
Presidential inaugurations are coordinated
by the Secret Service.
NSSE requires that everyone that attends
the event is put into a protective bubble, if you will.
So the NSSE makes the Secret Service be responsible
for every public person, the press, all the staff,
everyone that's involved in the event.
That's different
from the usual job of the agency,
which is just protecting individuals like the president
and their family.
For a special event like an inauguration,
the Secret Service has to coordinate among dozens
of federal and local agencies.
It also involves working with private companies like Amtrak
and cell providers to secure the entire district.
So water supplies or power supplies,
all of those things could be impacted
through a cyber breach of some kind.
So it is extremely important
for us to work with private sector partners
in that critical infrastructure area
to make sure that everything is safe.
Mike says it's not unique
to see law enforcement working around the clock
in the weeks leading up to the inauguration.
I know I slept in my office,
and I know previous agents in charge
for the president's detail did the same.
I'm talking about during the planning process weeks up
before the inauguration.
Most of the work is done
by the time you see them guarding street corners.
Closer to the event, you're going to switch gears somewhat
into making sure that you have effective
and capable response elements and operational units
that can address any problems
that may come up based on intelligence
or events that happened prior to event.
In typical years,
that means rehearsing the inauguration,
from the parade to the ball, and anticipating any threats.
You train and prepare for just about every threat
that's imaginable.
And that can be peaceful protesters
that maybe were to try to block the route of the motorcade,
all the way to a massive, coordinated-type situation.
The pandemic made those sorts
of trainings harder this year,
but it's also meant far fewer crowds to worry about.
I know in the past, you've had hundreds of thousands
of people show up, and they have to be screened,
they have to go through magnetometers,
and any items that they have with them have to be searched.
Those components won't necessarily be as necessary.
The screening in 2021
also looked at law enforcement itself.
Nearly 30 off-duty cops were identified as participants
at the Capitol riot.
The FBI vetted individual National Guard troops,
and just a day before Biden's inauguration,
two troops were removed from their inauguration posts
because of links to far-right militia groups.
I do think there might be issues or incidents,
and those don't have to be security issues.
It could be the weather. But I think on the security front,
we're in pretty good shape.