Downtown D.C. Becomes the Green Zone

In addition to a record number of houseguests and an explosion of kitsch, Washington, D.C., is witnessing an unprecedented surge in security for tomorrow's presidential inauguration.

A force of 20,000 police officers, National Guard troops, and plainclothes agents will be on the streets tomorrow to watch over the inaugural festivities. F-16 fighters and Patriot missile batteries will be on alert to defend the capital's airspace. Notes the New York Times:

The security measures, enhanced by a White House announcement of emergency financing for public safety, are by far the most extensive and stringent for the swearing-in of a president — a task vastly complicated by a crowd that is expected to reach two million to four million people who will face successive rings of security, each more restrictive than the last before they get near inaugural events.

Our apartment DANGER ROOM's D.C. bureau is a few blocks north of the restricted zone that will envelop the National Mall and most of downtown. An outer ring will be off-limits to vehicles; pedestrians will have to pass through entry control points to get to the parade route. Planning on driving in from Virginia? Good luck. All the bridges from Virginia to the district will be closed to private vehicles, with few exceptions.

Over the past week or so, there's been a flurry of security-related activity. Lots more police and emergency vehicles are on the street, and downtown traffic has been quite gridlocked. And security has tightened noticably over the last few days. I went for a stroll yesterday afternoon around Logan Circle and ran into two small National Guard foot patrols.

So is all this inauguration security, um, a tad excessive? Mark Thompson of Time magazine certainly thinks so. In a scathing piece on inaugural security, he asks: Is a police state necessary?

Thompson quotes Virginia Rep. James Moran, who fought -- successfully -- to reverse a Secret Service edict that would have barred pedestrians from the 14th Street Bridge. "The Secret Service, they're insane," Moran told the Washington Post. "This is security on steroids."

[PHOTO: NYTimes.com]

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