WASHINGTON (AFP) – An unprecedented security blanket has been draped over the US capital for Barack Obama's inauguration next week, and the threat level to the country's first black president is expected to remain high well beyond his swearing-in.
More than 12,500 active troops and military reservists, thousands of metropolitan police as well as personnel from 57 departments around the nation are descending on Washington to protect against any potential terrorist attack during Tuesday's historic ceremony, according to officials.
With estimates of up to a record two million people attending, the Department of Homeland Security has designated Obama's inauguration a national special security event.
"I think we all have to be concerned about a chemical, biological, radiological potential attack," Major General Richard Rowe, head of the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee, said Wednesday.
To counter the threat, officials are putting in place what is likely to be the biggest and most advanced inaugural security operation ever.
The US military will fly air patrols, man surface-to-air weapons systems, ply the Potomac River with gunboats, assess chemical and biological threats, organize large-scale medical support in the event of an attack, and provide visible and undercover on-the-ground security.
But a "perfect storm" of factors is brewing that will require security forces around Obama to be in top form for long after he takes office, according to Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Policy Law Center (SPLC) which tracks hate groups.
Outside elements include the vicious economic downturn which may fuel hate groups and extremists in the United States, some of whom "are enraged at the ascendancy of a black man to the White House," Potok told AFP.
"It's perfectly obvious that our first black president is faced with some dangers that other presidents would not be," he said, noting that Obama received official protection 18 months before the November 4 election, earlier than any other presidential candidate.
The SPLC says the Secret Service tasked with protecting presidents acknowledges that Obama has received more threats than any incoming chief executive in history.
They include one that came days before the election in which two white supremacists were arrested in Tennessee for plotting to kill him.
Attacks and threats have soared since his victory, ranging from physical attacks and the burning of crosses in their yards to second-graders chanting "assassinate Obama" on an Idaho schoolbus last November. Potok says Obama has been hanged several times in effigy.
A California man was reportedly arrested last week for posting a note on an Internet message board predicting "he (Obama) will have a 50 cal(iber) in the head soon."
The Secret Service does not provide specifics on the new security regime, but it says it is prepared for any contingency.
"We understand the historical significance of his election, and we pay attention to that," Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told AFP. "We look at every single aspect of protection... any factor that you could imagine."
The president's skin color has clearly added to security concerns in the country, where there are more than 200 million legally owned firearms and about 30,000 gun deaths per year, and where four sitting presidents have been assassinated.
Obama spoke on the campaign trail with The New York Times about his life in the security cocoon, saying "I've got the best protection in the world... So stop worrying."
The protection level ramps up come Tuesday, when Obama will start being whisked to and from appointments in the most secure presidential limousine ever, a hulking Cadillac said to be tough enough to withstand a rocket-propelled grenade.
Experts say threats are amplified by an accumulation of outside factors, including the tanking US economy and the simmering immigration issue which has led to a surge in hate-group numbers.
Fred Burton, vice president of counter-terrorism at geo-political intelligence analysis firm Stratfor, cites as an example the Gaza war being waged by US ally Israel.
"A Sirhan Sirhan-type (attacker) could become the needle in the haystack" that eludes federal agents, Burton said, referring to 1968 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy's convicted assassin. Sirhan is believed to have acted out of Arab nationalism.
"The problem is, it's one thing if you know that person and you have leads to go after," Burton said. "But you're really challenged when you're out there looking for ghosts."
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