Security 'threatens Washington soul'

By Rachel Clarke BBC News Online in Washington

The 11 September attacks brought many new realities home to Americans, not just that they could become victims on their own soil but that some of their best-known landmarks would also be targeted.

The Capitol (far left) may have been a target with the Pentagon

The buildings aimed at by the plane hijackers seem to have been picked not just to inflict a massive human toll but to change the very landscape of the US' financial and legislative capitals of New York and Washington DC.

The new reality since that day is that symbols as well as people are more under threat than ever.

But some critics fear that the need to protect people and places is jarring with American freedoms and threatening to erect literal and metaphorical barriers around buildings.

This is becoming particularly evident in Washington itself. Security is a prime concern even in the plans for the memorial to those killed at the Pentagon.

Other historic government buildings escaped damage on 11 September - it is believed that the hijacked Flight 93 was being directed towards the White House or the Capitol Building before a passenger rebellion contributed to its crash in Pennsylvania.

Barriers and a tunnel

But the attacks added new impetus to plans to boost security around Washington's key buildings and memorials, many of which make up the Mall with the Capitol at one end and the Lincoln Memorial at the other.

At the centre of the city and the centre of the controversy is the Washington Monument, the obelisk honouring the first president and the republic he helped to found.

The Washington Monument - at the centre of the city and controversy

Plans are being finalised to build barriers around the obelisk and for visitors wanting to get to the top to go through security checks far from the monument and enter it through an underground tunnel yet to be constructed.

But that would send the wrong message, according to Judy Feldman, president of the National Coalition to Save the Mall, an umbrella organisation gathering groups to defend the physical and symbolic nature of the heart of Washington.

"The way the Park Service is approaching the Mall issue is with terror in their hearts, as though 11 September has totally cowed us into desperate measures to do anything to protect this monument," she told BBC News Online.

"Here we have a symbol of what America stands for - it's our public face to the world.

"The Mall is supposed to be the symbol of hope... if they see us burrowing underground and building walls around monuments and closing up, it makes a very loud statement."

Ms Feldman agrees that security measures are necessary but objects strongly to current plans which envisage a series of concentric low walls partway up the gentle hill on which the monument stands as well as the tunnel to the entrance.

"We believe in security, we believe that we can secure the place but this not the only solution and this is a bad solution," she said.

She cites concerns about the walls preventing large gatherings - "Essentially it could ruin the number one public forum for America" - as well as about the monument's physical safety.

The 555-foot five-inch (169.3-metre) obelisk had to be built slightly away from its original site directly in the centre of the White House, the Capitol and the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials because the swampy soil would not have been able to hold its weight. Digging a tunnel could cause new problems, Ms Feldman fears.

And the monument itself with its 15-foot-thick walls at the base could surely withstand a lone suicide bomber if one wanted to target the monument, she added.

Prime target

Both the Save the Mall group and the National Park Service which is the monument's guardian agree that visitor safety has to be a priority along with any protection of the obelisk, which was completed in 1884.

Opponents fear freedoms will fall victim to security

The National Park Service says the monument had been identified as the prime target for a terrorist attack in Washington well before al-Qaeda became a household name.

Concrete blocks were placed around its base to stop a vehicle-based attack in 1998, and have been criticised as ugly ever since.

National Park Service spokesman Bill Line said the plan for the 30-inch walls will offer the necessary security while not breaking up views of the monument and even doubling up as extra seating.

"It's very aesthetically pleasing, it does not destroy or alter the historical sightlines that have been in place for well over 100 years at the Washington Monument," he told BBC News Online.

"We believe [it] maintains the historical integrity and the historical landscape. At the same time it provides for the protection against someone who might be crazy enough to try to do something."

Closing the top of the monument to visitors is not an option, he said, and the Park Service is determined to continue to welcome the crowds who just want to walk up to the base of the monument, touch it, look up and get dizzy.

The walls have received final approval from the authorities and the tunnel to the entrance is also proceeding. The city's main newspaper, the Washington Post, has backed the proposals as necessary under the circumstances.

But legal action is being considered by the Save the Mall coalition as they try to set up their own barriers to the security plan.