Cheney: Street Should Remain Closed
WASHINGTON - Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House should remain closed because a truck bomb could reduce the executive mansion to rubble, Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday.
Cheney, speaking in a TV interview after working this week from a secret "secure location," said the ongoing terrorist threat settles once and for all the long debate over Pennsylvania Avenue.
"Pennsylvania Avenue ought to stay closed because, as a fact, if somebody were to detonate a truck bomb in front of the White House, it would probably level the White House and that is unacceptable," Cheney told PBS' "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."
The Secret Service closed off an eight-block area surrounding the White House with concrete barriers shortly after an explosion killed 160 people at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
Security experts have, ever since, opposed reopening Pennsylvania Avenue to cars and trucks in front of the White House, despite demands by local District of Columbia officials and some members of Congress that "America's Main Street" should be fully open to the public.
President Bush had previously said that the question was still under review, although top advisers who studied the Secret Service's case had privately said they were inclined to recommend that Bush keep the street closed.
The 2000 Republican party platform unequivocally supported reopening Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicles.
On the street now, the large concrete barriers _ topped with sparse plants _ block off the road and it has become a playground to rollerblading hockey players. New guardhouses monitor pedestrian traffic, which is still allowed. Tens of thousands of motorists have to detour around the barriers, contributing to gridlock in the city.
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