Actual Security Theater
As part of their training, federal agents engage in mock exercises in public places. Sometimes, innocent civilians get involved.
Every day, as Washingtonians go about their overt lives, the FBI, CIA, Capitol Police, Secret Service and U.S. Marshals Service stage covert dramas in and around the capital where they train. Officials say the scenarios help agents and officers integrate the intellectual, physical and emotional aspects of classroom instruction. Most exercises are performed inside restricted compounds. But they also unfold in public parks, suburban golf clubs and downtown transit stations.
Curtain up on threat theater—a growing, clandestine art form. Joseph Persichini, Jr., assistant director of the FBI’s Washington field office, says, “What better way to adapt agents or analysts to cultural idiosyncrasies than role play?”
For the public, there are rare, startling peeks: At a Holiday Inn, a boy in water wings steps out of his seventh floor room into a stampede of federal agents; at a Bowie retirement home, an elderly woman panics as a role-player collapses, believing his seizure is real; at a county museum, a father sweeps his daughter into his arms, running for the exit, while a raving, bearded man resists arrest.
EDITED TO ADD (9/11): It happened in D.C., in the Potomac River, with the Coast Guard.
Mike B • August 25, 2009 6:53 AM
Hey Bruce, I’m surprised you and your Secu-Nerd army haven’t set up a Security Theatre event at one of the many conferences you attend. It could have things like security professionals performing Shakespeare to raise money to charity, light original works about the foibles of Information Assurance or maybe just a series of security related films. Thank about it! Security Theatre is like your biggest brand.