Most White House intruders do not try to harm the President (who may not even be in residence), but are usually attempting to attract attention to their causes or ideas (e.g. Anthony Henry) or are intruding accidentally (e.g. a plane inadvertently flying into White House airspace). There have been four assassinations of U.S. presidents and many more assassination attempts. None of the assassinations occurred at the White House, and only one attempt occurred there (see below).
Extensive security measures are used to protect the White House as the official residence (Executive Residence) and office space (West Wing) of the President of the United States. Security is primarily provided by the United States Secret Service. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the restricted airspace above the White House has been expanded and better enforced.
Currently, a fence surrounds the White House, but it did not always exist. Though at various points since the time of Thomas Jefferson, various fences and gates were added to shape or constrain public access, greater public access to the White House grounds then was common in comparable European institutions was possible (with some restrictions) up until World War II. After World War II, public access to the White House grounds has been increasingly restricted.
During the mid-1990s, the fence was expanded by one block to move traffic farther from the White House to prevent damage from any car bomb.
Police built barricades on the streets surrounding the White House in 1983.
In November 2011, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez was taken into custody in Indiana, Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) in connection with bullets fired near the White House- at least two of which impacted- on Constitution Avenue, NW (near The Ellipse and the closed Washington Monument), at least one of which was stopped by bullet-proof glass, the other having hit the exterior; it is unknown whether the White House was a target or was even involved- the President and First Lady were in Hawaii for the APEC Summit meeting at the time. A suspect was seen fleeing into Virginia from the 23rd Street, NW, entrance to the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge from an abandoned car left near there.
Read more about White House Intruders: Successful and Attempted Intrusions
Famous quotes containing the words white house, white and/or house:
“The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“When white men were willing to put their own offspring in the kitchen and corn field and allowed them to be sold into bondage as slaves and degraded them as another man’s slave, the retribution of wrath was hanging over this country and the South paid penance in four years of bloody war.”
—Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930)
“I sometimes left a good fire when I went to take a walk in a winter afternoon; and when I returned, three or four hours afterward, it would be still alive and glowing. My house was not empty though I was gone. It was as if I had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It was I and Fire that lived there; and commonly my housekeeper proved trustworthy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)