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Sat May 14 05:35:22 PDT 2005

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 Someone to Protect Besides the VIPs

 By Colbert I. King

  Sometimes words lack meaning until you draw close to the situation they are meant to describe. Take, for instance, the term "collateral damage." Wednesday's red alert in the nation's capital, caused by an unidentified aircraft bearing down on the city, brought home that expression to an extent not heretofore   imagined.

 Living due south of Walter Reed Army Medical Center  and near the flight path of helicopters  traveling to and from the facility, I've grown accustomed to the sound of rotors and engines overhead. That's not what I heard as I left home just before noon on Wednesday. What I heard was the roar of a low-flying jet. A quick flip of the radio dial to WTOP  let me know something was up, and within minutes most of the story was in: A small plane had accidentally ventured into restricted airspace  over Washington, triggering the scrambling of Air Force jets and an evacuation of the White House, the Capitol and the Supreme Court.

 It was reassuring to watch TV replays of the emergency response: Vice President Cheney's motorcade speeding away from the White House; members of Congress, their staff and visitors walking and running to safety from the Capitol and nearby buildings. And guns. Not just side arms, but rifles defiantly on display.

 It was nice to know that President Bush was out of danger, bike-riding in suburban Maryland, with the Secret Service and a "Do Not Disturb" sign in tow. And I was pleased that at the first sign of trouble, first lady Laura Bush and her visitor, former first lady Nancy Reagan, were rushed to a safe location in the White House.

 Most of all, it was a relief to learn that the whole thing was a mistake: Two lost pilots with old maps and terrible judgment flew where they weren't supposed to fly.

 But suppose that old-fashioned white Cessna  up in the air over Washington had contained aviators bent on wreaking havoc in the federal enclave?

 It may be too early to start drawing  firm conclusions. But all accounts suggest that the F-16 interceptors were in a position to take out the plane before it could have crashed into the White House or the Capitol. If so, a legitimate military target would have been destroyed before it could inflict harm on U.S. leaders and the national shrines they occupy.

 Which gets us to the term "collateral damage," or the rest of us living and working beneath  the Washington airspace. Let's engage in a little "What if . . . ?"

 Suppose a plane had been flown by suicide attackers intent on using the aircraft's fuel payload as a weapon. Suppose the plane had been loaded with explosives, say a "dirty bomb" containing dynamite and radioactive material. What if the pilots had been intent on scoring a psychological victory by striking a Washington target not tied into the White House alert system -- for example, the Washington Aqueduct, a power plant, Union Station or a university campus?

 Suppose, too, the F-16 fighters had shot down the intruding plane over a residential area?

 If our worst fears had been realized and this had proved to be a plane with suicide pilots aboard, it might well have caused -- even if it was destroyed before it reached the White House and the Capitol -- inadvertent casualties and the destruction of private office buildings and homes. I suppose these effects on civilians would go down in the books as "collateral damage," or the human consequences of protecting our nation's leaders.

 You don't really have to reach that level of speculation to conclude that Wednesday's scare raises some serious questions that people living in the Washington area's high-density communities are now left to ponder. Immediately after the event, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams complained that "nearly four years after Sept. 11, 2001, we are still fighting the same fight." Williams wanted to know why he and other local key decision makers had to wait until several minutes after the fact to learn that a possibly dangerous aircraft had violated restricted  airspace. It turns out that some of the delay may have been caused by a muddle at the city's end. Nonetheless, precious time elapsed before the rest of the town learned what authorities in the White House and Capitol knew and were acting on.

 Time out in this screed for a declaration: I'm not on the list of folks who need early notification in the event of an attack, nor should I be. As my Post colleague Robert Kaiser once observed, people our age are now on the "back nine" of life. I can't complain; life's been good and full. I'll gladly take my place at the end of the line.

 The same cannot be said of the children at play on Wednesday in the schoolyard behind my house. Or the kids attending the elementary school a block away . . . or the hundreds of other children enrolled at three schools located within a four-block radius of our home. Or kids on playgrounds near Capitol Hill and in schools throughout the region.

 What about them? Don't they also deserve a chance to be evacuated along with the likes of Rep. Tom DeLay, or Sens. Harry Reid, Bill Frist and Ted Kennedy? Shouldn't a plan be in place to protect them -- maybe a system that sounds a horn or siren to let them and their teachers know of possible danger so they can take cover?

 If "fair warning is fair play," as the dudes used to say in my old neighborhood, did the protectors of the White House and Capitol play fair with the rest of Washington? Or are innocent kids, their parents, workers and visitors in the Washington region simply accidents of war -- or collateral damage -- just waiting to happen?

 kingc at washpost.com

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