Securing Washington for Inauguration

This is a partial transcript from "On the Record," January 14, 2005, that has been edited for clarity.

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GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, HOST: FOX News has obtained an FBI bulletin about reports of suspicious activity around the sites of next week's inaugural events. Joining us with more is national security reporter Bill Gertz of The Washington Times.

Bill, what can you tell me about any possible threats or at least what are people concerned about for the inauguration?

BILL GERTZ, WASHINGTON TIMES: Basically, Greta, one word caution. Everybody is on edge. They know that this is the first big public inauguration since 9/11 and there's not a lot of intelligence out there that indicates anything specific is going to happen.

They had some reports about possible improvised explosive devices. That seems to be the main threat at this point, so everything security wise is being geared towards dealing with that, I mean ranging from massive surveillance to electronic devices that could disrupt any kind of a remote- controlled trigger.

VAN SUSTEREN: And I assume we're going to see a lot of police presence, people on buildings and we'll see snipers on buildings or any huge equipment, military equipment?

GERTZ: Yes, all of the above and they've really expanded the area outside the basic parade route, which goes from the Capitol to the White House and they really expanded that area. They're going to be looking at it especially for vehicles or any kind of suspicious activity.

Now, there's been some activity which indicates surveillance of buildings but, again, it's not specific. People can't tell whether it's just tourists or whether it could be somebody planning to do something during the inauguration.

VAN SUSTEREN: Lots of roads shut down. There are already some shut down.

GERTZ: Yes, oh yes. It's going to be very tight security, I think the tightest that there could be for this kind of an event.

VAN SUSTEREN: And I can't even imagine what they'll do to protect the subway system because that runs right under the areas, much of the mall where the parade route is.

GERTZ: I think we'll see a lot of high visibility security presence. I know that in the past the police have called in some military reservists and things like that to do security. I expect that's probably likely to happen as well.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right. You had a story yesterday about a NIC, an unclassified report. I never knew it as a NIC. You told me tonight as you came in. What does this report say?

GERTZ: The National Intelligence Council is a group of analysts under the CIA director but not really formally part of the CIA. Their job is forecasting. They're to take in this case kind of an outside of the box look at what the future threats could be.

They range from an emerging China, a dangerous China to even India and, of course, the big problem is terrorism. They had a briefing at CIA headquarters with about five or six of these analysts who produced this report, talked about some scary scenarios, one of which the most worrisome was that they think that biological terrorism is likely and they use the word likely in the next 20 years.

VAN SUSTEREN: Here's what I don't get, Bill. I mean everybody thinks in the next 20 years we're going to get this. Why are we paying to sit around and get sort of a generalized report with no specifics? I mean by a group that by the way missed 9/11, missed the Madrid bombing, the embassies in Africa were bombed, I mean and these people were sitting around writing a report that, yes, we're going to get it in the n ext 20 years.

GERTZ: Well, it was interesting in that they presented in their report, which is about 199 pages, several fictional scenarios and...

VAN SUSTEREN: That makes it worse.

GERTZ: Well, yes, I asked myself well how is this useful? They are convinced that it's a useful process that this is going to give people in charge of long range planning and intelligence officials and policymakers both, it's going to give them some idea of what's out there in the future.

VAN SUSTEREN: Give them what? It's just a generalized, oh no, we're going to get it in the next 20 years and most Americans probably think maybe that could happen. You know, we spent thousands maybe millions of dollars creating that document.

GERTZ: Well, I think what they're trying to do is to present some of these scenarios. What do you do if China collapses I guess is the more important question, which is a very real possibility? How do you deal with the fact that the U.S. may not be the sole super power in 20 years? It's those kind of questions that they're trying to put out there and hopefully that that will have some use...

VAN SUSTEREN: Did you learn something?

GERTZ: Well, as you know, I'm a skeptic when it comes to intelligence. I'm a skeptic.

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, well you're a good sport, Bill. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

GERTZ: Thank you.

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