White house hostage crisis

Gosh. I bet the sneaky terrorists didn't use their real names, either.

The post-event debriefing would be entertaining. "So you see, Mr President, it was hardly the fault of the secret service that they didn't know about a way in to the White House that these sneaky foreigners knew about. I understand it was built by the British when they burned the White House in 1812. OK, I know they did it in 1814, but everyone calls it the war of 1812. Anyway, we didn't know about this entrance. And then, when they did get in, all our men were in the wrong place, and we didn't have anyone watching the surveillance cameras. I suppose that might be because sometimes they had been caught watching porn films. Oh, that was watching you? Never mind, we all make mistakes. Anyway, they caught us completely by surprise, and we simply couldn't do anything effective to protect you. The bounders even ignored the 'Do Not Enter' notices, and how could we plan for that level of perfidy? Not even Canadians are rude enough to ignore such notices. Anyway, they made their way from the entrance to where you were really quickly, much faster than we could think, and we can count up to ten in three minutes, tops. How many of them were there? Well, they came with bombs and guns and they were in a linen truck, and our guard didn't see them hiding them, so there could have been, oh, six of them. Maybe seven. How many of us are there? Well, obviously, we couldn't have used anyone not in the White House, that might have looked like we were over-reacting, so there were no more than sixty of us actually nearby. Yes, all right, we did outnumber them ten to one. How much explosives did they bring in with them? Enough to destroy the White House. How big is the White House? Oh, pretty big. Yes, I guess it was a lot of explosives. Did our sensors detect any explosives? Sir, I'm afraid you don't have the security clearance to know what sniffing devices we have available. I know you're the CinC, and I know that such devices have been in common use since the 1980s at least, and even the British use them, but well, we didn't think to have any in place. What were the terrorists trying to do? They were trying to drill into the bunker. How were they drilling? With drills. Where did they get the drills? I guess they brought them in with them, or they found them lying around in the White House. Yes, I suppose they were carrying drills around. Yes, drills are quite heavy. Yes, it is difficult to carry guns and bombs and drills and make your way around a place you don't really know that well, but you have to understand, they took us by surprise."

The phrase nonsense on stilts springs to mind. I would suggest that the author needs to have his artistic licence revoked.
The secret service knew about the tunnel but didn't expect it to be breached. Yes in the book a guard had to screw up to get the plot going. Regards to the terrorists using fake names actually yes. The master mind faked being a prince from Oman and used it to to make a donation to the DNC giving the 500,000 dollars to the chairman who was at the white house and killed later on. It is acknowledged in the book that the truck was the Secret Service's fault. Also a sniper was placed on the roof of the Washington Hotel killing Secret Service men on the roof of the White House. The terrorist cut the communications to the outside world preventing the president from contacting anyone acter it is known he is safe. When the terroist entered the building a forklift is used destroying a white house basement and go up the stairwell with grenades (smoke and fragmentation) and use a rpg. Out of bostage casualties i know that one man was killed for asking for some items for a pregnant woman and the National security advisor and his secretary were killed.
 
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Wanting concessions for both Iraq and Iran is implausible. The two countries have different dominant Islamic sects(important if these "middle eastern terrorists" are Jihadis), and fought a rather long and nasty war in the 80s.
I did some more re reading and apparently the terroist mastermind is from Beirut and sees the US as putting brother against brother so presumably he loves all middle eastern countries without carrying about differences.
 
The author also left a note at the beginning of the book that he changed out the layout of the White House out of respect of the Secret service and protection of the president. He also did alot of research into his books.
 
Perhaps instead of planning to kill Lincoln Confederate sympathizers tried to kill or capture him wherever he planned to stay in Washington before his inauguration?

First or second inauguration? Anyhow, that might be doable, actually, though I was thinking more early 20th century (automatic weapons to conceal them more easily, etc.). Would need a force to attempt it, though - KKK for whatever reason, maybe?
 

CalBear

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Uh...

Uh...

Ya.

Even if they somehow got into the Residence they have dozens (actual number is closely held for obvious reasons) of Secret Service agents on post, plus Uniformed Secret Service. Many of the posts have access to shotguns or submachine guns, all used by the best shots in the Secret Service (and that makes them VERY good shots indeed), at a level close to if not equal to U.S. Tier One SPECOPS. THe Detail has demonstrate, time and again, they they WILL take a bullet for their principal, so the Tangos have no advantage in devotion.

They Detail also does not have to defeat the attackers. They just have to delay them logn enough to get the POTUS either out via helo or armored limo, or down into the bunker. The Bunker is designed to survive a near miss GROUNDBURST, so the bad guys are not breaking in. The will have around an hour, to papraphrase the movie, before the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines arrive to deal with them.
 
The secret service knew about the tunnel but didn't expect it to be breached. Yes in the book a guard had to screw up to get the plot going. Regards to the terrorists using fake names actually yes. The master mind faked being a prince from Oman and used it to to make a donation to the DNC giving the 500,000 dollars to the chairman who was at the white house and killed later on. It is acknowledged in the book that the truck was the Secret Service's fault. Also a sniper was placed on the roof of the Washington Hotel killing Secret Service men on the roof of the White House. The terrorist cut the communications to the outside world preventing the president from contacting anyone acter it is known he is safe. When the terroist entered the building a forklift is used destroying a white house basement and go up the stairwell with grenades (smoke and fragmentation) and use a rpg. Out of bostage casualties i know that one man was killed for asking for some items for a pregnant woman and the National security advisor and his secretary were killed.

I don’t know where to begin.

The secret service knew about the secret tunnel, but didn’t expect it to be breached. They presumably didn’t think to put any surveillance systems, and presumably didn’t think to make it tricky for unauthorised people to use it. They presumably didn’t think to have someone keeping an eye on the place, with instructions to call in before going off to investigate something suspicious (rather than investigating before calling in, only to be taken out, as seen in all truly dreadful movies). They didn’t think to have triggers at each end of the tunnel, so that when anyone unauthorised enters from either end, they are in the middle of the most delightful kill zone anyone could imagine.

Someone gives half a million, and no-one thinks to check out if he is who he says he is. You know, if someone gave me half a million, I might phone them up to say thank you. But I guess the President was too busy to do it, and didn’t have any interns who could make any calls.

How many heavily armed people with explosives and rpgs and etc can you hide in a linen truck? Because that’s your manpower inside the WH.

A single sniper takes out all the secret service roof cover. Uh huh. So presumably all the duty posts on the roof are visible from one spot. Or maybe our sniper has teleport abilities. When you set up a defence zone, normal people make sure that the positions are in different places and are covering different directions, and that these positions have as much cover as possible. Because, you know, outposts are potential hot spots.

Cut communications to the White House. So presumably there is only one landline into the WH, and this is easily accessible. Presumably no-one has any of these things called mobile phones. No one is on the computer with access to the internet. We’ll grant all this, and arm wave, and say magical powers enable the terrorists to do all this in an instant. Don’t you think someone might notice? “Sir, we’ve lost all communication with the WH, and we’re getting indications that the secret service people in plain view have been killed.” “Nothing to worry about, Jenkins. Let’s play another hand of poker.”

A forklift goes up the stairwell. I’m sorry? A forklift goes up the stair well? Presumably it, like the Daleks, has discovered the ability to cope with stairs. I’ll not even ask what a forklift was doing in the basement. Presumably, the terrorists didn’t bring the forklift with them (hidden in the linen truck), so one assumes it was just lying around, and the terrorists found it. It’s an interesting plan that is predicated upon using vital equipment that the other side leaves out for you.

Look, I know you can totally trust the research and reliability of anyone called Flin (or variations upon the spelling of the name), but I would suggest that the objective of the author was: “How totally ridiculous can I make this and have people think it plausible?” Believe me, it’s about as plausible as Wallace and Grommit’s inventions.
 

GarethC

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There is an underground tunnel connecting the white house to the treasury building the terrorists use in order to take the secret service by suprise.
I guess the point is, it is unbelievable for there not also to be some significant barrier to such a tunnel being used by terrorists.

The Secret Service have been doing this kind of job for a while now. They do read the newspapers and occasionally update their response plans for a variety of threats. They have an annual budget of $1.8 billion, six thousand employees, and pretty much carte blanche to make the Presidential residences nigh-impregnable-yet-stylish-and-comfortable fortresses.

The concept of "did not expect the tunnel to be breached"... No, I'm sorry, I can't buy that one.

After atrocities like the Mumbai hotel attack, the Bataclan theatre in Paris a year ago, the the Peshawar Army School in Pakistan, the Westgate shopping mall in Kenya, the Kashmiri separatist attack on the Indian parliament, the various Chechen war actions (Moscow Theatre, Beslan school, Budyonnovsk hospital for a start) back to things like Carlos the Jackal and the OPEC ministers or the Israeli athletes in Munich - the concept of a small force of trained and heavily-armed commandos launching an assault to kill or take hostage high value targets like the President and the White House staff is hardly a novel concept, and it's hardly stretching the imagination to believe that the Secret Service has gamed out and trained for a large number of variations on that theme, including "how do we close all the doors and windows very quickly, not even forgetting that thermal exhaust port just above the main port?"

I'm sure that Mr. Flynn did look at the security features which are public domain about the White House and the Secret Service... and then quite rightly decided not to use them in his book, because it would make quite a boring story where the terrorists die in vain with two lines of agents yet unengaged between them and POTUS for the 45 seconds before he gets in the limo, not a rollicking high-octane thriller with a tense countdown to an electrifying denouement of the kind beloved by airport bookstores and movie studio development people alike.
 
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As the man said, whatever sells.

At least it's not the thriller I remember (except for trifling things like the title and author) where the Bad Guys snatched the President from the middle of a public meeting and stuffed him into a boobytrapped armored car, cuffed him to the floor, and walked off (whistling?) while the authorities were balked as they couldn't do anything since the car was under 360-degree 24/7 TV coverage and the Bad Guys would see any rescue attempt.
 
They Detail also does not have to defeat the attackers. They just have to delay them logn enough to get the POTUS either out via helo or armored limo, or down into the bunker. The Bunker is designed to survive a near miss GROUNDBURST, so the bad guys are not breaking in. The will have around an hour, to papraphrase the movie, before the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines arrive to deal with them.
Heck, they don't even HAVE a hour. DC PD and like every other cop in DC, which is quite a lot, is going to be converging on the White House the instant shit starts. So your unit has to attack one of the more well defended buildings in the US, survive in sufficient enough force to sweep the entire building for the POTUS, find him, assuming he's not in said bunker or in a car heading out of DC at top speed, hold him hostage, and then call up the authorities to go "Neener neener neener".

Oh, and let's say, by some miracle, they actually get the negotiations going. How do you think the US or NATO are going to view the negotiations, assuming they don't just get shut down as being made under coercion? Iraq'll be a parking lot before the day is out.
 
The secret service knew about the tunnel but didn't expect it to be breached. Yes in the book a guard had to screw up to get the plot going. Regards to the terrorists using fake names actually yes. The master mind faked being a prince from Oman and used it to to make a donation to the DNC giving the 500,000 dollars to the chairman who was at the white house and killed later on. It is acknowledged in the book that the truck was the Secret Service's fault. Also a sniper was placed on the roof of the Washington Hotel killing Secret Service men on the roof of the White House. The terrorist cut the communications to the outside world preventing the president from contacting anyone acter it is known he is safe. When the terroist entered the building a forklift is used destroying a white house basement and go up the stairwell with grenades (smoke and fragmentation) and use a rpg. Out of bostage casualties i know that one man was killed for asking for some items for a pregnant woman and the National security advisor and his secretary were killed.
Please don't litter the forum with this rubbish. Thrillers are completely implausible most the time, and this scenario is quite far fetched.
 
Please don't litter the forum with this rubbish. Thrillers are completely implausible most the time, and this scenario is quite far fetched.
Again that is the book's reason not my mine. I just wanted to know what would happen in real life not how implausible the scenario would be.
 
Uh...

Uh...

Ya.

Even if they somehow got into the Residence they have dozens (actual number is closely held for obvious reasons) of Secret Service agents on post, plus Uniformed Secret Service. Many of the posts have access to shotguns or submachine guns, all used by the best shots in the Secret Service (and that makes them VERY good shots indeed), at a level close to if not equal to U.S. Tier One SPECOPS. THe Detail has demonstrate, time and again, they they WILL take a bullet for their principal, so the Tangos have no advantage in devotion.

They Detail also does not have to defeat the attackers. They just have to delay them logn enough to get the POTUS either out via helo or armored limo, or down into the bunker. The Bunker is designed to survive a near miss GROUNDBURST, so the bad guys are not breaking in. The will have around an hour, to papraphrase the movie, before the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines arrive to deal with them.


But, but, but, i saw Olympus have fallen during the weekend and the bad guy just said he had a bunch of hostages that he would kill if the army did not withdraw and they did. The armed forces apperantly can not enter the white house becauce of some law according to white house down movie.
 
But, but, but, i saw Olympus have fallen during the weekend and the bad guy just said he had a bunch of hostages that he would kill if the army did not withdraw and they did. The armed forces apperantly can not enter the white house becauce of some law according to white house down movie.

NORTH KOREA STRONK!!!!!!
 

CalBear

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But, but, but, i saw Olympus have fallen during the weekend and the bad guy just said he had a bunch of hostages that he would kill if the army did not withdraw and they did. The armed forces apperantly can not enter the white house becauce of some law according to white house down movie.
Uh...

Sure.


:D
 
I'm sure that Mr. Flynn did look at the security features which are public domain about the White House and the Secret Service... and then quite rightly decided not to use them in his book, because it would make quite a boring story where the terrorists die in vain with two lines of agents yet unengaged between them and POTUS for the 45 seconds before he gets in the limo, not a rollicking high-octane thriller with a tense countdown to an electrifying denouement of the kind beloved by airport bookstores and movie studio development people alike.[/QUOTE]
Again. Vince did his research. At the beginning of the book he left this message that I will quote.

"Out of respect for the United States Secret Service and the security of the president, certain facts regarding the layout of the White House and Secret Service tactics have either been changed or omitted."
 
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