NBC News Attempt To Discredit GA

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote:

As far as the president is concerned, they are set by policy of the
Secret Service.
There is some feeling that the president could order the SS to
reduce the size of the
TFRs, but I don't know if that's true.

I'm sure it's true, but not realistic. An example is the closing of
Pennsylvania Ave., which many powerful people there don't like. Yet
the SS view still prevails. In the case of the President, the
managers of the SS are human, and since they firmly believe the
airspace security is necessary, they don't want to potentially be in a
situation where if something happened they would feel they failed to
be persuasive enough.

I doubt either they ever discussed it with the President, and SS is
now under Homeland Security.
SS was previously under Treasury, so presidential protection probably
operated fairly independently. Now the Secretary (Ridge) of DHS
intervenes between SS and the Prez. So part of the problem seems
political, since if airspace protection were to be greatly relaxed,
and then some wacky thing were to happen which media could interpret
as serious, the overall effectiveness and judgment of Homeland
Security could be called into question by the media, to scare the
populace some more. And in fact Kerry, compared to Bush, would be
more aware that the actual number of pilots seriously affected by
these TFR's is very small. Once President, politics tends to trump
everything. If it citizen concerns over security are politically
sensitive, then the Prez has to consider letting the DHS Sec'y do his
job and not force him to reverse decisions of the SS, which can create
counterproductive conflicts within the Dep't. Dunno for sure, but
sound good?

F--