Friendly forces patrol capital

By JOHN BALZ

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 16, 2001

WASHINGTON -- It rained Friday morning, which didn't help. The sun came out around noon, but that just made it easier to see the armed guards and Humvees patrolling the streets. As secure as Washington felt the day after the World Trade Center collapsed, it became more like a police state as the week continued.

Helicopters and fighter jets zipped through the air. The security area around the White House was extended for a while, more blocks were closed to cars and police directed pedestrians to walk on one side of street.

"It seems like there's strangeness afoot," said Tony Quattro, 33, of Arlington, Va. "Don't you get the sense that this is close to martial law?"

The flags were on T-shirts and suit lapels. They hung in store windows and fluttered from the tops of buses. They flew at half-staff over government buildings (and in Washington there are a lot of them). Some people simply carried a flag in their hands.

Of the thousands on display, the most famous rests on a table in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. The 30- by 34-foot flag originally flew over Fort McHenry outside Baltimore almost 190 years ago. There are older and bigger flags, but this one inspired the national anthem.

During the War of 1812, British troops detained hundreds of Americans before shelling Fort McHenry. Francis Scott Key, a lawyer and amateur poet, watched the bombardment from a British ship. Key, as the story goes, was so inspired by the sight of the flag the next morning that he wrote The Star-Spangled Banner.

The banner is now tattered and faded. For the past three years, it has been housed in a special laboratory where conservationists vacuum individual fibers to preserve them. This multimillion-dollar undertaking has been partly funded by fashion designer Ralph Lauren.

Lines to see the flag and the laboratory are usually long, but not Friday. A few people walked up to peer through the sheet of glass. Some, like Barbara Thill, remembered what happened on Tuesday and think about the country.

"It's patriotic but sad," she said.

At the Madhatter bar near Dupont Circle, owner Mike Tobin sees a lot of anger in his customers -- and in himself.

"People are talking about how they want to nuke Afghanistan," said Tobin, a middle-aged man with a bushy mustache.

Business is fine, he said, although the happy hours haven't been as rowdy. The two televisions in the bar have been running news coverage nonstop, and he has posted a flag outside that will fly "until it gets stolen."

Tobin "wants bin Laden's head rolled down the street. But that's just an emotional response."

The best way to defeat terrorism is for people to get back to normal. His son's soccer game was canceled this weekend, which frustrates him a bit.

"If it is (canceled) out of respect, that's fine," he said. "If it's canceled out of paranoia, that's ridiculous. We have to move on -- otherwise the b------- win."

At this point in the congressional session, aides are usually shuttling back and forth between offices and hammering out legislative initiatives. Since Tuesday, however, the hallways have been quiet as staffers focus almost exclusively on constituent mail and the terrorist attacks.

"We're not doing anything but this," said Adam Kovacevich, press secretary for Rep. Cal Dooley, D-Calif.

The atmosphere is tense. Staffers were evacuated three times last week. When Paul Anderson started work for Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., six weeks ago, he was told that people often don't leave their desks when the fire alarm goes off. Thursday, a bomb scare forced police to shut down his building, and "when that fire alarm went off, people moved," Anderson said.

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