Peninsula Daily News
news sources
WASHINGTON — When President Barack Obama and his family make their first extended trip to sub-Saharan Africa next week, the federal agencies charged with keeping him safe won’t be taking any chances.
According to an internal White House planning document:
■ Hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.
■ A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with a fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case of an emergency.
■ Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bulletproof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay.
■ Fighter jets will fly in shifts, giving 24-hour coverage over the president’s airspace, so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane gets too close.
The trip, which begins Wednesday, could cost $60 million to $100 million and could be one of the most expensive presidential trips in U.S. history, one unnamed source told The Washington Post.
The White House has not issued publicly an estimated cost.
The unusual cost is partially due to “elaborate security provisions,” according to the Post, which obtained a confidential internal planning document.
The first family is making back-to-back stops from June 26 to July 3 in three countries where U.S. officials are providing nearly all the resources, rather than depending heavily on local police forces, military authorities or hospitals for assistance.
The president and first lady had planned to take a Tanzanian safari as part of the trip, which would have required the president’s special counterassault team to carry sniper rifles with high-caliber rounds that could neutralize cheetahs, lions or other animals if they became a threat, according to the planning document.
But officials said last Thursday that the safari had been canceled in favor of a trip to Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, where Nelson Mandela was held as a political prisoner.
