DAILY EXPRESS: A MILITARY-style operation to keep Barack Obama alive was under way yesterday within hours of his victory.
Even as the US President-elect celebrated with more than 160,000 supporters in Grant Park, Chicago, he did so from behind bullet-proof glass 12ft high and 3ins thick.
Mr Obama, wife Michelle, running mate Joe Biden and his wife Jill were under instructions not to stray from the line-of-fire protection zone.
This zone had been identified by FBI agents pointing lasers at the stage from every building surrounding the park.
America will have to get used to such scenes. Such are the concerns for Mr Obama’s safety that many are already voicing their fears he may not even reach the White House.
Emory Douglas of the Black Panthers rights group said: “Nothing can be taken for granted that he actually will be the next President of the United States. There are people who don’t want Obama in that position and some of them are powerful.
“There could easily be an assassination or a campaign to ruin him before he begins his term because of what he represents.
Nothing is out of the question. Until January when he is inaugurated, we just don’t know if we will see a black man in charge.”
Fears for Mr Obama’s safety began the moment he entered the race for the White House and investigations are on-going into potential threats from race-hate groups in and outside the US.
As America celebrated yesterday the mood in both Secret Service and FBI headquarters was sombre as the scale of the task was analysed.
One security source said: “It’s not the crazies who tell you what they’re gonna do that are dangerous, it’s the crazies that don’t. And we all know they’re out there. It only takes one lunatic racist with a gun, one deranged extremist with a single bullet, one determined white supremacist, to end it all.
“And you can bet there are plenty of angry, disturbed people lining up for the chance to be that one.” >>> By Joanna Walters | November 6, 2008
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