After being accused of not being able to protect the President and the White House sufficiently, the US Secret Service wishes to construct a replica of the White House to the tune of $8 million in Beltsville, Maryland. The replica would be located around 20 miles away from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the current address of the official building.
John P. Clancy, Director of the Secret Service, testified before the House Appropriations Committee and asked that lawmakers provide money to construct a detailed White House replica to help train Secret Service officers and agents to better protect the real White House.
A 500-acre training site currently exists in Beltsville. However, replicas of the White House are not to scale, bike barricades are used to simulate the fences, and there are also no bushes or fountains like those on the actual property. According to Clancy, this is not a realistic representation of the building, and an accurate replica of the White House is needed so the agency can better train its agents, officers and tactical teams.
The replica would deliver what Clancy has defined as an environment that would be more realistic and more useful for training exercises and similar scenarios. He added that the copy would be based on the façade of the real residence, and will include both the East and West Wings, the surrounding area including the roads, and the guardhouses.
It is still unknown if the replica will be a full scale copy of the entire structure, including all of its sides, as the design has not yet been finished, according to White House officials.
This request for a replica of the White House is due to an incident at the real site six months ago when an intruder climbed over a fence, entered the structure via a front door that was unlocked and maneuvered to the East Room prior to being tackled by Secret Service officers. This caused major concern over the state of White House security and new ideas are being implemented to help prevent any future breaches.
Another possible idea is to build up the fence around the White House to make it higher. Plus, it has been suggested that Secret Service agents should devote more time to training.
The Secret Service has not only asked for funds to build the replica of the White House, it has also asked for money to renovate a live-fire shooting house, as well as to fix and improve one of the tactical village training sites that works as a fake city street training environment.
