JFK in Jacksonville: Sabotage?

Presumptive Presidential nominee John Kerry, of the Democratic Party by way of the great state of Massachusetts, made a stop down south in Florida earlier this summer. I attended his appearance in Jacksonville, Florida, at the Jacksonville Landing, a shopping complex in the city’s downtown riverfront district, just a mile down from Alltel Stadium, site of Super Bowl XXXIX on Feb. 6, assuming the NFL season lasts that long.

Although naturally skeptical of the Senator’s viability as a candidate, I was anxious to see for myself if he actually exists; that much can now be confirmed. He spoke about health care to a packed Landing courtyard, standing-room only. For over an hour earlier, attendees crowded into queues that snaked in and around the building, three of them, all intersecting near the main entrance on Water Street. It is so named because it’s the last street before the St. Johns River, which would have been the best option had something catastrophic occurred in the courtyard.

Having been born in Jacksonville, I tend to be protective of my city, especially in the post-9/11 era, when any city in America could be a scene of catastrophe at any time. Critics of the current Administration, who accuse them of having pooh-poohed warnings about the potential for an terror strike against Lower Manhattan, have themselves ignored those and subsequent warnings that other cities could be targeted. For this they should be ashamed, and perhaps viewed with closer scrutiny in the future.

One should assume now that al-Qaeda has spent years scouting any number of locations, foreign and domestic, executing as circumstances warrant. From the evildoers’ perspective (which is worth anticipating if one’s wish is to stop them), the 9/11 model would not be effective against other cities with lower population densities and few major landmarks. Future terror strikes (God forbid) will be “custom jobs,” developed with the target’s characteristic features in mind, and will as always be designed to inflict maximum physical and psychological damage in minimum elapsed time.

Obviously, both Presidential nominees should consider themselves targets of the terror masters—not just because of who they are, but because of what they represent: an opportunity to throw the machinery of American democracy into chaos. It just happens that both major-party conventions are being held this year in major northern cities whose airports’ security was compromised as part of 9/11. Is it a problem? One hopes not.

The security at Kerry’s Jacksonville stop was so poor as to be suspicious. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) had dozens of policemen in and around an area that is always fairly saturated with law enforcement, and of course the candidate is shadowed by Secret Service agents. Yet still there were inexplicable gaps.

Having established myself as a working journalist with no ideological agenda to be serviced, I was denied the media access that had supposedly been confirmed with the candidate’s flacks the day before, so instead I hovered around the perimeter, talking and watching. The first thing I noticed was that only one officer was posted with the women volunteers at the press entrance; the SS guy with the magnetometer was some 50 feet away. An armed marauder, stopped by the cop, would have had enough time to empty his gun before backup arrived, by which time he could have escaped in either of two directions. Of course, he wouldn’t have gotten far, but of course he wouldn’t have cared about escaping at all.

When former Republican nominee Bob Dole worked the Landing in 1996, he spoke from a dais that was basically raised from the stage in the courtyard. The building is a horseshoe-shape whose open end faces the river, so from the stage Dole’s back was to the river, concealed by local dignitaries and stage props like flags and such.

In 2004, John Kerry was positioned in such a way that he was visible from the river, which runs through most of the city. This would have been a problem if any of the persons assigned to paint the Main Street Bridge (a gleaming sea-blue) that afternoon had harbored any ill will toward the Senator—radical pre-Vatican II Catholics, perhaps. An assassin would have had a clear shot at the candidate from the bridge’s northern side, which was largely obscured by a huge canvas tarp.

He entered the stage via the American Café, his second eatery visited that day; earlier he’d hit the venerable Jenkins Barbecue on Kings Road with Congresswoman Corrine Brown, the only national Democrat from the state who could be bothered to be seen with Kerry. He walked down a wide orange staircase—faded orange, because the Landing is notoriously unprofitable, a white elephant even for seasoned developers like Toney Sleiman, who’s seen his perfectly-timed investment scuttled by a City Hall that allegedly swerved Sleiman on promised monies to help get the place hoppin’ in time for the Super Bowl. (It’s worth noting that, under Sleiman’s proposed design, the Landing would have been even more dangerous for Kerry than it already was.)

From viewing the lines to get in, it appeared that once they were all inside, the courtyard would be dangerously over-capacity, which could have led to a stampede if something had gone down. When it appeared that Kerry would be ready for the world before they had adequate numbers inside for his photo-op, security simply stopped checking people one-by-one, relying instead on the metal detectors stationed at each of the regular entrances—which doesn’t mean it was impossible to sneak contraband into the event. Hardly, because there were no security restrictions on entering the Landing in general, just around the courtyard area. Nearby rooftops, and even the Landing balcony, received only minor scrutiny, from what I could tell.

I’m not voting for John Kerry—the shoddiness of his advance team confirmed any suspicions I’d had about his inattention to detail, and my treatment by volunteers suggested that even they did not expect him to contend—but I would have been sickened if he’d met his maker in the Bold New City of the South. That would be a shame, more bad publicity that Florida does not need right now. I can only hope that one of Kerry’s Blackberry-jockeys takes time out from looking for hookups on Friendster and reads this (with a name like “Botoxwatch,” it’s quite possible). John Kerry desperately needs to get his shit together now, if he is to be anything but a Trojan horse for his party.

shelton hull
sdh666@hotmail.com
May 11, 2004