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In Depth: Democratic Party Convention Security

Boston's big political party in 2004 took a lot of planning. During a six-month period, CSO followed U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Scott Sheafe as he and others developed a security plan tailored to make the best of a bad situation.

On the eve of the DNC, the securing of this venue is a transformation that astounds Sheafe more than the process of readying a hockey-and-basketball arena for prime-time politics. He knows how far the site has come from unpromising beginnings.

Quite a Site

It was more than two years earlier, on a similarly clear day in June 2002, when members of the site selection committee for the Democratic National Convention donned orange vests and hard hats, and gathered for an ice cream social just north of the FleetCenter on the new Zakim Bridge.

This was no opening ceremony—none of the bridge's 10 lanes would carry traffic for nine more months (even today, two lanes have yet to open). So, the chance to see Boston's eclectic skyline from between the bridge's two 30-story towers was a rare one indeed. No, this was civic boosterism taken to the extreme. Led by Mayor Thomas Menino and other local political lights, it was part of a three-day show staged in an effort to persuade Democrats that Boston—not Detroit, not Miami, not New Yorkwas the ideal site for their next convention.

Maybe it was the ice cream. The Democrats picked Boston, and Menino cheered that the event would bring millions of dollars to the city.

At the request of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Department of Homeland Security named the DNC a National Special Security Event. The announcement was a formality. The national conventions in 2000 were among the first events to earn this designation, which was created by President Clinton in 1998 and puts the U.S. Secret Service in charge of security planning for high-profile events. (The FBI is in charge of crisis response, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is responsible for consequence management.)

Although the Secret Service is responsible for protecting national security events, the agency is decidedly not involved in planning them. When asked why, officials insist it's simply not their job. For groups planning major public events, any site can seem as good as the next from a security perspective. The Republicans, after all, picked New York City for their convention—as difficult a place to secure as Boston, albeit better equipped for such large events. A senior official for the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC), speaking on condition of anonymity, says that the DNCC was so confident in the federal authorities' ability to secure any site that he didn't even know whether security experts were included on the site selection committee.