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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.

But if Democrats had asked for an opinionand if the Secret Service had answered honestlyit's pretty clear what the verdict would have been: From a security perspective at least, the Democrats couldn't have chosen a worse site.

A Man, a Plan

On the early March day when I first met Scott Sheafe, he shook his head a bit as he stepped out of Boston's Secret Service field office and walked next door to the FleetCenter. It was noon on a weekday. Despite the cold weather and threatening skies, the sidewalks were full of office workers heading to lunch. A trolley screeched overhead on its elevated tracks, and cars and delivery trucks crowded the street.

Sheafe, 34, is trim and handsome. He has a boyish, almost mischievous grin to go with his trademark Secret Service crew cut and black suit. He has worked for the Secret Service for 12 years, but in his office he proudly displays a schoolboy's certificate, received when he was 7, declaring him an honorary member of the service. Sheafe pointed at the elevated trolley tracks and said that they were supposed to be taken down before the convention, as part of ongoing construction, but they won't be—which would make securing the street below that much more difficult. Then he gestured at a large crane in front of North Station. (North Station, the commuter rail terminal adjoining the FleetCenter, is in the midst of being turned into a consolidated transit center.) Sheafe wasn't sure what that crane would be doing by convention time. "Not only are we in a tough environment," he said, "we're in a tough environment that changes every day."

His career has already been a crash course in tough environments. Formerly on security detail for President George W. Bush and, before that, then-First Lady Hillary and former President Clinton, Sheafe had never set foot in Boston when he got word that he would be in charge of the security plan for the DNC. He and his family moved there—sight unseenin June 2003. Yet when giving a walking tour of the area he's expected to secure, he already exuded the calm confidence of someone familiar with his surroundings.

Of course, before those surroundings became familiar to Sheafe, they presented a set of daunting problems. As he continued around the FleetCenter last March, he recalled his reaction upon first seeing the area. From an expanse of windows on the east side of the building, you could just about reach out and touch the major north-south highway bisecting the city. "See that?" he shouted, a truck rumbling by as he pointed at the wall of FleetCenter windows. "That's glass!" Then he pointed at the road. "And that's the highway...."