Could ISIS strike at the home of the White House?

Officials in Washington know their hometown is a target for terrorists. But, despite the huge resources ploughed into preventing attacks, there are still issues with the city’s defences, writes Jeff Stein

THE mobiles of dead people were still ringing inside the Pulse nightclub on June 12 when Cathy Lanier, chief of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, got a message from her counterparts in Orlando, Florida. First reports were that a terrorist had carried out “the worst mass murder in American history” there.

A famously hands-on and nocturnal leader, Lanier started punching numbers on her mobile. One call went to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the FBI-led body that gathers intelligence on threats. Another went to the city’s homeland security ops centre.