Bomb Scare
About 10 years ago I was living in San Antonio. I worked for an ISP, and the offices were in downtown San Antonio. There were all sorts of fancy hotels, office buildings, a bus stop, and plenty of homeless people around. One night two of my coworkers were moving in together. They needed my help getting them moved in, so they stopped by the office to pick me up. This was, of course, after the Olkahoma City bombing that Timothy McVeigh did.
When they showed up, they were driving a U-Haul truck to move their stuff in. They parked it across the street in a public parking lot, came in to get me, hung out for a minute or five, and then thre three of us left to move their stuff. What we didn’t know was that President Clinton was giving a speech at a fund raiser across the street from our office.
Picture this: Secret Service all over the place. Two guys drive up in a U-Haul (like the one that McVeigh used), and they get out and walk away into the night. Yeah… The Secret Service went nuts over the truck.
When we got to the truck, we were met by dozens of agents. They were waiting for a bolt cutter to cut the lock off of the truck to see what was inside. My friend that had the key surrendered the key, so that they could get the truck open. While they were doing this, they separated the three of us, and started interrogating us. They were very polite, but they were also very firm. They didn’t abuse us, insult us, or harrass us too much. However, they did want their questions answered without any joking around.
We answered their questions to their satisfaction. Most of my answers were, “I don’t know.” They wanted to know my friends’ old addresses (never been there), their new address (hadn’t been there yet), how long they had known each other, how long I had known them, what were their names (which I did know), and so on.
In all, it wasn’t a bad experience. I never did like President Clinton, but I never wished him harm. I’m glad that we have the security that we do around the leader of our nation. It somehow made me feel a little safer.
