Secret Service’s next challenge: Keeping scores of world leaders safe at the UN General Assembly

Below United Nations headquarters, a state-of-the-art information station dubbed the “Brain Center” hums with enactment connected the eve of adjacent week’s high-level gathering of the U.N. General Assembly. The yearly diplomatic pilgrimage is bringing much than 140 satellite leaders to New York City, including the leaders of Israel, the Palestinians and Ukraine.

Keeping them harmless is the U.S. Secret Service’s adjacent large challenge.

The agency, nether a unreality aft a July assassination effort connected erstwhile President Donald Trump, is assured successful its multi-layer, multi-agency program to support the U.N. General Assembly, which is deemed a Super Bowl-level National Special Security Event.

The program — developed with New York City constabulary and the U.N. Security and Safety Service, among different agencies — includes not conscionable motorcades and protective details, but NYPD helicopters and patrol boats, a twelve U.N. information K-9 teams sweeping for explosives, roadworthy closures and postulation diversions. The Secret Service is bringing successful agents from posts astir the satellite for the event. The Coast Guard is restricting East River entree adjacent the U.N. and the Federal Aviation Administration is closing airspace.

With truthful galore presidents, premier ministers, monarchs and others dignitaries successful 1 metropolis and nether 1 extortion astatine the aforesaid time, the U.N. General Assembly is really bigger than the Super Bowl. It’s the astir analyzable lawsuit the Secret Service is progressive successful each year.

This year, it’s coming during a particularly engaged agelong highlighted by the Republican and Democratic conventions and the last weeks of the statesmanlike campaign. Speaking Monday aft the Secret Service thwarted different evident assassination effort connected Trump successful Florida, Acting Director Ronald L. Rowe Jr. said employees were “redlining” similar an motor pushed to its limit. But, helium said, “they are rising to this moment” and gathering the challenges.

“The operational tempo is incredibly high,” said Patrick Freaney, the peculiar cause successful complaint of the Secret Service’s New York tract office.

The Associated Press got a uncommon look wrong information preparations for the U.N. General Assembly, known arsenic UNGA, including the “Brain Center” and a associated operations halfway that lets the Secret Service, NYPD and different agencies pass instantly to basal retired threats and logistical snags. They’re besides coordinating with the overseas information services that support each of the dignitaries.

Freaney said the National Special Security Event designation — for peculiar events of nationalist value — smooths the mode for interagency planning, connection and cooperation. The Secret Service is successful charge, but the NYPD’s robust counterterrorism and different operations, and the U.N.’s 300-person Security and Safety Service, play pivotal roles.

“We person implicit 140 heads of state, heads of authorities that we’re moving astir the city,” Freaney said during a circuit of the associated operations center, which has abstraction for 10 section and national agencies, including the FBI and Federal Emergency Management Agency and the State and Defense departments.

“One of the astir important things is bringing each of them successful present and past departing safely,” Freaney said. “Think astir that logistically — bringing 140 motorcades into 1 country each astatine the aforesaid time. This plays an integral portion of bringing those details successful safely.”

The Secret Service, NYPD and State Department volition besides beryllium operating their ain bid centers — successful Brooklyn, astatine One Police Plaza successful Manhattan and astatine a adjacent edifice ballroom. The NYPD, the nation’s largest constabulary force, has its Joint Operations Center equipped to springiness officers real-time feeds from security, drone and helicopter-mounted cameras, on with different captious information.

The U.N. Security and Safety Service, which is successful complaint of keeping the U.N. office field secure, has its bid station successful the “Brain Center.”

Down a basement hallway from the main hub of U.N. activity, wall-to-wall monitors amusement unrecorded feeds from dozens of the 1,400 information cameras connected the 18-acre (7.2-hectare) office campus. All are recorded and tin beryllium reviewed instantly. Automated voices alert imaginable breaches and emergencies. Computers make real-time information and photos for each of upwards of 22,000 radical who walk done information checkpoints per day. Fire alarms necktie straight into the city’s cardinal dispatch strategy for contiguous response.

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The bid station is staffed astir the timepiece by U.N. information officers who enactment successful 12-hour shifts portion satellite leaders are successful town. The goal, Inspector Malinda McCormack said, is to receive, analyse and rapidly disseminate information.

Security plans for UNGA started to instrumentality signifier a fewer months ago. The Secret Service and its spouse agencies usage past gatherings — this is the 79th variation — arsenic a blueprint, portion making adjustments for changing satellite events specified arsenic the wars successful Gaza and Ukraine.

“There’s an unthinkable trust,” said Michael Browne, main of the U.N. Security and Safety Service. “There’s unthinkable consciousness of collegiality and collaboration, which I deliberation is simply a cardinal constituent for occurrence successful a precise analyzable and challenging cognition specified arsenic UNGA.”

As of Friday, authorities said, determination were nary circumstantial oregon credible threats to the event.

But, Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s lawman commissioner for quality and counterterrorism, acknowledged “the chaoticness, the diverseness and the unpredictable quality of the menace environment” requires instrumentality enforcement to beryllium nimble and expect each the galore ways idiosyncratic could question to origin harm.

“These are precise antithetic times,” Weiner said.

World leaders are gathering astatine the UNGA for the archetypal clip since Hamas attacked Israel connected Oct. 7, 2023, triggered an Israeli violative successful Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of people. NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said Friday that the section has tallied much than 4,000 protests implicit the war, with much anticipated adjacent week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are some expected astatine UNGA. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is besides expected to return. Russian President Vladimir Putin volition not beryllium attending but is sending Russia’s overseas curate Sergey Lavrov.

While the warring is an water away, authorities are “thinking astir what’s happening overseas successful these location countries and what we tin expect here,” Weiner said.

“The full intent of this assembly is bringing countries together,” she added. “The full intent of our information posture is making definite we’re doing the same.”