Daily Beast Editor Stayed Next Door to the WHCA Dinner Shooter...and Noted This Security Issue

The Daily Beast wrote something worth reading, which wasn’t filled with anti-Trump garbage or had something in the opening that undermined the headline and the story entirely: their executive editor, Hugh Dougherty, 

 

stayed next door to Cole Allen, the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner shooter, at the Washington Hilton. 

He detailed how he couldn’t return to his room for quite some time, as law enforcement was standing in the hall, where they finally told him the area was an FBI crime scene and the police were awaiting a warrant from a judge to enter the room next to his. He also noted this security issue: no one was checking luggage (via Daily Beast) [emphasis mine]:

When I went back upstairs to get into 10235, the 20 minutes I’d been asked to wait were long gone.

The Hilton worker was much nearer the elevator this time. There were many more uniformed men behind him. “I’m sorry, Sir, I can’t let you go further,” he said. “I know you were here earlier.”

“When do you think I can get back in?” I asked. “I don’t know, Sir,” a man in a Metropolitan Police uniform next to the Hilton worker said. “We’re waiting on a judge.”

In that moment, I had a flash of realization: The police needed a judge because they needed to search the room. Already, security sources had said that they were working on the theory that the gunman had been a hotel guest.

I knew then that I had been next door to the man who wanted to turn the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner into a mass shooting. Maybe I had slept the night with an assassin in the next room.

“He was next door to me?” I asked the Hilton worker. “I can’t tell you anything, Sir,” he said. An officer in a Metropolitan Police Department “detective” windbreaker turned to me and said, “I’m sorry, Sir,”

Another officer said, “Sir, just to let you know, this will be an FBI crime scene when they get here. We’re waiting for a judge. When exactly did you check in?”

That was apparent confirmation that, yes, the gunman had been the guest next door—and that I might actually be a witness to this whole case.

[…]

I asked the detective another question. “Do you want to talk to me? I mean, I was next door.”

I gave him my business card, then told him the only things I could think of that might be relevant. I knew when I had checked in. I knew when the cleaner had been in my room in the morning. I had seen no guests in the rooms beside mine at the end of the corridor.

Then I was left incredulous by what he did. The detective said to the Hilton worker, “I need the cleaning logs for the room.”

They hadn’t thought of this? It was almost three hours since I had been lying on a floor, the echo of gunshots in my head.

“We’ll be in touch, sir.”

[…]

It does not take a security expert to unravel the layers of failure that happened at a Washington, D.C. hotel on Saturday night.

How on earth could someone with a disassembled long gun check into a room at a hotel where the president was going to speak? I can answer that: Nobody even looked at my luggage on Friday afternoon. 

Worse, my colleague arrived on Saturday at 5 p.m. Nobody looked at his luggage either: No magnometers, no hand checks, no I.D. checks. Nothing.

How on earth could that person get downstairs and assemble a long gun? I can answer that too. I moved up and down from Floor 10 all day. Nobody ever stopped me and asked me anything. I have never shown my I.D., except to the clerk who checked me in; I have never been searched or frisked when I checked in, or moved in and out of the hotel. To get down from my room to the dinner, I simply flashed my ticket. It could have been a photocopy.

The only time I went past a checkpoint was at the same magnetometers that Cole Allen, 31, sprinted past with his gun.

Another colleague was outside; I texted them a copy of their ticket. That allowed them to get into the hotel as far as those same magnetometers, entirely unchecked.

How on earth could that be considered safe?

Yeah, there will be adjustments the next time this dinner is held, which should be soon. Trump said it’s happening. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has been one of the top officials keeping an eye on the Secret Service post-Butler, so no doubt she will be making some severe changes the next time the core of the presidential line of succession is at this event. 

Cole Allen, 31, admitted to planning to target Trump officials at this event, while his manifesto is directed at the president. Allen was armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and two knives. He traveled by train from Torrance, California, to D.C. to carry out this attack.