Under surveillance

Under surveillance

532

1993 6 June 22 Under surveillance (226)

The President of America, the most powerful man in the world, can summon a helicopter by simply touching a button and, more devastatingly, can start a world war by touching another. And yet he himself is the most helpless of men, for the security arrangements at the White House, his official residence, are so tight that he feels sometimes that he is not just being protected, but is actually under surveillance.

One of the young daughters of the previous president complained in her book, Souvenir, that she could not carry on a love affair during her stay in the White House as she had no privacy in which to do anything. She had actually made up her mind not to marry while she lived there. She asked the reader to consider the effect of saying good night to a boy at the door in a blaze of floodlight with a secret service man in attendance. ‘There is not much you can do except shake hands, and that is no way to get engaged!’. Although anyone living in the White House has a feeling of being watched, no one anticipates the risk of punishment. In spite of this, the people concerned become guarded in their ways. Consider then how a person who has the feeling that he is in the sight of the Almighty every moment of his existence will become guarded in his behaviour.