MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Protecting an American president on the move is a gargantuan challenge in the best of times. As President Trump arrives here in the U.K. tonight, both British and American security teams are geared up to protect a man who survived two assassination attempts last year and whose close friend and political ally, Charlie Kirk, was shot and killed while speaking at an outdoor event last week. So what all's involved in a security operation of this scale? Well, let's put that question to Nick Aldworth, former U.K. national coordinator for counterterrorism. He is with me now here in our London bureau at BBC headquarters. Nick Aldworth, welcome.
NICK ALDWORTH: Good evening.
KELLY: Let's dive in with Windsor, which is where King Charles will host President Trump and the first lady tomorrow. The president has been promised a carriage procession - open carriage. Dive in right there. If you were overseeing this security, what would go through your mind when you hear this?
ALDWORTH: Well, I used to look after the late queen's mother, who lived probably half a mile away from the castle, inside Windsor Great Park. So Windsor Great Park is a big, open expanse. It's not an area that you could easily protect. You certainly have lots of long-range threats, both on the ground and from the air. And so it is my understanding that while President Trump will get his carriage procession, it won't be in the public domain - that I'm told they are currently erecting, or have erected barriers around. So a space that is...
KELLY: Yeah, I'm told there are big, white barriers that are being used for the (inaudible)...
ALDWORTH: Yeah, and they'll be there...
KELLY: ...To block people's views.
ALDWORTH: They'll be there to block people's views. And, of course, from a security perspective, it blocks two sorts of views. It blocks protesters looking in and, of course, the occupants of Windsor Castle seeing protesters on the outside, but it does also provide some protection from view from potential threats, particularly from...
KELLY: You still have airspace above. What do you do about that?
ALDWORTH: Yeah. So the airspace above is actually already controlled airspace 'cause it's part of the flight path into Heathrow. You actually fly over the castle on your way in. But there will have been additional measures put in. There will have been an exclusion zone for drones, and we now also have the ability to remove those from the air as well.
KELLY: So that's on the high-tech end of things.
ALDWORTH: Yeah.
KELLY: What do - go back to things like big, white barriers. What value is there to very low-tech, very simple things, but they may make a huge difference when you're planning something like this?
ALDWORTH: Yeah, low tech makes a huge difference. And in fact, you know, the starting point for this event has been that it won't be a public event, and you can have little greater security than that, to be honest with you. So keeping a target from view prevents a number of attack methodologies. It prevents things being thrown. It prevents firearms. And it also prevents anybody from conducting hostile reconnaissance - so seeing where he might be going, where they could possibly launch, as I say, a drone attack.
KELLY: Nick Aldworth, last time you and I spoke was three years ago, and that was on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth's funeral, when you had all kinds of other monarchs and quite a few presidents, prime ministers - a whole lot of people all converging on Westminster Abbey in London all at once. On a certain level, does one American president present a simpler task?
ALDWORTH: No, it doesn't. It seems to always present a more complicated task. So I oversaw two presidential visits - Clinton and Obama - and I saw the lead-up to the Trump - the first Trump state visit. The complexity and the demands, I would say, that are made on British security by the American protective services are greater than those made by other nations as a rule.
KELLY: Like what?
ALDWORTH: Well, I'll never forget doing the Clinton visit, and I thought I'd got everything nailed. You know, I'd got dogs. I'd got horses. I'd got technical systems all around the estate. I'd got snipers. I had everything I could possibly imagine. And I'm walking around with my Secret Service counterpart, hopefully reassuring him that things were OK, and he said, what about aerial infiltration? - by which he meant a parachutist. And I've got to be honest with you, that was not a threat that we'd necessarily considered.
KELLY: You had not planned for...
ALDWORTH: We had...
KELLY: ...Someone literally parachuting in.
ALDWORTH: Exactly. But thankfully, some quick thinking and quick talking put that one to bed fairly quickly.
KELLY: Nick Aldworth, thank you.
ALDWORTH: You're welcome.
KELLY: He's former national coordinator for counterterrorism here in the U.K., also founder and director of Risk to Resolution Limited. That is a private security consultancy. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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