U.S. CAPITOL SHOOTING

Inouye aide from isles
was leading a Capitol tour
as gunfire broke out

By Pete Pichaske
Phillips News Service

WASHINGTON -- Jason Wong, 25, was a bit player in history Friday -- although it was hardly the history he would have expected when he came to Washington from Honolulu eight months ago.

Wong, a staff assistant to Sen. Daniel Inouye, was leading a tour around Statuary Hall in the Capitol Friday afternoon when the shootings that rocked Washington erupted, leaving two Capitol Police officers dead.

Statuary Hall is one floor above where the shootings took place. And while Wong did not see any of the action, he heard plenty.

"We heard the first round of gunfire, about four or five shots, and we just kind of looked at each other," Wong recalled today.

"We had no idea what it was. We thought maybe something was rolling down the stairs. We couldn't conceive that it was gunfire," he said.

"Then maybe 15-20 seconds later, we heard the second round, two or three shots, and we knew. It echoed through the building."

Within moments, police and Secret Service agents were running through the hall, their pistols drawn.

The police ordered Wong and the other visitors to the side of the room, then herded them downstairs to a safe area on the first floor.

Wong said the foreign tourists in Capitol seemed to be the first to realize the danger.

"As soon as they heard the shots, they were running around, hiding. They knew right away what it was," he said.

"We realized it was serious" when the police showed up, he said.

The incident "was scary but not really life-threatening," he added. "It was OK."

In fact, Wong was back in the Capitol this morning, leading another tour through the building.

"It felt different. Part of the area is still closed off," he said.

Despite the wild incident, Wong has no qualms about working on Capitol Hill or returning to the scene of the gunfire.

"Security has always been pretty tight, so I don't feel nervous to walk around the Capitol," he said. "I think it's absolutely safe."

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Cayetano doesn’t want to
be cloaked in security

By Mike Yuen
Star-Bulletin

Even if federal experts were to recommend that barriers be placed around the governor's mansion and that metal detectors and video surveillance cameras be installed, those suggestions won't go far.

Gov. Ben Cayetano said he'd nix such ideas, since he believes that Hawaii's chief executive should not live in a siege-like environment. There's already sufficient security for Washington Place and himself, Cayetano said. Since he became governor, he hasn't faced any significant security threat, Cayetano said.

"If people want to get you, they'll get you," added Cayetano, who said he did receive a death threat when he was chairman of the Senate money committee in the early 1980s. Cayetano said he has instructed his armed, plainclothes bodyguards not to be too close to him when he's in public so isle residents won't be afraid of approaching him.

Public figures have to accept the possibility that events like last week's gun battle at the U.S. Capitol can happen, Cayetano said. But such rare occurances should not force public leaders into withdrawing into a protective cocoon that cuts them off from the public, he insisted.

A few hours after the shooting Friday, Hawaii Public Safety Director Keith Kaneshiro said the U.S. Secret Service will be sending a team to Honolulu later this year to assess security at the governor's mansion and the state Capitol.

Kaneshiro, who believes that there should be tighter security at both locations, said he had persuaded Secret Service officials based here to agree to send the team weeks before the U.S. Capitol shootout.

Cayetano said he is not too concerned with his own safety. "I'm more concerned about my family," he said. "I'm fatalistic about such things. If it's my time to go, it's my time."

Cayetano usually is accompanied by two armed plainclothes bodyguards, one of whom serves as his driver. First lady Vicky Cayetano and Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono also have armed escorts.

Currently, 25 deputies provide around-the-clock security for Washington Place, the first family and Hirono. Another 33 are assigned to the state Capitol.

Washington Place is on South Beretania Street, across from the state Capitol. The mansion has iron gates at its entrances. An express bus stop is 20 yards from the mansion's front entrance.

In 1995, a 35-year-old Pearl City man who later said he was trying to escape from two men living under his car, rammed his brown Ford Bronco through the padlocked gates on the Diamond Head side of Washington Place.

He drove through the mansion's U-shaped driveway, past the mansion's front door, and then crashed through the Ewa-side gate to get back onto the street.

Cayetano said he and the first lady occasionally receive threatening letters, which are turned over to the security detail. One individual who penned an anonymous threat to the first lady was traced. "He's now on a (watch) list," Cayetano said.