King Charles's state visit to US to go ahead 'as planned' says Buckingham Palace — BBC News

[0:00] The suspected gunman who tried to storm an event that President Trump was attending in Washington over the weekend will appear in court later today. [0:08] Now these were the chaotic scenes inside the ballroom on Saturday evening local time. [0:13] President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and senior cabinet figures had gathered with hundreds of journalists for the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. [0:22] The suspect has been named as 31-year-old Cole Thomas Allen and he was detained by security agents at the Washington Hilton Hotel. [0:31] Now the acting U.S. Attorney General has said that the President and his officials were the likely targets and our North America Correspondent Peter Bowes reports. [0:45] Pandemonium in a ballroom packed with America's most powerful politicians. [0:50] For the third time in two years a gunman managed to get close to the President. [0:55] Donald Trump was bundled offstage along with his wife Melania and the Vice President J.D. Vance. [1:02] The room was full of journalists for the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. [1:06] They had to hide under the tables as members of the Secret Service stormed in when gunshots were heard near the entrance. [1:15] Surveillance cameras caught the moment the suspect tried to break through security. [1:20] Police say the attacker was carrying two guns as well as knives. [1:23] The authorities have said it's likely Mr. Trump and his officials were the intended victims. [1:30] Mr. President, do you know if you were the target of the gunman? [1:34] I don't know. It sounded to me, I read a manifesto. [1:39] He's radicalized. He was a Christian believer and then he became an anti-Christian and he had a lot of change. [1:47] He's been going through a lot based on what he wrote. [1:51] His brother complained about him and I think reported him to the police and his sister likewise complained about him. [1:56] His family was very concerned. He was probably a pretty sick guy. [2:02] The suspect Cole Thomas Allen traveled to Washington by train from his home almost 3,000 miles away in a suburb of Los Angeles [2:11] where the FBI have been going door to door looking for evidence. [2:15] A computer science graduate describes himself online as a mechanical engineer, game developer and teacher. [2:22] Cole Thomas Allen is accused of assaulting a federal officer and using a firearm during a crime of violence. [2:29] The attack has highlighted what many see as a growing problem in America, politically motivated violence. [2:37] In a country all too familiar with the scourge of gun violence, an attack at the very heart of American government, [2:44] witnessed by many of the nation's most prominent journalists, has sent shockwaves through the capital. [2:50] Peter Bowes, BBC News, Washington. [2:54] Well, Oz Perlman, also known as Oz the Mentalist, is the most televised and most followed mind reader on social media. [3:00] He was attending and entertaining the president and the first lady when those gunshots rang out. [3:07] He spoke to BBC News and told us more about how that situation unfolded. [3:12] The timing of it was just so crazy because I was right in the midst of performing for the first lady [3:17] and for the president and for the press secretary, kind of guessing the name. [3:22] The press secretary is having a baby soon and she said to me, can you guess my baby's name? [3:27] And if you notice in the video, I'm trying to guess how many letters. [3:31] And right at that moment, I rip off a piece of paper and show her the name that she's naming her daughter, [3:35] which she said I can now share with people because it was such a personal moment. [3:39] And at that exact moment, if you watch the video, we notice what's going on in the room [3:44] with all of the commotion and all of the guns coming in. [3:47] Like everybody coming in, the Secret Service, the SWAT teams came in at the same moment [3:51] and we see that something's not right. [3:53] This isn't simply somebody, you know, potentially having a medical condition or a tray falling. [3:58] And we see everyone sitting and going under their tables and understanding [4:01] that there's some sort of violent encounter, something is going on. [4:05] I personally thought at that moment there was about to be a bomb [4:07] because of the way that they were all going towards one table [4:10] and it didn't feel like they were looking for a shooter. [4:13] It felt like they were looking to stop something from happening. [4:16] So I, within moments, assessed and just dropped. [4:20] I just wanted to get down low. [4:22] And in that moment, that's when I saw, because I was down low on all fours, [4:26] I saw the Secret Service bringing the president to the side and having him go down. [4:30] And he was slowly going down. [4:32] It's funny, I just saw that 60 Minutes interview he did for the first time. [4:35] And he was going down kind of slow, so they got on top of him. [4:38] And it was pretty forceful. [4:40] And I, he came down right next to me and we are both on the ground on fours. [4:46] And I turned and it's honestly one of the most surreal images in my life. [4:49] If I didn't live it, I would have thought it was a dream [4:52] where we're about half a meter apart face to face looking at each other on the ground [4:56] when I'm hearing shots and thinking to myself, you know, are we about to die? [5:00] So it was, it was, it was crazy. [5:03] And then about two seconds later, they kind of slowly pulled him up to his feet slightly [5:08] and got him out. And me and two of the other people that were at the dais, [5:13] who I know from backstage, were asking, are they still shooting? [5:16] Are they still shooting? Is there a shooter in the room? [5:18] Like, we didn't want to look up and see what's going on because [5:20] my assumption is they're shooting at us. [5:22] So we army crawled, we crawled out of the room behind the curtains as far as we could [5:27] until we felt like we were safe and then got up and ran and ran to the backstage area. [5:32] Now, Buckingham Palace has confirmed that King Charles and Queen Camilla's state visit [5:38] to the US, which is due to get underway today, will go ahead as planned. [5:43] That follows discussions on both sides of the Atlantic over the past day. [5:47] Our senior royal correspondent, Daniela Relf, reports from Washington. [5:52] Security for this state visit was always going to be tight. [5:57] Events in Washington over the weekend prompted a security review by the UK government [6:02] and Buckingham Palace, and the visit will go ahead pretty much as planned. [6:11] The attempted attack on the White House correspondent's dinner has added a degree of tension [6:15] to an already challenging trip for the King and Queen. [6:20] They arrive with the UK-US relationship under strain to see a president who has been openly [6:27] critical of Britain and its prime minister. [6:30] But for the most senior UK diplomat in America, this visit is a reminder [6:35] of the importance of the alliance. [6:37] What is so enduring about this relationship is that we've had differences. [6:41] Thatcher to Reagan, Roosevelt, with Churchill actually, over how to handle Stalin. [6:48] These are moments in the relationship, but actually it endures because it is so deep. [6:53] Even before the weekend's events, this was always going to be a highly secure [6:57] and highly choreographed state visit. [7:01] The chances for President Trump to get loose-lipped [7:03] in front of the cameras and in front of the King have been limited. [7:08] Thank you very much, everybody. [7:10] Well, it's a great gentleman. [7:12] A great gentleman and a great King. [7:16] There will be few opportunities for this kind of off-the-cuff remark [7:19] from the President this week. [7:21] The schedule has been designed to carefully control [7:24] the moments the King and Donald Trump are together. [7:32] Back in September, the President's visit to the UK passed off without incident. [7:37] But the King and Queen are stepping into this trip during more charged political times. [7:44] The King will not want to provoke or upset his host. [7:49] But he will want to promote the UK and the value of its relationship with the US. [7:54] One royal source said it was a complex trip, but carried with it a spirit of hope. [8:00] Daniela Ralph, BBC News, Washington. [8:06] Well, going back to that attack at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, [8:10] Ola spoke to Bob Ayers, a former CIA intelligence officer, [8:14] and he explained the risks of hosting the event at the Hilton Hotel. [8:17] The problem with having an event in a hotel like the Hilton [8:23] is that you have guests checking in and checking out, [8:26] some checking in a week before the event, [8:28] and there's a constant turnover of guests in the hotel. [8:32] And it's a physical impossibility for the security services [8:35] to check all of the guests and make sure that they're not radicals, [8:40] look at their history, and all of those things before the event takes place. [8:43] So what the primary means of providing security was, [8:48] was to put a cordon around the ballroom itself [8:52] with many different agents in the ballroom, around the ballroom. [8:57] And as we can see, that was very successful, [8:59] and they prevented the man from getting into the ballroom. [9:02] So from that perspective, it was a successful operation. [9:07] Now, there'd be a lot of people asking questions about [9:09] how did the man get weapons into the hotel? [9:12] Well, that's pretty easy. [9:13] You don't have your baggage screened through a magnetometer [9:17] when you check into a hotel. [9:19] So he clearly brought the weapons in with him. [9:21] He was there a few days in advance. [9:23] Then all he did was assemble them and walk downstairs [9:25] to try to get into the ballroom. [9:27] And that's fairly easy to do. [9:29] So would you consider that a blind spot then, [9:31] the fact that there could be a guest several days ahead of an event, [9:35] and that White House Correspondents' Dinner [9:37] has long been held at the Hilton, [9:39] and because of that they were able to attempt what unfolded there on Saturday? [9:45] It's not what I would call a blind spot. [9:48] It's something that you have to put in place security safeguards [9:52] to compensate for the fact that you have a public building [9:55] with ongoing public access into it. [9:58] So there are a lot of situations like that. [10:01] When the president goes to a football game, [10:03] an Army-Navy game, for example, [10:05] you've got 40,000, 50,000 people in the stadium watching the game. [10:10] You can't screen them all. [10:12] You don't know how many people may have been there a week before the event [10:15] and put something under the seats or hidden in a building. [10:18] So what you do is you try to provide the best protection you can [10:21] without trying to outlaw or keep out [10:24] all of the various public people that inhabit events like that [10:29] or go and stay in a hotel. [10:31] The Hilton wouldn't have this event take place [10:33] if they had to shut the hotel down for a week before the event took place [10:37] and not let anybody check in. [10:38] As we know, there were a back and forth of discussions [10:42] on both sides of the Atlantic yesterday [10:44] about what this would mean for the visit of the king and queen, [10:49] the state visit. [10:50] What kind of things would they have to take into consideration [10:53] in light of what unfolded in Washington? [10:57] Things they would take into consideration would take place [11:01] regardless of what just happened in Washington. [11:04] By that I mean when the king arrives in the states, [11:07] the king will be accompanied by his own close protection services. [11:11] The U.S. will be providing security through the Secret Service. [11:16] There will be state and D.C. police on roadways going back and forth [11:22] between the airport that the king lands in [11:24] and the British embassy where he's staying in town [11:28] and from the embassy to the White House. [11:30] So there will be a lot of people involved in this. [11:33] The complexity is that now we have in this mix of people [11:38] that are trying to coordinate their activities [11:40] another security force, i.e. the close protection service [11:44] of the king coming in. [11:45] Now they will do all sorts of ways to compensate [11:48] to make sure that the British and the Americans [11:51] are well integrated together, [11:53] but they don't have the same amount of time [11:56] to practice together that they would normally have [11:59] if they were on their own. [11:59] So, first of all, let'sävare to the prize [12:02] and