Eyewitness confirmed bomb squad drill before the Boston Marathon began.

Article first appeared in Story Leak. com:

In an exclusive interview, I just finished speaking with key Boston Marathon eyewitness and running participant Alastair Stevenson, who has confirmed to me that drills were taking place the morning of the Boston Marathon complete with bomb squads and rooftop snipers. 

Alastair’s initial statements towards the Alabama news publication regarding the Boston Marathon training exercises ignited a firestorm within the alternative media, despite being only around two sentences in length. Now, Alastair has been given a forum to voice the entirety of what he saw as a participant and coach during the Boston Marathon — something that Alastair says he has never seen before despite participating in much larger races around the world.

As you can watch in the video above, Alastair detailed what went on before the race began:

“At the start at the event, at the Athlete’s Village, there were people on the roof looking down onto the Village at the start. There were dogs with their handlers going around sniffing for explosives, and we were told on a loud announcement that we shouldn’t be concerned and that it was just a drill. And maybe it was just a drill, but I’ve never seen anything like that — not at any marathon that I’ve ever been to. You know, that just concerned me that that’s the only race that I’ve seen in my life where they had dogs sniffing for explosions, and that’s the only place where there had been explosions.”

And Alastair is speaking from serious experience. As a veteran of marathons and a coach at the University of Mobile in Alabama, Alastair knows about how marathons traditionally go down. The interview with Alastair clarifies his former statements regarding the presence of bomb squads and bomb sniffing dogs that went mega viral on the web, and also serves to better understand what the reality is behind this situation. As Alastair details, there was definitely a drill taking place the morning of the marathon, and it appears police were likely aware of a dangerous threat that required a large degree of action to counteract.
http://www.storyleak.com/boston-marathon-eyewitness-confirms-drill/ 

Dry-run disaster exercises a regular occurrence at the Boston Marathon:

A 2008 article from the Boston Globe  explains the value of holding disaster drills during massive events like the Boston Marathon. The article by Arnold Bogis titled, “Marathon as a dry-run disaster” states ”today thousands of runners and hundreds of thousands of spectators are unwittingly taking part in a planned disaster.” While that may sound dangerous, Bogis assures us that the people are not only safe but they are actually making the, “citizens of Greater Boston safer in case of a natural catastrophe or terrorist attack.”

As a former policy analyst for a Department of Homeland Security grant at George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute, Bogis goes on to explain that organizers see these, “annual gatherings of hundreds of thousands of people” as perfect opportunities to, “evaluate new technologies” and “exercise disaster plans.” He states that to successfully manage the marathon, public safety agencies, “must have relationships…with a diverse set of private organizations” so that, “When a real disaster strikes, these contacts can be called upon to lend needed supplies and other assistance.” He finishes the article by saying:

“Massachusetts is better prepared for a real disaster because every Patriot’s Day and Fourth of July is treated as a ‘disaster.’ Instead of constant warnings about the inevitability of another terrorist attack or natural catastrophe, the public would be better served if this type of local homeland security innovation were promoted and adopted elsewhere.”

Every Patriot’s Day is treated as a disaster? Is there any reason to believe that this wasn’t the case this year? Arnold Bogis updates us in a Homeland Security blog in April of 2011 with an article titled, “The Boston Marathon: In preparedness, the old is new again.” His blog post outlines, “similarities between what (Presidential Policy Directive 8 ) calls for and the actions of Boston officials in preparing for and running the Boston Marathon as a ‘planned disaster.’” He explains:

“…today, in addition to being Tax Day, is Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts and the day on which the Boston Marathon is run. Why is this relevant to homeland security? As I wrote in and op-ed in the Boston Globe a few years ago: Today thousands of runners and hundreds of spectators are unwittingly taking part in a planned disaster.”

A recent ESPN article adds more information, reporting that, “… in recent years the Boston Marathon has become a training ground for state and local officials to develop their response to large-scale catastrophe, whether man-made (like terrorism) or natural (like an extreme heat wave.)” It goes on to say that the 2008 marathon turned into, “something of an anti-cataclysm laboratory as local agencies cooperated with tech companies and research facilities, bringing an impressive array of hardware to defend the event from disaster.”

According to the article, similar efforts were made at the 2009 marathon when, “the City of Boston first used an ‘enhanced situational awareness’ system developed by Raytheon.” The project named Athena, “integrated video, mapping and tracking software across the city’s police, fire and port security departments into one set of information that any public safety official could use.”

The dry-run disaster training continued into 2012 when the marathon, “deployed the Next-Generation Incident Command System…” The NICS is a, “sort of real-time virtual whiteboard developed by the Lincoln Laboratory, a federally funded research center at MIT.”

This presentation put out by Richard Serino, the former Chief of Boston EMS, describes some of the aspects of these, “planned disasters.” It is titled, “Marathons – A Tale of Two Cities and the Running of a Planned Mass Casualty Event.” The document itself is not dated but the URL includes the year 2008. Under the section titled, “Collaboration” it recommends utilizing, “special events and drills as opportunities to plan and train together…” The subsection titled, “Working with the Media,” states, “Their mission is to get a story. Building a longstanding relationship with journalists and reporters ensures that they get the right story and that they serve as a resource when needed.” Serino was appointed by Obama as FEMA’s Deputy Administrator in 2009.

Another presentation by Serino, dated, “sept 2007″ in the URL , includes the Boston Marathon being used in, “Planned Disasters,” under the section, “Special Operations.”

So while the public thinks of the Boston Marathon as a yearly sporting event, the government views it as a yearly disaster planning/counter terrorism exercise. Since these exercises have been carried out from at least 2007 to 2012, it seems perfectly reasonable to believe they would have had similar drills this year.  http://victorypost.com/?p=1040