(Practice) Drama Breaks Out in Washington Area for Agencies Like Secret Service, FBI and U.S. Marshals

The drama around around Washington, thanks goodness, in these instances is not real. It’s just practice for the different federal agencies. You can never be too ready. You can never practice too much.

By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — Five minutes before his job interview, John Fisher parks at Ace Fire Extinguisher Services in College Park, his window open and his stomach jumpy. He is nibbling on spoonfuls of cottage cheese when shouts erupt from the car next to his.

“Gun! He has a gun!” a man with a Secret Service earpiece yells, riffling through the glove compartment.

“It’s my brother’s gun!” a man in a black ski cap growls. “I didn’t know I had a gun!”

Fisher’s eyes pop. He slides down in his seat, cranking his window closed.

“Hands behind your back,” says the man from the Secret Service, ratcheting his handcuffs.

“Man,” says Fisher, wiping a spray of white flecks from his chin. He crosses the street to his job interview. “Did I pull up to the wrong spot.”

Unwittingly, Fisher had driven into the climactic scene in a secret world of shadow theatrics. The man in the ski cap is a stage actor; the agent with the earpiece is a Secret Service recruit.

Every day, as Washingtonians go about their overt lives, the FBI, CIA, Capitol Police, Secret Service and U.S. Marshals Service stage covert dramas in and around the capital where they train.