It's Monday, April 27, 2006.

I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

History often records how close we have come to disaster.

And that's exactly what happened on Saturday night. The scene at the

Washington Hilton looked more like a motion picture, but it wasn't. It wasn't a motion picture. It was

reality. And the reality was that someone intending to assassinate federal officials,

including probably the president of the United States, he forced his way running 60 feet past a security barrier

that was all that was set in place, basically to stop him from going into the dining room,

where there were large numbers of journalists and, of course, political leaders gathered in one place

for the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner, often referred to as the Washington White House Press

Dinner. And that's exactly what the affair was. And the press were all over the place.

It was a very interesting development, by the way, in terms of how the press responds to covering a

story in which they themselves have become a part of the story,

certainly witnesses to the story. The big story leapt into the American attention nationwide

because of the fact that this was being streamed live. This was a live broadcast,

and Americans were seeing unfolding basically in real time.

Millions, of course, saw it just a matter of moments later.

They saw the president and the vice president of the United States,

basically forced onto the ground and then taken out of the building.

They saw Secret Service and other major security, federal security personnel,

enter with guns pointed and clearly at maximum security deployment. And that's exactly what was called for on Saturday night. This man had

entered into the convention center where this vast banquet was being held there at the Washington

...