WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 - Each day seems to bring a new reminder that this is a city under siege by an invisible enemy.
On Monday, following a terrorism alert naming financial institutions as targets, parking spaces were eliminated around the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. By Tuesday, the Capitol Police had closed a street and established 14 traffic checkpoints around Capitol Hill.
By Thursday, the police were inspecting vehicles near the Federal Reserve. And by Friday, the Secret Service was planning to close a sidewalk outside the Treasury Department. More is to come, security officials said.
On its own, each measure might have seemed inconsequential. But together, they have brought an explosion of denunciations from local officials fed up with the growing maze of concrete barriers and guard posts around their city. They say the latest round of fortifications seems excessive, intrusive and even harmful.
"It's an overreaction," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city's nonvoting delegate in Congress, who contends street closings have created havoc for emergency vehicles and choked off the city's evacuation routes.
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But on another level, many here are increasingly worried that the city is changing in fundamental ways. Institutions that were once beacons of open government, particularly the Capitol, have imposed stricter security than at any time in history, including when Washington was under imminent threat of invasion during the War of 1812 and the Civil War, historians said. Even monuments and museums are being encircled by protective walls.
http://nytimes.com/2004/08/07/politics/07capital.html?hp