Update to this story.
The description of the incredible waste on this one trip is sickening. 445 agents needed to defend Dear Leader for a one week trip? Protecting from cheetahs?
Via Telegraph:
The president and first lady will end a week-long, three-nation tour of Africa in Tanzania, but austerity measures at the Secret Service mean that they will not head into the wilderness, as was first planned.
US tax-payers will pay between £40 million and £65 million for the trip, only Mr Obama’s second to the continent of his father’s birth since he became president, leaked documents showed.
Their scheduled afternoon’s visit to a Tanzanian wildlife sanctuary was judged to be too expensive and difficult to arrange, The Washington Post reported.
It was dropped in favour of a tour of Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, during the Obamas’ visit to South Africa before they fly to Tanzania.
The safari “would have required the president’s special counter-assault team to carry sniper rifles with high-calibre rounds that could neutralise cheetahs, lions or other animals if they became a threat,” the newspaper said, citing a leaked Secret Service internal planning document.