After reading your post, I think I've been using the term "anarchists" too broadly... I think what we saw on the streets and gathered in those HUGE blocks of humanity at security checkpoints were probably just the old-fashioned, run-of-the-mill "leftists" (anti-Bush, anti-war protestors) rather than anarchists. They had "Bush - Worst President Ever" and other signs, some more vile than that, but I don't remember seeing a big group completely dressed in black clothing as you've described. They may have been there, I don't remember. I mostly remember a pretty mixed group of people, most of them holding some sort of anti-Bush sign.
I muttered a comment or two a couple of times to these leftists, but it was mostly in passing them on the streets. No one may have heard me, for all I know. We witnessed no violence of any kind.
My questions to the one particular police officer were polite. We really just stopped there for a couple of seconds to try to make a decision what to do next, once we saw that familiar huge block of protestors gathered "in line". I think this police officer had probably HAD it by the time we got there, and he didn't look too crazy about standing out in the cold either. Oh well...
I'm wondering if a complaint to the police is not in order. Not so much about the officers comments as he may have been under great stress. More of a complaint about not controlling the anarchists and figuring out a security gate system that would not take so long or subject decent law-abiding citizens to mixing with the skunks of the left, people who came to protest and disrupt.
The security gate "system" was ridiculous, in our opinions, but what do we know about these things. Many Bush supporters whom we met on the Metro, in the streets, etc. who tried to attend the Inaugural activities also complained - some bitterly - that "it wasn't organized very well", etc. I'm not interested in filing any complaint to the police. I understand that - of course - heavy security was necessary. It just seemed to us that the sheer numbers of protestors standing in those blocks (and they seemed to be segregated from the "normal" Bush-supporting crowd) at every gate made it impossible for us to even get to the security tents. We were told we would have to get in line with/in back of the "protestors", and wait to go thru the security checkpoint. Since we were in back of hundreds (thousands?) of people, we could see that this would take hours, so we gave up and took the Metro back to our hotel.
I don't remember exactly what time we were at the 7th (and Penn. Ave.?) checkpoint. I'll check with zelig and let you know sometime tomorrow (Monday). He'll remember.
Our main reason for coming to DC last Wed-Fri was to attend the FR Ball. We're not really all that disappointed that we couldn't get into the Inaugural swearing-in ceremony with our tickets. We arrived near the Capitol probably too late as it was (our hotel was pretty far from DC - we had a long Metro ride in).
I felt really sorry for the people we met who traveled even further than we did (from CT) whose primary objective was to attend the swearing-in ceremony and/or the parade (with tickets in hand), and were pretty much scared away by these leftists/protestors who appeared to block every security gate and weren't able to do so.
The intersection has four "segments", if you will. South 7th, North 7th, East D and West D. The security checkpoint was at South D. I saw the anarchist flags and the snowballs flying from West D. Most pedestrian traffic was coming from the direction of the capitol, East D. The motorcycle cops came in from North 7th. My wife and I were square in the middle of the intersection and had to get our of the way of the first police car to arrive.
I could see over the tops of the heads of the crowd and it wasn't only snowballs that the anarchists were throwing - I saw one of those metal crowd barriers upended, as well as broken pieces of PVC piping that was jagged on one end being thrown.
My wife and I decided that the crowd was too large to get through the checkpoint (it was around 1:30 or so) so we headed up North 7th to E street, where we came across a couple of dozen police donning their riot gear. It was at that point that we decided to head back to our hotel.