WASHINGTON, July 7: Explosions in London on Thursday also tested Washington’s new security management team set up by President Bush. As soon as they learned about the explosions, the new working group called ‘Interagency Incident Management Group’ went into action. Since President Bush was at the G8 summit in Scotland, the team alerted Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr Bush was also briefed on an on-going basis by Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

The new group, which includes the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA and all national intelligence agencies, went into an emergency session to determine if there was a threat to the United States.

Director National Intelligence John Negroponte came to the White House and headed towards the “situation room.”

Mr Bush then got on a conference call with all his national security and homeland security advisers to make sure that security was ramped up wherever necessary in the US.

Local officials were busy, as well. Overnight, every metropolitan police officer in Washington was kept on double overtime to increase the visibility of security throughout the city.

And on the metro system in particular, security was vastly ramped up, with some officers, machine guns visible, being posted at major metro stops and every available bomb-sniffing dog being put on duty in the metro system.

More than one million people use the subway daily, and this is the height of the tourist season in the US capital.