VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN IN ASPEN FOR PRIVATE EVENT
Curtis Wackerle, Aspen Daily News Staff Writer
Vice President Joe Biden is in town through this evening for an event sponsored by the private equity firm Forstmann Little & Co.
The invite-only gathering is an annual autumn affair in Aspen, and typically attracts big names from the worlds of politics, business and entertainment for off-the-record discussions. A sitting vice president would be one of the bigger gets in recent memory.
Biden’s 40-car motorcade sped to Aspen after landing at the Eagle County Regional Airport, arriving in town around 8:30 p.m. Law enforcement personnel escorting the motorcade blocked every intersection as the caravan passed along the 70-mile route using Interstate 70 and Highway 82. The operation, which a Pitkin County sheriff’s deputy said went smoothly, will be repeated in reverse this evening when Biden leaves town.
“I’ve never got here that fast from Vail before,” said a local who was hired to drive one of the cars and asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the press.
The area around the St. Regis hotel was crawling with Secret Service agents, local cops and private security shortly after the vice president’s arrival. Around 9:45 p.m., a second motorcade left the St. Regis for the Hotel Jerome.
Biden is said to be participating in a discussion with noted interviewer Charlie Rose today.
The Forstmann Little conference has been held in Aspen since the 1990s.
Biden landed in Eagle because his plane — typically a modified Boeing 757 known as Air Force Two — is too large to land at Aspen’s Sardy Field.
According to Biden’s public schedule at the www.whitehouse.gov website, Biden held a roundtable discussion on domestic violence in Denver at 3:30 p.m. on Friday. His schedule listed no public events through the rest of the weekend.
Biden’s most recent known visit to the Aspen area was for a ski vacation over President’s Day weekend in February 2013, when he was here along with first lady Michelle Obama. In March 2011, Biden made a surprise visit to the National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic in Snowmass Village, where he spoke to over 400 clinic attendees.
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