1.8 million people attended Obama's inauguration

Washington, Jan.22 (ANI): 1.8 million people attended President Barack Obama's inauguration as America's head of state, an official estimate has revealed.

According to the Washington Post, D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's office cited the 1.8 million figure, which eclipses the 1.2 million official tally from the 1965 inauguration of Lyndon Johnson.Mafara Hobson, Fenty's spokeswoman, described the count as a "collective decision" reached Tuesday inside the city's joint operations command center, where dozens of local and federal agencies were helping to coordinate security and traffic management.

She said it was based on information collected by several cameras and individuals on the ground.

"The 1.8 [million] was communicated out to the mayor's office and other agencies," she said.

The National Park Service, which has been barred from making estimates since its count of 400,000 at the 1995 Million Man March drew the threat of a lawsuit, issued a statement yesterday saying it would "not contest" the 1.8 million estimate.

"We do firmly believe that the crowd that was there was the biggest crowd ever, and I think that's what people are most interested in," Park Service spokesman David Barna said.

"We don't have anything that suggests there was ever a bigger crowd," he added.But two separate experts said after viewing a satellite image of the event that the estimate was inflated. They put the number as low as 750,000 or 1.27 million, excluding the parade route and city streets.(ANI)