For less than $150 you can buy all the parts necessary to construct an improvised explosive device that can be carried undetected into virtually any federal building in the country, thanks in large part to security weaknesses with the Federal Protective Service, the agency charged with protecting those buildings.
So said the Government Accountability Office, which released preliminary findings Wednesday in testimony to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. And being able to sneak in bombs was only the beginning of the problems GAO found.
GAO investigators were able to carry the disassembled IED into all ten of the high security federal buildings where they conducted covert testing, assembling the devices in the nearest restroom once inside, and were then able to walk around the buildings freely, including into the offices of a U.S. Representative and Senator.
The IED was of the same design GAO used in 2007 to penetrate security at 19 different airports. As with the federal building tests, TSA screeners never detected any of the bomb components.
Along with its testimony, GAO released a video showing one of its investigators entering a federal building, along with the IEDs being detonated at a test site.
Bomb experts say there is not that much that can be done today to detect explosive devices of this type.
Again, “while better training will help — if screeners know the types of liquid IED components and materials to look for — that will help, but the only definitive way of detecting liquid explosives is the detection equipment that’s been designed to spot these types of explosives,” a bomb authority at the Department of Homeland Security told HSToday.us.
Training obviously needs to be improved, the official said, but in order to stay “on top” of terrorists’ ability to change their bomb-making designs, FPS screeners also will need to have a program that provides for a steady stream of threat analysis intelligence and information made available to them at all times.
“Otherwise, as we’ve found at airports, liquid explosives are going to be sneaked past screeners,” the official said. “The alternative is installation of liquid explosives detection equipment, but they cost money.” — Homeland Security Today
GAO’s testimony identified further problems with the Federal Protective Service’s use of 13,000 contract guards to protect most federal buildings. The majority of contract guards’ training and certifications had lapsed or was not documented, GAO said, and in one case a contractor was caught taking bribes to falsify the certifications.
GAO also noted that FPS conducted inspections inconsistently, and rarely on nights and weekends. When it has conducted inspections, it found guards not complying with post orders. One FPS guard was caught sleeping at his post after taking the prescription painkiller Percocet. Another night guard was illegally using government computers to manage his own for-profit adult website.
It just keeps getting better. One FPS guard attached an unapproved motion sensor outside the garage he was supposed to be guarding to alert him whenever somebody was coming toward his post. Another accidentally fired his sidearm while practicing drawing it in the restroom. Apparently he’d never heard of firing ranges or gun safety training.
In yet another incident, a baby was accidentally x-rayed when the guard left the x-ray machine and a safety feature of the x-ray machine, to prevent the conveyor belt from running while the guard was not present, had been disabled. The guard was fired, but it’s not known whether the x-ray machine was fixed.
FPS has also conducted its own internal testing, GAO noted, with less than flattering results. In one such test, a fake bomb was brought into an FPS loading dock. The fake bomb was then somehow misplaced. A guard then picked it up and took it to the mail room, opened it, and panicked when he saw the fake bomb. Intrusion testing in that region was canceled after that incident.
“FPS has recently taken some actions including increasing the frequency of intrusion testing and guard inspections,” the testimony noted. “However, implementing these changes may be challenging, according to FPS.”
“In this post-9/11 world that we’re now living in, I cannot fathom how security breaches of this magnitude were allowed to occur,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, ranking member of the committee.
Chairman Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., said that in all his years of reading GAO reports, this one represented “about the broadest indictment of an agency in the federal government I’ve heard.” — Government Executive
Government Executive also notes that Congress did not want to wait for GAO’s full report, due in September, before taking action, and urged FPS director Gary Schenkel to ask Congress for whatever it needs to remedy the problems.
Congress is also considering moving FPS from within Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the National Protection and Programs Directorate, which most observers say is a much better fit for the agency.
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8 Comments
I am sorry, but this thing of keeping dangerous weapons out of federal buildings; this is going to basically be close to impossible. This is especially true when you consider having a bunch of people smuggle in the bomb in pieces.
The real answer is not to give in to the terrorists, and make the results of terrorist incidents just the inverse of what they want. I suspect that Bush’s doing this in the case of 9/11 is one of the main reasons we have not seen another 9/11. Of course Europe does exactly what they want so there have been several small scale 9/11s in Europe. After all they are successful there. Obama then wants us to be more like Europe.
Fireworks at budget time *yawn*. Next year and tens of billions later, same story.
All of which is interesting.
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However, what’s NOT even being broached is just this: Why none of these extra-precautionary measures would even be needed were the U.S. to simply get out of the rest of the world’s face, off their backs and out of their countries.
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Why is no one attacking Mexico, or Sweden, or Norway, or Finland, or Switzerland, or … You get my drift: Those nations DO NOT have massive armies swarming around doing the bidding of the international bankers, instigating trouble and fomenting intercultural hatred.
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This whole bit of TSA/DHS/DIA/CIA/NSA/FBI and all the other ASSorted three letter agencies in just a convenient machination to shroud the real problem in so many layers of secrecy that its a wonder ever the inveterate idiots can figure it all out.
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The problem, dear readers, isn’t the contrived enemy we’re lead to believe. Rather it’s US, for believing every little lie, every big lie, and every contrived bit of propaganda aimed at the average uniformed American dullard who imbibes the insane crap being fed them on the TEE VEE and talk radio, and not a few web sites purposely set up to further confuse matters.
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It’s getting bloody damned hard anymore to figure out just WHO the disinformation artists are, what with ~some~ truth being revealed but folded in with such deceptions as to make one wonder whether it’s worth attempting to figuring out anymore.
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And yes: That’s purposeful. It’s intended to discourage the honest digger from actually finding out the truth.
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This is what I’ve come to understand: Whenever a story breaks regarding something EVERYONE SHOULD know about, IMMEDIATELY the MSM pops up with some line of COMPLETE BS of a ‘news story’ about one or another actor, entertainer, politician, or even some completely irrelevant event blown so far out of proportion that it occupies the media for days —if not weeks— at a time, until the event which everyone SHOULD have been digging into becomes so low-level that nobody really cares anymore about it.
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So then, this whole shebang over the FPS getting caught with its pants down is likely something of a stalking-horse (look it up) intended to prevent the revelation of something far more damaging than some ~security faux pas~ on the part of otherwise ill-trained and ill-managed employees.
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For all we know, because the FPS is MADE to do such a lousy job that the excuse will be to make EVERYONE who visits —or even gets sufficiently close to— federal buildings and other federally managed assets, will be made to strip down nude for a close inspection.
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It will all be for our ’safety and security.’ Everyone will of course go along.
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In summary: Bread and circuses to keep the hoi polloi entertained while the machinators machinate.
Hey highlander have you seen the recent news from Mexico? Want to take this one back.
One could also find interesting and on target news from the other nations you mentioned. The fact you don’t know this says much about your thought processes.
The remarks were:
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Ray | July 14, 2009 8:51 am
Hey highlander have you seen the recent news from Mexico? Want to take this one back.
One could also find interesting and on target news from the other nations you mentioned. The fact you don’t know this says much about your thought processes.
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Would you care to ‘recompose’ that missive, with a wee bit more ‘clarity?’
And after all this, FPS gets rewarded with a bigger budget so that they can screw up on an even larger scale.
They can put in lockers in the buildings for visitors to place thier stuff under the watch of cameras being monitered by more than one person. They can conduct the normal search they do. Don’t you think this may solve the problem?
Now they are all trying to sterilize us Americans in England I was told with some giddy up bullshit. Don’t fall for it.
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