Survey Faults Security at Federal Buildings : Safety: Severe shortcomings found in more than half of nation’s facilities. Clinton orders immediate upgrading to meet minimum standards.

Two months after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Justice Department on Wednesday reported severe shortcomings in security at more than half of the nation’s 1,300 federal buildings.

A survey conducted by the U.S. Marshal’s Service and the General Services Administration found “no security of any type” at one or more entrances of 680 buildings housing 750,000 federal employees. The study recommended a set of minimum standards for improving security at entrances, in underground parking garages and nearby parking areas, as well as in handling mail and incoming packages.

“We owe the people who work in our buildings, and the people who come to do business, as much safety as we can prudently provide,” Deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie S. Gorelick said in releasing the study.

She said the recommendations would “strike a balance” between assuring more safety while still granting public access to the buildings.

President Clinton, responding to the report, promptly directed that “all executive departments and agencies shall immediately begin upgrading their facilities to meet the recommended minimum-security standards, to the extent possible within currently available funding.”

The report called for 52 minimum-security standards for larger buildings, some of which most buildings already meet but which are to be adapted to each site as necessary. They include new parking restrictions within buildings and in adjacent areas, use of X-rays and metal detectors at entrances for visitors and packages, erection of physical barriers, deployment of roving patrols outside the buildings and closed-circuit television monitoring.

The study also recommended installation of shatterproof glass on lower floors, better alarm systems, locating new buildings farther from streets, grouping agencies with similar security needs and tougher standards for visitor and employee identification.

In a two-page memorandum, Clinton ordered the GSA, the Office of Management and Budget and agencies occupying the largest federal buildings to identify funding for improvements by Oct. 15.

Gorelick said “retrofitting” existing buildings with all the improvements could cost up to $1 billion, but that the expense might be spread out over several years. A committee composed of federal agency officials housed at each site will recommend specific steps, she said. The cost of new building construction might be increased by 5% to 6% to accommodate the recommended measures.

Officials said the April 19 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people, is part of a security threat unheard of when many of the nation’s larger federal buildings were constructed. Principal security measures at that time were designed to thwart thefts of property, assaults against federal workers or unauthorized access to the buildings, they said.

Now, with the threat of domestic terrorism, “we feel that most buildings and their surroundings have not reflected the new security environment,” Gorelick told reporters.

“We are trying to respond to that environment,” she said, adding that in the last two months, 200 federal buildings have received bomb threats.

The security survey, ordered by Clinton immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing, focused most heavily on so-called Level IV buildings, the largest multistory federal structures that often house several agencies. But shortcomings were discovered at each level. In the slightly smaller Level III buildings, for example, only 25% were found to have adequate visitor and employee security.

The study did not cover the White House or the Capitol, where officials tightened security in the wake of the Oklahoma City attack. Nor did the survey focus on already highly secure Level V buildings, such as the Pentagon and the CIA headquarters, where national security matters have long demanded the strictest measures.