Security? What Security?

The U.S. government, properly concerned about the security of its missions overseas, must also start paying urgent attention to the security of its facilities at home. It is an inexcusable mess.

The House Judiciary subcommittee on crime asked the General Accounting Office to test security at a number of federal sites. The subcommittee was especially concerned about whether people carrying stolen or bogus law enforcement credentials, which apparently are easily obtainable over the Internet, could gain entry. What undercover investigators found is that breaching security was almost laughably easy.

According to the GAO’s report, “We were able to enter 18 of the 21 sites on the first attempt. The remaining three required a second visit.”

Sixteen of the sites housed the offices of Cabinet secretaries or agency heads. At 15 of them “agents were able to stand immediately outside the suites of the Cabinet secretary or agency head.” Among the targeted installations were the departments of Justice, State and Defense, the CIA and Washington’s Reagan National Airport and the Orlando, Fla., international airport.

The agents were armed and in some cases carried briefcases that weren’t inspected. In every case they announced themselves as visiting law enforcement officers and presented fake credentials. The credentials were never challenged by on-site security personnel. In one case the agents were allowed to park a van in the courtyard of the Justice Department. No one looked in the vehicle to see what it might contain.

The 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing and the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 supposedly led to tighter security measures at government facilities. But as a recent report showed, woefully little has yet been done to make overseas missions safer, and now comes shocking evidence of how porous and casual security at domestic facilities can be. Why did it take the GAO to discover what on-site security officials should have found and remedied on their own? One or two lapses might suggest mere laxity, but this many instances strongly points to general incompetence.