WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In what officials admit is a major breach of security, a document describing design features intended to make a new Defense Department building bomb-resistant has been posted on a public government website.
The document, comprising a 30-page narrative and hundreds of pages of technical data, describes bomb-proofing features which were incorporated in the structural design of the Mark Center, a new office complex in Alexandria, Virginia, Around 6,400 Defense Department personnel are scheduled to move into the building later this year.
One of the document’s key points is raising eyebrows among some experts — the building’s level of bomb resistance.
According to the paper, the Mark Center is designed to resist threats posed by vehicle bombs detonated outside the building’s security perimeter carrying the equivalent of 220 pounds (100 kg) of TNT.
That is far less than the amount of explosive used in recent attacks in the United States, including the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center and 1995 bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City.
The top and bottom of every page of the 424-page document on the Mark Center is stamped “For Official Use Only” — a label which is supposed to mean that the unclassified document will not circulate outside official channels.
Read More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110420/wr_nm/us_usa_pentagon_security_exclusive