| 3/18/2007 – By Jim Leusner
The Orlando Sentinel
(MCT)
ORLANDO, Fla. – Orlando International Airport officials already scrambling to plug security gaps had a new concern to explain Friday: how sensitive documents detailing the airport’s layout, fuel-storage facilities, communications systems and power lines wound up in a dumpster.
The documents, part of an OIA 20-year growth master plan updated in August 2004, are labeled “sensitive security information” that should not be released without a “need to know.” After being shown the documents by an Orlando Sentinel reporter, airport officials vowed to tighten security to prevent a similar mistake.
Larry Johnson, a former deputy director of the State Department’s counterterrorism office who specialized in aviation security, called the papers “an excellent document for terrorists planning an attack.”
“That should have been shredded,” said Johnson, managing director of Berg Associates in Washington.
Instead, the documents somehow made their way into a trash bin next to a warehouse owned by the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority just east of the airport perimeter. The building sits on an unfenced lot on Dowden Road, a public street north of Lake Nona. “No trespassing” signs are posted outside the building.
A teenage aviation enthusiast who was exploring the area around the warehouse two weeks ago came upon the discarded documents and collected them as a souvenir. A parent delivered the material to the Sentinel last week in the wake of recent reports about OIA security problems.
Both insisted on anonymity because they said they were acting as “good Samaritans” and did not want any publicity.
After hearing of the incident from the Sentinel reporter, who returned the discarded materials, the airport’s top security official, Robert Raffel, said an investigation was under way to determine how the documents ended up in the trash – and what measures were needed to keep it from happening again.
“As a general security practice, these are not the kind of documents that should end up in a dumpster,” said Raffel, senior director of public safety for the GOAA. “Normally, we would shred it or destroy it.”
Raffel stressed that the binders contained planning documents that were widely distributed to airport managers, staff and planners – and were not the airport’s ultra-sensitive security plan. Still, he has ordered airport-security officials to conduct random checks of dumpsters and will send out warnings to workers about proper handling and disposal of sensitive documents.
“We’re not taking this lightly,” said Raffel, who added that he will use the records as “Public Safety Exhibit A” in document-security classes.
The discovery of the three binders and a photocopied book of blueprints comes on the heels of a security breach at OIA nearly two weeks ago involving 14 weapons and 8 pounds of marijuana smuggled onto a Delta flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Two Comair employees who have since been fired are accused of using their access to secure airport areas to conceal and move the weapons and drugs around security checkpoints.
GOAA Chairman Jeff Fuqua did not return phone calls from a reporter.
Transportation Security Administration spokesman Christopher White said Friday evening that his agency was informed of the “potential violation” and was looking into the matter.
“Anytime that sensitive security information may be released in error, we are very interested in finding out how it occurred and what we can do to prevent it from happening again,” White said.
The binders, with a total of 652, mostly double-sided pages, contain ground- and air-traffic projections, and planned gate expansion and rail designs from 2002 to 2022. They are similar to master plans filed by developers building massive housing and commercial projects.
Still, Mike Boyd, an aviation-security specialist who has consulted with major airports across the country, said he was stunned by the discovery of the documents.
“A document stamped `secure’ should not be found in a dumpster,” said Boyd, president of the Colorado-based The Boyd Group. “Sweet Jesus, that’s part of the security plan. If guys get it out of a dumpster, you don’t have a security plan. That’s not minor stuff.”
Most of the master plan consists of material that would be readily available from sources such as Google Earth or records kept by local government and transportation authorities.
But potentially sensitive information about the airport is sprinkled throughout the documents: maps of the fuel lines entering the property and storage facilities with precise figures on the amount of jet fuel in individual tanks in August 2004; maps showing where phone, electricity, power and Federal Aviation Administration cable lines run into and around the property; and locations where security fences will be improved.
A warning at the bottom of the report’s preface page reads, in part:
“Warning: this document contains sensitive security information that is controlled under provisions of 49 CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) Parts 15 and 1520. No part of this document may be released without a “need to know,” as defined in 49 CFR parts 15 and 1520, except with the written permission of the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration or the Secretary Of Transportation. Unauthorized release may result in civil penalty or other action.”
Raffel would not detail what in the documents caused him security concerns. When the Sentinel requested a copy of the same airport master plan from GOAA under the Florida Public Records Law, it was provided with dozens of pages removed “for security purposes.”
Among the omitted material: critical infrastructure maps involving fuel storage; phone, power and gas lines throughout the property; and an inventory of every building on the property and its use.
“A lot of information we have about security is security-sensitive and protected,” airport spokeswoman Carolyn Fennell said. “If we tell you how we’re doing something, we’re not secure.”
That point was echoed by Boyd.
“Coming on the heels of the smuggling in Orlando with the guns and drugs, it’s just one more indication that we’re just as vulnerable as we were before 9/11,” Boyd said.
Raffel said he and security officials are constantly assessing safety at the nation’s 12th-largest airport for its 34.8 million annual passengers and its 16,000 workers. He said security is designed in overlapping layers, ranging from metal detectors and passenger screeners to security cameras and roving airport security personnel or Orlando police patrols.
The idea that detailed blueprints for a facility as secure as an international airport would be so casually discarded runs counter to the federal government’s otherwise aggressive classification and removal of once-open records from public view.
Just this week, The Associated Press reported that more than 1 million historical government documents have been sealed since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Included in the now-restricted materials is nearly half of a Federal Emergency Management database with information on federal buildings as well as other papers more than a century old, according to the report.
Since those attacks, the federal government and states have enacted laws that protect security records involving airports or public venues such as arenas or theme parks such as Walt Disney World.
Meanwhile, tougher screening procedures have forced passengers to have their shoes searched and bottles of mouthwash seized by security screeners in the wake of further terrorist warnings.
Johnson, the former State Department aviation and counterterrorism expert, said humans are always a weak link in security systems and can make mistakes. He said OIA needs to improve document-handling procedures regarding the destruction of sensitive documents.
“You need to put systems in place and to put the fear of God in people if they screw up,” he said.
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