Preface to Shut the Door Article (Original Article Previously Published in 2013)
Written by Ronald Kendall

With the recent multi-month leak of top-secret national security documents by a Federal insider, an Air National Guardsman with both anti-government views and beliefs in nefarious government conspiracies (as revealed through thousands of messages he posted to the internet chatroom, Discord,) the question is once again before us: Are internal/insider threats of greater risk to US national security (cyber or physical) than external ones, and specifically, external threats in the form of vehicular bombing or armed attacks on  federally owned and leased buildings within U.S. boundaries?  

Federal funds are finite, and must be deployed with due consideration, in the case of  physical security, for the cost of the countermeasure and the risk (probability) of the threat it is supposed to protect against or mitigate. Is the government making judicious choices between, say, spending capital to harden physical assets, versus improving the monitoring of those within the Federal establishment who have access to national security data?   

This article, which first ran 10 years ago in The Journal of Government Real Estate, challenged the wisdom of spending millions of federal dollars annually on physical security for federally-occupied buildings---particularly in terms of  building “hardening” countermeasures, such as anti-progressive-collapse structural design, and ballistic-resistant glass-- when, 18 years after the bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the likelihood of a vehicle-borne bombing attack on a federal building, or any direct, intentional assault on a federal facility, seemed improbable.   The article also questioned whether the government would be better served by devoting resources to protect against insider threats (e.g., monitoring the vulnerability of federal actors with top-secret clearances to betray the country). 

Today, ten years later, the incidence of attacks on federal buildings remains very low.   In this past intervening decade, there have been only a few attacks on federal facilities, but none involving vehicles or bombs.  Specifically, these threats have manifested as: 1) the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021;  2) an assault in August 2022 on the FBI Cincinnati Field Office by a discontented Trump partisan brandishing a firearm and nail gun, after the FBI seized classified documents at Mar-a-Largo; and 3) damage in 2020 to Portland, Oregon federal buildings (the Hatfield, Pioneer and Solomon Courthouses) and several leased facilities caused by Black Lives Matter protestors after the death of George Floyd. 

Clearly, critical infrastructure, such as iconic and strategic federal facilities, warrant special protections (set-backs, fencing, bollards, perimeter guards, etc.)  The U.S. Capitol  unquestionably qualifies as an iconic facility,  as do House and Senate office buildings, the Supreme Court, the White House, etc.    What is less clear is why many non-iconic buildings housing administrative agencies of the federal government require special protections and security features (again, particularly those designed to counter bombing assaults) when these facilities are improbable targets for such attacks.  And yet the government continues to spend significant sums to "harden" these buildings against these threats.  Moreover, with the passage of time, as costs have only escalated and the government demonstrates less ability and/or interest in funding capital security improvements lump sum in leased space, the financing of these security features through the lease becomes increasingly problematic.

The counter-thesis to this article is that the near-total absence of attacks on federal buildings over the last 28 years is proof that the capital security program is working.   But is that reasoning accurate?  Arguably, those who wish harm to the federal government don't know what security improvements have been deployed (apart from building set-backs, and guards) because those other improvements are invisible. Today's terrorists (most of whom, as the FBI has documented, are domestic actors, not foreign nationals) choose to attack schools, theatres, houses of worship, sporting events, and pedestrian gatherings in public spaces, because they are softer targets than federal buildings which have security guards at every entrance.  Isn’t it more reasonable to say that the clear presence of guards---not ballistic-resistant glass and structural hardening---is what is keeping malign actors at bay, coupled with the presence of "softer" civilian targets: which are more easily accessed and where the ability to inflict casualties, mayhem and terror is higher.  Perhaps the least capital-cost intensive countermeasure: the presence of guards, is having the largest deterrent effect.  

Similarly, some argue that in the case of the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), whether or not they are completely effective in keeping dangerous objects and persons off planes, they are manifestly present at every airport attempting to do so, and that has a powerful deterrent effect.  For some, this is security "theatre"---the appearance of security but not genuine security.  But if the illusion of security is working, then, at essence, the TSA is effective.   So, back to federal buildings: if the readily apparent countermeasures of building guards at entrances and approaches is working, why deploy the non-obvious capital-intensive ones, especially given the cost and the non-likelihood of a bombing attack?   

Please note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and have been neither endorsed nor rejected by the NFDA Board of Directors.

 

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