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Oliver Burkeman in New York
Tuesday April 11, 2006
Security lapse reveals secrets of Air Force One
Guardian
Air Force One, the presidential jet, is a near-mythical symbol of US power, shrouded in so much secrecy that even foreign leaders invited on board are forbidden from seeing every corner. But the aircraft just became rather less mysterious after it emerged that detailed plans of its interior and exterior had been made publicly available on the website of an American air force base.
One diagram shows the location of the president's suite, at the very front of the Boeing 747, which is known to include a medical facility, workout room, kitchen and office, as well as a bedroom. Another shows the location of oxygen tanks which could, in theory, be targeted by a terrorist sniper. The information appears to be intended for personnel involved in responding to an emergency on board.
The documents, which had not been removed from the site yesterday, add precise detail to what was already known about the president's plane: that it contains 85 telephones, 19 televisions, facilities for film screenings, flares to repel missiles and shielding to protect onboard electronics from an electromagnetic pulse. They also underline the previously publicised fact that the plane always pulls up at public events with its left side facing people and buildings - protecting the president's quarters on the right side.
"From the point of view of protecting the president, we'd rather have nothing out there as regards Air Force One and the security arrangements," said Richard Falkenrath, a former security adviser to George Bush who is now a scholar at Washington's Brookings Institution. "If I were still in government, I'd try to get this taken down promptly."
But he added that "even after the publication of this information, the president is still secure - he's a pretty well-guarded individual. There's an additional quantum of risk as a result of this, and you don't want any risk, but it's not as if he's suddenly hugely more vulnerable to assassination."
Captain Rickardo Bodden, a spokesman for Robins air force base in Georgia, whose website was hosting the documents, said he had been unaware of the problem until contacted by the Guardian. But a public affairs officer at Andrews air force base in Maryland, which coordinates the president's air travel, agreed it was "not a good thing" for information to be in the public domain. The San Francisco Chronicle, which first reported the story, said it had alerted the US secret service.
No single aircraft is Air Force One, however: the label is simply the call sign for any air force plane in which the president is travelling. But two near-identical 747s now fulfil the role. A Boeing 707 was in use in 1963, when Lyndon Johnson was sworn in while airborne - Air Force One's most famous moment until September 11 2001, when Mr Bush spent much of the day in the air.
The US military faced another embarrassment yesterday after it was reported that computer drives containing classified defence information were on sale at a bazaar only metres from the Bagram base in Afghanistan. They included presentations on suspected militants targeted for killing or capture and the social security numbers of 700 US soldiers.
