Plans for a new counter-terrorism installation, dumped in a garbage pile on an Ottawa street last year, contained information that could have been harmful to the military if they had fallen into the wrong hands, according to a newly released Defence Department investigation.
The plans for the headquarters of the unit, the military’s main response team in case of a terrorist attack using a weapon of mass destruction, showed the locations of security equipment protecting the installation. Included were the locations of motion detectors, wall-mounted alarms and closed-circuit TVs, noted the report by the department’s directorate of special examinations and inquiries, or DSEI.
Other details in the plans, found by an Ottawa couple on their way to a downtown restaurant, included the locations of security fencing and lighting. Additional details about sensitive information contained in the plans for the Canadian Forces Base Trenton site were censored from the investigation report, obtained by the Ottawa Citizen.
"DSEI considers that some of the information in this and other projects, especially when considering the impact of the aggregation of information, could be considered harmful to DND if compromised and thus falls between designated and classified," stated the investigation.
"While each individual drawing may be unclassified, when the information contained in all of the drawings is added to other information contained in project documents, the totality of the information may be sensitive and give away more information than DND would prefer," it said.
Still, the investigation found no breach of security since the plans were not classified secret in the first place. In addition, because there was no such classification, investigators concluded no one did anything wrong.
Last summer, the Defence Department’s deputy minister, Robert Fonberg, assured a Commons committee that proper procedures had been followed in the case of the plans. "There actually was no flaw in the process," Fonberg told the public accounts committee.
But DND’s investigation concluded government and department security policies did not provide adequate guidance to help staff properly classify their project.
The Defence Department "perhaps should have" classified information in the drawings, including locations of the close-circuit cameras, motion detectors and wall-mounted alarms, the report determined.
Other concerns raised by the investigation included the fact the construction project did not have a security officer, which meant staff did not have access to professional security advice. In addition, the investigators determined not all the key players in the building project understood the classified nature of the unit, called the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit.
Investigators noted the plans were not the final drawings for the electrical wiring and much of that information may have been revised. What isn’t clear is whether the physical layout of the installation was altered in the final building.
The plans indicated the physical setup of the headquarters, including the location of the commander’s office, the location of classified computer terminals, security fencing and lighting and the use of specific landscaping to make it more difficult for intruders to escape detection.
The documents were found in March 2008 by the spouse of Anthony Salloum, an analyst with the Rideau Institute in Ottawa. They were in rolled tubes thrown on top of a large pile of garbage bags.
Salloum’s connection with the Rideau Institute, which has opposed the Afghan war and large-scale defence spending, set off speculation on the Internet that the institute had somehow surreptitiously obtained the plans and engineered the find to discredit the Canadian Forces.
The plans, however, appear to have been discarded by one of the businesses involved in the construction project and since there was no secret classification on the drawings, the materiel was put into the garbage instead of being destroyed or returned to DND.
At least one other contractor involved in the project did the same with their set of the plans.
Salloum turned over the documents he found to DND after realizing what they contained.
He noted that at least one defence analyst, whose organization receives funding from DND, told the media the plans contained no sensitive information.
"Obviously, we now know that wasn’t the case and there was information there that was sensitive," he said. "This report confirms there is a problem at DND and a short-sightedness when it comes to security of secret facilities."
The investigators recommended a series of changes, including immediately assigning security officers to some construction projects and putting in clauses in contracts requiring builders to return such plans to the department.
It is not known if any of the recommendations were followed, as DND could not provide comment.
Last summer, Fonberg told the Commons committee the department had not made any changes.
The DND report might also raise questions about assurances Fonberg gave to the Commons committee. Salloum had said there were other copies of plans left behind in the garbage, but Fonberg said that claim was "unfounded."
However, the investigation noted that two sets of drawings were missing from the set.
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