Air Force One Scare; Real Security Sacrificed

Stephen I. Schwartz is the for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor and pub­lisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the edi­tor and co-​​author of Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940. This his first post for Defense Tech. I’m look­ing for­ward to more.
The head­line sure seemed scary: “Web site exposes Air Force One defenses.” And the copy down below was just as breath­less, dis­cussing a name­less online doc­u­ment which gave “spe­cific infor­ma­tion about the anti-​​missile defenses” on the two specially-​​converted 747-​​200B series planes serv­ing as Air Force One (Air Force des­ig­na­tion VC-​​25A). “Detailed inte­rior maps” showed, among other things, the “loca­tion of Secret Service agents” and, more alarm­ingly, “the loca­tion where a ter­ror­ist armed with a high-​​caliber sniper rifle could det­o­nate the tanks that sup­ply oxy­gen to Air Force ones med­ical facil­ity.” You could almost for­give the Drudge Report for post­ing the San Francisco Chronicle story instantly.
But the Chron failed to men­tion the most impor­tant and most glar­ingly obvi­ous — aspect of the doc­u­ment: It’s part of a safety man­ual, writ­ten so fire­fight­ers and emer­gency respon­ders can quickly res­cue Air Force One’s pilots and pas­sen­gers if there’s an acci­dent or mishap. The doc­u­ment was cleared for inter­na­tional pub­lic release ages ago.
The arti­cle says that “the Air Force reacted with alarm last week after The Chronicle told the Secret Service” about the doc­u­ment, while the Secret Service had no com­ment. Writer Paul J. Caffera quotes a pub­lic affairs offi­cer from the 89th Airlift Wing at Andrews Air Force Base say­ing “it is not a good thing” to have such infor­ma­tion in the pub­lic domain. For good mea­sure he throws in com­ments from a national secu­rity ana­lyst Daniel Gour (whose quote actu­ally gives away the “secret” of the anti-​​missile defense sys­tem deployed on the air­craft) and for­mer con­gress­man and White House chief of staff Leon Panetta, who says, “If I were still chief of staff, I would order the damned site (to) pull it down.“
Of course, pro­tect­ing Air Force One should be given the absolute high­est pri­or­ity. Every mea­sure should be taken to ensure the safety of every­one aboard. But would yank­ing this doc­u­ment really help? Or could it hurt?
The doc­u­ment Caffera found is part of the Air Forces Technical Order 00-​​105E-​​9 — Aerospace Emergency Rescue and Mishap Response Information (Emergency Services) Revision 11. It resided, until recently, on the web site of the Air Logistics Center at Warner Robins Air Force Base. The pur­pose is pretty straight-​​ahead: “Recent tech­no­log­i­cal advances in avi­a­tion have caused con­cern for the mod­ern fire­fighter.” So the doc­u­ment gives “air­craft haz­ards, cabin con­fig­u­ra­tions, air­frame mate­ri­als, and any other infor­ma­tion that would be help­ful in fight­ing fires.“
As a February 2006 brief­ing from the Air Force Civil Engineer Support Agency explains, the doc­u­ment is “used by for­eign gov­ern­ments or inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions and is cleared to share this infor­ma­tion with the gen­eral global pub­licdis­tri­b­u­tion is unlim­ited.” The Technical Order existed solely on paper from 1970 to mid-​​1996, when the Secretary of the Air Force directed that hence­forth all tech­ni­cal orders be dis­trib­uted elec­tron­i­cally (for a sav­ings of $270,000 a year). The first CD-​​ROMs were dis­trib­uted in January 1999 and the web site at Warner Robins was set up 10 months later. A month after that, the web site became the only place to access the doc­u­ments, which are rou­tinely updated to reflect changes in air­craft or new regulations.

But back to the doc­u­ment Caffera found. It’s hardly a secret that Air Force One has defenses against surface-​​to-​​air mis­siles. The page that so trou­bled Caffera indi­cates that the plane employs infrared coun­ter­mea­sures, with radi­at­ing units posi­tioned on the tail and next to or on all four engine pylons. Why does the doc­u­ment pro­vide that level of detail? Because emer­gency respon­ders could be injured if they walk within a cer­tain radius of one of the IR units while it is oper­at­ing.
Nor is it remark­able that Secret Service agents would sit in areas on the plane that are close to the Presidents suite, as well as between reporters, who are known to sit in the back of the plane, and every­one else. Exactly how this infor­ma­tion endan­gers any­one is unclear. But it would help emer­gency respon­ders in fig­ur­ing out where to look for peo­ple in the event of an acci­dent. (Interestingly, con­jec­tural draw­ings of the lay­out of Air Force One like this one are pretty close to the real deal.)
As for hit­ting the med­ical oxy­gen tanks to destroy the plane, you’d have to be really, really lucky to do that while the plane is mov­ing at any sig­nif­i­cant speed. And if it’s stand­ing still and you are after the President and armed with a high-​​caliber sniper rifle, why wouldnt you tar­get him directly? Besides, if you wanted to make the plane explode, it would be much eas­ier to aim for the fuel tanks in the wings (which when fully-​​loaded hold 53,611 gal­lons). Terrorists dont need a dia­gram to fig­ure that out. But a res­cuer would want this infor­ma­tion so that the oxy­gen valves could be turned off to mit­i­gate the risk of a fire or explo­sion.
Interestingly, what Caffera either missed or ignored is that the Technical Order includes detailed infor­ma­tion on most of the fixed-​​wing and rotary air­craft oper­ated by the mil­i­tary, by NATO, and by civil­ian agen­cies like the Forest Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Other U.S. mil­i­tary air­craft found in the doc­u­ment include the Global Hawk, SR-​​71, COBRA BALL and RIVET JOINT (both using mod­i­fied ver­sions of the C-​​135), the B-​​2 bomber, the F-​​117A fighter, the E-​​6B (inher­i­tor of the Cold War-​​era “Looking Glass” and TACAMO mis­sions), the National Airborne Operations Center (code­name “Nightwatch”), to be used by the President or his suc­ces­sor in the event of a nuclear war, and even the Airborne Laser and the International Space Station.
Caffera’s story was quickly posted on the Drudge Report and sub­se­quently picked up and picked apart in all sorts of places. A more tem­pered response from John Noonan at the Officers’ Club, who’s in the Air Force.
Predictably, many folks crit­i­cized the Chronicle for pub­lish­ing the arti­cle and, in their view, jeop­ar­diz­ing secu­rity. There was even spec­u­la­tion that the draw­ings were decoys designed to mis­lead ter­ror­ists. Few, how­ever, have actu­ally looked closely at the doc­u­ment, even as they point out the rel­a­tive ease with which they located it. And no one has explained its true pur­pose or the fact that it has been freely avail­able online for over seven years.
Having read all this, youll prob­a­bly want to peruse the doc­u­ments your­self, as many thou­sands of peo­ple, includ­ing yours truly, have already done. Well you cant, because just as pre­dictably theyve been yanked off the web (though you can find cached text-​​only ver­sions via Google). And not only the cur­rent ver­sion is gone, but pre­vi­ous ones as well.
Did the folks at Warner Robins notice the fuss and under­take some dam­age con­trol? No, a reporter from Londons The Guardian news­pa­per tele­phoned Robins about the story and found a spokesman who indi­cated he was unaware of “the prob­lem.” But not for long. A few hours later, the doc­u­ments were gone.
Caffera has another expla­na­tion in a follow-​​up arti­cle in todays Chronicle that breath­lessly begins:

Air Force and Pentagon offi­cials scram­bled Monday to remove highly sen­si­tive secu­rity details about the two Air Force One jet­lin­ers after The Chronicle reported that the infor­ma­tion had been posted on a pub­lic Web site.

This time, Caffera cor­rectly describes the pur­pose of the Technical Order. Nevertheless, accord­ing to Air Force spokes­woman Lt. Col. Catherine Reardon, “We are deal­ing with lit­er­ally hun­dreds of thou­sands of Web pages, and Web pages are reviewed on a reg­u­lar basis, but every once in a while some­thing falls through the cracks. We can’t even jus­tify how (the tech­ni­cal order) got out there. It should have been password-​​protected. We regret it hap­pened. We removed it, and we will look more closely in the future.“
An Air Force source famil­iar with the his­tory and pur­pose of the doc­u­ments who asked not to be iden­ti­fied laughed when told of the above quote, reit­er­ated that the Technical Order is and always has been unclas­si­fied, and said it is unclear how the doc­u­ment can be dis­trib­uted now, adding that fire­fight­ers in par­tic­u­lar wont like any changes that make their jobs more dif­fi­cult or dan­ger­ous.
“The order came down this after­noon [Monday] to remove this par­tic­u­lar tech­ni­cal order from the pub­lic Web site, said John Birdsong, chief of media rela­tions at Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, the air base in Georgia that had orig­i­nally posted the order on its pub­licly acces­si­ble Web site. According to Birdsong, the direc­tive to remove the doc­u­ment came from a num­ber of offi­cials, includ­ing Dan McGarvey, the chief of infor­ma­tion secu­rity for the Air Force at the Pentagon.“
Muddying things still fur­ther are com­ments from Jean Schaefer, deputy chief of pub­lic affairs for the Secretary of the Air Force. “We have very clear poli­cies of what should be on the Web,” she said. “We need to empha­size the pol­icy to the field. It appears that this doc­u­ment shouldn’t have been on the Web, and we have pulled the doc­u­ment in ques­tion. Our pol­icy is clear in that doc­u­ments that could make our oper­a­tions vul­ner­a­ble or threaten the safety of our peo­ple should not be avail­able on the Web.“
And now, appar­ently, nei­ther should doc­u­ments that help ensure the safety of our pilots, air­crews, fire­fight­ers and emer­gency respon­ders.
– Stephen I. Schwartz
UPDATE 3:17 PM: Cryptome has the doc­u­ment here.
(Big ups: Russ)

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