Federal Agencies Tighten Security

Three government agents told Congress Thursday that an intruder or terrorist could gain access to several important federal facilities simply by flashing a fake badge and telling a good lie.

CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart reports ever since the Oklahoma City bombing, security in the nation’s capital has visibly increased: jersey barriers, ramp guards and security cameras are everywhere

But federal agents, trying to show how easy it is to get past all the new security, found that agents were able to enter the Justice Department building, FBI office, Pentagon and other facilities under false pretenses.

Robert H. Hast, a General Accounting Office investigator, testified that, "Our undercover agents were 10 percent successful in penetrating 19 federal sites and two commercial airports. We were able to enter 18 of the 21 sites on the first attempt."

GAO investigators were able to reach the Cabinet officer or agency head at 18 facilities. Only at the CIA did security stop them.

Pretending to be New York cops just out to see the city, they told guards at FBI headquarters that they wanted to buy a T-shirt and were allowed to enter. They were even walked past Director Louis Freeh's office.

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The State Department

Their good cop act also got them into the State Department, which surprised hardly anyone. Russian spies had already penetrated the seventh floor where Secretary of State Madeleine Albright works, and, more recently, someone walked out with computers containing secret files.

Posing as Justice Department officers, the investigators were allowed into the Pentagon after showing fake badges. They walked into Defense Secretary William Cohen's outer office and then left. They did not attempt to enter Cohen's inner office complex.

Defense Department spokesman Glenn Flood said Thursday the Pentagon has long followed a practice of allowing federal law enforcement officers—but not state or local officers—to enter the building without question simply by showing their badges. This policy is now under review as a result of the GAO report, Flood said.

"They were never going to be able to get beyond that outer office," Flood said, because the Pentagon has security measures in place there to prevent unauthorized entrances.

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FBI Headquarters

And no one ever looked at their badges closely, or they would have seen they were counterfeits bought off the Internet, and poor ones at that.

"I must say I find the easy availability of these badges to be disconcerting," said Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla. "If fact, if you were to go online right now and go to E-Bay's web site, you could find more than 600 police badges available for sale."

Publicly the agencies that were burned thanked Congress for the lesson.

Privately, however, they grumbled that this is the least of their fears. When real terrorists come knocking, history shows, they rarely pull such stunts, preferring cheap bombs and simple operations to the complex, perilous task of penetrating a building's security.

Nonetheless, some of the agencies involved promised to tighten up security.

Reno said when she learned of the security breach at Justice, she ordered authorities to do something about it.

"We must review the processes, which we have done, see what can be done to prevent it," she told reporters. "Any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing," she added.