Lack of security for US missiles

A country now obsessed with "homeland security" is learning gradually of gaping holes in its defences. Reports published over the past two days warn of an almost total lack of security in transhipments of missiles and explosives by the army and its private trucking contractors. They also warn of the failure of the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the country's water system from poisoning.

Security for domestic shipments of surface-to-air missiles, cruise missiles and explosives is so poor that a terrorist could easily obtain and detonate them, according to a classified report obtained by the New York Times.

The report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, issued in July, warns that the lapses are such as to pose "substantial national security or public safety risks".

Some of the weapons transported without guard include ready-to-fire, hand-held rockets. In one case a shipment of 162 Stinger missiles was left unguarded in a civilian storage area without the knowledge of either the army or the private shipper. The report records that at another terminal a security guard was "watching television in the main part of the building, away from the office where keys to the gate were hanging on the wall. At the time of our visit the terminal had a shipment of Hawk surface-to-air missiles sitting in the yard in temporary storage".

Investigators were given repeated access to such stores by showing bogus defence department credentials. They tried unsuccessfully to raise suspicions, on one occasion signing in with different names to their ID cards.