FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                         DAG
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28, 1995                           (202) 616-2765
                                               TDD (202) 514-1888

     JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ISSUES RECOMMENDATIONS FOR UPGRADING
                    FEDERAL BUILDING SECURITY

     WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Justice Department today made public
a study of the vulnerability of federal office buildings to acts of
terrorism and other forms of violence, prepared at the direction of
the President after the April 19 bombing of the Oklahoma City
federal building.
     The study proposes new minimum security standards for federal
buildings, and recommends that each federal facility be upgraded to
meet those standards to the extent feasible.  
     "We owe it to our federal workers, and to the citizens who
visit federal offices every day, to take these sensible steps to
protect their safety," said Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick.
     The survey concluded that typical federal facilities lack some
of the elements needed to meet the new minimum security standards,
recommended in light of the changed environment of heightened risk. 
The study noted that when many of the buildings were constructed,
the potential risk of terrorist and similar violence was not as
great as it is today, and that tight security was often seen as
inconsistent with making the facility easily accessible to serve
the public.  In the last two months alone, 200 federal buildings
have received bomb threats.
     Approximately one million federal civilian employees work in
space leased or owned by the government's General Services
Administration, three-quarters of them in the locations included in
the two-month review.
     As part of the Justice Department study, a standards committee
developed 52 security standards dealing with such items as
perimeter parking, lighting, physical barriers and closed circuit
television monitoring.  Standards were also recommended for
security at entrances and exits, employee and visitor
identification, and the operation of day care centers.  Federal
sites were divided into five security levels ranging from a Level
1 with minimum security needs (typically, leased space with ten or
fewer employees, such as a military recruiting office or a small
post office), to a Level 5 (a building such as the Pentagon or CIA
headquarters with a large number of employees and a critical
national security mission).  The destroyed Alfred Murrah Federal
Building was a Level 4 building, as is the main Justice Department
building in Washington, D.C.
     For higher-security level buildings, the report calls for such
things as controls over facility parking, perimiter monitoring by
closed-circuit television, intrusion-detection systems, x-ray
screening of mail, the installation of shatter-proof glass on
exterior windows, and a set-back from the street for new buildings.
     The report also recommends reemphasizing the General Servie
Administration's primary responsibility for implementing federal
facility security, upgrading of the Federal Protective Service, and
creation of an Interagency Security Committee. 
     The report estimates that the minimum security features
recommended for a typical Level 4 building would add about $2.5
million to the cost of new construction -- approximately 3.3% of
the total construction costs.  Retrofitting an existing building
could cost up to $3 million, if it had no security features already
in place -- a highly unlikely situation.  
     Because each building's security requirements differ, the
report recommended that security issues first be addressed by
building-level security committees, and that the resulting
building-by-building evaluations be assessed by GSA for appropriate
implementation.
     The United States Marshals Service and GSA were assisted in
the preparation of the assessment by the FBI, the Secret Service,
the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Social
Security Administration and the Administrative Office of U.S.
Courts.
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95-365