Terror Attacks in DC

Physical Security

The author of this report is asked to answer several questions that center on the idea that a truck bomb is (or could be) used to destroy the Federal Reserve building in Washington DC, not unlike what happened with the Murrah building in Oklahoma City at the hands of Timothy McVeigh. There are five overall questions that will be answered as part of this brief paper. These questions include how important it is to have a continuity systems for the Federal Reserve, what some of the other scenarios that could cause a total closure of the Federal Reserve, how the Federal Reserve could prepare itself against an attack or huge disaster in general including proactive steps it could take, what a good overall plan of operation would be for the Federal Reserve given the above and whether the data flowing the Federal Reserve should be backed up at an offsite location. While there are some things that cannot be planned for, a brazen attack on such a major and important institution like the Federal Reserve is certainly not beyond the pale.

Analysis

As far as why it would be important for the Federal Reserve to have fail-safes and other continuity-oriented operations, this would be because there cannot be a time where the Federal Reserve is taken out of commission. There has to be backup for every physical and data piece that the Federal Reserve has. If the main location in Washington DC is compromised, there has to be an alternate location that can pick up where the DC location left off. There also has to be personnel that can step in. As far as data, if a server in DC is attacked or destroyed, there need to be backups that do not exist in DC (or at least not in that building) and it should preferably be in an unknown location that is not in the DC area in case there is a weather event or something like that (e.g. Hurricane Sandy) that is affecting the area (FEMA, 2015).

Other possible scenarios could easily affect the Federal Reserve would be a computer hack, a tornado or a nuclear detonation. A computer hack is absolutely not beyond the pale given what happened to the Office of Personnel Management recently (Levine & Date, 2015). In any event, any of those could shut down the DC location entirely if the damage was large enough. Indeed, this would be the case if 9/11 were to repeat itself in whole or in part and the Federal Reserve was a target of one of the planes or some other form of terrorism. As far as how the Federal Reserve could or should protect itself, they should have all data backed up and it should not be onsite under any circumstances. It should actually be backed up in at least two to three secret locations around the country and it should be classified and top secret as to where those locations are and who has the knowledge of these locations, other than the obvious people like Yellen.