The Army, Navy, and Marine Corps aren’t properly monitoring access to their bases years after deadly mass shootings at installations in Fort Hood, Texas, and Washington, D.C., a federal watchdog says.
The Government Accountability Office found that only the Air Force and the Defense Logistics Agency keep track of the use of physical access control systems, which are designed to vet those wanting to enter bases by searching government databases. The office discovered there is no clear Pentagon directive on the matter.
“The Air Force and DLA have monitored their installations’ use of PACS, but the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps have not. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps installation officials stated that they do not monitor PACS use at their installations because there is no requirement to do so,” the report said.
The military has suffered two high-profile shootings at bases in the last decade. Former Army major and psychiatrist Nidal Hasan killed 13 people and injured 42 when he went on a shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009. He is on death row at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Four years later, Navy contractor Aaron Alexis shot and killed 12 people and injured four at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., before police killed him.
They are the two deadliest mass shootings to take place on U.S. military bases.
Security forces on base use the physical access control systems to scan a Department of Defense member’s credentials. That scan is connected to a central system that determines “fitness for access” based on criminal history and information on whether the individual is a “known or suspected terrorist” pulled from government databases. The central system “continually vets this fitness for subsequent visits.”
The system “has identified more than 42,000 instances of individuals who were granted access to a DOD installation and were subsequently issued a felony warrant,” the report said.
The failure of most services to monitor the use of the access system is problematic because it prevents the Pentagon from evaluating the system’s effectiveness and “make informed risk-based decisions to safeguard personnel and mission-critical, high-value installation assets.”
The GAO report found that the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps “do not know the extent to which PACS are being used at more than 100 installations.”
Adding to the issue are the Pentagon’s recorded problems with the central system, which has suffered from frozen screens and faulty equipment.
The GAO report recommended the Pentagon mandate that all services monitor their use of the systems and develop a plan to deal with any technical issues. The Pentagon has agreed to implement the recommendations.
