The Federal Business Opportunities website clearly says "Do not upload ANY classified materials"— but somehow U.S. government employees uploaded at least 1,000 pages of classified Israeli plans for a missile base.
The blunder knocked Israeli officials for a loop, reports Sheera Frankel of McClatchy:
"If an enemy of Israel wanted to launch an attack against a facility, this would give him an easy how-to guide. This type of information is closely guarded and its release can jeopardize the entire facility," said an Israeli military official who commented on the publication of the proposal but declined to be named because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the facility.
The facility is supposed to house Israel's new Arrow-3 missile, part of a system 3 years from completion that will to extend the range of Israel's anti-missile capability and counter Iran's newer missile technology.
Obviously Israel would like to keep the possible locations of these missiles secret, not to mention the plans for their underground warehouses.
Nonetheless, U.S. military officials shrugged off the breach to McClatchy reporters, saying that documents and plans get uploaded "all the time." Yet even a brief perusal of the FBO website reveals that many proposals do not include complete public access to detailed plans.
This isn't the first time a secret bunker project has been outed via the government's bidding site.
Walter Pincus of the Washington Post uncovered a convoluted effort to mask U.S. contracting efforts aimed at building a complex of underground bunkers for Israel.
The bunkers — called site 911 — would cost approximately $100 million to construct, and called for “electrical, communication, mechanical/ HVAC [heating, ventilation, air conditioning] and plumbing."
Pincus speculated that the plans looked like a vast "command and control" structure. Ironically — if Pincus is right — that structure may have been to oversee the same recently outed Arrow-3 missile bunker.
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