Canada's plans for a new counter-terror unit were trashed — literally — when blueprints for new headquarters were found last week in a pile of garbage on an Ottawa, Ontario, street, it was revealed Wednesday.
The 26 blueprints, bearing a Department of National Defense stamp, reportedly show everything from the location of the security fence to the floor plan of the new home of the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit, the Ottawa Citizen reported.
The unit is Canada's main military responder to a terrorist attack using a weapon of mass destruction.
The plans also show the electrical grid scheme for the unit's computers and details about sewer systems, areas for workshops, sea container loading docks, and offices for the unit's various troops, the newspaper reported. There also is a blueprint for the storage bay for the unit's robots, which are designed to detect chemical and biological agents.
There are no "classified" markings, and while the documents are more than a year old, Canadian military officials acknowledged the seriousness of the security breach and immediately launched an investigation.
The Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit handles "Jack Bauer-24" type scenarios, the newspaper reported. It provides a national response for chemical, biological and radioactive threats, whether it be tracking down and dealing with a weapon of mass destruction or collecting and cataloging evidence that might be used in court to prosecute terrorists for creating or setting off such a device.
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