Most embarrassing national security breach

[bhsup]

List 'em! Inspired by a recent post in the TIL thread about some bloke breaking into Buckingham Palace.

Here's my submisison: Mathias Rust, German, lands plane in Red Square.

Mathias Rust (born 1 June 1968) is a German aviator known for his illegal landing near Red Square in Moscow on May 28, 1987. An amateur pilot, he flew from Finland to Moscow, being tracked several times by Soviet air defence and interceptors. The Soviet fighters never received permission to shoot him down, and several times he was mistaken for a friendly aircraft. He landed on Vasilevsky Descent next to Red Square near the Kremlin in the capital of the Soviet Union.

...

William E. Odom, former director of the U.S. National Security Agency and author of The Collapse of the Soviet Military, says that Rust’s flight irreparably damaged the reputation of the Soviet military. This enabled Gorbachev to remove many of the strongest opponents to his reforms. Minister of Defence Sergei Sokolov and the head of the Soviet Air Defence Forces Alexander Koldunov were dismissed along with hundreds of other officers. This was the biggest turnover in the Soviet military since Stalin’s purges 50 years earlier.

Honorable Mention: Toddler causes security breach at White House

The little boy managed to squeeze himself between the bars of the White House fence, just before the briefing was expected to start. It forced a temporary lockdown.

It didn't take long to resolve the matter and he's now back with his parents.

"We were going to wait until he learned to talk to question him, but in lieu of that he got a timeout and was sent on way with parents," according to Edwin Donovan, spokesman for the United States Secret Service.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

A lockdown? Is that necessary for a toddler? I'd think a few people would be enough to secure the situation (there are cameras monitoring the place, right? And the security detail is more than a few people?).

 

[Valka D'Ur]

As awful as it is, explosives can be strapped to a toddler as well as to an adult.


One infamous Canadian security breach occurred in 1995, when André Dallaire broke into 24 Sussex Drive, the official residence of the Prime Minister of Canada. The RCMP proved to be very lax and rather incompetent before, during, and after this incident regarding security there. It was the Prime Minister's wife, Aline Chretien, who phoned the RCMP after locking both bedroom doors (Dallaire got into the house and upstairs, outside their room, and was armed with a knife). Jean Chretien grabbed a soapstone Inuit carving as a weapon in case the intruder got into the room.

 

[Kozmos]

Red Cell was a pretty embarrassing series of events.

 

[Takhisis]

A national security breach? I'll nominate the election of George W. Bush to the presidency of the United States of America as one of the worst ever.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

You guys put a communist in charge of the top secret atom bomb project.

 

[gay_Aleks]

And more ex-Nazis one can count.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

And more ex-Nazis one can count.

Yeah but that's far less of a crime in Western eyes than being an active communist, especially in those days, when the rules regarding who could join the West German government were, how shall we say, liberally written.

 

[JollyRoger]

Giving a Hollywood union thug access to the Oval Office for 8 years.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Can't be that worse than that one time you elected a Roman Catholic, now is it?

 

[Takhisis]

Nah, he kept to the usual tradition of funding terrorist organisations to destabilise nominal allies, so he's OK in the long run.

 

[gay_Aleks]

His death did lead to Nixon later on becoming President.

 

[kochman]

Yeah but that's far less of a crime in Western eyes than being an active communist, especially in those days, when the rules regarding who could join the West German government were, how shall we say, liberally written.

Yes, what about those in East Germany, Cheezy?

 

[Takhisis]

How dare you say that Communists doing something that is wrong when done by non-Communists is wrong?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Yes, what about those in East Germany, Cheezy?

You mean the ones that purged the country of its Nazi past and influence instead of openly embracing it because of its anti-communism, as the BRD did?

 

[kochman]

Yes, after they purged themselves of their Nazi past, of course...
Look which side turned out better?

Also, I'd like to see your thoughts regarding the Cuba thread, if you have a moment and the inclination.

 

[Goodfella]

Next up on "Who's Worse, Communists or Capitalists?": Pol Pot and Suharto! And followed by Castro vs. Pinochet!

 

[woody60707]

Wow, This was a really good thread, until people started replying in it..

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm going to say the Gunpowder Plot. Renting out space under the national legislature and not bothering to check what people were doing with it? Not the brightest move. It barely even qualifies as a "security breach", because that terms there was any meaningful security protocols in the first place.

 

[kochman]

They rented out the space?
That is a rather large cock up.
However, especially since warfare had long used underground mining/explosives to damage the enemy. You'd think that would have registered somehow into a civilian idea.