National security plans for Super Bowl left on seat on commercial flight

The documents were reportedly meant to be kept locked up during business hours and shredded before being thrown away

A flight attendant checks on passengers on an unrelated flight (ERIC BARADAT/AFP/Getty Images)

Reporters have discovered sensitive anti-terrorism plans for the Super Bowl marked “for official use only” in the seat pocket of a commercial airline.

The documents, which came from the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) BioWatch programme, were meant to be kept locked up during business hours and shredded before being thrown away. But there they were, sitting in a seat back pocket when a CNN reporter got on the plane before Sunday's game.

Alongside the documents were the boarding pass and flight itinerary of Michael V Walter, CNN reported. According to a Congressional biography, Mr Walter has been the BioWatch programme manager since 2009.

A DHS official told CNN that the documents were the subject of an "operational review" and that "DHS does not comment on personnel matters or potential pending personnel action”.

The BioWatch programme is responsible for providing early detection of bioterrorism attacks, and helping communities prepare for such events. The documents discovered in the seat pocket included a review of two exercises that BioWatch conducted to assess whether local emergency response agencies were prepared for a possible anthrax attack at Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis, according to CNN.

The exercises, conducted in June and November of last year, showed that "some local law enforcement and emergency management agencies possess only a cursory knowledge of the BioWatch program and its mission,” according to the report. They also showed that some health agencies were confused by the warnings issued during the drill, and didn’t know who they could safely share information with during an emergency.

This "made it difficult for them to assess whether their city was at risk," and "creates a situation where local officials are deciding on courses of action from limited points of view,” the documents said, according to CNN.

DHS Press Secretary Tyler Q Houlton said in a statement that the agency had worked for two years to prepare local and federal law enforcement for Sunday’s Super Bowl. He noted that these preparations often involved testing emergency preparedness, and called the BioWatch exercises a “resounding success”.

The DHS did not respond to questions about whether the issues laid out in the report had been resolved before the game.

Previous reports from the Government Accountability Office have found that the BioWatch threat detection system is unreliable, having issued dozens of false alarms since its creation in 2003. The system had cost the US government and estimated $1bn by 2013, according to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's oversight subcommittee.