GSA Shared Top Secret White House Blueprints with 11,000 Workers for Years. Whoops!

Written by: Sam Orlando

STAUNTON, VIRGINIA - In a story that could make even seasoned bureaucrats wince, officials at the General Services Administration (GSA) accidentally shared sensitive documents—including White House floor plans and blast door blueprints—with over 11,000 federal employees, according to internal records reviewed by The Washington Post.

The GSA, the federal agency that oversees government buildings and technology infrastructure, let these documents float around a shared Google Drive folder for years, accessible—and editable—by the entire agency staff. And no, this wasn't a one-off glitch. It was a slow drip of security missteps that spanned at least two presidential administrations.

The bulk of the file-sharing mishaps began in early 2021, shortly after President Biden took office. But at least three additional documents were shared improperly during the Trump administration as well—including one just last week—suggesting this wasn’t a case of political carelessness, but rather an institutional problem baked into the daily workings of a career-staffed federal agency.

The folder’s contents? Blueprints of the East and West Wings of the White House, schematics for blast door installations at the Visitor Center, and banking details for a vendor tied to a Trump-era press conference. No big deal—unless you’re concerned about national security or basic information hygiene.

Nine of the fifteen documents were labeled “Controlled Unclassified Information,” meaning they weren’t classified per se, but still required protection under federal protocols. At least ten of those files could be edited by anyone with access.

It wasn’t until a routine audit by the agency’s Office of Inspector General last week that anyone noticed. GSA’s IT team quickly reversed the sharing settings, but only after discovering the documents had been open to the entire agency for years. They also tried reaching out to the employee responsible for one of the most recent shares. No response

Security analysts say the breach underscores a persistent challenge across government agencies: how to protect sensitive—but not necessarily classified—information in massive bureaucracies.

Steven Aftergood, an expert in government secrecy with the Federation of American Scientists, has noted that while documents like building layouts or security infrastructure may not meet the legal definition of “classified,” they are often tightly held for obvious security reasons.

Michael Williams, a Syracuse University professor specializing in international security and defense, has pointed to these kinds of lapses as evidence of broader systemic vulnerability—one that transcends presidential administrations and reflects how bureaucracies struggle to adapt digital information safeguards in the modern era.

A GSA employee defended the agency’s digital safeguards, noting that automated tools scan Google Drives for inappropriate sharing and that staff undergo mandatory annual training. That training, evidently, hasn’t done the trick.

So while the headlines may feature Biden and Trump, the real story is about an enduring bureaucratic blind spot—one that treats sensitive government files like a shared team folder for office potluck sign-ups.