The United States Secret Service was left scrambling after a member of the public found a document containing detailed information on joint security plans for US President Joe Biden’s visit to Northern Ireland’s Belfast.
The document, which bears Monday’s date and was reportedly found near the hotel where Biden was staying, was apparently misplaced by a member of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
The page “included the names and phone numbers of police officers involved in the operation, as well as the streets where they were deployed and other information such as street closures and security measures to detect hostile vehicles,” one US outlet explained.
A photo of the paper, which had been edited to remove the names of officers, was published on Twitter by a British state-affiliated media employee on Wednesday.
The man who recovered the document was identified by the British government outlet by just his first name — Bill.
“I literally came out of my home and drove up the street and saw the document,” he told a radio host in an interview Wednesday. “I stopped, picked it up, and there it was: the first thing I noticed is it was a PSNI document with ‘sensitive’ on top.”
“It sounds a bit crazy, but it’s true,” Bill insisted.
No breaches in Biden’s security were reported as a result of the failure, but the incident marked the second alarming disruption amid what US media described as a “carefully choreographed… visit to the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.”
On Monday, a brief clash between demonstrators and a security force widely perceived as harboring British sympathies led to a police vehicle being hit with multiple lit Molotov cocktails during a march celebrating the anniversary of the Easter Uprising.
The group behind the demonstration said they considered Biden fair game and warned in a statement to US media that “any notion that US imperialist President Joe Biden will visit Republican areas as part of his excursion to occupied Ireland will be vigorously opposed.”