From: William Knowles (wkC4I.ORG)
Date: Sat Apr 22 2000 - 00:12:11 CDT

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59527-2000Apr21.html

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday , April 22, 2000 ; A01

The laptop computer missing from the State Department contained
thousands of classified documents about arms proliferation issues,
including highly sensitive information about the sources and methods
of U.S. intelligence collection, State Department officials said
yesterday.

The State Department still has not found the computer, which vanished
in January from a conference room, according to a senior State
Department official. Its disappearance was reported to the
department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security in early February,
according to another official.

If the laptop was stolen for the information it contained about the
spread of sophisticated weapons technology, the theft would represent
one of the most serious single losses of classified information ever
by the United States, said a source familiar with the case.

Several sources in the department said that Secretary of State
Madeleine K. Albright is "furious" about the security lapse and is
once again considering the transfer of responsibility for top-secret
information from the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) to the
Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

Within the State Department, INR handles all government intelligence
reports classified as "sensitive compartmented information," while
diplomatic security handles less sensitive documents with lower levels
of classification. The laptop contained "code word" information, a
classification higher than top secret.

Many State Department security officers, members of Congress and other
government intelligence officials have been asking why sensitive
information about the spread of missile technology and nuclear,
chemical and biological weapons was stored in a portable laptop
instead of a fixed desktop computer.

After The Washington Post first reported that the laptop was missing,
the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Rep.
Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), said he would hold hearings on
allegations of lax security at the State Department.

A senior State Department official said yesterday the laptop was never
supposed to leave the INR conference room in which it was kept. The
senior official said a laptop was used instead of a desktop computer
so that different people with clearance could use the computer and
access its information without having to switch chairs.

State Department officials said they still hope to recover the laptop
if it was stolen simply for the value of the computer hardware rather
than the information it stored. The FBI has joined the search and the
examination of suspects, including contractors who have been
renovating the area, the official said.

A person familiar with the laptop incident said an official had
propped open the door of the secure conference room, that contractors
lacking security clearances were working in the sensitive area, that
the contractors were not properly escorted, and that the laptop had
not been properly secured.

The laptop incident is the latest of a string of embarrassing security
breaches at the State Department. Last year, counterintelligence
officials from the FBI discovered a Russian spy lurking outside the
department and, later, an eavesdropping device carefully planted in
the wall molding of a conference room inside.

In 1998, a man dressed in a tweed coat strolled into an executive
secretary's office, six doors down from the office of Secretary of
State Albright, helped himself to a sheaf of classified briefing
materials in plain view of two secretaries, and walked out. The man
was never identified and the materials never recovered.

*-------------------------------------------------*
"Communications without intelligence is noise;
Intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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