NBC News TODAY (7:00 AM ET)
April 18, 2000, Tuesday
FBI INVESTIGATING DISAPPEARANCE OF LAPTOP COMPUTER FROM STATE DEPARTMENT CONTAINING HIGHLY SENSITIVE GOVERNMENT SECRETS
ANN CURRY, anchor:
The FBI is investigating the disappearance of a laptop computer from the State
Department, a computer containing highly sensitive government secrets. It is
the latest in a string of security embarrassments for the State Department, and
Congress is demanding answers. NBC's Andrea Mitchell has more
now.
ANDREA MITCHELL reporting:
Madeleine Albright will have a lot of explaining to do, say members of both
parties. State Department officials are being summoned to Congress today to
explain how a laptop computer containing America's most closely guarded secrets
could disappear from the department's own Intelligence
Bureau.
What kind of secrets could have been compromised? Everything from the names of
spies to electronic intercepts from spy satellites.
Mr.
JOHN PIKE (Federation of American Scientists): That would include things like signals
intelligence intercepts, it would include information about liaison
relationships with other intelligence agencies.
MITCHELL: And Democratic Senator
Richard Bryan, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says
Congress only learned about it by reading The Washington Post months after the
theft was first discovered. One question being asked, why weren't such secrets
stored in a locked vault?
Mr. PIKE:
It's not the sort of thing that anybody would have any business putting on a
laptop computer that could easily be lost or stolen.
MITCHELL: This latest theft is the third in a series. Two years ago, a man
walked into an office near Albright's and simply walked off with
classified documents. Last December, an electronic listening device was found
in a State Department wall, a bug allegedly planted by a Russian spy who
listened in from the street below.
Congressional critics say after three separate security lapses,
it's obvious to them that the State Department is not sensitive enough to
security concerns, and so Congress is scheduling hearings to look into the
problem. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington.
Copyright 2000 National Broadcasting Co. Inc.
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