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Any attentive terrorists with a grudge against the United States were yesterday handed a free online gift by the butter-fingered Obama administration when a 266-page report detailing all of the superpower’s civilian nuclear sites was inadvertently posted on the Internet.
A nuclear power plant in California. Image: emdot/Flickr.
Despite the wealth of information contained within the report, representatives of the U.S. government, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu, have insisted the documentation betrayed no classified material regarding the country’s nuclear arsenal.
According to the Associated Press, Chu said an innocent “snafu” was responsible for the report mistakenly finding its way to the Net via the official Government Printing Office Web site, where it was subsequently spotted by an online newsletter that centres on governmental secrecy.
However, although conceding that the small window of public availability was “a little embarrassing” for the government, Chu told reporters, “no secret or classified information [had] been compromised,” by the posting and “the sites and everything are public knowledge.”
The lengthy report, which was amassed for international nuclear inspectors, reportedly detailed the positioning of several hundred U.S. nuclear sites, including research, storage and fabrication facilities. The report also provided map data and specific details relevant to each individual site.
“We don’t want to make [it] easier for people to get this kind of information,” commented Thomas D’Agostino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, regarding the online posting snafu.
“Unfortunately something like this makes it easier,” he added, likely echoing the thoughts of most concerned Americans.
A congressional investigation into the incident has since been requested by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), who said the report’s release revealed a lack of effective safeguards regarding the protection of potentially sensitive information.
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