Scientists protested Web site nuclear data: report.

Scientists protested Web site nuclear data: report

Reuters
Saturday, November 4, 2006; 2:01 AM

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Scientists at a U.S. weapons lab complained more than two weeks ago that captured Iraqi documents containing sensitive nuclear information were available on the Web site that the government shut down on Thursday, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

Intelligence chief cuts access to Saddam-era documents that may have nuclear secrets

Intelligence chief cuts access to Saddam-era documents that may have nuclear secrets

A senior federal official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Times that scientists at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory protested some of the weapons papers on the site to the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy, in October. But the objections "never perked up to senior management," the Times quoted the official as saying. "They stayed at the mid-levels."

Managers at the security administration passed the warning to their counterparts at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversaw the Web site, the Times said, citing the official. And as a result, according to a nuclear weapons expert, the government pulled two nuclear papers from the Web site last month. The dangers of the documents, which were captured during the war, had been recognized at Livermore and in the wider community of government arms experts, he said.

"Those two documents were on everybody's list," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

The Times said federal officials were conducting a review to better understand how and when the warnings had originated and how the bureaucracy had responded.

The Bush administration set up the Web site in March at the urging of Republicans in Congress who said that public access to such materials from Iraq could increase the understanding of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein. It was shut down after the Times inquired about the disclosure of nuclear information and the experts' complaints. Among documents posted were roughly a dozen that nuclear weapons experts said constituted a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

While Democrats have called for an investigation, the scientists' two-week-old complaints, as outlined by federal officials on Friday, indicated for the first time that warnings about the site had come from the government's own arms experts as well as from international weapons inspectors, the report said.

U.S. Shutters Site With Saddam-Era Files.

The Bush administration's decision to shutter a Web site that contains documents from Saddam Hussein's covert nuclear program has renewed debate over the threat posed by Iraq and the question of which political party can best guard U.S. secrets.

On Friday, Republicans said the documents, which predated the 1991 Gulf war, provided a reminder that Saddam was a major risk. Democrats said release of the information in the first place had been nothing more than a dangerous political ploy.

Established in March, the government Web site _ called the "Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal" _ was intended to be a repository for millions of pages of documents seized in Iraq over the past 15 years.

It's not clear how many documents might contain potentially dangerous material. But National Intelligence Director John Negroponte's office suspended public access to the site on Thursday, after The New York Times questioned whether some materials provided too much information about making atomic bombs.

Negroponte's office is also conducting a review. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said it includes a forensic examination _ to determine who accessed the documents _ and a fresh look at procedures to make sure sensitive information is withheld from the public.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States obviously wants to protect anything "that might give an upper hand to people trying to build weapons of mass destruction."

Yet in an interview on the "Laura Ingraham Show," she also cited the documents in arguing that Saddam was a threat. "The interesting thing is that there clearly were an awful lot of nuclear documents floating around Iraq, which suggest that this is someone who'd not given up on his ambitions," Rice said.

In a conference call arranged by the National Security Network, three Democratic security experts said the posting of the material showed the dangers of politicizing national security issues. None of the three had seen the documents or the federal Web site.

"There was no national security benefit gained from this exercise. There was only damage done," said Joe Cirincione, nonproliferation expert and a senior vice president at the Center for American Progress.

Rand Beers, who served as national security adviser to John Kerry's 2004 Democratic presidential campaign, said an independent investigation by the congressional intelligence committees or another similar entity was necessary to hold people accountable.

Pressed by Republican members of Congress, Negroponte's office last March ordered the unprecedented release of millions of pages of Iraqi documents, most of them in Arabic, collected by the U.S. government over more than a decade. Detractors have said the Republicans were holding out hope for evidence of the never-found Iraqi WMD.

Until this week, the information had been posted gradually on public Internet servers. Negroponte's office has said the government had made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, their factual accuracy or the quality of any translations, when available.

In a statement, House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said his staff's preliminary review of the documents in question suggests that some may be from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"There is a serious question of why and how the Iraqis obtained these documents in the first place," said Hoekstra, one of the chief advocates for the documents' release. "We need to explore that carefully. I certainly hope there will be no evidence that the IAEA had been penetrated by Saddam's regime."

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Scientists protested Web site nuclear data: report.