A "highly confidential" 266-page report with details on hundreds of American nuclear sites and programs was this week discovered to have been accidentally published online by the federal government.
Each page is marked "HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL SAFEGUARDS SENSITIVE" in all caps on the top of the page. The document also contained maps with the locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons.
Steven Aftergood's (excellent) Secrecy News ezine picked it up first, and re-published the PDF. Snip from NYT story by William Broad:
As of Tuesday evening, the reasons for that action remained a mystery. On its cover, the document attributes its publication to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. But Lynne Weil, the committee spokeswoman, said the committee had "neither published it nor had control over its publication."
Gary Somerset, a spokesman for the printing office, said it had "produced" the document "under normal operating procedures" but had now removed it from its Web site pending further review.
The document contains no military information about the nation's stockpile of nuclear arms, or about the facilities and programs that guard such weapons. Rather, it presents what appears to be an exhaustive listing of the sites that make up the nation's civilian nuclear complex, which stretches coast to coast and includes nuclear reactors and highly confidential sites at weapon laboratories.
Steven Aftergood, a security expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, revealed the existence of the document on Monday in Secrecy News, an electronic newsletter he publishes on the Web.
Mr. Aftergood expressed bafflement at its disclosure, calling it "a one-stop shop for information on U.S. nuclear programs."
U.S. Releases Secret List of Nuclear Sites Accidentally (NYT)
FAS.org still has a copy of the PDF up at the time of this BB blog post.
