Information on How to Build an Atom Bomb on U.S. Government Web Site

 By Brigitte L. Nacos
This has to be the ultimate madness: In the midst of the war on terrorism the Washington government established a web site that provided open access to documents captured during the invasion and occupation of Iraq—including information constituting for all practical purposes a guide to build an atom bomb. According to today’s New York Times, “The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to ‘leverage the Internet’ to find new evidence of the prewar danger posed by Saddam Hussein.” In an obvious effort to cover up their compliance in the administration’s manipulation of pre-war intelligence and thus their failure of oversight, Republican lawmakers got the administration to post documents—most in Arabic, some in English--about Iraq’s nuclear research before the first Gulf War in 1991 so that they were available to anyone—including, of course, to terrorists with nuclear ambitions, such as Osama bin Laden and his followers.

On the campaign trail in Montana, President Bush said yesterday according to the Washington Post that Democrats would "weaken the battle against terrorists..." Today, he made similar arguments in Missouri. During this fall’s campaign President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and many other Republicans have repeated the preposterous warning that a win for the Democratic Party in the upcoming elections would be a victory for the terrorists. Now we know for sure who the terrorists’ little helpers are: Those Washingtonians, who dismissed the warnings by John Negroponte, Director of National Security, and others and went ahead with the web site postings for the sheer political purpose of keeping the myth of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction arsenal alive. What a horrible decision in the face of the real threat of terrorism the United States and many of its allies face. It is, after all, no secret that bin Laden and like-minded terrorists are eager to build or otherwise get hold of nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, among the early postings on the government’s web site were also papers about Iraq’s germ and chemical weapons programs, a fact that alarmed experts at the United Nations.

The site was suddenly shut down on Thursday after the New York Times had contacted administration officials to inquire about the posted documents. A real life horror story: Here we are faced with the real danger that states like Iran and North Korea could provide terrorist organizations with nuclear material and in spite of this, our own government opens “how to do” documents to the whole world—including the “axis of evil” countries and all kinds of terrorists. 

Nearly a year ago, the 9/11 Commission evaluated the federal government’s post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts and dished out many failing and low grades. The decision to post the how-to-do WMD-documents on a government web site is so incomprehensible that even a failing grade would be too generous.

Comments

[Tiffany Jeltema]

Unfortunately, this is just one case in which the government has accidentally made potentially dangerous information available.

But, they are not alone; so much information is public now (especially with the Internet), and anyone determined enough can become a serious threat to society.

I agree that this was a huge mistake, but I'm sure not the only one that's been made. Just happened amidst major international concerns AND election day ... I guess this is a negative campaign ad the democrats didn’t have to pay for!!!

[Brigitte]

Bob:
That's a good way to put it. We'll have to see on Tuesday how many Republicans, Independents, and Democrats who voted for George W. and his fellow-Republicans in previous elections recognize the problem and send the White House a message.
Brigitte

[colorado bob]

Brigitte ... Here's the way I like to express it these days .... The Republican Party gave the keys to George W. Bush, and to their horror, he took the Party out and wrapped it around a tree. The really sad part is the country was in the back seat.

[Brigitte]

Yes, Mart, I very much agree--and all the stolen weaponry is not in the hands of those who fight the U.S. military and are involved in the civil war.
brigitte

[Mart]

Episode also points out the lack of Arabic speaking individuals working for the US. It would have made sense to have the scans run through keyword software and those results translated before release - although, with the numbers of documents and the addition of hand-written notes, it would have been a slow process & probably not very reliable. Clearly they wanted to speed the process up for political reasons, assuming the documents would prove a WMD cache, and never considering the consequences. Reminds me of the unguarded weapons cache early in the war, which was looted.