 One of Britain's top intelligence officials left a file with secret documents about Iraq and al Qaeda on a train, in an embarrassing government security breach that was exposed on Wednesday.
| Brilliant. Simply brilliant. |
A passenger found the orange folder on a train and handed it in to the BBC, which said it contained top secret documents on Iraq and al Qaeda.
| If I found a classified document on a train, I'd hand it to a cop, not to the BBC. But I guess that's just me. |
The Cabinet Office, the central government department that supports the work of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, acknowledged the incident and said it had called the cops in a police investigation. "The documents were secret. They were in the possession of a senior intelligence official who works in the Cabinet Office. They were lost on a train," a Cabinet Office spokesman said. "They were retrieved by a member of the public who handed them to the BBC," he said. "When the official realized what had happened, he reported it immediately to the Cabinet Office. We called the police in and they launched an investigation." A police spokeswoman confirmed that the counter-terrorism command of London's police force was carrying out the probe. |