Five government agencies, the National Security Council and two congressional offices all share blame for the inadvertent publication of sensitive information regarding hundreds of US civilian nuclear sites, government watchdogs concluded in a report published yesterday.
Though the release of the information does not appear to have jeopardised national security, government officials agree that it should not have been published in June 2009 on the website of the Government Printing Office (GPO), the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported.
The draft declaration of US nuclear facilities (which included locations for those that store enriched uranium and other materials for use in nuclear weapons) was meant to be seen by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but it appeared for about a day on the GPO website.
The GAO report lays out in detail the mistakes made by the departments of commerce, energy and state, the GPO, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the National Security Council, and the House of Representatives‚ parliamentarian and clerk's office.
Commerce, energy and the NRC first classified the document's sensitivity using an IAEA designation that carries no legal significance in the US, the report said. The State Department then characterised the document as "sensitive but unclassified" when it was delivered to the National Security Council for review. But that term is unfamiliar to some federal agencies and sparked confusion, the report said.
The National Security Council then failed to provide explicit instructions on how to handle the information when it was delivered to the White House clerk's office, the GAO said.
The full report is called ŒManaging Sensitive Information: Actions Needed to Prevent Unintended Public Disclosures of US Nuclear Sites and Activities‚ It is on the GAO's website.
