This is somewhat of a follow-up to
Welshman's diary yesterday about the Los Angeles Times article that revealed US Army secret documents on flash memory sticks being sold in an Afghan market. The memory sticks were stolen from Bagram Airbase, the main US base in Afghanistan. The LA Times has followed up its original story with a
new revelation that the problem continues despite ongoing Army efforts to track down and retrieve stolen computer hardware.
Here are some excerpts from today's LA Times story:
BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- A computer drive sold openly Wednesday at a bazaar outside the U.S. air base here holds what appears to be a trove of potentially sensitive American intelligence data, including the names, photographs and telephone numbers of Afghan spies informing on the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The flash memory drive, which a teenager sold for $40, holds scores of military documents marked "secret," describing intelligence-gathering methods and information -- including escape routes into Pakistan and the location of a suspected safe house there, and the payment of $50 bounties for each Taliban or Al Qaeda fighter apprehended based on the source's intelligence.
The credibility and reliability of some intelligence sources identified in the documents is marked as unknown.
Other operatives, however, appear to be of high importance, including one whose information, the document says, led to the apprehension of seven Al Qaeda suspects in the United States.
One document describes a source as having "people working for him" in 11 Afghan cities. "The potential for success with this contact is unlimited," the report says.
Even the names of people identified as the sources' wives and children are listed -- details that could put them at risk of retaliation by insurgents who have boasted about executing dozens of people suspected of spying for U.S. forces.
The drive includes descriptions of Taliban commanders' meetings in neighboring Pakistan and maps of militants' infiltration and escape routes along its border with Afghanistan.
In another folder, there is a diagram of a mosque and madrasa, or Islamic school, where an informant said fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar had stayed in Pakistan.
Another document describes in detail how a member of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the Taliban's former mentors, tried to recruit an Afghan spying for the U.S. by promising him $500 a month.
Some of the documents can't be opened without a password, but most are neither locked nor encrypted.
Numerous files indicate the flash drive may have belonged to a member of the Army's 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), based at Ft. Bragg, N.C. The unit is operating in southern Afghanistan, where a U.S.-led coalition is battling a growing insurgency.
Some of the computer files are dated as recently as this month, while others date to 2004. The clerk who sold the computer drive said an Afghan worker smuggled it out of the Bagram base Tuesday, a day after The Times first reported that military secrets were available at several stalls at the bazaar.
The 1-gigabyte flash drive sold at the bazaar Wednesday is almost full and contains personal snapshots, Special Forces training manuals, records of "direct action" training missions in South America, along with numerous computer slide presentations and documents marked "secret."