WASHINGTON – An exhaustive list of America’s nuclear sites – including maps showing the location of fuel for nuclear weapons – that was accidentally posted on a US government website did not jeopardise national security, the Obama administration insisted yesterday.
The 266-page document, marked “highly confidential”, was removed from the website of the government printing office on Tuesday night after media inquiries.
The White House admitted that the information should not have been public.
President Barack Obama had ordered the report for the International Atomic Energy Agency in the hopes of prodding other countries, such as Iran, to submit similar classified information to the agency.
In his accompanying letter to Congress, Mr Obama said that the information was “sensitive but unclassified”.
It was not clear how the report, with details of hundreds of US nuclear facilities – including the exact location of a storage site for highly enriched weapons grade uranium – ended up on the website.
– (Guardian service)