Forwarded from: William Knowles <wkat_private> http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,653471,00.html John Hooper in Berlin Thursday February 21, 2002 The Guardian The United States military's European Command last night appealed for the return of a CD-rom said to be packed with a wealth of secret military information on the Balkans. In a report to be published today, the German magazine Stern said the disk had turned up in a laptop computer auctioned on the internet. The details on the disk were apparently compiled for Nato's bombing of Kosovo. US European Command, based in Stuttgart, said: "If someone says that they have classified information, they should safeguard that information and turn it in to the appropriate authorities". It would not say whether a CD was missing or an investigation was planned. Stern said the disk carried a "Nato secret" classification. It suggested that American forces were preparing for the conflict almost a year before the first bomb was dropped. Stern said the CD contained plans, aerial photographs and the geographical coordinates of 53 potential military targets in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina. There were indications on the disk that the data had been compiled between April and September 1998, and that they had been put on the CD in February 1999, the month before Nato began bombing. The targeting of sites in Bosnia, a Nato-friendly country, suggests a belief that Slobodan Milosevic might have tried to seize installations there. The laptop containing the disk was reportedly bought for just DM118 (£38) in an internet auction by someone in Herten, near Düsseldorf. Stern said the seller, from Schweinfurt in Bavaria, said he had bought the computer in an army surplus sale. *==============================================================* "Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ================================================================ C4I.org - Computer Security, & Intelligence - http://www.c4i.org *==============================================================* - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
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