I am really getting sick of hearing about the rampant corruption and incompetence in our government run by the Bush Administration. There have been countless stories of terrible mismanagement and here we have yet another inside the governmental bureaucracy of the FBI.
In August of 2002 a Department of Justice report found hundreds of laptops and weapons either lost or stolen over the course of the prior 28 months. Well in the last three years and eight months they lost an additional 160 laptops and 160 weapons. Some of those laptops had confidential information including details of FBI personnel in counter-terrorism and other divisions.
From Reuters:
The 160 missing weapons and 160 laptops disappeared during the 44 months that ended on September 30, 2005. At least 10 laptops contained sensitive or classified information, including one with personal identifying information on FBI personnel.
The FBI could not determine whether an additional 50 missing laptops contained sensitive or classified information. Seven of those were assigned to the counter-intelligence or counter-terrorism divisions, which handle sensitive national security information.
The gross mismanagement and utter carelessness of important documentation must end. It is bad enough that the 2002 report disclosed the loss of several hundred laptops and weapons, the fact that this is still occurring is maddening. Despite the DoJ setting up a system to facilitate the whereabouts of such items, reports were turned in late.
The FBI did an assessment in the case of only a few of the missing laptops to determine the possible damage to its operations and national security, the report said.
It found the bureau did not adequately document its disposal of excess laptops and hard drives to ensure that sensitive or classified information had been erased. The report also found that the FBI failed to consistently ensure departing employees returned weapons and laptops.
Now there is no way to ascertain what information was on those hard drives. The article reports that 10 of the 160 laptops had classified data on them, though there could be an additional 51 systems with sensitive information. The FBI claims 43 of those did not have classified information, but who can really know for sure as their accounting procedures are obviously in the gutter.
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