Desperate US offers 25,000 dollars for missing State Department laptop

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/article.html?s=asia/headlines/000810/world/afp/Desperate_US_offers_25_000_dollars_for_missing_State_Department_laptop.html

Thursday, August 10 4:20 AM SGT

WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (AFP) - Apparently frustrated and desperate for
leads after months of fruitless investigation, the United States on
Wednesday announced a 25,000-dollar reward for the return of a missing
State Department laptop computer containing classified information.

"At this point in the investigation, it was time to put out a reward
of 25,000 dollars if anybody can identify the machine and bring it to
us," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

FBI and department security agents who have been on the trail of the
laptop since it was reported missing in January, had been quietly
spreading word of the reward since May but it had not widely known
until Wednesday, he said.

"They've investigated many leads in this case since it began earlier
this year," Boucher said. "They've decided at this stage in their
investigation it is time to publicly announce a reward.

"We expect that the reward might generate new leads in the case and
those would be actively investigated as well."

Boucher declined, however, to describe the status of the
investigation, though it was clear investigators were casting as wide
a new as possible in the hunt.

Fliers and posters describing the computer -- "a black Dell laptop
with a five-digit serial number ending in the letter 'Q' located on a
sticker in the back near the ports," according to Boucher -- were
being posted in pawn shops and computer stores around the country, he
said.

Boucher brushed aside questions about whether such a description of
the computer might not alert otherwise ignorant spies or criminals to
the laptop's importance.

"If people with nefarious goals took it, they they probably know what
they've got already," he said.

"If people thought they were just swiping a laptop or pawning it or
fencing it or whatever, it doesn't really matter to them what's on it
and this reward might induce them to look at the laptops and turn it
over."

The State Department has never revealed the type of information
contained on the missing computer, but some reports have said it
includes extremely senstitive data about nuclear weapons and arms
control issues.

The disappearance of the laptop is just one in a series of highly
embarrassing security lapses at the department over the past two
years.

It followed the discovery last year of a sophisticated Russian
listening device in a conference room and a 1998 incident in which an
unknown man in a tweed coat walked into a room six doors from
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's office, picked up a sheaf of
classified material and walked out without being stopped.

An irate Albright ordered a top-to-bottom security review of the
department and was recently presented with 43 separate recommendations
on how to improve the situation.

State Department officials say implementing the most essential of the
recommendations will require about 300 million dollars over the next
three years.


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