HoodaThunk?

(See Update below.)

On May 6 the Obama Administration published a document that lists the locations and activities of all government and civilian nuclear facilities as part of a report to Congress. The document, labeled “highly confidential safegards sensitive”, was then posted to the Internet. (Note: the publication was performed by a Congressional Office, not the White House themselves.)

The government accidentally posted on the Internet a list of government and civilian nuclear facilities and their activities in the United States, but a U.S. official said Wednesday the posting included no information that compromised national security.

The 266-page document was published on May 6 as a transmission from President Barack Obama to Congress. According to the document, the list was required by law and will be provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Some of the pages are marked “highly confidential safeguards sensitive.”

Good move, Team Obama Congress. For a crew that has now been confirmed to have mishandled sensitive information they’re falling all over themselves to dismiss the breach saying that it doesn’t represent a national security problem.

There are “zero” national security implications to the publication of this document, said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Government’s Project on Government Secrecy. Aftergood found the document on the GPO Web site and highlighted it in his online bulletin.

“I regret that some people are painting it as a roadmap for terrorists because that’s not what it is,” Aftergood said

Really? Because when I hand someone a list of addresses of nuclear facilities that they didn’t have access to before, complete with a description of what those facilities are currently engaged in, it sure sounds like a roadmap to me. Any terrorist group that can lay their hands on this document now knows precisely where to go to find nuclear material and technology – information I sure don’t have and I’m betting most of you readers wouldn’t be able to produce on your own, either – which would certainly improve their chances of acquiring such material and technology. After all, finding the stuff you need is half the battle. They can certainly better plan their operations to get it now that they know where it is.

I hate to keep saying “what if Bush had done that” but, really, that’s the question. The left would be howling about incompetence and the press would be running the “Bush Administration puts Americans at risk of nuclear annihilation – women, children, minorities hardest hit” stories around the clock.

Regardless, this administration Congress can’t even keep it’s own information confidential so how is it that we’re supposed to trust them with ours? (Yes, that’s an Obamacare reference.) Seems to me they need to start proving they’re better able at containing the information on matters like this before they move on to our info, thank you.

Update: I note over at Hot Air Ed Morrissey is reporting that the release apparently came from the House Foreign Affairs Committee to the GPO (Government Publishing Office.) I’ve no reason to think he’s gotten it wrong so I’ve update this post accordingly. There are people making the “oh, this information was already available to the public” noises and Ed takes the words right out of my mouth:

Releasing any sensitive information, classified or not, is rather stupid, especially on nuclear material during a time of terrorist war.  Aftergood may well be correct that anyone willing to do enough research could compile a similar report.  That doesn’t mean the government has to hand out that information on its websites in order to make that research unnecessary.  While we certainly need more transparency in government, we have many, many places where it is more necessary than in finding out which floor of which building has the fissile material for bombs.

Exactly correct.