Webloggin » UK Top Secret Docs Not So Secret

A second batch of secret government files has been found on a train, this time detailing Britain’s efforts to tackle terrorism financing, the drugs trade and money-laundering. The files, stamped “UK Top Secret,” were found on a London-bound train on Wednesday, the same day classified documents on al-Qaida and Iraq were handed to the British Broadcasting Corp. The top secret files contained assessments of al-Qaida’s vulnerabilities and the capabilities of Iraq’s security forces. (BBC, via National Terror Alert,)

Today the UK raised the terror threat for citizens living in the UAE (United Arab Emirates), to the highest level — any connection to the secret files found on trains???

A statement posted on the Web site of the British Embassy in Abu Dhabi says the country has “a high threat of terrorism.” It says the British government believes “terrorists may be planning to carry out attacks in the UAE.”

It says the attacks “could happen at any time,” and that British citizens should “maintain a high level of security awareness.”

Over the weekend we learned that a nuclear smuggling network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist, have electronic blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, but that they have not been able to determine whether they were sold to Iran or the smuggling ring’s other customers.

The plans appear to closely resemble a nuclear weapon that was built by Pakistan and first tested exactly a decade ago. But when confronted with the design by officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency last year, Pakistani officials insisted that Dr. Khan, who has been lobbying in recent months to be released from the loose house arrest that he has been under since 2004, did not have access to Pakistan’s weapons designs.

In interviews in Vienna, Islamabad and Washington over the past year, officials have said that the weapons design was far more sophisticated than the blueprints discovered in Libya in 2003, when Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi gave up his country’s nuclear weapons program.

But the latest design found on Khan network computers in Switzerland, Bangkok and several other cities around the world is half the size and twice the power of the Chinese weapon, with far more modern electronics, the investigators say. The design is in electronic form, they said, making it easy to copy — and they have no idea how many copies of it are now in circulation. (New York Times)

From the Washington Post:

The drawings, discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen, included essential details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and more than a dozen developing countries, the report states.

The computer contents — among more than 1,000 gigabytes of data seized — were recently destroyed by Swiss authorities under the supervision of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, which is investigating the now-defunct smuggling ring previously led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

But U.N. officials cannot rule out the possibility that the blueprints were shared with others before their discovery, said the report’s author, David Albright, a prominent nuclear weapons expert who spent four years researching the smuggling network.

Al-Qaeda is also planning to carry out attacks on Danish soil, the head of the Scandinavian country’s PET intelligence service warned — “We see now … al-Qaeda behind a targeted training and planning of terror attacks on Danish soil.” (News24) Also Denmark’s Foreign Affairs Minister said the Embassy of his country in Algeria has received serious threats from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. (El Khabar)

Tourists are also warned about the strict drug laws in the UAE.

It seems to me that all roads lead back to Pakistan these days. It doesn’t help when security officials leave their Blackberries, their laptops, their top secret documents, out for anyone to grab and use.

[Discuss These Topics with Debbie Hamilton]

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