Military probes how secret briefing wound up on Web

The military is investigating how a secret briefing about national security got posted on the Web, including information about 93 tunnels found along the nation's borders and a warning that Canada could become a terrorist gateway.

The investigation to find who's responsible for posting the unclassified, but "official use only" and "law enforcement sensitive" briefing was launched Feb. 20 after the Joint Task Force North report had been online for two weeks, said task force public affairs officer Armando Carrasco.

Joint Task Force North, based at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, assists federal law enforcement agencies in the narcotics and terrorism arena along the United States' border with Mexico and works with Northern Command, based at Peterson Air Force Base.
The briefing, prepared for Rear Adm. Janice Hamby, NorthCom's director of command control systems, was posted in early February. On Feb. 18, it was removed, he said.

Since then, news of the briefing has made the rounds after Insidedefense.com reported on Feb. 20 that the military believes Canadian immigration policies create a "favorable" environment for potential terrorists wanting to enter the United States.

Secrecy News http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2009/02/tunnels.html said the briefing noted 93 tunnels under the U.S. border had been found between 1990 and November 2008 - 35 in California, 57 in Arizona and one in Washington state.

Blog.wired.com reported one "informed source" said the briefing is "the latest of a steady drumbeat of fear mongering coming out of NorthCom."

Even though the briefing was posted for two weeks, it's being kept secret, Carrasco said, "because we have to safeguard that information."

Asked what danger disclosure could pose, Carrasco said, "The investigative officer will address that. We're taking steps to correct the situation."

NorthCom spokesman Michael Kucharek said most of the information in the briefing "was at some level publicly accessible."
But he said it could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

"Potentially, there are those concerns about terrorists," Kucharek said. "When things are marked with specific classifications, we've got to be aware of that and the potential information that could be provided."

"Given the violence down there (Mexico)," he said, "people's awareness is going up on this issue."

He was referring to drug gangs killing Mexican police officers and military members.

Kucharek said the goal of the probe isn't so much to punish someone as to "retrain" them.