'Embarrassing' miscue puts U.S. nuke list online.

     Washington(AP)-- The government's inadvertent and red-faced posting of a 266-page list of U.S. nuclear sites provided a one step guide for anyone wanting details about such sensitive informantion. Administration officials said Wednesday the document contained no classified material about nuclear weapons. They contended the locations and other details were available from public sources.

     The Energy Secretary said a mistake led to the online posting. "A little embarrassing," he acknowledged. The document, stamped, "highly confidential safeguards senasitive" made it onto the Government Printing Office's Web site...and why that happened was not immediately clear. A newsletter that focuses on government secrecy quickly picked up on it. The printing office removed the document when informed about "The potential sensitive nature" of the list, the agency said. By then it was too late.

     The information, compiled for international nuclear inspectors, is a "compilation of hundreds of civilian nuclear sites along with maps and details" of the facilities. The material includes sites for uranium storage...nuclear fuel fabrication plants and nuclear research facilities.

     I'm not going to put the rest of the article here as it only repeats most of what's already been said. There is one thing though I'd like to point out......

     One of the sites...the Y-12 Oak Ridge Complex in Tennessee is a storage facility for "highly enriched, as in weapons grade, uranium. It holds large quantities of said uranium.

     When questioned by a senator at a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration said "We don't want to make this easier for people to get this kind of information"...DUH!..."Unfortunately something like this makes it easier."

     The director of the Federation of American Scientists' government secrecy project which distributed the document, said he was perplexed about all the attention surrounding the disclosure. Perplexed?? He said..."Some people are painting this as a road map for terrorists, which it is not". Maps and details about the facilities sounds like a pretty good road map to me.

     Not to worry folks... our sublime and security conscious high muck-a-mucks in Washington are doing just what they normally do. Screwing things up royally. There are times when I wonder what the hell is going on over there. Seriously!!