NBC News TODAY (7:00 AM ET)
April 18, 2000, Tuesday
FBI INVESTIGATING DISAPPEARANCE OF LAPTOP COMPUTER FROM STATE DEPARTMENT CONTAINING HIGHLY SENSITIVE GOVERNMENT SECRETS

   ANN CURRY, anchor:

The FBI is investigating the disappearance of a laptop computer from the State Department, a computer containing highly sensitive government secrets. It is the latest in a string of security embarrassments for the State Department, and Congress is demanding answers. NBC's Andrea Mitchell has more now.

ANDREA MITCHELL reporting:

Madeleine Albright will have a lot of explaining to do, say members of both parties. State Department officials are being summoned to Congress today to explain how a laptop computer containing America's most closely guarded secrets could disappear from the department's own Intelligence Bureau.

What kind of secrets could have been compromised? Everything from the names of spies to electronic intercepts from spy satellites.

Mr. JOHN PIKE (Federation of American Scientists): That would include things like signals intelligence intercepts, it would include information about liaison relationships with other intelligence agencies.

MITCHELL: And Democratic Senator Richard Bryan, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says Congress only learned about it by reading The Washington Post months after the theft was first discovered. One question being asked, why weren't such secrets stored in a locked vault?

Mr. PIKE: It's not the sort of thing that anybody would have any business putting on a laptop computer that could easily be lost or stolen.

MITCHELL: This latest theft is the third in a series. Two years ago, a man walked into an office near Albright's and simply walked off with classified documents. Last December, an electronic listening device was found in a State Department wall, a bug allegedly planted by a Russian spy who listened in from the street below.

Congressional critics say after three separate security lapses, it's obvious to them that the State Department is not sensitive enough to security concerns, and so Congress is scheduling hearings to look into the problem. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington.

Copyright 2000 National Broadcasting Co. Inc.