Senior civil servant suspended after secret papers left on train
LONDON (AFP) — The civil servant at the centre of a police investigation into misplaced top secret government documents was suspended from his duties, the government said Thursday.
The Cabinet Office confirmed a day earlier that the two documents were left on a train and were subsequently handed to the BBC, in the latest embarrassing security breach for Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
According to the department, the senior civil servant, who has not been identified, was interviewed as part of an internal government inquiry after the files were left on the train, and will be suspended as inquiries into the matter continue.
"The official at the centre of this investigation into the loss of documents has been suspended ... from his duties," a spokesman for the department said.
The BBC reported that the documents, in an orange cardboard envelope, were left on the seat of a train which was about to pull out of Waterloo station.
The broadcaster said the passenger who found the files, which it said were marked "UK Top Secret", took them to its security correspondent, who had read them.
The intelligence assessment of Al-Qaeda was seven pages long and so sensitive that it was marked "for UK/US/Canadian and Australian eyes only", the BBC reported.
The other pertained to the state of Iraq's security forces and contained "embarrassing" revelations, it said.
They had been in the possession of a "very senior intelligence official" working in the Cabinet Office, the BBC said.
It is believed they were both made by the government's Joint Intelligence Committee.
The report on Iraq was commissioned by the Ministry of Defence while the report on Al-Qaeda was commissioned jointly by the Foreign Office and the Home Office.
The government has faced a series of security gaffes in recent months.
In the most serious, the confidential records of 25 million people who receive child benefit payments went missing last year after two data discs were lost in the post.
