US intelligence chief closes nuclear document website

AMERICA’S top intelligence official took down a government website with captured Saddam Hussein-era Iraqi documents after questions were raised about whether it provided too much information about making atomic bombs.

In a statement, a spokesman for National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said his office has suspended public access to the website “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing”.

The action came after The New York Times raised questions about the content of the government site, called “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal.”

The Times website reported that weapons experts say documents posted on the government site in recent weeks provide dangerous detail about Iraq’s covert nuclear research before the 1991 Gulf war.

“While strict criteria had already been established to govern posted documents, the material currently on the website, as well as the procedures used to post new documents, will be carefully reviewed before the site becomes available again,” said Mr Negroponte’s spokesman, Chad Kolton.

Former White House chief of staff Andrew Card said yesterday that top officials knew that there were risks when they posted the documents.

Pressed by congressional Republicans, Mr Negroponte’s office last March ordered the unprecedented release of millions of pages of Iraqi documents, most of them in Arabic, collected by the US government over more than a decade.

A spokesman for the chief US envoy to the nuclear agency, Gregory Schulte, denied that he was approached by agency officials about the posted documents.