Posted on: Thursday, March 17, 2005
State says no secrets leaked in putting federal data online
Advertiser Staff and News Reports
The state's top defense official said yesterday that he had no reason to believe a draft federal anti-terrorism planning document was sensitive when it was placed on the state's public Civil Defense Web site in November.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security asked the state to remove the document from the Internet on Tuesday afternoon after inquiries from the New York Times.
"My understanding is that this was an error," Chertoff said.
But Maj. Gen. Robert G.F. Lee of the state Department of Defense said the Homeland Security document was sent by standard e-mail and was not marked classified or for official use only.
Lee said the department put the document on its Web site so local police and fire departments could review it and determine how the state would respond to the emergencies.
"I can assure you that we did not release any classified information," Lee said.
The Homeland Security Department distributed the document to help state and local authorities plan for any attacks. The planning document only presents different attack scenarios, not specific locations.
Lee said he does not believe security was compromised by posting the document on the Internet.
"Everything was generic. It wasn't specific to the state of Hawai'i or any state," he said.
Chertoff said Homeland Security will continue to share a wide array of information — including hunches, suspicions and tips — with local and state authorities. But he said he will "mightily resist the temptation" to give that same information to the public for fear of spreading inaccurate data.
"What I want to resist is what I sometimes have observed over the years: a temptation to feed the desire for information by putting something out that we are not in a position to speak about definitively," Chertoff said. "Our credibility must rest in a sense that when we say something is a fact, we've done everything humanly possible to, in fact, ensure that we are giving the accurate facts out."
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday that it was a mistake for Hawai'i to post the document, which examined the death toll and economic damage from several different emergency scenarios, including nuclear, biological and chemical attacks.
Michael Chertoff
