Meltdown at State: Don't mention jihad, and oh, by the way, hundreds of laptops are missing
http://www.jihadwatch.org/As if the new directives forbidding use of the term "jihadist" to name the enemy weren't enough evidence that State is in meltdown, here is more: "As many as 400 of the unaccounted for laptops belong to the department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program, according to officials familiar with the findings."
"Hundreds of Laptops Missing at State Department, Audit Finds," by Jeff Stein for CQ Politics (thanks to Sr. Soph):
Hundreds of employee laptops are unaccounted for at the U.S. Department of State, which conducts delicate, often secret, diplomatic relations with foreign countries, an internal audit has found.
As many as 400 of the unaccounted for laptops belong to the department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program, according to officials familiar with the findings.
The program provides counterterrorism training and equipment, including laptops, to foreign police, intelligence and security forces.
Ironically, the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program is administered by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS), which is responsible for the security of the department’s computer networks and sensitive equipment, including laptops, among other duties. It also protects foreign diplomats during visits here.
DS officials have been urgently dispatching vans around the bureau’s Washington-area offices to collect and register employee laptops, said department sources who could not speak on the record for fear of being fired.
The inventory sometimes strips DS investigators of their laptops for “days, or weeks,” they said.
The State Department’s Inspector General launched an audit of the equipment about three months ago. Only the first stage, or inventory of equipment, has been completed.
A State Department official referred all questions regarding laptop losses to the Inspector General....
“Unaccounted for” does not necessarily mean the laptops have been lost. But they are “missing” until they have been found or otherwise accounted for.
Auditors found that the department had lost track of $30 million worth of equipment, according to one official, “the vast majority of which . . . perhaps as much as 99 per cent,” was laptops....
Topic: Don't mention jihad, and oh, by the way, hundreds of laptops are missing (Read 1760 times)