Web site honors military's request

[peterh]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/aptech_story.asp?category=1700&slug=Web%20Site%20Military

NEW YORK -- A watchdog group has removed documents from its Web site that detail military research into knockout gases similar to the one used in the deadly 2002 Moscow theater siege after the Marine Corps warned they could pose a threat to Defense Department employees.

The group, the Sunshine Project, claims the documents indicate that early 1990s Army research into knockout gases, which was canceled because of the Chemical Weapons Convention, was revived by the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate in the early 2000s.

The Sunshine Project posted an e-mail on its site Thursday it says is from Zachary J. Stewart, a lawyer with the Marine Corps Systems Command, saying the three documents were inadvertently sent to the group after it requested them through the Freedom of Information Act.


He said similar requests occur a few times a year, but called this one a "comedy of errors," since the documents were apparently sent by mistake and were on the Web for months.
"Once information makes it to the Web for more than 30 seconds, it is permanently in the public domain," he said.

[Robb]

1. Not exactly

...Shrub signed an EO early on that, among other things, exempted classified material that was inadvertantly released from being summarily unclassified; whether or not it's now in the public sphere, laws concerning classified information still apply.

[damnraddem]

2. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you can't put it back in.

They took the materials off because someone in the DOD might be at risk? Of what, of being indicted by the World Court?