An FBI staffer in the Washington field office lost a laptop in May 2004. To this day, the FBI doesn’t know what was on the computer and whether the information was classified.
Another FBI laptop, reported stolen from the FBI’s laboratory at Quantico in July, 2002, contained the names, addresses and phone numbers of FBI employees.
These were just two examples of 160 FBI laptops lost or stolen in less than four years and documented in a report released by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General Monday.
In dozens of these cases, the FBI couldn’t tell whether the computers stored classified information, Glenn A. Fine’s report found.
Agents also reported 160 lost or stolen weapons in the same period, with 14 percent of those weapons not being entered into a national criminal database to track them, the report said.
Monday’s report was a follow-up to a 2002 report that found the FBI lacked the necessary precautions to protect its weapons and computers. The overall situation have improved since then, inspectors found, but the FBI is still being too sloppy in tracking its laptops.
Though the rate at which laptops were lost dropped dramatically, the rate at which laptops were stolen jumped by over 50 percent between the two reports, Fine said. At least 10 of the lost or stolen laptops contained classified information, including the one allegedly stolen from Quantico.
In 51 cases, though, the FBI couldn’t say whether the laptops had classified or sensitive data.
“This is a significant deficiency,” Fine wrote. “Without knowing the contents of these lost and stolen laptop computers, it is impossible for the FBI to know the extent of the damage these losses might have had on its operations or on national security.”
In an e-mailed statement, FBI Assistant Director John Miller said that many of the report’s findings pre-dated the audit.
“Nonetheless, we acknowledge more needs to be done to ensure the proper handling of the loss and theft of weapons and laptops, and the information maintained on them,” Miller’s e-mail stated.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee and an outspoken critic of the FBI, called on the Bureau to clean up its act.
“Tracking these deadly weapons and computers may seem like it’s not worth the time to some in lawenforcement,” Grassley said in an e-mail sent through his spokeswoman, “but it’s critical to public safety, national security and the credibility of the FBI and the other agencies that are losing personal information on Americans.”
Anyone with information on the FBI can call 202-459-4956.
