Reply #10: Hearing: Iraq camp chief held "devastating" material

[Barrett808]

Iraq camp chief held "devastating" material -hearing
By Paul Tait

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq, May 1 (Reuters) - Classified information wrongly kept by the former head of a detention centre holding members of Saddam Hussein's regime could have been devastating to the U.S. army in Iraq, an investigation heard on Tuesday.

Special Agent Thomas Barnes, the U.S. military's senior fraud investigator for Iraq and Afghanistan, said he was shocked by the amount of classified material found in the living quarters of Lieutenant-Colonel William Steele.

Steele is the former commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment at Camp Cropper, the detention centre near Baghdad airport where "high-value detainees" are among 3,000 people held and where Saddam spent his last days before his execution.

He faces nine charges, including aiding the enemy by providing an unmonitored cell phone to detainees, at a military investigation to decide whether he should face a court-martial.

Barnes said he led a search of Steele's living quarters at Camp Cropper on Feb. 22. Up to 65 documents were found in a briefcase, as well as piles of CD-Roms.

"I'd never seen that amount of classified material not properly stored, not properly labeled and not properly protected," Barnes told the investigation by telephone from the United States.

"In my opinion the documents that were found were extremely sensitive to the army's mission in Iraq. I believe if those documents were compromised it could have been devastating."

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