State Department loses another laptop

The department has been dogged by security problems

By Paul Reynolds in Washington

Another apparent security breach has been uncovered at the US State Department, where officials have found at least one more laptop computer to be missing.

What is embarrassing about this latest incident is not so much the computer itself - it is said not to have any secret information on it - but who it had been assigned to.

Mrs Albright: Gave staff a dressing-down

Its owner was Morton Halperin, assistant secretary for policy planning and a close aide to the Secretary of State Madeleine Albright herself.

The discovery came during a check on computer inventories being carried out after the disappearance earlier this year of a laptop which did contain highly-classified information.

Albright anger

And it follows an angry speech by Mrs Albright to assembled State Department staff on Wednesday in which she berated them for security lapses.

It will not please members of Congress who summoned Mrs Albright to a secret hearing on Thursday.

After that session, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Congressman Porter Goss said that Mrs Albright seemed determined to fix the problem.

But even if the missing computer turned up in the back of a closet, he said, security at the State department had been horrendous.