U.S. Shutters Website with Nuclear, Chemical Weapons Info

A public website that featured postings of documents from Iraq that contain information about the creation of nuclear and chemical weapons has been shuttered by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence at the request of United Nations (U.N.) weapons inspectors, The Washington Post reports.

The U.N. weapons inspectors in New York and Vienna said that some of the documents—which were gathered after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 but predate the Persian Gulf War of the early 1990s—could expose sensitive weapons secrets, according to the Post.

Officials say the information held within the documents at issue does not suggest that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded the country to capture Saddam Hussein at the order of President George Bush, the Post reports.

A spokesperson for Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte said the office “suspended access” to the website so that it could perform a closer examination of the information posted on it, according to the Post.

Earlier this year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence started making thousands of documents from Iraq available on a site run by the Pentagon Defense Intelligence Agency to appease Republican legislators who thought the materials may help to determine Iraq’s prewar weapons supply, the Post reports.

The spokesperson from Negroponte’s office said it will review the documents to decide whether some or all of them should be reposted, according to the Post.

Gordon Johndroe, National Security Council spokesman, said, “We are confident the [Director of National Intelligence] is taking the appropriate steps to maintain the balance between public information and national security,” according to the Post.

Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage.