For the second time this week, confidential British government documents on fighting terrorism were left on a train and passed to the media. The papers blast countries like Iran for financial policies that can be used to terrorists’ advantage, reports the Independent, which released no other details about the documents. Earlier this week, a top intelligence official left secret files on a train which were handed to the BBC.
Those documents criticized Iraq’s military and described “al-Qaeda vulnerabilities." Both incidents have dealt a blow to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s troubled government. “This is another appalling embarrassment for an accident-prone government,” said an opposition politician, who called the lost files “extremely damaging to the government’s fight against terrorism.” (More Britain stories.)