What particularly angers U.S. officials is their growing conviction that the Brits have not been forthcoming in telling them what happened. According to initial reports, Wing Commander David Farquhar, an aide to Air Chief Marshal Sir Patrick Hine, joint commander in chief of British forces in the gulf, was asked on Dec. 17 to take a briefcase containing top-secret documents back to RAF Strike Command headquarters from 10 Downing Street, where Hine had used the materials to brief Prime Minister John Major. On the way, Farquhar stopped to look in the window of a used-car showroom and while he browsed, thieves broke into the car and stole the briefcase.
The Brits downplayed the incident, telling U.S. officials that all the stolen materials had been quickly recovered. A doctor had spotted the briefcase in a Dumpster in north London, they said, and turned it over to the police. What they didn’t say, however, was that a laptop computer containing classified information was still missing. That news didn’t come out until it was published by the Irish Times late last week. A massive search was underway for the missing computer. “We know it was a normal theft and not the work of Iraqi agents,” said a spokesman for the British Defense Ministry.
