U.S. scours markets in Afghanistan for stolen items with military data

BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) -- A shopkeeper outside the U.S.-led coalition headquarters in Afghanistan was selling computer memory drives Wednesday containing seemingly sensitive military data stolen from inside the base -- including the Social Security numbers of four American generals.
The surfacing of the stolen computer devices has sparked an urgent American military probe for the source of the embarrassing security breach, which has led to disks with the personal letters and biographies of soldiers and lists of troops who completed nuclear, chemical and biological warfare training going on sale for $20 to $50.
Five military investigators, surrounded by heavily armed plainclothes U.S. soldiers, searched many of the two-dozen rundown shops outside the sprawling base.
Asked if any disks had been found, one soldier said: "We are looking. That's all I can say."
The shopkeeper, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears he may be arrested, said he was not interested in the data stored on the memory sticks and was selling them for the value of the hardware.
"They were all stolen from offices inside the base by the Afghans working there," he said.
About 2,000 Afghans are employed as cleaners, office staff and laborers at the Bagram base.
The shopkeeper showed an Associated Press reporter a bag of about 15 and let them be reviewed on a laptop computer. Four contained data. The rest did not work or were blank.
News of the breach was first reported by the Los Angeles Times on Monday. The paper said its reporter saw files containing classified military assessments of enemy targets, names of corrupt Afghan officials and descriptions of American defenses.
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