In March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war.
The Bush administration did so under pressure from congressional Republicans who said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
But in recent weeks, the Web site has posted documents that weapons experts say present a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq's secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”
Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing the information could help nations like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the U.S. ambassador to the agency, European diplomats said. One diplomat said the agency's technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.
The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that the nuclear experts say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.
“For the U.S. to toss a match into this flammable area is very irresponsible,” said A. Bryan Siebert, a former director of classification at the federal Department of Energy, which runs the nation's nuclear arms program. “There's a lot of things about nuclear weapons that are secret and should remain so.”
