Politics Came Before National Security

Why did right wing groups press the US government to release the Project Harmony documents that happened to contain atomic bomb design instructions? My guess is that they assumed that among all the documents some conspiracy hounds would find among all the arabic texts and diagrams evidence either of 1) Iraq regime complicity with Al Qaeda or 2) continued Iraqi involvement in WMD research. Either findings would help to vindicate the Bush Administration's case for war with Iraq. The NY Times reported:

Former CIA terrorism specialist Michael Scheuer pointed this out in an interview with the New York Times: "There's no quality control. You'll have guys out there with a smattering of Arabic drawing all kinds of crazy conclusions.

That's precisely what these right-wing Bush supporters wanted to see happen! They wanted legions of conspiracy hounds combing through through the captured Iraqi documents.

What seems to have happened is the US government lacked sufficient arabic translators to certify the security of the documents before they were made public. Thus, information containing WMD technology secrets was put into the Arabic-speaking public domain.

All the documents, which are available on fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm, have received at least a quick review by Arabic linguists and do not alter the government's official stance, officials say.

Secret WMD-related documents "received at least a quick review" before being released. I guess that statement was intended to reassure us?

However, the Bush administration has a reputation as being obsessed with secrecy. I guess, in truth, they are only secretive when it comes to not wanting the public understand the extent of the Bush Administration collaboration with the oil industry, the coal industry, and various multinationals; they don't care about secrecy in relation to US national security. Bush Administration officials will deliberately release the name of a CIA agent, or carelessly make public documents containing plans for building an atomic bomb.