WASHINGTON — The Army's chief of staff said Wednesday that he was frustrated by security lapses at Bagram air base in Afghanistan that led to the loss of potentially sensitive data, and that the military must learn how to be more careful with new technology.
Weeks after revelations that flash drives carrying sensitive and classified information have turned up for sale in a bazaar outside Bagram, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said the Army was trying to improve how soldiers used and secured flash drives.
"We have been working hard to educate the force to develop policies to make sure everyone understands what the vulnerabilities are," he said.
A market for used computer memory drives has sprung up outside the Bagram base. On April 10, The Times reported that drives being sold at a marketplace just outside the base gate contained documents and files labeled as secret. Although some of the information had been deleted, it was easily reconstructed with software available on the Internet.
Documents on some of the drives appeared to contain the names, photographs and telephone numbers of Afghan informants aiding U.S. forces.
After the disclosure, the military began a criminal investigation and tightened security at the base. But last weekend, more drives with sensitive data were again being sold at the Bagram bazaar. One smuggler told The Times that he sold four memory drives to a local shopkeeper after a shift change Sunday afternoon.
At the request of military officials, The Times on Wednesday returned the flash drives it had purchased at the Bagram bazaar.
U.S. military officials have been vague about the steps they are taking to improve security practices in Afghanistan and throughout the armed forces.
The military is "making all attempts to protect the identities of people who are helping us to defeat the enemy," Col. Thomas Collins, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, wrote in an e-mail.
Collins and other officers familiar with the situation in Bagram said they believed the security improvements made after the first disclosures of stolen drives were working.
Schoomaker's comments came as members of Congress said this week that they wanted to learn more about what commanders were doing to stop the security lapses. Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it was disconcerting to learn information was still being stolen, even after the original security crackdown by the military.
