Laptops in Dutch Crash Said to Contain U.S. Secrets
April 16th, 2009Via: CNN:
Four laptops said to contain U.S. military secrets were recovered from a Turkish Boeing Co. plane that crashed near Amsterdam in February and handed to U.S. authorities, a Dutch official said Friday.
According to a newspaper report the laptops contained U.S. military secrets linked to plans for a sophisticated airborne radar system to be used by the Turkish air force.
Four Boeing employees were among the nine people who died when the plane crashed near Schiphol airport near Amsterdam on Feb. 25 after a problem with its altimeter.
The prosecutor’s office in Haarlem, west of Amsterdam, “gave instructions that four Boeing laptops should be removed from the plane,” a spokeswoman for the office told AFP.
“We then handed them over to the U.S. embassy in The Hague and 48 hours after the accident they were returned to Boeing.”
The four Boeing employees were returning from Turkey after a mission for the U.S. Department of Defense.
“According to Boeing they had with them four laptops containing confidential and sensitive information,” the spokeswoman said.
“The United States asked us to hand them over.”
The newspaper De Telegraaf said the laptops contained Boeing’s plans to build a sophisticated airborne radar station, named “Peace Eagle”, to be installed in a Turkish airforce Boeing 737.
Research Credit: hux
