From the Keystone Kops Department, one from the Washington Post, with thanks to Nobody:
Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, who was released from jail earlier this month, contacted the FBI’s Boston office Tuesday after he realized agents had inadvertently given him the computer disk containing the secret files along with his personal property.
Mehalba had the disk in his possession for only a “matter of hours” before the FBI retrieved it, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Ricciuti. “Someone in the bureau obviously made a serious mistake,” Ricciuti said.
FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz said the disk was not labeled “secret” — as all classified data should be — because prosecutors had to keep it in the same condition as when it was seized from Mehalba. Authorities have not said what exactly was stored on the disk, other than it concerns “national defense.”
Mehalba, an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen who was working as a civilian Arabic translator at Guantanamo, was arrested at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Sept. 29, 2003, after customs agents found the disk containing hundreds of documents labeled “SECRET” or “SECRET/NOFORN” among 131 other disks in his luggage.