The Battle Group Document

A Navy signalman with a secret clearance served aboard a destroyer in a battle group preparing to deploy to the Persian Gulf. While aboard, he exchanged emails with a London-based jihadist publisher, bought its videos and praised an attack on a U.S. warship. Later, British police searching premises linked to that publisher found a computer disk holding a classified document describing the battle group's planned movements, dates and vulnerabilities. Years afterwards, in recorded conversations, the sailor used coded language and spoke of having worked in "making meals" while in the Navy. The defence argued there was no direct evidence he sent the document, and that it mixed public information with errors that someone outside the Navy could have compiled.