LONDON, June 11: One of Britain’s top intelligence officials left a file with secret documents about Iraq and Al Qaeda on a train, in an embarrassing government security breach that was exposed on Tuesday.

A passenger found the orange folder on a train and handed it to the BBC, which said it contained top secret documents on Iraq and Al Qaeda.

The cabinet office, the central government department that supports the work of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, acknowledged the incident and said it had called in a police investigation.

“The documents were secret. They were in the possession of a senior intelligence official who works in the cabinet office.

They were lost on a train,” a Cabinet Office spokesman said.

“They were retrieved by a member of the public who handed them to the BBC,” he said. “When the official realised what had happened, he reported it immediately to the cabinet office. We called the police in and they launched an investigation.”A police spokeswoman confirmed that the counter-terrorism command of London’s police force was carrying out the probe.

The Cabinet Office declined to comment on the contents of the missing file. But the BBC, whose correspondent waved a copy of the documents during a live broadcast, said they contained two reports, one on Iraq’s security forces and one on al Qaeda.

A government source suggested that the leak was embarrassing, but would not actually hurt Britain’s security.

But the news will hurt Mr Brown, who has already been stung by accusations of lax security after a civil servant lost computer discs containing the names, addresses and bank details of 25 million people in the mail last year.

In January the ministry of defence reported it had lost a laptop containing personal data on 600,000 recruits.

Brown, whose popularity has plunged since he took over from Tony Blair last year, is promoting plans to roll out a national identity card system, and opponents of the measure often cite the government’s poor record of keeping data secure.—Reuters