A SECRET dossier explaining in detail how military chiefs would respond to a terrorist emergency has been found in a kitbag dumped in a ditch.

The document, which contained information about how Cabinet ministers and leading security officials would meet to discuss an emergency, as well as phone numbers of important military figures, was stolen from a car while under the care of an army officer who works for the counter-terrorist wing of the Ministry of Defence.

The officer informed the ministry as soon as he realised that the dossier was missing. The document, which was passed to The Sun after it was found by a reader, has been returned to the department.

Last night the MoD said that security had not been compromised by the theft of the document — which had been left behind the front seat of the car in the officer’s gym kit — but that “procedures had changed” as a result of the incident.

“This was not a secret document — it was restricted, which is the lowest category of security classification,” a spokesman said. “National security was not placed at risk as a result of the theft of this document. It was stolen from a locked car and has now been returned.”

The 46-page document, entitled Directorate Counter Terrorism & United Kingdom Operations Duty Officer File, contained information on how the Cabinet Office Briefing Room (Cobra, the emergency committee) would meet, as well as a list of ongoing anti-terror operations and their code names and commanders.

It also provided an A-to-Z phone directory of the most senior military figures in the country, including the Defence Secretary, the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Director of Special Forces, as well as a list of potential terrorist targets.

The dossier also revealed the home addresses and wives’ names of the MoD’s 28 top counter-terrorist personnel, including one of the Army’s most senior brigadiers.

The dossier was lost while under the care of Major Guy Jones, an army officer in the MoD’s counter-terrorist wing, who had left it in his gym bag as he went shopping. The bag was stolen from behind the front seat of Major Jones’s car while he was in his local Sainsbury’s.

At the time of the theft, Major Jones was on duty as the ranking officer to represent the MoD at any hastily convened national crisis meeting.

A Sun reader later found the dossier with the soldier’s MoD ID card, gym shorts and trainers after they had apparently been thrown out of a car.

“I found the bag just lying in the ditch by the side of the road as I was passing by,” the reader, who would not be named, said.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I opened it up and saw what it contained. There it was, all this secret stuff in the middle of a lot of smelly gym kit.”

As well the phone numbers, the document also contained information about how many helicopters can be scrambled at short notice, and how police cars should take army chiefs to meetings at Cobra.

The MoD said last night that most of the phone numbers contained in the directory would have been reasonably widely known, and that the information about helicopters could easily be obtained under a Freedom of Information request.

CLASSIFIED BAG

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