WH Email Blunder

A mundane trip manifest of reporters who traveled to Latin America with President Bush has turned colossally controversial because the White House mistakenly included personal ID info on the E-mail sent to news bureaus and accountants. The key ingredients of identity theft–Social Security and passport numbers and dates of birth–were included in the E-mail that the White House Travel Office sent out in what’s typically the first stage of billing. “A lot of us went crazy,” says one reporter, “because it’s an identify theft waiting to happen.”