Top UK Minister Dumps Documents In Park

As Cabinet Office minister, Oliver Letwin is David Cameron's right-hand man, and is responsible for advising the British prime minister on most aspects of government policy—but he doesn't seem to know what a shredder is. Journalists from the Daily Mirror watched as, day after day, Letwin walked around a London park reading sensitive documents before dumping them in the trash. In one case, he simply handed a bundle of documents to a park cleaner.

The papers Letwin discarded on his morning walks included correspondence about the transportation of terror suspects and about al-Qaeda's connections in Pakistan. Letwin, a former philosophy lecturer at Cambridge, is considered one of the smartest members of Cameron's government, but he's far from streetwise, the Telegraph notes. In 2002 his London home was robbed in the early hours of the morning by a stranger who had asked to use the bathroom. (More David Cameron stories.)