Four days after Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule last November, a top State Department expert boarded a British Airways flight on her way to Pakistan for urgent strategy talks with U.S. diplomats at the embassy there. The stakes were high: President Bush had just called for Musharraf to hold new elections. In Pakistan, the military had begun a violent crackdown against demonstrators.
In the diplomat's bag were several classified documents improperly removed from the main State building. One of the intelligence documents was particularly sensitive, says a department official familiar with the incident. "It dealt with longer-term contingencies and...