An American-Israeli woman has come forth about acquiring old file cabinets, which contained hundreds of sensitive U.S. government documents, at an auction held three years ago by the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. The files contained detailed information about U.S. soldiers deployed in Israel, as well as financial records regarding the spending of government money.

A few hours ago, when we covered the story of a New Zealand man buying U.S. military files stored on a secondhand MP3 player, we had no idea that the U.S. diplomatic mission in Israel is responsible for a similar, but more serious, security breach. According to Fox News, an Israeli woman, who was only identified as Paula, has been in the possession of confidential and even secret documents belonging to the U.S. government since December 2005.

Paula claims that she received the impressive amount of documents along with a bunch of file cabinets that she bought at an auction held by officials at the U.S. Consulate, who obviously wanted to get rid of some old furniture. Also being an American citizen, she explains that her first intention was to contact the Consulate, but eventually decided otherwise, fearing a cover-up.

Finally, being angered by an incident, which involved a Palestinian driving a BMW car into her son's military unit, she contacted the press and revealed the incident. Apparently, the local media speculated at the time, without any solid proof, that the vehicle was bought at another auction hold by the U.S. Consulate.

According to Fox News (video), the documents contained names and security numbers of American soldiers participating at various missions in Israel, as well as those of U.S. government employees working in that troubled part of the world. U.S. State Department banking records, revealing account numbers or funding of various organizations in Israel, were also amongst the files. The reporters even identified a document marked as Secret, which detailed the meeting of a U.S. Marine with a Israeli woman in a bar.

The U.S. Consulate, who initially denied the sale, had to request help from the local authorities in order to recover the files, because the woman refused to comply. The police are said to have threatened Paula with unspecified criminal charges, forcing her to give back the easily acquired documents.

All these serious security breaches, which involve military records or government secret documents really make one wonder whether foreign intelligence services should not start snooping around for similar opportunities. It's fair to assume that many of these incidents might not even get reported and there is also the prospect of such information being sold on the black market.