SINCE 2001, the US air force has been sending highly confidential emails including the flight plan for the presidential jet, Air Force One, to an English factory worker who runs a Suffolk tourism website.

In the late 1990s, Gary Sinnott, of Mildenhall in Suffolk, near Cambridge, set up the website www.mildenhall.com, to promote his hometown. He soon became inundated with emails meant for airmen at the US airbase at RAF Mildenhall, where personnel email addresses end in mildenhall.af.mil.

It was all harmless enough when the emails were mundane messages to friends and silly videos, but soon Sinnott discovered that he was also getting battlefield strategies and military passwords sent straight to his inbox.

One email purportedly received by Sinnott had the notice "'Destroy by any means to prevent capture" emblazoned on the top, another had the title " military procedures and tactics".

Mr. Sinnott told EDP 24 News that when he reported the sensitive emails to base officials, "their attitude was, 'we are not worried, we are American, our security is great'". But they started to pay attention when Sinnott received information about upcoming and top secret presidential flight plans.

He says that when he reported it, the official on the other end of the line "went mental".

In what can only have been an exemplary example of their great security, military officials also told Sinnott to block unrecognisable addresses from his domain and have an auto-reply sent reminding people of the official Mildenhall domain. But the messages kept coming.

In a statement, the USAF said there had been no "verified security breach" and that it had advised airmen and other staff to use the correct e-mail address.

But for Sinnott it was too little, too late. He had already decided to shut down the website to put a stop to the deluge of classified emails.

So presumably the Mildenhall.com domain is up for grabs. Hmmm… Could come in handy for any Al Qaeda operatives reading this. µ