Understandably, many people in our country are very disturbed by the way the Clinton Administration has handled the Elian Gonzalez case. Even Vice President Gore said that he would have handled it differently. But while that case was drawing all the media headlines and television coverage, something else happened that has very, very serious implications for all the American people.

Amazingly, the media gave almost no attention to this latest chapter in a series of frightening national security lapses during the Clinton-Gore Administration. In January a laptop computer disappeared from a conference room in the U.S. State Department Building in Washington, D.C. But this was not just any laptop. According to The Washington Post, the laptop computer contained "code word information," a classification that is even higher than top secret! A source told The Post that the loss was potentially one of the most serious single losses of classified information in U.S. history. Other details reported by The Post make this story even more astonishing. The laptop disappeared in January, but the loss was not reported to the Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security until early February and became public only a few weeks ago. The laptop was left in a conference room that was being remodeled. The door to the conference room was propped open, and workers lacking clearances were allowed in without escorts.

To this day, the State Department does not know who stole the computer, why it was taken or where it went. It is reported that Secretary of State Madeline Albright was "furious" about what happened. The American people have every right to be at least as "furious."

It would be bad enough if this were just an isolated case of national security incompetence and neglect of duty during this administration. But, unfortunately, it isn't. Here are a few other examples of what has been happening in the last several years:

• In 1998, a man dressed in a tweed jacket calmly walked into an office just six doors down from Secretary Albright's own office. Then he helped himself to a stack of classified briefing papers in clear view of two secretaries and simply walked out. Neither he nor the papers have been seen since. The State Department has no idea where they are.
• In 1999, the FBI discovered a Russian spy hanging around outside the State Department Building. He was listening to a bugging device that had been skillfully implanted in wall molding in a seventh-floor conference room inside the building.
• Then there's the case of the Clinton Administration's former director of the CIA, John Deutch. He put highly classified material from the CIA on his home computer, which he also used to send and receive e-mail, which, of course, made the computer and its contents more vulnerable to hackers. Once again, the Clinton-Gore Administration took its time about reporting what had happened to Congress.
• All of this came after the highly publicized loss of national security information from the U.S. Department of Energy's laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and other facilities around the country. And Communist China has stolen classified U.S. information that helped that nation improve its advanced nuclear weapons and obtained intelligence on various weapons designs, including the neutron bomb.

These continuing serious lapses in judgment and security are spreading alarm in the law enforcement and intelligence community. Here's what former FBI Associate Deputy Director Oliver "Buck" Revel had to say in a recent column in The Wall Street Journal:

"The Cold War may be over, but there can be no doubt that our adversaries are many, and they have increasingly effective methods to penetrate even our most closely held secrets. We need a vigorous program at all levels of government to protect classified information. Unfortunately, the Clinton Administration has failed at this task. The President and his aides have not upheld their oaths to 'preserve and protect our country against all enemies, foreign and domestic.'"

Those are strong words from Mr. Revel. We should take them to heart.