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Abraham Bars Classified Work at Los Alamos
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham yesterday blocked the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico from conducting classified research until recently discovered security concerns are corrected, according to Agence France-Presse (see GSN, July 20). The Energy Department on Monday began reviewing security procedures at the nuclear weapons research facility following the reported disappearance earlier this month of computer storage disks. Classified research would not resume at Los Alamos until it is determined “that the newly implemented corrective actions provide for complete and verifiable custodial control of such media,” Abraham said in a statement (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 21). Abraham also said that he envisioned classified research resuming at Los Alamos in stages, according to the Washington Post. “Given the very broad nature of the classified activities under way at the lab and likely differences in the ability of some divisions to implement security modifications more quickly than others,” he said, “I expect the restart of the various operations to take place in stages rather than all at once.” During the halt, “supervisors are going to have one-on-one meetings with every single employee to explain the rules and expectations at Los Alamos,” laboratory spokesman Kevin Roark said. “If we get the sense that someone here isn’t willing to buy into that, then they should consider other places of work,” he said. In addition to firings, the revocation of security clearances held by some Los Alamos scientists is also being considered, a senior Energy Department official said (Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, July 21). Meanwhile, a delegation of Energy Department officials and lawmakers that visited Los Alamos earlier this week found that in addition to poor attitudes about security among personnel, the laboratory might also suffer from poor security procedures, according to the Los Angeles Times. The delegation found that the missing computer storage disks were kept in a small safe in hallway next to a vending machine, the Times reported. Access to the safe was governed through an honor system because the safe’s custodian was nowhere in sight, according to the Times. “It was just put down at the end of a hallway, and it looks to me like it was put there because there was space,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas), who was a member of the delegation. “I don’t think there was any strategic reason it was put there. There weren’t any barriers, and there weren’t surveillance cameras,” he said Eleven Los Alamos employees had the combination to the safe, and all have denied taking the missing disks, the Times reported (Vartabedian/Hanley, Los Angeles Times, July 21). Barton said yesterday that it appears that the two missing computer disks were lost and not stolen. He also said, though, that the disks contained important information related to experiments conducted by Los Alamos’s weapons physics division. “If they were to fall into the wrong hands, it would not be a positive thing for the national security of the United States,” Barton said (Blumenthal/Chang, New York Times, July 21).
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