Senate hearing examines loss of nuclear secrets at Los Alamos lab

June 14, 2000
Web posted at: 6:22 PM EDT (2222 GMT)

By By Amy Paulson/CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Energy Department officials outlined their security procedures Wednesday to a skeptical Senate panel looking into the unexplained absence of classified nuclear information from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"I am accountable for all the actions at my laboratory," said John Browne, the lab's director. "I am accountable for all of the policies and procedures of security systems, and I am accountable for the training of the individuals working in the lab. We can't excuse them if they ignore these policies, if they are negligent, we have to hold them accountable as well."

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While Browne was commended by Senate panel members for taking responsibility for the loss of two highly sensitive hard drives, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson came under fire for declining to appear at the hearing.

"Mister Secretary, you should be here today, of all people," chided Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which held the hearing in conjunction with the chamber's Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Sen. Richard Shelby

"I think he's not accountable," Shelby said in a reference to the absent Richardson.

That sentiment was shared by other panel members, many of whom pointed to the empty chair that had been set aside for Richardson, rhetorically asking: "What could be more important than protecting the nation's security?"

"I hope that the secretary will respond to these questions: What did Secretary Richardson know, when did he know it and why isn't the secretary here to answer that question?" said Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Richardson told reporters later in the day that he will be testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee next week. "We will have more answers next week," he said, adding that he was "extremely outraged" by the "lack of accountability" at Los Alamos.

Sen. Frank Murkowski

"I'm concerned about the timelines that were -- lack of notification to officials at the Department of Energy after all the massive security improvements that we have made," he said.

Witnesses appearing before the joint Senate committee in addition to Browne were: Edward Curran, chief operating office of counter intelligence at DOE, and Gen. Eugene Habiger, director of the office of security and emergency operations at DOE.

Wednesday's hearing comes one day after the House began its own inquiry into why the Los Alamos lab failed to notify DOE immediately about two missing hard drives containing classified nuclear information.

The hard drives -- each about the size of a deck of cards -- have been missing since at least May 7 from a highly secured storage vault in the "X Division," where the lab's nuclear weapons designers work. The drives were part of three kits that contained highly sensitive information used by the lab's Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST), which is trained to respond to nuclear accidents or terrorism.

Whoever possessed the material would conceivably be able to arm or disarm a nuclear missile, according to an indirect acknowledgement from Curran. The information the NEST team had available to them "had to have that capability," he said.

Running through a chronology of missteps, Browne said that as the lab was threatened by raging wildfires, employees began preparing to evacuate about May 7. At that time, two employees were authorized to enter the vault to pick up materials that might be necessary for responses to nuclear emergencies.

Los Alamos lab director John Browne

"It was at that point that they noticed that these hard drives were missing," Browne said. "They did not immediately call their supervisors, and the lab was closed for two weeks."

Once the lab reopened, around May 22, employees began a thorough search -- but did not inform Browne that the material was missing.

"They should have let us know, again, immediately, once they were let back into the laboratory that the hard drives were missing," he said.

Instead, they continued to search the lab for another week and finally informed their supervisor May 31. Browne said he was also informed that day, and Richardson was notified the following day.

"At that point I ordered the laboratory turned upside down," he said. "We believed these things were just missing."

Browne said that more than 200 interviews were conducted of the 86 people who could potentially have accessed this information. The lab asked DOE to formally take over the investigation on June 5, because, he said, "we had run out of ideas at Los Alamos."

Habiger was brought in at that time, as was the FBI.

"I'm not going to use the fire as an excuse for this, but I will say that during that period people were under great stress," Browne said. "Nonetheless we can't excuse errors, but people do make mistakes under stress and my assumption is that someone made a mistake."

But Curran quickly noted that the department was "particularly angry" about the length of time it took for the lab to ring the general alarm bell.

"If one of these people had his car stolen from a garage, he would have notified the authorities immediately," Curran said. "He would not have waited three weeks."

The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation that Curran characterized as "ongoing" and "at a very sensitive stage."

Polygraph examinations begin today of the 86 people who had access to the vault, he added, and all work at the lab has been suspended.

The department maintains that no breach of security was detected, but the incident has raised new questions as to whether the Clinton Administration is directing adequate funding to protecting the nation's security.

There were no log-in procedures in place in the vault, although access to the vault's interior required employees to provide a scan of an identification tag, as well as of his or her hand.

Gen. Eugene Habiger, director of the Energy Department's office of security and emergency operations

Part of the problem, Habiger said in response to questioning, was that the disk drives were only classified as "secret," and federal guidelines are more lax when it comes to accessing and accounting for "secret" documents than "top secret" documents -- not only at DOE, but at every federal department and agency.

"Within the context of the way things are classified today -- rules were changed in 1992 -- the basic problem is the individual," he said.

"We do background investigations, we train them some more, and then we certify them accountable and responsible for handling classified information. That's the line of defense that we need to work on."

"It's a sad day for security," Shelby said. "What is it going to take?"

To that end, the Senate unanimously confirmed Air Force Gen. John Gordon to the new post of undersecretary for nuclear security at the Department of Energy. A "hold" had been placed on the nomination and was only lifted today.

"I'm pleased that Gen. Gordon was confirmed by the Senate today," Secretary Richardson said. "His immediate task, I've assigned him to go to the three weapons labs -- Sandia, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore -- to conduct security reviews at these three sites upon his arrival."

"Clearly, this is an extraordinary breach of national security," Murkowski said Wednesday. "The last time we went through this with the Wen Ho Lee case, and now we find ourselves right back where we started."

Lee, a former scientist at Los Alamos, was charged in December with copying top-secret computer files that have never been found. He has not been charged with espionage.

In a move welcomed by the White House, Richardson formally announced Wednesday that former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton will conduct a separate investigation and make recommendations to President Bill Clinton.

The two retired officials have strong resumes. Baker, a Tennessee Republican, was Senate majority leader from 1981 to 1987 and served as President Ronald Reagan's chief of staff during the stormiest days of the Iran-Contra scandal. Hamilton, an Indiana Democrat, chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee from 1992 to 1994 and served as ranking Democrat on the renamed International Relations Committee until 1999.

"I think Senator Baker and I want to do a very careful, a very thorough, and as the secretary said, very expeditious review, and we will do that," Hamilton said at a mid-morning press conference.

"It is not our purpose to second-guess what other agencies are doing or what the department's doing, but rather to make sure that we know the facts as best they can be ascertained, and to make appropriate recommendations to the secretary and to the president on how this can be avoided, how other challenges to national security may be dealt with," Baker added.

White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said the lab's security lapses were "troubling," but that the president had not lost confidence in his energy secretary. Instead, Lockhart said comprehensive changes at the Energy Department may be needed.

"We've done an enormous amount as far as changing the security culture at the Department of Energy, at the labs. I think we have to wait and see, and get some of these questions answered to see what more we have to do."

As part of that effort, six managers at the Los Alamos lab were placed on administrative leave with pay Tuesday pending the outcome of the various investigations.

Neither lab nor Energy Department officials would comment on the action to place the officials on leave, nor would they identify the individuals. But The Associated Press reported that among those put on leave was Stephen Younger, head of the nuclear weapons programs.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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