Change Is Hard, But NNSA, LANL Need It (NM-Los Alamos lab)

On Thursday, the Department of Energy canned the guy in charge of the country's nuclear weapons program. On Thursday, Los Alamos National Laboratory told staffers to get ready for random drug tests. On Thursday, Democrats took control of Congress.

Looks like Department of Energy and LANL officials are running for political cover after another year of throwing millions of taxpayer dollars at security improvements to see if they stick.

The latest DOE/LANL embarrassments involve a DOE computer security breach in Albuquerque (the theft of more than a thousand employee Social Security numbers and other data was covered up for eight months) and piles of classified LANL documents found in the trailer of a lab subcontractor (a 22-year-old clerk was up against a deadline and schlepped the work home, where she rooms with a meth addict).

Stack those on top of a scathing 2006 DOE inspector general report on lab security, a 2005 investigation that found two missing data storage devices that nearly shut down the lab in 2004 never even existed, a 2004 discovery of secret info being repeatedly e-mailed over unsecure lines, a 2000 find of missing portable hard drives laden with classified info sitting behind a copy machine, and of course, Wen Ho Lee's guilty plea to one count of mishandling lab secrets that same year.

DOE has been instituting a five-year plan to address sloppy inventory control and security failures. DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration says [it]has been unable in five years "to prevent such management problems from occurring."

It has taken five years and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars for DOE and LANL officials to figure out their security system still isn't working. If political cover spurred them on, so be it.

Vehicles To Face Screening Near LANL
LOS ALAMOS — A $24 million road security project is scheduled to greet many Los Alamos commuters this morning.
The project, which began in 2002, is part of the government's effort to better protect Los Alamos National Laboratory.
''We'll have guards at the stations so we can make sure that the traffic gets through smoothly,'' said Bernie Pleau, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration. ''It's part of the designed security for the site, to protect those families that need to be protected.''
All vehicles are subject to inspections, and all recreational vehicles and motor homes will be required to stop at the checkpoints.
Cars and motorcycles will be stopped briefly and allowed to proceed after a signal from a security officer, lab officials say.
All large delivery vehicles need a pass and big trucks carrying gravel, logs and pumice are to avoid the area by taking N.M. 4 through the town of White Rock.
Bicycles may go through the checkpoint without stopping and lab officials are encouraging pedestrians to stick to sidewalks.
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/apscreen01-08-07.htm?jsbottom

Simple concept - all empoyess to be swept for drugs regularly and randomly. All vehicles subject to search, and should be searched randomly - just to prove the guards can do so.

No weapons, No forn, no illegals, all security measures adopted by the military including conflict of interest penalties should apply.

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