Posted on 06/15/2007 11:12:35 AM PDT by badboy21224
Lab Managers Accused of Security Breach By DEBORAH BAKER and JENNIFER TALHELM, Associated Press Writers 2 hours ago
SANTA FE, N.M. - Officials with the contractor that runs Los Alamos National Laboratory sent top-secret data regarding nuclear weapons through open e-mail networks, the latest potentially dangerous security breach to come to light at the birthplace of the atomic bomb, two congressmen said.
The breach was investigated by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which rounded up laptop computers from Los Alamos National Security LLC's board members and sanitized them.
But NNSA and lab officials who subsequently appeared before a congressional committee investigating security problems at the nuclear weapons lab never mentioned it, according to a letter the congressmen sent Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.
Reps. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who heads the panel's oversight subcommittee, called that "unacceptable" and demanded an explanation.
"This facility's mind-bogglingly poor track record makes me repeat my question: What do we do at Los Alamos that we cannot do elsewhere?" Stupak said Thursday.
The northern New Mexico lab has been plagued by security lapses, from missing data storage devices to the Wen Ho Lee case to the discovery of classified data on a computer found during a drug bust at a former lab contract worker's trailer.
The problems led the Department of Energy's inspector general to describe security at Los Alamos as "seriously flawed" and prompted federal officials last year to put the lab's management contract up for bid for the first time in decades.
LANS, which took over the lab's operation, is made up of the lab's former manager, the University of California; Bechtel Corp.; and two other companies.
The e-mail case, the latest to come to light, was reported to NNSA by a University of California official on Jan. 19, according to the congressmen.
"Apparently, open e-mail networks were used by several LANS officials to share classified information relating to the characteristics of nuclear material in nuclear weapons," the congressmen said in the letter.
The breach occurred when a consultant to the LANS board, Harold Smith, sent an e-mail containing highly classified, non-encrypted nuclear weapons information to several board members, who forwarded it to other members, according to a Washington aide familiar with the investigation who asked not to be named because the information is sensitive.
The notice went out that there had been a breach, an official was pulled out of a White House meeting and told, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory flew a team across California and recovered the laptops within six hours, the aide said.
Lawmakers were assured no damage was caused, according to the aide.
A spokesman for LANS, Jeff Berger at Los Alamos National Laboratory, declined to discuss the security breach. He cited national security, federal law and the lab's longstanding policy as reasons that LANS "will not discuss the details of purported security violations or vulnerabilities, regardless of whether they exist."
NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes said: "As a matter of federal law, we don't confirm, deny or acknowledge allegations of security violations."
"Any allegations of potential security violations at our sites is fully investigated," Wilkes said. "If procedures are found to have been violated, then appropriate actions are taken."
“The breach occurred when a consultant to the LANS board, Harold Smith, sent an e-mail containing highly classified, non-encrypted nuclear weapons information to several board members, who forwarded it to other members, according to a Washington aide familiar with the investigation who asked not to be named because the information is sensitive.”
There is irony in here somewhere.
http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/pa/News/071897.html
Cooperative Threat Reduction Program focus of talk
Harold P. Smith Jr., assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear and chemical and biological defense programs, will discuss the “Cooperative Threat Reduction Program” Tuesday at 8:15 a.m. in the Physics Building Auditorium.
His talk will focus on the purpose for and actions of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which was initiated in 1991 to assist in the reduction, control and elimination of weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union.
Smith, who holds a doctorate in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has served as a consultant and adviser to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, the Armed Services Committees of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, and the National Academy of Sciences.
I don’t know if this has anything to do with the UN and socialism (as much as they suck) so much as old scientists and engineers not understanding how things work in the Great Series of Tubes that make up the Internet. :p
What is it with Los Alamos? The place is a seive. Every time they make the news it’s for another major leak or giving away of our national secrets. Is nobody in charge of security????
It’s haunted by the residents of sacred Indian ground. ;)
A Department of Energy audit couldn’t locate 20 desktop computers — 14 of which were used to process classified information about nuclear weapons — in addition to the 1,427 laptops the department lost during the past six years. Hundreds of other laptops containing census data and veterans’ medical information have also gone missing, not to mention the 160 laptops that were either lost or stolen from the FBI in less than four years.
I do not know. I've asked the same question many times. You know they say that scientists are brilliant, but have NO common sense. Maybe, in this case, it's true!
United Nations
United Nations, what? I don't make the connection?
Btw, welcome to Free Republic! :o)
And here, just in case a LANL associate comes along to obfuscate the matter again,...
University of California - Office of the President
Laboratory Management
http://labs.ucop.edu/
“The University of California manages three laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) — the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, both in California, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.”
...another link.
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