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Posted on 03/12/2002 12:01:26 PM PST by Stand Watch Listen
The compromised system is known as the Nuclear Weapons Information Program (NWIP). It was mentioned publicly in a 1995 LLNL Website press release that described it as a series of upgrades to the lab's computer systems to make it easier for scientists to coordinate and share information.
Insight is told that this was like revealing that there's a stealth fighter but concealing how it is built and what secrets are aboard.
"This is one of the most classified projects on Earth given what its mission is," says a well-placed source. In essence, say Insight sources, it is the single repository of all U.S. knowledge concerning every aspect of U.S. nuclear arsenals, capabilities, weaknesses, developments, strategy and new technologies. This includes even the living memories of scientists involved in the U.S. nuclear-weapons program ? a sort of detailed oral history of everything anyone knows or remembers about the program.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is said to be stunned by the possibilities raised by the allegations and furious that sloppy security may have compromised the nation's most sensitive project. That is, the assembly of virtually every single U.S. nuclear secret into one computer system.
The suspect, who may even have become a U.S. citizen, only recently popped up as a security threat following discovery of potentially compromising family ties. "The Paki had been under surveillance for an unspecified period of time," a source tells Insight. "The FBI counterintelligence didn't want to make the same kind of mistake it had made with [Felix Bloch] who was caught in the mid-1990s spying at the State Department." Bloch was nabbed before the FBI could confirm the identity of his suspected handlers and contacts. Nor did it want to risk the sort of investigative gaffes committed at the Los Alamos nuclear facility when it targeted Chinese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee.
Investigators in the Livermore case conducting routine security sweeps are said to have discovered that their Pakistani suspect had engaged in suspicious activities that were registered by classified computer logs. This portion of the investigation was confirmed by a civilian source familiar both with the U.S. nuclear-weapons program and the incident.
"It is being treated as a high-level security investigation," one of the sources says, asking like some others not to be publicly named. Of apparent concern is that the Pakistani scientist had not revealed ? or not revealed sufficiently ? family ties in Pakistan, where some family members allegedly work for that country's intelligence agency, the ISI.
"When we found out about this it set off alarm bells everywhere" because of U.S. intelligence suspicions that elements within the ISI actively supported and protected the Taliban in Afghanistan and helped to train al-Qaeda terrorists and other supporters of Osama bin Laden. Indeed, rogue ISI factions are suspected of helping terrorist groups after the Sept. 11 carnage.
The ISI also is reported to be in close communications with Chinese counterparts. In recent years Pakistan has been a major ally of the People's Republic of China which, according to U.S. intelligence and security chieftains, has helped Pakistan develop modern nuclear weapons. Hence the alarm about alleged linkage between the Livermore scientist and family ties to ISI.
Though word about the arrest is being closely guarded both in Washington and California, there remains significant concern about other security problems in the eastern Bay area where Lawrence Livermore is located ? not to mention generally within the family of U.S. nuclear laboratories. One reason for increased concern involving Livermore is the fact that it is located amid one of the largest Arab populations in the world outside of the Middle East. U.S. officials are taking care to keep it from becoming the target of a terrorist act.
In fact, according to federal law-enforcement sources, the FBI confirmed last summer to security and civilian chiefs at LLNL that the nuclear laboratory there was a prime target of bin Laden's terrorist network even before the tragic events of Sept. 11.
The warning from the FBI followed a bizarre discovery last summer by security staff at Camp Parks, a mothballed military base patrolled by federal police and within 10 miles of Lawrence Livermore. Two sources tell Insight that during a routine patrol federal officers discovered what appeared to be a terrorist "drop site" or storage area in one of the hills near the base.
This discovery included two double-wide filing cabinets of three or four compartments each that contained top-secret documents taken from the labs, maps, photos, Iranian passports and literature from the Islamic Jihad, an officially cited terrorist group. Also in the cache were photos of two labs, which suggested to investigators that the research facilities "were being cased."
Anthony Kimery also contributed to this report.
email Martin Edwin Andersen
email Paul M. Rodriguez
Seems this article is under two vastly different titles. Here's the top of the Insight page wherein I copied...
Issue Date: April 1, 2002
Exclusive
U.S. Nuclear Security May Be Compromised
Posted March 11, 2002
By Martin Edwin Andersen and Paul M. Rodriguez
http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=207329
....BUT when you click on it it just takes you to the main page. I went to the table of contents, clicked on this article...then copied the URL.
Seems this article had one title yesterday and a differnet one today.
I have but one thing to say. Spetsnaz.
Red China buys Clinton's presidency, gets strategic sales
decisions moved from the DOD to the State Dept,
nuclear secrets get sold to the PRC, and you
focus on what Clinton did as a student in
England. You know, that white stuff in
chicken shit is just more chicken shit, doncha?
Go where the meat is.
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clintonscandals: for clintonscandals articles. Other Bump Lists at: Free Republic Bump List Register |
From the Prologue:
"Certainly their job became easier as Clinton appointees opened up our nuclear weapons laboratories to scientists from our former Cold War opponents and emphasized "international scientific collaboration," whose major achievement was to expose our scientists to foreign intelligence collectors. As a result, our national nuclear labs were suddenly flooded with visitors from China, Russia, India, even Iran and Iraq—many of them staying on for two years or more."
I know about a lot of this stuff, but it's always a recurring shock to see it in black & white. And I still have the sense that the country is sleepwalking through this, while tempests in teapots rage over Trent Lott...
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