Free Republic

By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER Inside Bay Area The head of a team challenging the University of California for command of the birthplace of the bomb is mightily offended by the university's suggestions that corporations such as his employer, Lockheed Martin, lack the ability or integrity to do real science. C. Paul Robinson, physicist and former Sandia National Laboratories director, lashed back Friday, saying his team was appalled at the lack of competent business practices and focused scientific direction at Los Alamos National Laboratory, run by the University of California since 1943. "No wonder science is hurting. You've got scientists...

Los Alamos laboratory shutdown cost up to $367 million From Global Security Newswire The shutdown last year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory could cost up to $367 million due to work that was delayed or not finished, National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks said Friday. That amount "represents an upper limit" of the possible price tag for the work suspension that lasted for months in some sections while the laboratory improved security procedures, Brooks told the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. The laboratory estimates the cost at $119 million, according to the Associated Press. Tens...

Los Alamos director steps down By David McGlinchey dmcglinchey@govexec.com The director of Los Alamos National Laboratory announced last week that he is stepping down after two years filled with controversy and troubling news from one of the nation's leading weapons research facilities. Pete Nanos took the helm of Los Alamos in January 2003. Since then the laboratory has suffered through security lapses and revelations of procurement abuse by employees. In 2004, Nanos shut down Los Alamos operations for months while officials conducted a security review. Late last year, the National Nuclear Security Administration initiated an open competition for contractors interested...

Dear Colleagues: As you are aware, Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Pete Nanos has announced that he will be taking a new position with the US Department of Defense. Pete has been an agent of change at LANL, and the laboratory is a stronger and safer place as a result of his leadership. I fully respect his decision to join the Department of Defense, and I wish him the best of luck in his new endeavors. He has been deeply committed to the mission of the laboratory, and I am grateful for his tireless efforts over the last two years....

'Parlor Maid' tarnishes FBI Details of Leung-Smith spy case throw bureau's handling of investigation into question Details of Leung-Smith spy case throw bureau's handling By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER Twelve years ago, a team of U.S. counterintelligence operatives flew into frigid southern Manchuria to assess Chinese spying on American diplomats. Instead, the U.S. agents came to believe their own team was tracked by China's Ministry of State Security every step of their mission, which is still classified today. The first clue was an odd elevator encounter in remote northeast China, an FBI agent bumping into a California nuclear-weapons scientist suspected...

NAMBE, N.M. - If loose lips sink ships, then what can a blog at a top-secret nuclear lab do? Many of the mostly anonymous Los Alamos National Laboratory employees who post to ''LANL: The Real Story'' take aim at work conditions and perceived weak morale at the federal lab. Others are bent on ridiculing - and perhaps sinking - their boss, Director Pete Nanos. Whatever its effect, the blog that debuted in December has become a lively public forum for current and former Los Alamos workers, who share articles, gripes, rumors and observations. ''It is sort of the modern version...

Last week I noted just one example of the Democrats' lack of seriousness when it comes to our national security, particularly our nuclear security, and that there is much more information out there about this issue. As if on cue, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, one of several Democrats going into conniptions over the nomination of John Bolton to be UN Ambassador, offered this criticism: "Mr. Bolton has overseen this Administration’s flawed proliferation policy that has seen North Korea quadruple its nuclear arsenal and seen Iran take dangerous steps toward the development of nuclear weapons." It's nice to know that...

The admission by the Energy Department that two allegedly "missing" secret computer disks never existed -- and the University of California's penalty of $5.8 million -- cap one of the biggest security shake-ups the U.S. nuclear weapons industry in post-World War II years that resulted in a temporary shutdown of all U.S. nuclear research facilities last year. What started with a bang has ended with a whimper. The U.S. Energy Department admitted late Friday that two allegedly "missing" secret computer disks that had triggered a major purge at one of the nation's premier nuclear weapons laboratories never existed in the...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Two computer disks that supposedly disappeared last summer, prompting a virtual shutdown of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in fact never existed, according to a report released Friday. In a harshly worded review that described severe security weaknesses at the nuclear laboratory, the U.S. Energy Department concluded that bar codes were recorded for the disks but that the disks themselves were never created. A separate FBI investigation supported that finding, according to the report. “The weaknesses revealed by this incident are severe and must be corrected,” said the report. As punishment for the problems, the Energy Department...

The last of my grandparents just passed away. We had been keeping a vigil over my grandmother for the last couple of weeks knowing that her time was near. About 2 months ago she fell and broke her hip and leg as well as fracturing several vertebrae in her back. Since that time she had progressively deteriorated to the point we knew her death was inevitable. Interestingly enough - apparently this morning my uncle was sitting with my Grandmother and she sat up and asked him 'why won't you let me die?' He responded with 'mother, if that's what you...

Two GREAT views of the Grand Canyon and Bandelier NM and environment. Arizonans, I'd like you to check the larger version of the Arizona image and see if you can identify a particular weird feature. (See below the image for my question.) Click on each image to see the larger version. Grand Canyon in Snow (Larger version is 2.1 MB.) In the larger version, to the west of the lower Grand Canyon and southeast of Lake Mohave and a small mountain range, there's a flat light-brown patch. Does anyone know what that is, or is it an image artifact? Bandelier...

Looking for a place to grow marijuana and live, rent-free, in a cave with all the creature comforts of home? Why not a canyon, tucked away within the 40 square miles of the nation's top-secret nuclear weapons research facility in Los Alamos? That's where Roy Michael Moore, 56, was recently discovered living in a cave equipped with a glass front door, a wood stove, a bed, electricity-generating solar panels with batteries to store the power, and lights. "From the campsite that I saw, he had been there quite a long time," said Los Alamos deputy fire chief Doug Tucker. "He...

US lab sent N-secrets over e-mail Los Alamos National Laboratory officials have discovered in recent weeks that secret information at the nuclear weapons facility was repeatedly transmitted over an unclassified e-mail system, reports the Los Angeles Times. Officials at the New Mexico lab confirmed Sunday that the incidents were reported to Energy Department headquarters in Washington, and said that they were taking measures to improve security and "prevent significant risks to national security", the paper said. Last week, the lab's director disclosed that two disks containing classified nuclear weapons information were lost. The disks contained information about a possible test...

Director accused of overreacting A Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist charged Friday that "national security has suffered demonstrably" and the nuclear weapons lab's reputation has been unjustly maligned because of director George "Pete" Nanos' decision in July to suspend work at the lab while cracking down on safety problems. The physicist, 32-year lab veteran Brad Lee Holian, has submitted a 1,500- word article outlining his charges to the journal Physics Today. The article has not yet been accepted for publication. Holian works in the T-12 division of the University of California-run lab in New Mexico. Contrary to Nanos' harsh public...

Test data missing U.S. intelligence officials say the missing classified data at Los Alamos National Laboratory is related to secret nuclear tests conducted by computer simulation. The data is considered extremely sensitive because it is used in the maintenance and development of nuclear weapons. It is contained on several computer disks that were stored in a top-secret facility at Los Alamos, N.M. The disks were last used in April. When lab researchers went to use them in July, they were gone from a secure vault within the X Division. Los Alamos is currently studying the possibility of a nuclear warhead...

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press WriterWASHINGTON - An inventory has found another case of missing data involving nuclear weapons, this time at the Energy Department's regional office in Albuquerque, N.M., the department disclosed Thursday.   The Energy Department said that an "accounting discrepancy" involving three copies of a "controlled removable electronic media" — or CREM — was found at the regional office as part of the nationwide inventory of such devices. The inventory was ordered a month ago after two CREM data devices were reported missing at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, also in New Mexico. The Albuquerque facility,...

WASHINGTON — A federal judge Wednesday held five journalists in contempt of court for refusing to disclose the names of their confidential sources for reports about a nuclear weapons scientist under government investigation in 1999. U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered the journalists, including a reporter for The Times, to pay fines of $500 a day until each divulges information about his sources to lawyers for Wen Ho Lee, who worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The order will not be enforced while it is being appealed.

The presumed missing computer disks that forced the security shutdown and political uproar at Los Alamos National Lab, appear to not be missing at all. KRQE News 13 has learned that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has concluded the disks, thought to have contained nuclear weapon secrets, were never missing. In early July, lab officials announced that the disks were missing, prompting a massive and unprecedented security shutdown and consequent investigation. Nearly two dozen scientists and administrators were placed on leave and virtually all lab operations were suspended. Now, sources tell KRQE News 13’s Larry Barker that FBI investigators have...

WASHINGTON -- NASA officials are worried that a work stoppage at Los Alamos National Laboratory could delay the launch of a nuclear-powered Pluto mission by a year and postpone the spacecraft’s arrival at its destination by two and a half years. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos lab halted all classified work July 15 after two computer disks containing classified information were discovered missing. The following day the director of the lab expanded the shutdown to nearly all activities. Some routine administrative work had resumed at the lab by July 29, but a NASA official said it remains unclear...

LOS ALAMOS — FBI agents seized a small computer hard drive marked "secret," two rolls of printed stickers reading "secret" and a Verbatim-brand 8 mm tape from a business that for years has sold recycled equipment from Los Alamos National Laboratory and other places. An agent confiscated the items Tuesday and gave Black Hole Store and Museum owner Ed Grothus an itemized receipt listing the things taken, Grothus said. Grothus said Friday the items have been a big joke in his store for years. "I had for years been jesting" that they were missing tapes from the federal nuclear weapons...