Texas Lawmaker Reviewing LANL Award (NM Los Alamos Lab)

The Albuquerque Journal ^ | January 9, 2006 | Associated Press

[CedarDave]

WASHINGTON — A Texas congressman has received "most of the materials'' he requested about why the U.S. Energy Department awarded a contract for Los Alamos National Laboratory to a team that includes the University of California, his spokeswoman said.

Lisa Miller, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee that Joe Barton heads, said discussions between DOE and the committee were continuing. She had no details about Barton's reaction.

Barton, R-Texas, demanded the information last month when the DOE awarded the contract to run the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab to UC and three corporations instead of to a team that included Lockheed Martin and the University of Texas.

Barton has been a frequent critic of UC's management of the lab. The university has run Los Alamos since it was created during World War II, but after a series of management and security lapses, the DOE decided to put the management contract up for bid.

Government and UC officials have emphasized that even though the university is part of the winning team, the new management group is a different organization.

Barton, however, said after the announcement Dec. 21 that he had "minimal hope and no belief that UC can reverse its record of consistent failure.'' He asked for documents detailing how the selection had been made.

[K-oneTexas]

Amazing. I read somewhere that Livermore Lab has a worse security record than Los Alamos. UC involved in both, since the beginning.


A BRIEF TIMELINE

1943 -- Los Alamos Laboratory, at first known as "Project Y," opens, its mission to build an atomic bomb. That was known as the "Manhattan Project." University of California operates it from the start.

1999 -- Lab security concerns come to the fore when scientist Wen Ho Lee is accused of 59 counts of mishandling classified information, downloading nuclear secrets onto tapes and removing them from the lab. He served 10 months in jail and eventually pleaded guilty to a single count. He gets an apology from the judge over having to serve jail time.

2000 -- Two computer hard drives containing classified data are reported missing. Six senior scientists were suspended over the ensuing flap; disks were later found behind a lab copy machine.

January 2003 -- Lab Director John Browne and Deputy Director Joseph Salgado resign following a 2002 internal report showing the lab could not account for an estimated $2.7 million in missing computers and other equipment, much of it presumed stolen. The FBI and the Department of Energy Inspector General investigate this and allegations of widespread credit card fraud among lab employees.

May 2003 -- In a strong rebuke of UC over security and business concerns, Department of Energy officials decide to put the Los Alamos contract, held by UC for six decades, up for competitive bids, along with the contracts for Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore national labs.

July 2004 -- Two classified computer disks are reported missing at Los Alamos, leading to a shutdown of the lab and a DOE-wide stand-down of activities involving classified computer disks and other removable media. Investigations later concluded that the disks never existed.

April 2005 -- UC retains operation of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, awarded a five-year contract by the DOE, which would not say if there were any other bidders.

Dec. 21, 2005 -- Partnership headed by UC and Bechtel awarded seven-year contract to operate Los Alamos, edging out a partnership of the University of Texas and Lockheed Martin.

2007 -- Contract will be awarded for operation of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, a UC operation for more than 50 years.

[K-oneTexas]

Another article.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Livermore security breaches overlooked

By Betsy Mason
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory has quietly weathered the media firestorm ignited by the reported loss of classified computer disks at Los Alamos Laboratory in July, but Department of Energy records show Livermore has had more serious security incidents over the past three years than its embattled New Mexico cousin.

In response to the missing disks and resulting scrutiny from the press and the federal government, Los Alamos Lab director Peter Nanos shut down all activity there July 16. A week later, the DOE halted all work involving removable classified media, such as computer disks and drives, at all of its facilities, including Lawrence Livermore.

Work resumed at Livermore a few weeks after an inventory accounted for all classified removable media at the lab. But work at many high-security facilities at Los Alamos remained stalled for more than six months. Recently completed investigations by the FBI and the DOE concluded the missing disks never existed.

Many more security incidents have occurred at the DOE's four nuclear weapons labs, including Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and California, that haven't gotten the same attention as the lost disks.

Records recently released by the National Nuclear Security Administration within the DOE show that of 87 security incidents at Livermore Lab from 2002 to 2004, 35 were Category 1, defined by the DOE as incidents that "pose the most serious threats to national security interests and/or DOE assets and could potentially create serious security situations."

Category 1 incidents are considered the most serious security incidents because they could result in top secret nuclear weapon information falling into the wrong hands. The incidents may include classified information provided to an unauthorized person or put on an unclassified computer system, and unsecured or unattended security containers.

At Livermore, four incidents resulted in confirmed disclosure of classified information to an unauthorized person.

"In all those cases, the determination was made that the impact was minimal," said NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes.

While the specific nature of these disclosures is classified, an example could be one level of classified information being disclosed to a person with a lower security clearance level, Wilkes said.

Meanwhile, Los Alamos Lab, commonly viewed as the worst offender when it comes to security lapses, had more total incidents with 102, but only 22 were considered Category 1 incidents, 13 fewer than Livermore Lab.

Like Livermore, Los Alamos had four confirmed disclosures of classified information to unauthorized people.

Another 39 incidents at Los Alamos and nine at Livermore are still being investigated and haven't been confirmed or rated yet.

Sandia in New Mexico had the most total incidents with 160, but only 14 were Category 1. At Sandia in Livermore, three of 42 total incidents were Category 1. The two labs combined had two confirmed disclosures of information to an unauthorized person.

It is difficult to compare the numbers between labs because each site uses its own judgment when reporting and categorizing security incidents, Wilkes said. "We're working on that," he said.

NNSA takes each incident seriously, Wilkes said, but it is important to keep the numbers in perspective. "When one considers the numbers of transactions we have, they number in the hundreds of thousands or millions," Wilkes said. "So these (security incident) numbers are fairly low. We are confident in the safety and security at all our sites."

Both Livermore and Los Alamos referred all questions about the security incidents to NNSA.

Even before the incident numbers were made public, employees at Los Alamos had begun to speak out about the shutdown and resulting tensions at the lab. Some employees have said they think Nanos overreacted and the complete shutdown, firings, demotions and reprimands were overkill.

On an Internet blog called "LANL: The Real Story," a few employees have been venting about Nanos, who in the days and months following the report of missing disks called workers "cowboys" who feel they are above the rules. Some lab employees have even called for his resignation. Others have called the climate at the lab "poisonous."

The security incident numbers are adding to some employees' opinions that Los Alamos was unfairly punished for a problem that exists at all the weapons labs.