Posted on 11/03/2006 3:59:46 AM PST by Donna Lee Nardo
Group: Lab breach bigger than thought
By Deborah Baker, Associated Press Writer 11/2/06
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - A former nuclear weapons lab contract worker took home not only classified information on a portable computer storage drive, but also about 200 pages of printed documents, her lawyer said Thursday.
The confirmation of the papers follows a watchdog group's report that an internal memo from the Los Alamos National Laboratory indicates the amount of classified information found at the woman's home is substantially larger than first thought.
Nuclear Watch New Mexico, an activist organization, reported that the memo appeared to be a summary of a briefing on the security breach, though the group said it could not verify the memo's authenticity.
Two officials with the federal agency that oversees the nation's nuclear weapons program said there were "significant errors" in the memo but did not reject it outright. The officials, who work for the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration, spoke anonymously because of the ongoing investigation into the breach.
They said they could not confirm the briefing referred to by the author of the memo, which Nuclear Watch said it obtained through an intermediary.
"If true, this summary indicates that a very serious and compromising breach has occurred; perhaps the most serious" in the troubled lab's history, Nuclear Watch said in a news release.
Police seized three portable computer storage drives - called flash drives, among other names - and the papers Oct. 17 during a drug raid at the home of Jessica Quintana, the contract worker.
Quintana has not been charged. A man who was renting a room at her home was jailed on drug and probation charges.
Her lawyer, Stephen Aarons, told The Associated Press that the material included copies of front pages of various documents from the lab. Quintana, an archivist, had planned to use them to create an index of items she had converted to an electronic format, he said.
Aarons also said that one of the three portable computer storage drives contained lab-related material, but that the information wasn't transferred to another computer.
"It was downloaded, but it was never uploaded," Aarons said, adding that Quintana did not show the material to anyone.
The 22-year-old archivist took the material home in August because she faced a work deadline to create the index, then forgot about the documents, he said.
"Her intent was to destroy the hard copies, and she never did it," Aarons said.
Nuclear Watch said the memo on the security briefing at the lab said Quintana had a level of security clearance that would have given her access to documents that could have contained information on how to bypass the authorization process for using nuclear weapons.
"She doesn't know anything about nuclear weapons," Aarons responded. "She knows how to scan documents."
The Energy Department and the Nuclear Security Administration declined Thursday to discuss the scope of the security breach, citing the investigation.
But an official with knowledge of the government probe acknowledged there were "several hundred" pages of classified documents discovered during the drug raid in addition to the classified material found in three computer "thumb" storage devices.
"It is a sizable amount," said the individual, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is under way. He declined to characterize the documents and said the exact number had not been determined.
Said Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens: "We're taking it (the security breach) very seriously." He added that Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman "was personally disturbed" that classified documents turned up during a drug raid.
"We want to know how this could happen," Stevens said.
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Associated Press writer H. Josef Hebert in Washington contributed to this report.
© Copyright 2006, The News & Observer Publishing Company,
No one is running Los Alamos.
Ruth, thanks for the ping on this one. We are getting more details and it isn't pretty.
These guys just don't learn.
Why don't we just move the operation to China and give our entire nuclear weapons operation over to the Chinese? They have access to all of our nuclear secrets. Why not just outsource our nuclear work to China as we have everything else?
I am sorry, you don't just happen to have so much classified material in your home by accident. This woman should be charged as a spy, regardless of why the material was in her home.
Make and example, don't just brush this under the table.
I know this is changing the subject, but have the Clintons finished decorating their vacation house outside Beijing?
I know this is changing the subject, but have the Clintons finished decorating their vacation house outside Beijing?
I know this is changing the subject, but have the Clintons finished decorating their vacation house outside Beijing?
First things first...
Get rid of everybody at the top..
Take Los Alamos out of the hands of the agency presently in charge..
Totally replace security..
There should be severe penalties in place for such security breaches..
Make sure those penalties are applied.. ( I hope it involves prison time.. )
If there are Not penalties in place,.... Why the H**l not???
This is just unacceptable. How many times have the U.S. citizens been promised each and every time that something like this will never happen again and then nothing was ever done to the people who broke the law. I want the axe to fall on them. I want the maximum penalty to befall them and I would like to see the same thing happen who let this go on and not take the steps that are suppose to be taken. All this is nothing but laziness on those who are suppose to not let this happen.
took the docs home to archive them, and then forgot about them.
Yeah. I believe that. /sarc
What the hell does a university know about security, anyway? Universities are almost totally open environments. Who the hell is making these decisions? Good grief!!
Chi Coms, maybe?
Security at this facility is constantly being breached. No one has taken security seriously and the whole security mindset is sloppy and ignored. The only way they are going to take security seriously is to completely close the facility, fire everyone and solicit new employees to start in 6 months.
The contract should be given to another organization and new employees be hammered with security procedures and periodic lie detector tests.
Make and example, don't just brush this under the table.
The best example is to close the facility and start over in 6 months; new hires, new procedures, new organization who gets a new contract, lie detector tests routinely given and double the security personnel and procedures.
No one is going to take security seriously unless they are personally affected negatively. Fire the whole bunch.
I know this is changing the subject, but have the Clintons finished decorating their vacation house outside Beijing?
Clinton has not delivered the final documents as agreed to.
Sandy Berger's difficulties delayed everything.
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