Posted on 02/22/2007 7:14:44 AM PST by CedarDave
Congressional leaders aren't finished scrutinizing Los Alamos National Laboratory over its security failures.
Members of a powerful House committee have asked Congress' investigative arm, the General Accountability Office, to evaluate the feasibility of moving classified activities to other laboratories "where there is a better track record with respect to security."
In a Feb. 16 letter to Comptroller General David Walker, House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders said repeated security problems have cast doubt on whether lab manager Los Alamos National Security and the National Nuclear Security Administration "are capable of assuring adequate safety, security, and sound business management practices."
The letter comes less than a month after lawmakers grilled LANL and NNSA officials over the lab's most recent security breach, when more than 1,500 classified documents were discovered during a drug raid at the home of a former LANL subcontractor.
At the Jan. 30 hearing, LANL director Michael Anastasio outlined a detailed response to the breach and said he had disciplined more than two dozen lab employees following a lab investigation.
But in their letter to the GAO, committee leaders cite LANL's history of security problems and said lab officials haven't followed through on repeated promises to solve security problems.
Since the late 1990s, LANL has dealt with a number of high-profile security lapses, including the temporary disappearance of two computer hard-drives containing nuclear weapons information and the case of Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwan-born U.S. citizen who admitted to mishandling nuclear secrets.
The Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has held 12 hearings on LANL security, the committee's letter notes. "More dramatic steps are necessary, and we intend to develop and implement a range of options to solve problems at LANL," states the letter, signed by committee chairman Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., and three other committee leaders.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
Maybe if they move LANL projects, they'll take Bill Richardson with them.
There is so much padding in the budget and corruption in the bureacracy at LANL - Take away the secure projects and see if they can get their act together.
I agree. LANL is riddled and Richardson played a major role in it when he was Clinton's energy secretary.
It is ironic that a democrat-controlled congress is about to take away a plum prize from a state with a democrat governor, who helped create the problem to start with.
The worst part is that our energy labs should be running full out right now, solving our energy problems.
There’s a lot of other good science being done there, but it’s mostly ancillary to the weapons programs. Most alternative energy research is pretty basic stuff, and that which was done at LANL was performed and perfected in the 70's and 80's, and turned over to industry long ago. It's not the lab's fault that there hasn't been a market for alternative energy technologies. The lab's can only develop the technologies, not compel Americans to use them. That's a social and economic issue.
There are a lot of people on this forum who probably can't even find Los Alamos on a map, let alone credibly comment on LANL issues. Please resist the impulse to join them for the sake of droll commentary. LANL is a phenomenal place, with unlimited potential to help this nation and the world. If Congress succeeds in their witch-hunt to close it, we will be far more vulnerable in the future.
I agree with that statement but you must agree that it's a shame the University of California has been allowed to continue running the place. It should not be closed but it should get new management.
By the way, Los Alamos has active programs in a number of alternative energy areas including fuel cells, hydrogen storage, superconductivity, super superconductivity, energy system reliability, solid-state lighting, solar technologies, biomass and alternative fuels.
They should be good.
They have their employees embedded everywhere - DOD,DHS, DOE - and sell the same research to each government agency for whatever the government will pay. Paying 3 or 4 times for the same research project is very profitable.
The National Labs are no more than contractors working under the guise of something they developed 60 years ago. What have they done since then that another contractor couldn’t do cheaper?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.