Another Nuclear Lab Security Breach
Corruption Chronicles: A Judicial Watch BlogPosted by at June 15, 2007 04:26 PM
The U.S. government’s failure to adequately protect a major nuclear weapons laboratory with a long history of serious security breaches has led to yet another major violation in which highly classified information was compromised.
Located in northern New Mexico, the Los Alamos National Laboratory has been plagued by an array of shameful security lapses in the last decade yet authorities and lawmakers have failed to correct the serious problem.
The latest incident involves lab officials sending top-secret data relating to nuclear weapons via an open electronic mail network. The highly classified information included details of the actual characteristics of nuclear material used in weapons.
Just months ago New Mexico police accidentally stumbled upon Los Alamos classified information in a drug dealer’s mobile home during a drug bust. The 1,500 highly classified nuclear weapons designs were stashed in a trailer park near the lab along with paraphernalia to manufacture methamphetamine.
Other renowned lapses include missing data storage devices and a Chinese communist scientist (Wen Ho Lee) who stole nuclear secrets from the facility in 1999 but was not prosecuted by the Clinton Justice Department because then Attorney General Janet Reno claimed the accusations were racist.
The lab’s problems have been so well documented that the Department of Energy labeled it a “systematic management failure.” Despite the problems, however, the government renewed the multi million-dollar contract of the practically incompetent group that for decades has managed the facility—the University of California.
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Judical Watch is allied with Pat Robertson, CBN and the 700 Club. Just thought you all should know.
ReplyDeletePat Robertson in a man of Gawd so you can trust him. Maybe he is crazy and kinda of evil but you should not hold that againts him.
ReplyDeleteSadly, the media and the "public watchdogs" such as these bozos, tend to add very little signal and lots of noise.
ReplyDeleteWhy isn't anyone talking clearly about the (apparent) fact that this "breach" was among the Board, not the rank and file, or even LANL upper management.
Reviewing the board, we see mostly Bechtel Bozos and UC administrators with a a couple of token UC scientists. None I think we would call "one of our own". I presume the lapse was among/between 2or 3 board members, not the whole bunch... but why are those kinds of details not "news"? If anything, this *should* vindicate LANL itself .
If the "privatization crew" brought in has a higher error rate than the rank and file (1 major incident in 1 year among 8 individuals vs 1 major incident every year or two among tens of thousands of individuals?)
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* Gerald Parsky (LANS Chairman), chairman of the board of regents of University of California.
* Tom Hash, chairman and president of Bechtel Systems and Infrastructure, Inc.
* John Fees, president and chief operating officer of BWX Technologies, Inc.
* Marye Anne Fox , chancellor of the University of California at San Diego.
* Joseph Mullinix, University of California’s senior vice president for business and finance.
* Craig Weaver, executive vice president of Bechtel Systems and Infrastructure, Inc.
* Dr. Sidney Drell, professor emeritus and deputy director at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
* Richard Mies, retired commander of U.S. Strategic Command.
* Nick Moore, retired global chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
* Dr. William Perry , former U.S. secretary of defense.
* Nick Salazar is a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives.
How about the Darko post submitted as a letter to the editor of the Journal, New Mexican, and Monitor?
ReplyDeleteI was with you about the LANS board until you posted their names.
ReplyDeleteIt is a pretty stellar group.
Drell and Perry are the only names that I find stellar on this list. It's also not clear if some of the names on this list are mainly for show, will little real input into the board's decisions. Parsky may be the real force behind this board.
ReplyDeleteYou don't find Fox, Perry and Mies also to be stellar?
ReplyDeleteAnd why were you "with me" until you saw the list and found them stellar?
ReplyDeleteIsn't it even more absurd that they would fuck up like this if they are all "stellar"?
All I wanted to point out was that this list is NOT LANL, but LANS (a limited liability corporation - think on what THAT means).
The Stupaks and Dingles and POGOs of the world dipping their brushes in the fuckup of the very boys (and girls) they sold us out to and then painting *US* with it.
From news reports no less than 2 of these individuals participated in the fuckaroo... and maybe more. That doesn't paint ALL of them with the fuckup brush, but it surely doesn't paint LANL rank-and-file with it either.
If someone from the trenches at LANL made this magnitude of error, we'd be dangling by our balls from the gates to a federal penitentary... but when LANS board members do it, *we* find ourselves dangling by our balls from the national headlines.
- Darko
Still trying to figure out who on that list would need to see "top-secret data relating to nuclear weapons...The highly classified information included details of the actual characteristics of nuclear material used in weapons."
ReplyDeleteI would assume a few on that list already know it. The others? Seems like there would be a tough time convincing knowledgeable people they had a need to know at that level of detail as part of their job as board members.
I'm still waiting for a reply to this comment from another thread:
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
What's interesting is the article makes it sound more like Mr. Smith had a document on his computer that he didn't compose himself. If so, how did the document wind up on his unclassified machine and who composed it?
6/14/07 4:56 PM
I'm guessing that John Deutch (former head of CIA) and Sandy Berger (former head of NSC/Whitehouse) where real "stellar" guys, too. And look how badly they both performed. Just because someone is "stellar" doesn't mean they aren't capable of also making "stellar" screwups.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing being "stellar" seems to do is get you off easy when you make a big security boo-boo.