Presidential Candidates Respond to Seven Key National Security Questions

Judyth Piazza, Newsblaze.com
Council for a Livable World today released responses to seven critical questions on national security issues that were posed to all declared presidential candidates from both parties. Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson responded to the Council's questionnaire. Their responses exhibited noteworthy unity while differing on some important details.

The seven questions were on reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles, new nuclear weapons, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Iraq, space weapons, nuclear non-proliferation, and negotiating with Iran and North Korea.

Senator Gary Hart, chairman of Council for a Livable World and a longtime expert on arms control and security issues, found more agreement than disagreement in the responses. "What struck me most is the degree to which these candidates passionately seek to reverse the failed policies of the current administration that have undermined U.S. leadership and made us less safe," Hart remarked.

Council for a Livable World submitted its questionnaire to all Democratic and Republican declared presidential candidates. Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, along with all of the Republican candidates, did not return the Council's questionnaire.

Christopher Dodd endorsed all of the Council's positions with one word responses, choosing neither to explain nor equivocate. The other candidates offered detailed explanations, leaving numerous shades of gray that offer valuable insight into their priorities and how they will implement them if elected.
[Read the full article here]


The questions and each candidate's full response are available here. For example, this is Richardson's statement on RRW:

We do not need a new generation of nuclear weapons. I was Energy Secretary under President Clinton. My department was responsible for the design, manufacture, and maintenance of our stockpile of nuclear weapons. These weapons are not abstractions to me: to see one of them is to be astounded that millions of deaths can be compressed into such a tiny package. To know intimately our nuclear arsenal is to know intimately how our species could destroy itself. Under my administration, we will lead the world toward the reduction of nuclear arsenals, not their augmentation.

UC president didn't bail, he was pushed out, sources say

Phillip Matier,Andrew Ross, Chronicle Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Members of the University of California's governing Board of Regents, unhappy with what they saw as persistent management problems in the UC system, pushed university President Robert Dynes into announcing his resignation this week, sources involved in the move said Tuesday.

Board Chairman Richard Blum met with the 64-year-old Dynes over dinner at Trader Vic's in Emeryville three weeks ago to tell him the regents had grown impatient with his lack of progress in reforming a dysfunctional university hierarchy, the sources said.

Dynes, who has been criticized by state lawmakers for UC's practice of handing out hidden perks and bonuses to top executives, offered to step down next year. Blum, however, told him it would be better if he did it sooner rather than later.

In announcing his resignation Monday, Dynes said he would leave no later than June, explaining that he wanted to spend time with his new wife. However, UC Provost Wyatt "Rory" Hume immediately was put in charge of the system's day-to-day operations while the university searches for a permanent successor.

Blum, husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., confirmed that he had met with Dynes at the Emeryville restaurant but would not comment on details, saying only that "Bob told me he wanted to spend more time with his family."

"I know you have a job to do," Blum told The Chronicle, "but the answer to everything else is going to be, 'No comment.' "

Dynes issued a statement late Tuesday saying that "at dinner with Dick Blum, he asked me what my plans were as president. I told him then that I was planning to step down by June 2008. I have had this timing in mind for some time."

One state official familiar with the meeting said several regents had concluded that after nearly four years on the job, Dynes, a former physicist and UC San Diego chancellor, was in over his head at the top of the 10-campus system.

"But then, what do you expect?" said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Spending 17 years in laboratories doesn't exactly set you up for running what is, in effect, a multibillion-dollar corporation."

Financier Warren Hellman, a major UC donor who was Dynes' father-in-law until the university president divorced Hellman's daughter last year, said of the fallout between Dynes and the regents: "Everybody sort of got tired of each other."

Blum told Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger about his meeting with Dynes on July 27, a few days after the dinner, sources said. The governor's chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, also was told.

Last week, other UC regents, state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez were alerted that Dynes was about to announce his resignation.

Blum, who heads a multibillion-dollar investment firm and sits on a number of corporate and charity boards, reportedly is putting together a reorganization plan himself for the UC president's office - something critics say is long overdue.

For all of his accomplishments - including presiding over the opening of UC Merced and retaining UC management of national laboratories at Livermore and Los Alamos, N.M. - Dynes probably will be best remembered for the public relations disaster unleashed by revelations in The Chronicle that UC was handing out millions of dollars in bonuses and benefits to top university executives without telling lawmakers or taxpayers.

The money represented only a small fraction of the system's budget, but the disclosures came at a time when student fees were rising and lower-paid UC workers were being stonewalled on raises.

"This guy had 70 lawyers on staff, and not one of them gave him a heads-up about the problems they were creating with these deals," said one regent, who asked not to be named. "It just goes to show how dysfunctional the whole place is."

Several regents made it clear that they had zero tolerance for repeats of such PR fiascoes as the revelation that the university had paid $30,000 to install a dog run at the UC Santa Cruz chancellor's home.

But there is concern that more is on the way. Just this week, it was disclosed that UC San Diego is the target of an Internal Revenue Service audit of its payroll and accounting systems. The IRS is believed to be looking into whether business income or employment taxes were appropriately reported or paid in 2005.

Taken together, the problems could make the search for Dynes' successor more difficult, UC watchers say. Whoever gets the job is certain to face endless scrutiny - and a lot less autonomy - in everything from dealing with UC's budget to hiring assistants.

More Legal News

The first of three items is this story from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Five journalists -- Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek; Allen Lengel of The Washington Post; Toni Locy, formerly of USA Today; and James Swart, formerly of CBS News -- now risk being held in contempt of court if they refuse to comply with the judge's order.

Walton called Hatfill's case "strikingly similar" to that of Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos nuclear scientist investigated for espionage in 1999.

Like Hatfill, Lee brought a claim against the government under the Privacy Act and subpoenaed journalists to find out who in the government had leaked them information. The journalists in the Lee case were held in contempt of court and heavy daily fines were assessed against them by the judge, though the fines were stayed while the reporters appealed. Lee eventually agreed to settle his claim, and in an unprecedented arrangement, the media companies that employed the journalists agreed to contribute money to the settlement.

In the Hatfill decision Monday, Walton refused to recognize a federal common law privilege for journalists to decline to reveal their sources.

Walton said doing so "would erect a potentially insurmountable hurdle for a Privacy Act litigant seeking to hold the government accountable for leaks condemned by the Act."

The next item isn't new but its also related to a constitutional amendment. This 2003 GAO briefing for Congressman Markey titled DOE Reimbursement of Contractor Litigation Costs discusses the assertion of immunity under the Eleventh Amendment:

• A state university that is sued in the course of its operation of a DOE facility may be entitled to assert immunity under the Eleventh Amendment and other immunity-related defenses, such as being exempt from punitive damages under state law. (3) Whether a particular state university is entitled to assert such defenses depends on whether it qualifies as a state entity, which in turn depends on a variety of factors, such as whether the state is liable for judgments against the university, the nature of the functions the university is performing, and whether the university is a separate incorporated entity.
  

• The University of California is the only DOE contractor to use immunity as a defense. Officials at the university, which operates three DOE facilities—Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory—estimated that the university used Eleventh Amendment immunity in 8 of about 35 federal cases in 5-1/2 years. Also, officials at the University of California estimated that the university, in its role as a DOE contractor, has asserted other immunity-related defenses in at least 62 of about 137 cases, predominantly to defend against punitive damages.
  

And the last item is an email forwarded by Pat the Dog of LANL: The Corporate Story fame.

Pat,
Is the blog alive? Today was my first attempt to visit it, so I'm a novice at this sort of thing. I have the inside scoop on pending litigation that would be blog-worthy, regarding the inability of upper Laboratory Management to make a decision about a hiring action due to a near-relative concern. It's been 9 months, and still no answer. Yes or no, is it so hard? It's a wonderful case study of institutional paralysis. The employee's promotion hasn't been declined, just thrown in the swamp to decompose and create more bureaucratic stench... Sincerely, Anonymous

Hello Sweden!

The blog's one hundred thousandth visitor was from Gothenburg, Sweden.

ISP Com Hem AB
Country : Sweden
State/Region : Vastra Gotaland
City : Gteborg
Operating System Macintosh MacOSX
Visitor's Time Aug 15 2007 3:49:27 am
Visit Number 100,000

To our readers, 100,000 thanks!
Pinky

Comment of the Week

We have two comments to be featured this week. The first one is from the LANL Manager Avoided $88M Fine post. This one is short, sweet, and to the point:

"Department of Energy apparently forgot to put legal requirements in its contract with the lab operator,"

Bullshit.

Bechtel agreed to help DOE turn LANL into a pit factory. In return, DOE agreed to protect Becthel's pet LLC.

End of story.


The next comment was from the post about Dynes resigning:

"Good riddance, shit head"

This blog editor shares the sentiment. Dynes was no friend of LANL. His deer-in-the-headlights management style (using the "management" term in its loosest sense) was what allowed the Nanos fiasco to turn into the Nanos disaster.

Good riddance, Bob.

--Gussie
[Gussie is on assignment so I'm posting for him.]

UC President Robert Dynes to resign

He says 'direction of my personal life has changed'
Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, August 13, 2007
(08-13) 11:06 PDT OAKLAND -- UC President Robert Dynes announced his resignation today, bringing a surprising end to his tenure.

He said he will serve until June 2008 or until a new president is named. However, he also disclosed that he has asked Provost Wyatt Hume to step in as the university's chief operating officer, effective immediately.

In a letter today to the governing Board of Regents, Dynes wrote: "Since it was my original intent to serve in this post for approximately five years, and as the direction of my personal life has changed substantially in the last couple of years, I write to inform you that I intend to step down in June 2008 or upon the appointment of my successor."

[Read Robert Dynes' letter of resignation and UC Chairman Richard Blum's letter to the Board of Regents. (PDFs)]

Dynes' acknowledged that his administration has endured "difficult pressures" because of public scrutiny of hidden executive compensation for top administrators, but he said generous pay packages were needed to attract top talent and that abuses occurred in "only a few instances."

Various audits of UC's executive compensation practices found scores of abuses over the years. One internal audit cited 113 cases where senior managers received extra pay or benefits as exceptions to established university policies. The same audit cited the cases of fourteen senior managers received incentive payments in violation of UC policy.

Dynes said he intends to return to his prior job on the faculty and resuming research in physics.

Dynes, a noted physicist, was the 60-year-old chancellor of UC San Diego in June 2003 when was picked to lead the university. He replaced President Richard Atkinson, who served eight years at the helm.

E-mail Charles Burress at cburress@sfchronicle.com

POGO Aims Higher

Watchdogs rank Bechtel among worst fed contractors

By Dave Wedge, Boston Herald Chief Enterprise Reporter
Thursday, August 9, 2007

While Big Dig general contractor Bechtel Parsons/Brinkerhoff has mostly avoided responsibility for woes on the oft-criticized $15 billion project, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group has tabbed the company as one of the top violators among federal government contractors.
According to a July 18 report by the Project on Government Oversight, Bechtel has more than $4 billion in federal government contracts and has had 10 “instances of misconduct” since 1995, resulting in $1.9 million in fines and damages.
The incidents cited by POGO involve discrimination settlements, asbestos violations, hazardous waste and radioactive materials laws, nuclear-safety violations and other environmental infractions.
The report also refers to a National Transportation Safety Board report that partly blamed the fatal 2006 Big Dig collapse on mistakes made by Bechtel.

Bechtel ranked 14th out of the nation’s top 50 firms on POGO’s Federal Contractor Misconduct Database. The top offender was Lockheed Martin, which had 40 incidents of misconduct resulting in $288 million in damages.

In one instance cited by POGO, Bechtel was slapped with a $162,000 fine in Hanford, Wash., after workers at a plutonium plant were found mishandling hazardous material. The company also was hit with a $330,000 fine that was later reduced to $198,000 at a Hanford water treatment plant for shoddy inspections and other violations.
In 1998, the company was fined $90,000 by New Hampshire environmental officials for violating wetlands laws during construction of a natural-gas pipeline.
A Bechtel spokesman said the instances represent “less than 1/20th of 1 percent of our total government contracts since 1995,” and that the company “stands behind that record.”
dwedge@bostonherald.com

Ex-Manager May Fight Proposed $3M Fine

Sunday, August 12, 2007
Journal Staff Report

The former manager of Los Alamos National Laboratory has signaled its intent to object to a proposed $3 million fine related to a security breach last year.
University of California officials have noted that the incident- in which a contract worker took home classified documents- happened five months after its management of the lab ended.
And like the new management team, the university has also asserted that it was not required to fully implement an updated series of Department of Energy security directives- or "manuals"- due to budget constraints.
"Any weaknesses that existed in the University's security systems due to inability to immediately implement the Manuals were accurately assessed and mitigated in consultation with DOE," S. Robert Foley, UC's vice president of laboratory management, wrote in an April letter to DOE.
Attached to the letter is UC's position on its culpability in the incident. Among the university's assertions is that UC, as a branch of the state of California, has immunity against suits brought by the federal government.
The assertion prompted a sharply worded letter last week from the chairmen of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and its oversight subcommittee, who called 11th Amendment argument a "frivolous legal posture."
"UC's posture is a fundamental challenge to DOE's authority to hold UC accountable for violations," wrote Rep. John D. Dingell, D-Mich., the committee chairman, and subcommittee chairman Bart Stupak, D-Mich.
On Wednesday, the university wrote the committee a letter in response, stating that the 11th Amendment is a defense that it routinely uses in "appropriate cases."
"The current DOE proceedings is not such an appropriate case," UC Vice President and General Counsel Charles Robinson wrote. "We should not have suggested that it might be."

LANL Manager Avoided $88M Fine

Sunday, August 12, 2007
By Raam Wong, Journal Northern Bureau

SANTA FE— An oversight during last year's change in management at Los Alamos National Laboratory may have helped the contractor that now runs the lab avoid a multi-million-dollar fine.
The Department of Energy's contract with Los Alamos National Security LLC inadvertently omitted some of the agency's own directives concerning the handling of classified material.
One congressman called the omissions a potential "get-out-of-jail-free card" for the lab.
Last month, DOE issued a notice stating that LANS violated directives in connection with an October 2006 incident in which a lab contract worker took home classified documents.
The lab may have dodged a huge bullet: The total maximum fine for all of the violations was $88 million, according to the notice.
The contract has since been updated to include financial penalties for violations of security directives.
Documents taken from the lab by Jessica Quintana— which were discovered during a police drug raid on her Los Alamos mobile home targeting her roommate— concerned the design of nuclear weapons and the methodologies for testing nuclear weapons of the United States and its allies.
In the months after the security breach, LANS asserted that it should not be fined for violating the security directives cited by DOE, according to a footnote in the DOE's notice of violation.
LANS maintained that its contract didn't include the security directives and that the contract instead referred to predecessor DOE orders that did not call for penalties.
It's not clear whether the lab's argument held water with the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nation's weapons labs. But in any case, LANS wasn't fined for violating the security rules that were supposed to be in the contract.
The agency's violation notice states that because "NNSA has decided not to impose any penalties" for violating the security directives, the question of whether the lab can be fined for them is "moot."
The NNSA did propose a $300,000 fine for LANS, but for a violation related to the longstanding Atomic Energy Act, not the security measures missing from the contract.
NNSA also is proposing to fine the University of California, the lab's former manager, $3 million.
Even though the Quintana incident took place several months after the June 2006 transfer of the lab's management from the university to LANS, NNSA said UC bore significant responsibility for the evolution of "longstanding deficiencies" the lab's handling of classified information.
NNSA decided to fine LANS on just one violation of the Atomic Energy Act, according to the notice, in recognition of the proactive way in which the lab responded to the Quintana incident.
DOE officials have also noted that LANS was only on the job for a few months before the incident occurred.
Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said Thursday that LANS plans to pay the $300,000 fine soon.

DOE orders
DOE left its security directives out of the LANS contract despite the fact that the Los Alamos operating contract was put out to bid in part because years of embarrassing security and safety lapses under the old management, the University of California.
UC had run the Los Alamos lab since it was created to build the first atomic bomb during World War II.
UC remains involved in Los Alamos operations as part of LANS, a private consortium that also includes Bechtel and other corporations.
The security directives— known as the 470.4 series manuals— were issued in recent years to codify DOE's requirements for protecting classified documents.
NNSA spokesman John Broehm said the manuals could have been left out of the contract due to the complexity of switching managers for the first time in the lab's history.
"Unfortunately, the manuals in question were not included during this transfer," Broehm said in a statement to the Journal. "Once the omission was discovered, they were immediately included and the new contract was updated." The updates were made in January.
The manuals did not include significant new security requirements, Broehm said. Rather, they alerted contractors of NNSA's authority to impose fines for violating security procedures.
The oversight brought criticism in April during a congressional hearing.
"This committee was disturbed to learn just this week that the Department of Energy apparently forgot to put legal requirements in its contract with the lab operator," said Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak, chairman of the Energy and Commerce committee's oversight subcommittee.
Stupak said he feared the omission would hand LANS a "get-out-of-jail-free card."
Last month, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman sent the NNSA a memo stating that one of the lessons learned from the episode is the need to ensure that DOE directives are "incorporated in the applicable contracts and subcontracts."
He goes on to say that leaving out references to these directives may limit DOE's ability to hold contractors accountable.

Journal staff writer John Fleck contributed to this report

Hispanic Homesteaders on the
Pajarito Plateau:
An Unconstitutional Taking of Property at
Los Alamos 1942-1945

Messrs Pinky and the Brain,
For the historians in your audience, perhaps this hidden account of how the Los Alamos National Laboratory came to be situated would be of interest. This shameful part of history has never been effectively chronicled by either academia or the media. Worse yet, this part of history has been actively hidden from public view not just by those in authority, but by those we elect to protect us from such abuses. Finally "the rest of the story" can be told thanks to the courage of the two individuals authoring this account, and to the courage of those who maintain this web site such that it remains an open forum for all points of view.
--anonymous

Tipping Point? Get Real

There has been discussion on recent posts about what is the "tipping point" regarding the work conditions at LANL that would finally cause individuals to leave. One comment suggested that a 1.25% raise, handed out to the top 10% of the work force would cause this particular individual to leave.

Folks, it's time to get real. LANL is facing a possible $400 million budget shortfall for this upcoming fiscal year. That could mean 1,400 pink slips would be coming shortly, and you guys are talking about getting raises?

Yikes! Talk about being disconnected from the actual, real world. Wake up to the realities of working at today's LANL!

--Gussie

Comment of the Week

Yes, it's that time again. After observing the sporadic anti-Pogo comments on recent posts, particularly those comments which impugned the accuracy of any Pogo news release which featured LANL, I felt that the LANL Public Affairs office deserved equal billing. This comment from the Thoughts on the latest security imbroglio post is our Comment of the Week:

If Lab Public Affairs were commissioned to spin the crucifiction this is how it would have been done:

Press Release:

Today there was a hammering incident. It was a signficant event, but under no circumstances should the public be alarmed. All nails have been accounted for, and the risk to the general public of accidentally stepping on one is minimal. Ceasar's spokesperson, Kevin Roark, said "the Emperor regrets the loss of nails in the past and takes very seriously his responibility ensure the safety of all who inhabiting his domain. It is now required that nails be under dual control and fully accounted for both before and after each and every event."


end of press release

Thoughts on the latest security imbroglio

Predictably, we are seeing two distinct camps form up around this latest incident.

The Pogo folks see it as yet more evidence that LANL's management team is not up to the job of running the lab:

The Washington, D.C.-based Project on Government Oversight has criticized the lab’s security record for years.

“LANL has been fined, lab officials have been fired, and the lab was even closed for a number of months so that it could get its act together,” the project’s senior investigator, Peter Stockton, said in a news release. “It’s clear that it just can’t.”

LANL, of course, is trying to downplay the event:

Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said POGO’s characterization of the event was misleading at best.

“We did have a lab employee who made a mistake and inadvertently allowed sensitive information to get on our yellow network, which is password protected,” Roark said. “It’s for lab employees only. It is not accessible to the outside world. However, sensitive information should not reside on the yellow network.”

Here on the blog we are seeing both factions represented. Apologists for the fact that the event occurred have pointed out that

1. Other DOE sites do it too (and Livermore does it 'more'),
   
2. LANL's security regulations are so byzantine that nobody can follow them, and
   
3. LANL's secure computing infrastructure is a shambles.

All true, no doubt. Amongst the LANL antagonists, we see this view

Not to worry. Uncle Boddy will label *this* incident "human error" just like he did for LANS' little oopsie just a month or so ago. Then Mikey and his boys will sweep it all under the table again. And then we will resume our trip down the path to becoming the nation's new plutonium pit production facility.

which refers of course to the other most recent classified email security incident, performed by a consultant to the LANS board.

The latest rumors that this latest classified email oopsie was either an expose of the W76, or contained a critique of LLNL's Tantalum-bearing RRW design are interesting, but unsubstantiated.

Myself, I suspect that a version of the 'Uncle Boddy Pardon' will be the sole outcome of this event, just as it was with the previous one. I am admittedly cynical to the core when it comes to DOE, NNSA, Bechtel, UC, and LANS, and what I am convinced is their collective intent to turn LANL into a production pit fab facility at the expense of all else.

--Gussie

Los Alamos nuclear lab loses more data

07 August 2007
By Chris Mellor, Techworld

The error-prone Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory has inadvertently released highly classified nuclear weapons material again, this time by e-mail.

This was followed by the theft of a Los Alamos laptop. Both occurred since last October when a crack dealer was found in possession of lab nuclear weapons data on a USB stick.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory is one of the USA's three nuclear weapons laboratories. It carries out sensitive national security missions, including helping to ensure that the US nuclear weapons stockpile is safe, secure and reliable. It has a history of bad classified data handling discipline and is managed by LANS, Los Alamos National Security.

Following the discovery of classified nuclear weapons data on a crack dealer's USB stick the lab operators were fined $3.3 million by the US Department of Energy. The lab then vowed to stop storing classified data on any removable media.

However, this did not extend to removable computers such as laptops. Over the May and June period a staff member of the lab took his laptop, containing "government documents of a sensitive nature” with him on vacation to Ireland, where it was stolen.

The lab then took an inventory of all its laptops and replaced many of them with non-portable desktop computers.

Jef Berger, a Los Alamos spokesperson, said: "information contained on the computer was of sufficiently low sensitivity that, had the employee followed proper laboratory procedure, he would have been authorised to take it to Ireland."

The employee did not follow proper procedure. Berger added that following the theft the lab is acting to narrowly restrict the use of lab laptops during foreign travel. The lab is also strengthening its employees' understanding of their responsibilities and lab procedures in such matters. He did not say why this had not taken place before.

Following the NewsWeek report Berger stated "After a rigorous review, computer forensics experts at the Lab determined with a very high level of confidence that the laptop stolen from a hotel room in Ireland did not contain any classified materials or any personally identifiable information. Nor were any national security interests jeopardised."

Email security breach

In January Harold P. Smith, a LANS board consultant and former Pentagon atomic weapons adviser, sent a message containing classified data to at least two other board members. He used the ordinary Internet instead of a secure Defense department network. The message was relayed to at least three more board members.

The incident has been described as comprising “the most serious breach of US national security,” and has been rated as Impact Measurement Index-1 (IMI-1), the most serious level of security violation.

Following this some LANS board members have now received security sensitivity training. It is not known why they had not received such training before.

Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), said: "How can we expect Los Alamos, which has thousands of employees, to clean up its abysmal ongoing record of serious security breaches when members of its own board can't even keep track of their classified communications with each other?"

POGO is an independent non-profit organisation that investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve a more accountable federal government.

POGO senior investigator Peter Stockton said the operator: "has been fined, lab officials have been fired, and the lab was even closed for a number of months so that it could get its act together. It’s clear that it just can’t.” It has a history of security breaches going seven years.

Los Alamos lab's security policy seems to consist of applying quick-fix security sticking plaster after each breach with no top-down, root-and-branch review of data security. The history of its secure data handling policy is one of serial breaches and frantic catch-up efforts.

LANL security incident renews criticism

By ANDY LENDERMAN | The New Mexican
August 6, 2007

Another security concern popped up at Los Alamos National Laboratory on Monday, and a watchdog group and the lab are at odds over what it means.

The Project on Government Oversight reported Monday that classified information was released via e-mail last week at the lab, and it’s among “the most serious threats to national security.”

But the lab describes the information as “sensitive” and stressed there was “absolutely no damage to any national security interests.”

Both sides agree the incident, which the lab declined to detail, was given the most serious U.S. Department of Energy rating, an Impact Measurement Index 1. Incidents are categorized based on their potential risk to national security.

That designation, the lab reported in a security advisory, covers “actions, inactions, or events that pose the most serious threats to national security interests and/or critical DOE assets, create serious security situations, or could result in deaths in the workforce or general public.”

The Washington, D.C.-based Project on Government Oversight has criticized the lab’s security record for years.

“LANL has been fined, lab officials have been fired, and the lab was even closed for a number of months so that it could get its act together,” the project’s senior investigator, Peter Stockton, said in a news release. “It’s clear that it just can’t.”

Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said POGO’s characterization of the event was misleading at best.

“We did have a lab employee who made a mistake and inadvertently allowed sensitive information to get on our yellow network, which is password protected,” Roark said. “It’s for lab employees only. It is not accessible to the outside world. However, sensitive information should not reside on the yellow network.”

The problem involved a small number of people and no one involved came from outside the lab, he added. It was discovered quickly, and the potential for a problem was eliminated within an afternoon, he said. An internal investigation is ongoing.

The National Nuclear Security Administration referred questions about the matter to the lab Monday. That agency recently declined to detail security incidents and how they compare among different weapons labs.

However, there were 22 “Category 1” incidents at Los Alamos from 2002 through 2004, New Mexican archives show. There were 35 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the same time frame.

The lab has been under intense pressure from Washington lawmakers to improve its security record, and new managers stress they are making progress.

Roark said the lab responded quickly. “We are on this stuff,” he said. “We are working it hard.”

U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., has been especially focused on Los Alamos. He chairs an oversight and investigations subcommittee.

“Chairman Stupak finds it troubling that, despite Secretary (Samuel) Bodman’s promise to immediately inform committees of jurisdiction when security breaches occur. Instead the Energy and Commerce Committee was alerted of this breach by an outside government watchdog organization,” Stupak’s spokesman Alex Haurek said.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said his office was told the lab has a well-established procedure for responding to incidents of this nature, and the information stayed on the lab’s internal network.

Contact Andy Lenderman at 986-3073 or alenderman@sfnewmexican.com.

Another Security Breach at Los Alamos

Here we go again.

--Gussie

____________________________________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, August 6, 2007

Contact: Danielle Brian or Peter Stockton 202-347-1122

Another Security Breach at Los Alamos

An incident involving the unauthorized release of classified data via email occurred last week at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The incident, which has been confirmed by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), is rated among "the most serious threats to national security."

The incident follows the Department of Energy's (DOE) July decision to slap the Lab with a $3.3 million fine , and to threaten the Lab with another fine if it failed to comply with security rules. The fine was levied because of the October 2006 incident in which classified information was discovered during a methamphetamine drug bust. The discovery was originally revealed by POGO. Last week's breach follows a series of other incidents in recent months (see links below).

This most recent breach was originally rated an Impact Measurement Index-1 (IMI-1), which is the most serious level security violation. In an attempt to minimize the problem, the breach was downgraded to a less severe category of IMI-4. After another review, however, it was elevated back to IMI-1.

"LANL has been fined, lab officials have been fired, and the lab was even closed for a number of months so that it could get its act together," said POGO Senior Investigator Peter Stockton. "It's clear that it just can't."

According to LANL , an IMI-1 rated incident is defined as:

"Actions, inactions, or events that pose the most serious threats to national security interests and/or critical DOE assets, create serious security situations, or could result in deaths in the workforce or general public. IMI-1 includes, but is not limited to, (1) confirmed or suspected loss, theft, or diversion of a nuclear device or components or weapon data; (2) confirmed or suspected intrusions, hackings, or break-ins into DOE computer systems containing Top Secret, SAP [Special Access Programs] information, or Secret Compartmented information; and (3) confirmed or suspected acts or attempts of terrorist actions."

Below is a list of security incidents at the Los Alamos National Laboratory since the Wen Ho Lee scandal in 1999.

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Los Alamos Security Incidents Since the Wen Ho Lee Controversy

July 2007 – Los Alamos lab worker with "highest possible security clearance" arrested in cocaine drug bust. July 6, 2007. SOURCE: KRQE

June 2007 – Los Alamos board member sends highly classified email message unsecured, comprising "the most serious breach of U.S. national security." SOURCE: Time Magazine

May/June 2007 – Los Alamos staffer takes lab laptop containing "government documents of a sensitive nature" with him on vacation to Ireland, where it is stolen. Los Alamos scientist sends highly classified email over unclassified networks to the Nevada Test Site. SOURCE: Newsweek

October 2006 – Classified information from Los Alamos found during methamphetamine drug raid. SOURCE: POGO

June 2006 – NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks informs Congress that computer hackers got access to detailed personal information, including Social Security numbers for about 1,500 DOE contract workers in September 2005. Yet neither the workers whose personal information was compromised, nor the DOE's cyber-security head were notified about the incident. SOURCE: Associated Press

July 2004 – POGO reports that 17 incidents of classified information from Los Alamos were sent over unclassified networks. On July 23, 2004, DOE shuts down operations involving Classified Removable Electronic Media (CREM) across the entire nuclear weapons complex. SOURCE: POGO

May 2004 – Classified computer media goes missing at Los Alamos. Lab claims it is "a single accounting discrepancy." SOURCE: POGO

December 2003 – Los Alamos confirms that computer disks were identified as lost during an "inventory of classified computer media." In total, ten disks were lost. SOURCE: POGO , LANL

January 2003 – A computer hard drive that contained classified data had been missing from the Los Alamos since October 2002, but top officials at DOE failed to investigate the loss. On January 16, 2003, DOE Secretary Spencer Abraham issues statement saying: "I am deeply troubled that Los Alamos National Laboratory is unable to account for computer equipment and other materials as part of lab management's inventory control and audit program." SOURCE: POGO , DOE

November 2002 – Documents leaked to POGO show that more than 200 computers are missing, some from top secret programs. A January 2003 report by the DOE Inspector General later corroborates the findings, and scolds Los Alamos for firing the officers who wrote the memo. SOURCE: POGO , DOI Inspector General

January 2002 – Computer data containing nuclear weapons design information goes missing. LANL locates the missing disk. SOURCE: POGO

June 2000 – Two hard drives containing nuclear weapons secrets disappear at Los Alamos. They are mysteriously found several weeks later behind a copy machine. SOURCE: LANL

March 1999 – Wen Ho Lee, a Los Alamos nuclear weapons scientist, is investigated by the FBI for allegedly downloading nuclear secrets onto his hard drive.

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Founded in 1981, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is an independent nonprofit that investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve a more accountable federal government.

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UC Smackdown

Thanks to our readers we have much to bring you this morning.

First, there is this letter from Representatives Stupak and Dingell to the UC Board of Regents. Its only three pages but it hits UC hard. For reference, you can also read the constitution's Eleventh Amendment here and Article III here. And UC's declassified supplemental briefing paper is here (go to page 17 for the assertion of immunity under the Eleventh Amendment).

Next we have updates on Friday's Visclosky-Hobson post. A link to a copy of the letter has been added (look at the bottom of the post).

Finally, we also have S 1914 for you to ponder with your coffee.

Triple Filter

Obvious applicability to LANL, and this blog.

--Gussie

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Keep this philosophy in mind the next time you either hear or are about to repeat a rumor.

In ancient Greece (469 - 399 BC) Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom. One day the great philosopher came upon an acquaintance who ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?"

"Wait a moment," Socrates replied. "Before you tell me, I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."

"Triple filter?"

"That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my student let's take a moment to filter what you're going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"

"No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it and..."

"All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?"

"No, on the contrary..."

"So," Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him,even though you're not certain it's true?" The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued. "You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter - the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?"

"No, not really"

"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor Useful, why tell it to me at all?"

The man was defeated and ashamed.

This is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem. It also explains why he never found out that Plato was banging his wife.

Mound Plant workers' cases can be judged without documents

Nuclear plant records were contaminated with radiation, buried in underground shafts.
By Tom Beyerlein
Staff Writer, Dayton Daily News
Sunday, August 05, 2007

Officials in charge of deciding whether cancer-stricken atomic workers qualify for federal compensation say they can accurately judge the cases of former Mound Plant workers without the unearthing of old Mound records buried in a radioactive waste landfill in New Mexico.

But Mound worker health advocate Paige Gibson said nobody knows the contents of the records, so it's "ludicrous" to say they couldn't be useful in determining whether worker cancers were caused by on-the-job exposures to radiation.

Staffers at the Energy Department's Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2005 buried in underground shafts more than 400 shrink-wrapped cardboard boxes, six 55-gallon drums and 11 safes containing classified records from Miamisburg's Mound nuclear weapons plant. The records were contaminated with radioactivity at Mound.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health said earlier this year that the records could be critical to conducting accurate "dose reconstructions," a paperwork method of estimating worker exposures to harmful radiation. If a reconstruction shows at least a 50 percent probability that a worker's cancer was caused by occupational exposures, the worker qualifies for cash and medical benefits.

A federal contractor charged with quantifying past Mound hazards for the compensation program went to Los Alamos last year to view the records, only to learn they'd been buried. The records include logbooks, safety analysis reports, Mound studies of the properties of toxic metals used there, and descriptions of a 1989 release of radioactive tritium.

"At this point, NIOSH believes that we have all the records that we need to accurately reconstruct doses for the workers who would be impacted by the Mound buried-records issue," NIOSH spokeswoman Amanda Harney of Cincinnati said last week.

The Energy Department searched its archives for additional Mound records and interviewed two former workers familiar with the content of the buried records, said spokeswoman Megan Barnett in Washington. She said "there's a good deal of confidence" the buried records aren't critical to the compensation process.

Of 1,287 claims filed by former Mound workers with the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, only 179 have been paid. NIOSH has ruled against Mound workers with dose reconstructions more than two-thirds of the time.

Gibson, a retired Mound worker who heads a union-sponsored health-screening program, said she thinks the buried records could be important, but she hates to see the government spend the estimated $9 million and 18 months to exhume them and make decontaminated copies. "I'm advocating they use that money to help the sick workers instead of fighting the sick workers."

She fears the buried records are ruined by exposure to the elements anyway. "They weren't meant to be protected," she said, "they were meant to be destroyed."

Mound workers plan to apply for special status that would exempt them from the dose reconstruction process and automatically trigger benefits for workers with certain cancers.

'It's a hornet's nest'

Russ Adams of Centerville was a Mound security analyst from 1985-96, and was approved for compensation in July 2006, five years after he applied. He has had 76 skin cancers surgically removed, including almost 30 in the last year.

His duties included handling the contaminated records now buried at Los Alamos, and "in my opinion, I had as much chance of getting (cancer) from the documents as anywhere else. I was at the plant."

Adams believes the government doesn't want to retrieve the buried records because they would bolster workers' cases, thus forcing the feds to pay more claims.

"It's a hornet's nest," he said. "There's a world of information in those documents. They don't want them dug up."

Photographer discovers Los Alamos

KIRSTEN LASKEY lacommunity@lamonitor.com
Monitor Community Editor

Fascinating sites and places are around every corner in Los Alamos and photographer Eric Fairfield is featuring these local gems in a CD.

The sparkling, reflective surfaces of pots for sale at a local store are displayed in the CD, along with photographs depicting glittering pieces of a stained glass window on Los Alamos church and a cloudy sky faintly light by moonlight.

Although the CD currently contains only Fairfield's photographs, he is looking for photographs other residents have taken. To select which photos should be included on the CD, Fairfield said he would like to form a panel of judges, which would be comprised of photographers and non-photographers.

The goal is to release the CD by Wednesday, however, the date could be delayed, Fairfield said.

He hopes to have the CD available as quickly as possible and keep its quality high, he said. The CD will offer images that evoke memories and emotions. So far, the photos were taken within 15 miles of Los Alamos.

Two things motivated Fairfield to pursue this project - "one, my daughter gave me this camera which allowed me to go back to being a photographer and then I said, 'what are pictures that convey a sense of (Los Alamos) to me,' " he said.

Fairfield added he showed his photographs to others and they asked him where they could purchase his images. He decided to offer his pictures in a CD because it was the easiest way to distribute them.

"The object is to have people who have lived here a long time relive memories," Fairfield said. "I want them to be happy that they live here."

Fairfield has been capturing memories with his camera for 35 years. He said he enjoys "a photo that's both pleasing in composition and connects with the viewer."

The CD costs $20. To purchase a CD, call Fairfield at 662-3115 or e-mail him at lairemember@gmail.com.