- Note - See earlier stories below of missing secret data
from LANL. -ed
-
- The Los Alamos National Laboratory, the nation's most
important nuclear weapons lab, lost another hard disk drive filled with
classified information, once again throwing a spotlight on lab officials
who have been trying to re-emerge from years of scandals and mismangement.
-
- The latest episode came to light Thursday, after Los
Alamos admitted that, since a Monday inventory check, its custodians hadn't
been able to find a "classified removable electronic media,"
or CREM -- disks and drives inscribed with the country's secrets.
-
- A Los Alamos press release played down the incident,
calling it "a single accounting discrepancy (that) in no way constitutes
a compromise of national security." Los Alamos has tens of thousands
of removable hard drives, discs and memory sticks. When one can't be found,
it's usually because of something innocent, like "administrative errors"
or outdated machinery. But lab critics were hearing none of it.
-
- "Can't they ever get anything right?" said
Los Alamos security consultant-turned-whistleblower Glenn Walp. "They
take the same old corporate line: 'It's not us, it's the system.' How refreshing
it would be if someone at that place would have the backbone to admit they
screwed up."
-
- Computer security has been particularly problematic for
the lab. In 2001, two missing hard drives packed with nuclear weapon designs
were found behind a Los Alamos copy machine. More CREMs went missing --
and were subsequently found -- in January 2002, November 2002 and January
2003. Last December, lab director Pete Nanos put several employees on "paid
investigative leave" after 10 CREMs vanished.
-
- Two weeks ago, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham called
for Los Alamos and the other nuclear labs to do away with removable drives
and disks altogether by 2009, moving to a "diskless environment"
instead.
-
- But Danielle Brian, executive director of the nuclear
watchdog Project on Government Oversight, said five years is too long to
wait. Abraham's initiative "should begin immediately, with Los Alamos
as the top priority," she said. "Going medialess will make this
problem go away overnight."
-
- Los Alamos has reduced its CREM stockpile by nearly 60
percent. A nice move, Brian said, but not enough.
-
- "There's still a lot of stuff for them to lose,"
she said.
-
- © Copyright 2004, Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
http://WWW.WIRED.COM/news/print/0,1294,63553,00.html
-
-
- Missing CREMS From Los Alamos
-
- From Ted Twietmeyer
- tedtw@frontiernet.net
- 5-24-4
-
- Just like musical chairs- the people have changed places,
- but the music is still the same. B-flat.
-
- Same old, same old. No one seems to ask WHY
- the drives were found behind a copy machine.
-
- Lets look at how things work. If you ever are in a
secure
- installation, its lock central. Thousands of locks. On
- everything. Passcards, keypads cameras and more.
-
- Now- to think there was no camera at that copy machine
?
- Oh- of couse not. We're only talking about national security.
- Why would anyone put a camera there to see what they
- are copying ? Its only a highly secure facility where
briefcases
- are X-rayed and people walk through metal detectors.
-
- So someone takes a drive, and after they are done with
copying
- it instead of having to LOG IN on a keypad somewhere,
they
- find the easiest place to stash it. Then they walked
out the
- door.
-
- There is an old expression with regard to security-
the more
- sophisticated the system, the lower the technology required
- to break it.
-
- Everyone should be SICK of the lying, wimpy little
$hits that
- pull these tricks. How would these people who are giving
away the
- store by selling this information to foreign nationals,
like a
- dirty, low efficiency NUKE kill own their family ? Using
the
- weapon technology they stole in the first place ? That
is, assuming
- the information was worth stealing in the first place.
-
- Look at what happened to the Rosenbergs for giving a
few secrets
- away in the NWO engineered war with Hitler ? They were
taken on
- a one-way trip to a necktie party. Yet no one today seems
to care.
-
- We've had Willy in the Whitehouse, letting foreign
Chinese nationals
- have the run of the place without being cleared. No passes
in most
- cases according to mainstream press accounts. Can we
make it
- anymore obvious that we are giving information away on
purpose ?
- The USA must be the laughing stock of the intelligence
world.
-
-
-
- Disks Missing From US Nuke
- Lab 'Pose No Threat'
- Staff and Agencies
- The Guardian - UK
- 12-11 03
-
- The Los Alamos National Laboratory is searching for 10
missing computer disks containing classified information about other country's
nuclear programmes; a further case of sensitive information going astray
at the US government's nuclear weapons' research establishment in New Mexico.
-
- Its spokesman, Kevin Roark, said the missing disks posed
"no threat to national security" and had probably been destroyed
without the proper documentation.
-
- They contained classified and non-classified material
from the Nonproliferation and International Security Centre, which tracks
the attempts of other countries to make nuclear weapons and obtain the
necessary materials to support nuclear weapons programmes.
-
- The disks - nine floppy disks and one large capacity
storage disk - were found to be missing during inventory checks in the
past few weeks.
-
- The lab has informed the US department of energy of their
disappearance.
-
- "This situation is totally unacceptable," its
director, Peter Nanos, said in a statement to employees.
-
- "Security is one of our most important jobs; obviously
we now must look deeper into the control of all sensitive information and
solve these problems."
-
- Since his recent appointment as director, and in the
light of several prominent security lapses, Mr Nanos has been trying to
make the lab more accountable.
-
- The lab, which produced the first atomic bomb, almost
60 years ago, has been stung by incidents in recent years in which it was
blamed for not keeping track of classified data.
-
- In 1999 and 2000 it came under scrutiny when one of its
scientists, Wen Ho Lee, was accused of removing classified materials from
the lab.
-
- In the resulting trial Mr Lee was found innocent of spying.
-
- Three years ago two computer hard drives went missing
in the section which designs nuclear bombs.
-
- They were found behind a photocopier.
-
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2003
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1104588,00.html
-
-
-
- Los Alamos Nuclear Lab
- Reports NEW Possible
- Security Breaches
-
- 6-25-00
-
-
- LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - Already under scrutiny for the
way it handled the disappearance of two top-secret computer hard drives,
officials at Los Alamos National Laboratory have reported two more possible
security breaches.
-
- Two 10-year-old floppy disks containing classified information
were reported missing Wednesday during an inventory at the nuclear weapons
lab, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported Saturday.
-
- However, they were found a day later, attached to a paper
report in a nearby, secured area. And no classified information was apparently
compromised, lab spokesman Jim Danneskiold told the newspaper.
-
- "Basically, we're doing an aggressive, lab-wide
inventory of classified materials," Danneskiold said. "During
that inventory, the two disks were not where they were supposed to be."
-
- The two incidents aren't as serious as the missing hard
drives, but Danneskiold said the disappearance of the floppy disks will
be investigated by the Department of Energy, which oversees the lab.
-
- Danneskiold would not say what kind of information the
two floppy disks contained.
-
- And because of their age, he said, "We're not even
sure if there's even a computer at the lab that could still read those
floppy disks."
-
- The lab also is investigating a door left unlocked on
an equipment closet where a repair person had been working in a classified
area.
-
- "Apparently this computer-repair person left, and
I don't know why, but left the closet door open," Danneskiold said.
"It has been reported (to federal officials), and it doesn't appear
there was any security issue raised."
-
- A grand jury has been convened to look into the two-month
disappearance of the two computer hard drives from the lab's top-secret
X division. The drives later resurfaced mysteriously behind a copy machine
near the vault where they were first discovered missing on May 7.
-
- The drives held information that would be needed to locate
and dismantle U.S. or even foreign nuclear devices that might be used in
a terrorist attack.
-
- In addition, former Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen
Ho Lee is in jail awaiting trial and could face a maximum of life in prison
for security violations. He was arrested in December and accused of illegally
copying top-secret nuclear weapons files while also working in the X Division.
-
- The alleged copies of the files have not been found.
-
-
- http://www.lanl.gov/external
|
