- WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Energy
Department, responding to a security scandal at the Los Alamos weapons
lab, ordered a halt to classified work at as many as two dozen facilities
that use removable computer disks like those missing at the New Mexico
lab.
-
- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Friday that the
"stand-down" at DOE operations that use the disks, containing
classified material involving nuclear weapons research, was needed to get
better control over the devices.
-
- The disks, known as "controlled removable electronic
media" or CREM, have been at the heart of an uproar over lax security
at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where work has been stopped as scientists
search for two of the disks reported missing on July 7.
-
- Fifteen workers have been suspended, including 11 who
had access to a safe where the disks were stored. Officials believed they
had been accounted for in an April inventory, but that also is being questioned
because of possible irregularities in that audit.
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- The missing Los Alamos disks raised concern within the
Energy Department about the handling of the devices at other facilities
involved in nuclear weapons research, department officials said.
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- Abraham said he wanted to "minimize the risk of
human error or malfeasance" that could compromise the classified nuclear-related
information held in the devices that are used at DOE facilities nationwide
in nuclear-related work.
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- "While we have no evidence that the problems currently
being investigated (at Los Alamos) are present elsewhere, we have a responsibility
to take all necessary action to prevent such problems from occurring at
all," Abraham said in a statement.
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- The department declined to identify the sites that will
be affected by the work suspensions, beginning Monday. The directive was
sent to all 59 DOE facilities nationwide, but the number actually affected
is expected to be "less than two dozen ... but more than 15,"
said a senior DOE official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
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- The stand-down involves classified work across the government's
nuclear weapons complex wherever the CREM storage devices are used, the
official said. It will continue until an inventory of the devices is completed
and new control measures on their use is put in place, said DOE spokesman
Joe Davis. Employees using the disks also must undergo security training.
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- "There will be disruptions to ongoing projects,"
said Davis. "But we view this as a necessary step to make sure that
we have a complete accounting." At many of the facilities nonclassified
work will continue and "a lot of stuff will continue to go on,"
said Davis.
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- Among the sites affected are the DOE's other two major
nuclear weapons research laboratories: Lawrence Livermore in California
and Sandia in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where a classified disk was missing
and then reported found last week.
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- Livermore spokesman David Schwoegler said 876 of Livermore's
more than 9,000 workers have access to the security sensitive CREMs targeted
by the DOE directive.
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- "Those would be the only people that would be affected,"
said Schwoegler. Coincidentally, he said, the lab already had a regularly
scheduled inventory of all CREMS planned for next week.
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- Among the other facilities that will suspend classified
work are the Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago; the nuclear weapons
plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Brookhaven National Laboratory in
New York; the Pantex plant in Texas, where nuclear warheads are taken apart;
and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.
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- The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland,
Washington, is not a weapons lab but had already began an inventory of
computer disks related to classified work, said its spokesman, Geoff Harvey.
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- Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on
Government Oversight, called Abraham's directive "an important step"
to moving toward a more secure computer data system in nuclear weapons
research.
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- "We always believed poor cyber security was a systemwide
problem," said Brian, whose Washington-based watchdog group has closely
followed the Los Alamos security problems.
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- The work disruptions across the government's nuclear
weapons program comes as officials at Los Alamos continue their search
of the most secure areas of the 43-square-mile facility for the two missing
disks. Abraham said more than 2,000 safes and vaults were being examined.
Work at the nuclear lab, which created the first atomic bomb, has been
suspended for a week.
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- The missing disks incident was the latest in a series
of embarrassments at the New Mexico lab, including security breaches and
allegations of mismanagement and theft. The Energy Department has said
that for the first time it will put the contract to manage Los Alamos --
held by the University of California for 61 years -- up for bid when it
expires in 2005.
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