Advertisement

Nuclear lab staffers face likely discipline

 
Published Aug. 13, 1999|Updated Sept. 29, 2005

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, citing a "total breakdown in the system," recommended disciplinary action Thursday against a senior official and two other employees of the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory because of failures in the China espionage investigation.

Richardson did not identify the three but said that their responsibilities were clear and that they failed to meet those responsibilities in the investigation of alleged spying by a Los Alamos scientist, Wen Ho Lee.

While the internal inquiry also cited "systemic problems in the Energy Department's management of counterintelligence matters," no action was taken against department headquarters officials. Nor were any former senior DOE officials singled out by name for criticism.

But the report by the DOE inspector general said that certain senior DOE officials with direct management responsibilities over the lab contributed to the problem because they "were not aware nor did they seek essential information" about the Lee investigation.

John Browne, director of the Los Alamos lab, said he was considering what action to take. "I intend to act as quickly as possible, but I must ensure fairness in this process," he said.

Richardson cannot directly take action against the employees because they work for the University of California, the private contractor that has managed the lab since the 1940s.

Lab spokesman Jim Danneskiold said that it is UC policy not to identify individuals subject to personnel actions and that they might not be identified if action is taken against them.

The internal DOE review was ordered several months ago amid criticism from Congress about the handling of the Lee inquiry, which began in 1996 when he first became a suspect in the apparent loss of secrets concerning the W-88 nuclear warhead in the 1980s.

Lee, a Taiwan-born computer scientist at Los Alamos since the 1970s, was fired March 8 for security violations. He has not been charged and has denied giving out any nuclear secrets.

The internal investigation focused on why Lee had been allowed to remain at his top-secret job for nearly three years after becoming an FBI suspect and why the FBI was never told he had given a waiver in 1995 to have his computer searched.

The inspector general's office also examined allegations by Notra Trulock, former head of security at the department, that he had been blocked from bringing his concerns about the W-88 warhead matter to then-Energy Secretary Federico Pena and to Congress.

The report said that in conducting 82 interviews there were conflicting versions of what happened and that investigators "were unable to reconcile the conflicting information."

Those cited for disciplinary action at Los Alamos:

A senior official who failed to follow up on a request by DOE management to develop a plan limiting Lee's access to secrets while under investigation and did not notify officials when the plan failed. Lee was not removed from his sensitive jobs until late 1998.

A counterintelligence official who decided against removing Lee from his sensitive position after being told by an FBI agent in 1997 that his removal from the design team no longer would jeopardize their investigation.

A lab employee who failed to adequately search records that showed that in early 1995 Lee had given a written waiver to have his computer searched. That failure contributed to reluctance by the Justice Department to approve a search that took place last May.

When Lee's computer was examined it was discovered he had shifted thousands of files of top-secret nuclear computer codes from a highly secure computer system to an unclassified system with access to the Internet.