Los Alamos lab says nuclear weapons secrets missing

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://news.excite.com/news/r/000612/20/crime-nuclear

Updated 8:08 PM ET June 12, 2000

By Zelie Pollon

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (Reuters) - Electronically-stored classified
information -- believed to include U.S. and Russian nuclear secrets --
has disappeared from a vault at the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory and
the FBI has launched an intense search, officials said Monday.

The lab's director, John Browne, said "classified information" was
missing but gave no details. The New York Times, which broke the story
on its Website, said the information was stored on now missing hard
drives and included U.S. and Russian nuclear secrets and other
sensitive data.

Browne said in a statement that the FBI and investigators from the
Department of Energy, which operates the world-famous nuclear facility
with the University of California, have been searching for missing
data. "This is an extremely serious matter and we are taking swift
actions to deal with it," Browne said

Ed Curran, Director of the Department of Energy's Office of
Counterintelligence, said, "At this point there is no evidence that
suggests espionage is involved in this incident."

The disappearance comes after an espionage controversy involving the
lab and one of its employees, Dr. Wen Ho Lee, who was fired in March
1999 after allegedly copying nuclear weapons secrets and storing them
on an unclassified computer network.

Lee, a U.S. citizen born in Taiwan, was arrested and charged with 59
criminal counts -- but not espionage -- and the lab came under
scrutiny for the ease with which he was allegedly able to download and
copy sensitive information. Lee has pleaded not guilty.

The Times, in its story, said the new security breach was not believed
to be related to the Lee case and was thought to have occurred long
after his dismissal from the lab.

Browne said a major effort was under way to find the missing
electronically-stored data and it was not known if they were just
misplaced, stolen or inadvertently destroyed.

"If the inquiry reveals that individuals did not fulfill their
responsibilities with respect to this matter, they will face certain
and appropriate disciplinary actions," he said.

NBC News reported the hard drives were first discovered to be missing
two months ago, before the Los Alamos fires.

Sen. Frank Murkowski, who heads the Senate Committee on Energy and
Natural Resources, said panel members were informed about the possible
loss, but got "very few details."

"I can't give a personal assessment of how serious this is, however,
based on the information in the New York Times, this could be one of
the most significant losses of nuclear weapons information in recent
times," Murkowski said in a statement.

"While we don't know whether the hard drives are lost, it gravely
concerns me that they have even been displaced. If they can't keep
track of this kind of information, it raises serious concerns about
overall security," he said.

Murkowski said he had ordered a staff inquiry and expected to be fully
briefed by the Energy Department and the FBI.

"Let's hope the hard drives are found. We don't need another crisis at
our nuclear weapons laboratories," he said.

The Times said the hard drives were missing when investigators
searched for them June 1 after a wildfire scorched the facility,
sparing the lab's major buildings but destroying 39 trailers and
sheds.

Many of those outbuildings were used as offices for staff members, and
the blaze, which began as a controlled burn, wiped out several years
worth of scientific research and destroyed some 20 personal computers.

The Times said that the disappearance of the hard drives, which were
stored in locked containers in a vault in the laboratory's X Division,
where nuclear weapons are designed, could be related to the evacuation
of the lab during the fire.

The paper said the hard drives contained nuclear weapons data used by
the government's Nuclear Emergency Search Team, which responds to
nuclear accidents and terrorist threats.

The paper said the missing material also included information about
the Russian nuclear weapons program.

The Times, quoting officials, said the Energy Department's new
security czar, Eugene Habiger, conducted an exhaustive investigation
and search at Los Alamos but did not find the data, and that he had
written a secret report on the matter.

It was not immediately known if the hard drives were misplaced or
stolen, the paper said.


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