The assignment is a continuation of last year’s assignment of Brooks and McSlarrow to review general management failures at Los Alamos. The 2003 review led to Secretary Abraham’s decision to compete the contract for the management of the Los Alamos Lab when the current contract with the University of California expires in September 2005. 

“The investigation to date indicates widespread disregard of security procedures by laboratory employees,” said Secretary Abraham. “This is absolutely unacceptable.   While our first priority must be to locate the missing material, the government will insist that the University of California, which operates Los Alamos, ensures that the laboratory take strong measures to correct the systematic flaws that allowed this problem to occur. Although it appears the laboratory management is taking vigorous action to locate the missing material, short term responsiveness is no substitute for sustained action to impose effective procedures and ensure they are followed.” 

Last week LANL reported that during an inventory two computer discs containing classified data were missing from the Weapons Physics Directorate. A subsequent search and inventory have not yet located the items. The incident was reported to the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the Los Alamos Lab for the Department of Energy. 

Secretary Abraham, upon learning of the missing data, met personally with the leadership of the University of California to express his concern. In addition, on Tuesday, he called Los Alamos Laboratory Director Dr. Pete Nanos to Washington for a full briefing on the missing data and the investigation into the security lapses.  In both meetings Abraham made it clear that he expects those responsible for the problem to be identified and held accountable as soon as possible. He directed McSlarrow and Brooks to ensure that all available mechanisms were being used to locate the missing material, including the use of such tools as polygraphs where appropriate. He also directed them to provide recommendations for immediate action to ensure full compliance with all security requirements at the lab in the future. 

The Secretary also directed McSlarrow and Brooks to personally investigate a similar, though apparently less severe, incident at the Sandia National Laboratory, where a single floppy disc not believed to contain weapons data cannot be located. This new incident was reported to DOE headquarters yesterday. 

In May, Secretary Abraham announced a series of sweeping security measures throughout the DOE weapons complex. The Secretary’s initiative includes working toward a more secure approach to classified desktop computing. To dramatically reduce the potential for mishandling of classified hard drives and disks, he proposed moving to diskless workstations for classified computing over the next five years. Drawing on the expertise of the national laboratories, he directed the department’s Chief Information Officer, in partnership with the National Nuclear Security Administration, to seek an approach so that in five years desktop weapons design functions can be performed in a diskless environment. In light of these new problems, Secretary Abraham has directed Deputy Secretary McSlarrow to investigate accelerating this initiative. 

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