DOE fines LANL managers

In July the US Department of Energy fined current and past managers of Los Alamos National Laboratory $3.3 million for the latest in a long string of national security breaches. DOE officials said they fined the University of California, which managed the lab from 1943 until June 2006, $3 million. Los Alamos National Security, LLC, the consortium that took over management of the lab in June 2006, received a fine of $300 000. In addition to the University of California, the consortium includes Bechtel National Inc, BWX Technologies Inc, and Washington Group International Inc (see Physics Today February 2006, page 23 ).

The fines stem from a raid by Los Alamos police on a methamphetamine lab in a private home. During the raid, according to the police report, “officers realized that some of the items seized appeared to belong to the Los Alamos National Laboratory.” One of those items was a thumb drive used to download data from a computer. Officials later determined that the thumb drive contained classified data that had been downloaded by a former contract worker who had a high-level security clearance. The worker pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.

In a letter to laboratory director Michael Anastasio, William Ostendorff, acting administrator of DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, said, “This incident is particularly troubling because many of the violations cited … are of the same nature as other performance deficiencies that have occurred at LANL. The history of problems and violations concerning the protection of classified information at LANL are matters of deep concern.”

A string of security incidents beginning with the Wen Ho Lee case in 1999 led to a seven-month stand-down of the lab in 2004, and the new management consortium took over operations of the lab with the specific charge of fixing the security problems.