Juzaitis Withdraws as Candidate for LLNL Directorship

University of California and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory officials met with their counterparts at the Department of Energy in early May to try to avoid a repeat of the embarrassment surrounding the near-appointment of physicist Ray Juzaitis as LLNL’s new director. Juzaitis, the associate director for weapons physics at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was only 30 minutes away from being named as the new director of LLNL on 26 April, when a phone call from DOE Secretary Spencer Abraham’s office put the announcement on hold.

Abraham had received word, apparently through the efforts of Bill Wattenburg, a scientist who has a radio talk show on KGO Radio in San Francisco, that Juzaitis had been one of Wen Ho Lee’s supervisors at Los Alamos. Lee, who was accused of security violations in 1999, worked in the division headed by Juzaitis. Several days after the Lee connection came to light, Juzaitis withdrew from consideration for the post in a letter to Richard Atkinson, University of California president. The university oversees LLNL’s operations.

“The unwarranted linking of my name to the Wen Ho Lee affair in an attempt to cast a cloud on the appropriateness of my appointment, suggests that the unfounded controversy may hinder my effectiveness in leading the laboratory,” Juzaitis wrote. Atkinson responded on 1 May with a statement that said, in part, “The university had reviewed documents relevant to the Lee matter. The documents reveal nothing that would change our evaluation of Dr. Juzaitis as an excellent candidate for the director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Although neither the university, the Department of Energy, nor the National Nuclear Security Administration had called on Dr. Juzaitis to withdraw his candidacy, we respect his decision to do so.”

The search for a new director was continuing, with those familiar with the effort confirming that two LLNL scientists, Michael Anastasio, a weapons program leader, and Jeffrey Wadsworth, the deputy director for nonweapons science, were the “inside” candidates. Physicist Steven Koonin, provost of Caltech, was the outside candidate.