Retired General to Tighten Sandia Security

Retired US Air Force General Thomas Neary has been appointed to oversee a tightening of security at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico as part of a wider effort by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to stop the security lapses that have plagued Sandia and the two other nuclear weapons laboratories. The six-month appointment of Neary, who has managed several nuclear weapons programs, comes in the wake of a classified Department of Energy report that concluded that “additional steps” were needed to bring Sandia’s security up to DOE standards.

“The best way to achieve our objective in a timely fashion is to bring in a topflight manager whose sole responsibility is to make sure this important job is done well and completely,” said NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks in announcing Neary’s appointment. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham endorsed the need for an outside administrator to clean up the lab’s security problems. “We must ensure that the laboratory focuses on implementing the necessary security improvements promptly even as it works to fulfill its national security mission,” Abraham said.

Sandia, like nearby Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Liver more National Laboratory in California, has suffered in recent years from security breaches that have included stolen computers, missing keys to restricted areas, and sleeping guards. In one incident, someone stole a van from a restricted area at Sandia by crashing it through a fence. The van was recovered in the parking lot of a Home Depot store in Albuquerque.

Sandia Director C. Paul Robinson replaced the head of security in June after the Government Accounting Office released a report critical of the lab’s security. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) triggered the security reviews at Sandia earlier this year when lab employees contacted him to complain about security problems. Grassley, coauthor of the 1989 Whistleblower Protection Act, was angered by the lax security at all three of the weapons labs and said they “should be locked up tight like at Fort Knox.” To “criminals and spies, the labs must be like a candy store with the front door left wide open and nobody at the register,” he said.

Security problems at Los Alamos cost John Browne his job as director late last year (see Physics Today, February 2003, page 22 ) Security at Lawrence Livermore underwent a major reorganization in June.