Nuke lab security changes ineffective

New security measures enacted by the Department of Energy after a rash of
espionage scandals are largely ineffectual and will do “little or nothing”
to combat future efforts to steal U.S. weapons secrets, according to a
scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Observing that
morale over security matters seems low, the scientist said, “A common
attitude among DOE employees is, ‘What good does it do me to protect
information and look for security breaches when the secretary of Energy and
the president are giving away the store?'”

The source, who requested anonymity, told WorldNetDaily that earlier this
year, when Energy Secretary Bill Richardson visited the lab to address
revelations about Chinese espionage there, “he held an employee awareness
seminar to instead focus on the dangers of racial profiling.”

The source said that indeed new security measures have been implemented at
all of the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, but many of them are cosmetic
and ineffectual.

For example, “all computers now have to be marked as ‘DOE property,’ and
even internal unclassified e-mail has to be encrypted.” The source compared
those and other new measures “to a drunk looking for his car keys underneath
a street lamp just because the light’s better.” And, said the scientist,
physical access controls have actually been reduced at the labs.

“Most of the counterintelligence efforts instituted by DOE at the labs
consisted of mandatory training — videos and written tests, the content of
which were treated as SNSI (Secret National Security Information),” the
source said. “The latest wrinkle is the upcoming use of polygraph tests on
certain employees with access to CNWDI (Critical Nuclear Weapons Design
Information) or SCI (Special Compartmentalized Information). The former is a
unique DOE-controlled clearance level and the latter is a so-called
collateral clearance controlled by the intelligence agencies. This is, of
course, just the camel’s nose under the tent, and we expect to see much
broader use of the polygraph on a random basis for all employees.”

Many of the new measures appear to be directed at employees who are not
suspected of espionage, nor singled out as security risks. That, the source
said, is sapping morale at the labs and contributing to hostility towards
DOE while doing little to guard the nation’s most sensitive weapons secrets.

Indeed the dominant reaction to the spy scandal by the Clinton
administration, according to the source, is racial sympathy, not increased
security. “Everyone seems to be very sensitive to the aspect of ethnicity or
race as a component or basis for investigation.”

Though the administration has been reluctant to pursue leads in the lab spy
cases that lead to Beijing, the source said, “all but one of the last dozen
or so cases of spying at the lab that were referred to the FBI for
investigation involved Chinese.”

Yet the administration and the DOE seem “more interested in finding
scapegoats like … former CIA Director John Deutch,” said the scientist.

The documented incidents of espionage or, in the case of Peter Lee,
“improper use of official materials,” involved removal of documents from the
labs or the use of e-mail to send information to unauthorized persons. In
addition to implementing cosmetic changes, the DOE’s response has been to
create “a blizzard” of new classification categories and procedures.

Long ago, the source said, “information was either classified or not. If you
were caught repeatedly disclosing or mishandling classified information,
there were sanctions, ranging from a security infraction notice placed in
your personnel file to removal of your clearance.”

In fact, the scientist told WorldNetDaily, an incident that occurred in 1983
caused DOE to issue “almost fanatical security measures.” A former nuclear
scientist named Dr. Edward Teller divulged secret details about Livermore’s
x-ray laser project — code named “Cottage” — to a reporter from the San Jose
Mercury News.

But after the Clinton administration appointed Hazel O’Leary to head up DOE,
the source said, “the other shoe finally dropped.” Security at the nation’s
nuclear labs went from very stringent to almost none at all. When DOE
scientists and employees were caught improperly handling or transferring
sensitive materials, the source said, it was often dismissed as “just sloppy
handling or some similarly weak reason.”

“The bottom line,” said the scientist, “is that practically all official
regard for the protection of formerly secret material disappeared and no one
seemed to be accountable.”

“What many of us suspect the Chinese got is not so much the details of a
particular warhead,” the scientist said, “although that could be important
from a vulnerability standpoint. Rather, we suspect the methodology and
calibration data necessary to save untold hours of computation and testing
was taken. The Lasnex code that Wen Ho Lee worked on as a member of the X7
group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory is a treasure trove of
information on materials properties and opacity models.”

At issue, the source said, “and the one that has been discussed in public,”
deals with the transfer of classified information to an unclassified
computer.

“That was almost standard operating procedure for many people whose
classified systems lagged in performance and memory,” said the scientist.
“This is a no-no, but is not in itself grounds for suspicion of espionage.
The more troublesome issue is the purported large number of e-mails that
contained sensitive, if not classified, information sent to foreign proxies
or contacts. There is no innocent explanation for this.”

The Livermore scientist admitted, “It’s extremely hard to prove espionage,”
but added that certain patterns of repeat behavior have, in the past,
alerted authorities to spying. Scientists Wen Ho Lee and Peter Lee appeared
to fit a spy profile.

“The spies that have been caught were usually involved in cash-for-secrets
scheme. There is no evidence that I am aware of that Mr. (Wen Ho) Lee was
doing this.”