Open-Door Policy

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 2, 1999 | by Kelly Patricia O'Meare

The now-infamous lapses at the Department of Energy sold U.S. security down the river to China. Whistle-blowers charge that the same gang still is in control.

After all the grandstanding, finger-pointing and blame shifting, the bottom line is that security at U.S. national laboratories is in shambles. Confirmation: The People's Republic of China, or PRC, successfully and seemingly effortlessly has stolen highly classified information on all of the most advanced U.S. thermonuclear warheads. Here is where the situation now stands.

The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, or PFIAB, a panel chaired by former senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, has finished looking into the security threat at the weapons labs run by the Department of Energy, or DOE. The board concluded that the "Department of Energy, when faced with a profound public responsibility, has failed ... and that the DOE's performance, throughout its history, should have been regarded as intolerable."

The PFIAB suggested two alternatives to correct the security problems. Either the weapons research and stockpile-management functions should be placed wholly with a new semiautonomous agency within the DOE, or a wholly independent agency, similar to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, should be created to oversee the nuclear-weapons program.

The Clinton administration waged a full-court press to convince Congress that the current system within the DOE is capable of securing the nation's nuclear laboratories and storage and production facilities. However, lawmakers in early July decided that the safety and security of U.S. nuclear assets should be guarded by a new, semiautonomous entity -- the Agency for Nuclear Stewardship, or ANS -- a concept Secretary Bill Richardson opposed but which sources say will leave control in his hands.

Richardson vigorously fought any loss. The labs account for most of the DOE budget; without them, the rest of the department easily could be folded into other agencies. The secretary called in markers from his decades on Capitol Hill, submitting to Congress a "new" security plan he said could be implemented within the new entity and would correct the much-scrutinized problems. He promised "rebuilding the entire department's security, cybersecurity and counterterrorism apparatus, as well as its emergency-response operations." Key components of his plan included a new Office of Security and Emergency Operations, to comprise several other offices including the Office of Security Affairs, the Chief Information Officer, the Office of Foreign Visits and Assignments Policy and the Office of Plutonium, Uranium and Special Material Inventory.

While the promised change seems impressive on paper and might reflect a sincere effort on the part of Richardson finally to deal with the serious security lapses at DOE facilities, sources familiar with security there tell Insight the plan, like the reorganization, is "just a shell game."

"All of these regulations have been in place for years" says Edward J. McCallum, director of the DOE's Office of Security and Safeguards, who was placed on administrative leave three days after cooperating with the PFIAB. "The only new element" he continues, "is that Richardson finally gave the counterintelligence guys the right to polygraph. But even this was already in the works when Richardson came on board."

Many security officials at the DOE wonder if the secretary, in implementing his plans for the reorganization, also will reinstitute the security measures that were dismantled during Hazel O'Leary's tenure as DOE secretary as part of her policy of "openness."

According to an Insight source within the department, O'Leary's first official act at the DOE headquarters was to "get rid of the guns" which, under Section 161 K of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, 1954 as amended, are supposed to be issued to DOE security forces for their own protection, for the protection of others and to safeguard special nuclear materials and weapons.

Other O'Leary changes included redesigning identification badges at DOE facilities to "minimize" the apparent differences between security-clearance levels and between federal employees and private contractors. Apparently the secretary objected to the badge designations because they "labeled" people.

O'Leary even ordered the layered exterior security fences removed and the security personnel eliminated at those posts. As the "islands of security" became smaller, the number of security posts became fewer and the number of security personnel was reduced. In fact, under the DOE "openness" policy, security forces were reduced by nearly 50 percent.

Whether Richardson heeds the call of his security personnel to correct this situation remains to be seen. They say there is no way his "new" plan can succeed without staffing security positions with experienced and well-trained personnel who have the required skills and institutional knowledge. A few of Richardson's recent hires provide insight concerning the secretary's resolve to correct the security lapses.