U.S. Security Blanket: Threadbare and Moth-Eaten

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 7, 2000 | by Sean Paige

Security lapses at the Department of Energy, or DOE, and elsewhere within the government s national security apparatus are very much in the public eye after the latest apparent breeches at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where computer hard drives containing classified nuclear-weapon designs disappeared, then reappeared, under suspicious circumstances.

But these and other problems have been a long-term preoccupation of the federal government's own internal watchdogs the General Accounting Office, or GAO, and the various agency offices of inspector general, or IG which have been warning for years that the U.S. national-security blanket is a tattered, moth-eaten old rag. And the damning reports just keep coming. Three have come across the desk of waste & abuse in just the last month or so -- two from GAO and one from the IG at the Department of Defense -- none of which inspire confidence that the holes are being plugged Faster than they can be identified.

One highly recommended read for anyone who wants to understand how DOE got to where it is today the target of trials, Fill investigations and congressional interrogations of Secretary Bill Richardson - is the July 11 testimony of Jim Wells, GAO's director of energy, resources and science issues, before the House Commerce subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Wells confirms a dramatic relaxation in the last decade in the way that DOE personnel are required to handle "secret" and "top-secret" documents.

A review of document-handling procedures since 1988 indicates that "many requirements for protecting and controlling `Secret' and `Top Secret' documents stored in protected areas were discontinued in the 1990s," according to Wells' written statement, including the requirement that secret documents be inventoried at least once every three years and that a control officer be assigned to oversee the handling of such documents which was dropped in 1998. Other document-handling requirements discontinued by DOE include the assignment of identification numbers to secret documents, the systematic tracking of who sees them and copies them and the requirement that all top-secret documents be returned to secure storage at the end of the workday.

In fact, six of the 10 safeguards DOE had in place fur the tracking of secret documents in 1988 had been discontinued or softened by 1992, according to GAO. More than half the handling requirements for documents considered top secret in 1988 had been discontinued or downgraded by 1998.

GAO also warned recently that control over national-laboratory contract personnel traveling overseas could be tightened. GAO reported that they're given too little training in avoiding or thwarting espionage attempts and that too few of them are required by the labs for which they work to have their travel plans reviewed in advance by government counterintelligence officials. This, despite the fact that lab contractors each year log about 1,500 trips to nations deemed a national-security risk.

GAO found that there have been more than 75 incidents of attempted espionage against lab contractors during foreign travel between 1995 and 1999. Sometimes the attempts came in the form of questions at academic forums or social occasions that touch on sensitive or classified issues. In other cases, sexual favors may have been traded for information or sexual blackmail attempted. Instances of physical surveillance, bugging and hotel-room breakins, searches and thefts also have been reported by DOE contractors.

One traveler to a "sensitive" country reported discovering video cameras and microphones hidden behind a hotel-room wall panel. Another believed that she was being photographed by a camera hidden in a hotel room's smoke detectors. Others reported having their briefcases stolen or hotel rooms searched.

The IG for the Department of Defense also recently reported that the Army and Navy were exercising too little control over foreign-nationals access to computers and internal information systems at some of their top command and research facilities.

As a result, "at least 23 foreign nationals at two Army facilities [the IG] visited and 103 foreign nationals at five of the six Navy systems commands and research facilities contacted had unrestricted access to automated information and local area networks," the IG reported. Moreover, the e-mail of dozens of foreign nationals visiting four of the six Navy facilities the IG inspected had no distinguishing identifiers, potentially allowing the visitors access to the sensitive military information stored or available on internal networks or databases.