Nuclear Weapons Facilities Closed

Energy Department officials Friday effectively shut down part of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex, fearful that security lapses discovered at Los Alamos National Laboratory had occurred elsewhere.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham ordered two dozen national laboratories and several other nuclear weapons facilities to stop using classified information stored on computer disks, portable hard drives and tapes that employees can easily remove from work.

The biggest effect will be on the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons facilities in California, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Such a shutdown has already been in effect for nine days at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The Energy Department’s doubts about security began earlier this month, when Los Alamos officials reported they could not locate two computer disks that contained classified information. So far, they have declined to say what is on the disks, though members of Congress have suggested the loss represents a serious security breach.

Officials said they had no idea how long the order would continue or how many employees would have their work disrupted. Some labs and weapons plants said that hundreds and potentially thousands of their employees would be affected by the order, which takes effect Monday.

It is also unclear how the order would affect national security. Energy officials said they were still assessing the potential disruption to their commitments with the Defense Department for technical support for nuclear weapons. Pentagon officials declined to comment.

Under Abraham’s order, sites cannot resume normal operations until they review security procedures, conduct inventories of all classified data stored on removable devices and can certify that the data is stored under proper security. Workers will be held accountable for any future problems, he warned.

Outside experts said Abraham’s unprecedented order would curtail operations across the Energy Department’s chain of laboratories, computing centers, accelerators and factories that employ more than 100,000 workers.

Abraham’s order was based on growing concern that the Energy Department had a systemwide vulnerability to losing important bomb secrets stored on removable devices, known as Classified Removable Electronic Media, or CREM. Such devices allow a person to download massive quantities of data that can be easily concealed.

“The situation at [Los Alamos lab] suggests that we must minimize the risk of human error or malfeasance to a much greater extent,” Abraham said in a statement. “Thus, while we have no evidence that the problems currently being investigated are present elsewhere, we have a responsibility to take all necessary action to prevent such problems from occurring at all.”

The Energy Department is responsible for as many as 8,000 nuclear warheads in the Pentagon’s inventory that require periodic inspections and maintenance. Abraham’s statement did not address how the department would cope with the lost work.

“Because we do not know the exact duration of the stand-down, it is not possible to provide information on the exact impact on our work for DOD,” said Jeanne Lapotto, Energy Department spokeswoman.

Los Alamos’ missing disks were supposed to be in a safe accessible by 11 employees, who along with eight others were suspended from their jobs Thursday by Lab Director George P. “Pete” Nanos. On July 15, Nanos halted all classified operations at the lab, and he suspended all regular work activities July 16.

Since then, top Energy officials have been reviewing operations across the nuclear weapons complex.

The use of computers by Energy Department scientists has grown more critical since the U.S. stopped testing nuclear weapons in 1992. Scientists today depend on computer simulations to ensure nuclear bombs are reliable and safe.

The department is spending nearly $800 million a year on computing and is building several computing sites the size of football fields, according to a recent analysis by Chris Payne, a nuclear weapons expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Scott Larson, a former FBI official who investigated the Wen Ho Lee security case at Los Alamos, said Friday that law enforcement officials were always concerned about the potential for employees to use CREM to walk out with large quantities of data. Larson, managing director at the Stroz Friedberg security consulting firm, added that nuclear weapons sites were under almost daily attack by hackers trying to obtain electronic data.

Energy labs were trying to assess the order’s effect Friday.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has 876 employees who use portable devices. The effect on Livermore would depend on the length of the suspension, which lab officials were still trying to clarify with Washington officials, said spokesman David Schwoegler.

The lab has 12,000 pieces of CREM, ranging from items that are seldom used to those used every day by several people, Schwoegler said. To tighten up operations, the lab destroyed 3,000 pieces of CREM last year.

At the Oak Ridge Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, where nuclear weapons are dismantled and radioactive materials stored, officials expected it would affect all of its 4,700 employees even though the site is not a research center and not all of them are directly involved in classified projects, said spokesman Steven Wyatt. He said it was too early to say how long it might take to carry out the order. “We consider this a prudent decision by the department. We want to make sure this kind of information and data is properly safeguarded and protected,” Wyatt said.

Officials at the Energy Department’s Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas, the main assembly and disassembly site for warheads, said they were still assessing the effect on their 3,500 employees. “Everybody will be working, but some operations will be shut down,” said spokeswoman Brenda Finley.

Billy Stair, spokesman for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, said less than 10% of the $1 billion in research involved classified projects. He estimated that a few dozen of the lab’s 3,800 employees would be affected, and that it should not take more than a few days to comply. The lab did not expect to find any problems.

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and its 1,600 employees are spared because they do not do any classified work, said spokesman Neil Calder.

The Savannah River Site in South Carolina expects minimal disruption, because only a small portion of the plant’s work involves classified operations, said spokesman Jim Giusti.

Before the Los Alamos breach surfaced, Abraham recognized the vulnerability of classified information stored on removable devices. In a May 7 speech, he outlined a number of security upgrades and called for the elimination of all classified information stored on the portable devices.

Under the plan, scientists could work only on computer terminals that did not have their own storage devices, but instead relied on a central computer system in a secured area.

Outside watchdogs, such as the Project on Government Oversight, advocated such a transition three years ago and said it could be done in six months for less than $15 million.

“We knew the recurring breaches at Los Alamos were not isolated incidents,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, “but symptomatic of a wider security issue in the complex.”