Missing nuclear data found at lab

The Los Alamos hard drives, containing data on nuclear weapons, turn up behind a copy machine in an area that had been searched twice.

©New York Times

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 17, 2000

WASHINGTON -- Two computer hard drives containing nuclear secrets, missing from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, were found Friday behind a copying machine under conditions that were highly suspicious, administration officials said Friday.

The hard drives were discovered in a secure area of the New Mexico laboratory's X Division, where nuclear weapons are designed and where the drives had been stored. They were discovered Friday afternoon by an X Division employee, who is now being questioned by the FBI.

Officials remained highly skeptical of the circumstances surrounding the recovery of the hard drives since the area in the lab where the drives were discovered had already been closely searched twice, by FBI and Energy Department investigators.

Officials said that the FBI's criminal investigation of the security breach is being intensified in an effort to determine why the hard drives were removed from a secured vault and how they could have ended up behind a photocopier.

While investigators now believe that the two recovered drives are probably the same ones missing since at least May 7, officials said the FBI is planning to conduct a more thorough examination of them to make sure, and to determine that they contain the missing data.

Investigators will be checking for fingerprints and other evidence that might pinpoint who removed them, and the FBI's computer experts also plan to determine whether the data was copied or downloaded before it was returned. The FBI now has nearly 60 agents working on the investigation, officials said.

The recovery of the computer drives marked a bizarre twist in a case that had already prompted much criticism over lax security at Los Alamos and had led to harsh Republican attacks on Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who had earlier been mentioned as a possible running mate for Vice President Al Gore on the Democratic ticket.

Richardson expressed outrage this week over the security lapses, especially after it was learned that Los Alamos employees had waited more than three weeks before reporting the loss of the hard drives, which reportedly contain some of the nation's most important nuclear secrets.

The hard drives contain data on nuclear weapons and are intended to be used in emergencies by the government's Nuclear Emergency Search Team, which is responsible for responding to nuclear accidents and terrorist threats.

The data includes information needed by the team to disarm nuclear devices designed by the United States and other nations, including Russia. In response to the loss of the hard drives, the lab's director, John Browne, placed six managers at the lab on leave, pending possible disciplinary action. The managers include the lab's head of nuclear weapons programs.

Richardson has also asked former Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr., a Republican from Tennessee, and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, a Democrat from Indiana, to conduct an independent review of the disappearance of the nuclear secrets.

Senior Energy Department officials received word of the discovery Friday afternoon while they were meeting to discuss how to deal with the crisis caused by the loss of the hard drives.

The latest security problem at Los Alamos dates to May 7, when members of the Nuclear Emergency Search Team discovered that the hard drives were missing while they were making sure that equipment stored in the X Division vault was secure as a forest fire raged near the laboratory.

They did not inform Browne for more than three weeks, on the night of May 31. The Energy Department and the FBI were notified the next day.

Officials say that a total of 86 people had access to the vault where the hard drives were stored, including 26 scientists who could enter without escorts and remove material without logging it in or out.

The FBI began conducting polygraph examinations of those with access to the material this week, and officials said three people had failed as of Friday. It was not known how the polygraph results were being interpreted.

Officials stressed that it is too soon to draw strong conclusions about the disappearance and reappearance of the hard drives.

Some officials speculated that whoever took the drives might have panicked in the face of a major investigation and dropped them behind the copying machine in the last day or so. But the intense scrutiny of the case by the FBI could make it difficult to maintain a coverup for long.

"I will continue to aggressively pursue this serious matter," Richardson said in a statement. "There will be accountability and disciplinary actions regarding the Los Alamos incident."

The disappearance of the hard drives is the latest in a series of security lapses at the highest levels of government, including at Los Alamos.

Last year, Los Alamos came under scrutiny following evidence that China may have stolen nuclear data from the lab. In December, a former scientist at Los Alamos, Wen Ho Lee, was arrested for mishandling classified material after it was discovered that he had downloaded and copied vast amounts of nuclear data from the classified computer network at Los Alamos into an unsecure network and onto portable computer tapes.

Lee is now in jail awaiting trial and has said that he is innocent of the charges.

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