LANL: The Corporate Story

LANL continues to take the blame for security "incidents" that are known to either not be real or are known to be another organization's fault.

Refer to the Congressional Research Service report "China: Suspected Nuclear Weapon Secrets, Order Code RL30143, Feb 1, 2006, pg. 37. Quote: " By November 1999, the FBI reportedly obtained new evidence that China acquired information about U.S. nuclear weapons from a facility that assembles those weapons. The evidence apparently stemmed from errors in the PRC intelligence document said to contain a description of the W88 warhead. The errors were then traced to one of the "integrators" of the weapons, possibly including Sandia National Lab, Lockheed Martin Corporation (which runds Sandia), and the Navy.
 

you are lying to yourself if you think that security is NOT lax at lanl.

Do you really believe that there is good security controls in place?
 

(The previous poster is ... George W. Bush.)
 

Cong. Joe Barton (R-Texas): "Los Alamos is the Crown Jewel of the nuclear weapons complex." If it was up to him, he would fire everyone there, shut the place down, and start up a new lab somewhere else. Now, that's what he would do to the "Crown Jewel." One can only wonder what he would do to Sandia and Livermore.
 

Yeah. Ennis, TX would make a great location for a new, multi-billion dollar NNSA lab, wouldn't it Mr. Barton? Or how about locating it somewhere in the great Rust Bowl of Michigan, Mr. Stupak? Do that and either of these guys would suddenly STFU about lab problems.
 

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A "Golden Moment" from Tuesday's hearing:

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Colorado Congress-lady: "Mr. Anastacio, how's morale at the lab?"

Mikey: "Oh.... the morale?..... it's...... morale is improving."
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Holy shit, Mike! For the love of God, how can you say this? Get out of your NSSB ivory tower and go talk with some Average Joe staff members 1-to-1. You'll quickly find that morale is at extremely low levels. Improving? Are you really that out of touch with your workforce or did you say that because you felt you had to say it as a means to protect LANS' image?
 

Speaking of "your workforce", I must admit I did get a chuckle out of the Director referring to it as "my Lab" re questions about drug testing.
 

I urge everyone who works at LANL to take the time and watch this hearing from beginning to end.

Some of the most interesting parts are when Clay Sell anwser the question "Why do we need Los Alamos?", when Barton tears into a witness about "who runs LANL today", and during the last third, when the NNSA folks sit like bumps on a log during questioning from Congress. It's quite a show.
 

Poster 7:53 AM -

Security is lax throughout the Federal government, so what else is new? Most of the former civil servant jobs throughout the Federal government have now been turned over to a corporate version of Kelly Services.

I welcome you to tour some of the Federal organizations throughout the US. What you will find is that most of the people now working at these facilities are contractors from outfits like SRA, CACI, Northrop, etc. These workers come-and-go into jobs, and have little loyalty to their corporate hiring firms and even less to the Federal organizations who sponsor them.

The "esprit du corp" of most Federal agencies has been wiped-out with the rush to corporatize the US Federal workforce. The people who have benefited most from this situation are Wall Street and the politicians, who now receive huge amounts of campaign funding thru the lobby groups of these corporate entities.

You want to improve the Federal government and reduce the number of security incidents? Bring back the civil service worker and solid government pensions. At least these workers had some sense of loyalty to their government agencies.
 

12:13 PM: How 20th Century! It will take the collapse of the entire corporate enterprise (America as presently constituted) before we see anything like those old-fashioned 'socialist' concepts, namely, "the civil service worker and solid government pensions." By then, the smoldering ruin of Los Alamos as a national research laboratory will have stopped smoldering.
 

Pat,

Just the fact that many people now see the concept of a civil servant or a government worker pension as 'socialist policies' tells you a lot about modern America, doesn't it? We've moved so far to the right over the last two decades. Most Americans don't even realize just how far right we've come.

Look at the so-called 'socialist states' like Norway and Sweden. They are listed as "Best Place to Live in the World" on most lists of this type. The US, however, has slipped far down on "Best Places" lists during the last few years.

Is it any wonder? Both Norway and Sweden have an affluent middle class and citizens with little worry that loss of a job or a bad medical condition will send them hurling into poverty. They also make some of the finest products on the planet. Is that such a bad deal?