LANL: The Corporate Story

Our corporate overlords have dropped by for one of their thrice-daily visits.
















Here's one of our buddies from DOE HQ. It is somehow appropriate that they don't see the big picture.

From "White House, Congress feud over weapons labs: Security breaches at Los Alamos highlight a hearing by exasperated House panelists," by James Sterngold, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer, Wednesday, January 31, 2007:

Many experts say it is no longer clear what kind of nuclear deterrent the United States should have, if any, and thus what kind of nuclear complex is needed.

The Defense Science Board, a body of outside experts that advises the Pentagon, wrote in a report in December that throughout the Cold War there was a basic understanding within the government about the kind of nuclear stockpile the country needed to deter any attacks by the Soviet Union.

"Fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, this consensus no longer exists," the report concluded.

Paul Robinson, the retired head of the Sandia National Laboratories, another weapons facility, said that the real issue was not boxes on an organizational chart, but a sense of mission, which is now lacking because there is no agreement on the purpose and size of the nuclear stockpile.

"There is a sense of drift, and that hurts," he said.

Commented Phil Coyle, a former top weapons scientist at Livermore and the Pentagon and now a senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information: "Little wonder it's become such an ineffective complex, because of all the uncertainties over what it's doing."

Give NNSA *more* authority? What planet does Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek, the new chairwoman of the House Strategic Forces subcommittee come from? Really?

White House, Congress feud over weapons labs
Security breaches at Los Alamos highlight a hearing by exasperated House panelists

James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/31/MNGQCNRSRF1.DTL

From the "Hearings" post, where it was noted that Mr. Whitfeld, Kentucky asked Anastasio if LANL had a whistleblower policy, and that Congress reads this blog:

-Pat, The (Whistleblowing) Dog

*****************************************


"I suppose this verifies that we now have an effective 'whistleblower' program at LANL, finally."

Too bad it took an act of Congress to get it.

Those who missed the hearings can see them at

http://boss.streamos.com/wmedia/energycommerce/ec_cmte_hearings_2007/013007.oi.hrg.lanl.wvx

-Pat

Santa Fe New Mexican, January 30, 2007

Lawmakers: Lapses could spur lab’s end
House panel blasts ‘tedious’ Los Alamos security problems

By Jennifer Talhelm, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Fed-up lawmakers on a House oversight committee said Tuesday that they want to strip a federal nuclear agency of its security responsibilities and threatened to shut down Los Alamos National Laboratory to correct a decade of security lapses there.

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said he has sat through nearly a decade of hearings in which the Energy Department and the Northern New Mexico nuclear weapons lab have promised to fix security problems. “I’ve been hearing these promises for a long time, and they’ve become somewhat tedious,” he said.

Lawmakers blistered the lab for its most recent security breach, in which a contract worker walked out with hundreds of pages of classified documents. The documents turned up during a drug raid last October involving a man who rented a room at the worker’s home.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said if problems cannot be solved this time, he will ask that the Los Alamos lab, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, be shut down. “There is an absolute inability and unwillingness to address the most routine security issues at this laboratory,” Barton said.

Barton, Dingell and others on the House Energy and Commerce Committee introduced a measure Tuesday to strip the National Nuclear Security Administration of its primary security responsibilities and turn them back to the Energy Department because of concerns that NNSA has not fixed security problems at Los Alamos despite spending tens of millions of dollars on improvements. “NNSA was a management experiment gone wrong,” Barton said.

Throughout Tuesday’s four hour hearing, lawmakers repeatedly asked why the lab needs to exist and whether it simply has too much responsibility for too many secret materials.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., called for a comprehensive audit of all services at Los Alamos.

He wants to evaluate whether its mission is too large and whether many of the classified operations should be moved to another lab. “I will not tolerate continued security lapses and a thumbing of their noses at Congress,” he said.

A new management team was installed at Los Alamos less than a year ago, in part to reverse years of security and safety problems.

Administration officials urged lawmakers to give the new managers more time to turn things around.

Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell also said Los Alamos probably could not be replaced or duplicated. It is the only place where plutonium pits for weapons can be made. Virtually everything that happens at Los Alamos is secret because the lab is responsible for the bulk of the strategic nuclear weapons stock pile, he said.

Sell promised that stronger security is possible.

“It appears to me the tail’s wagging the dog,” said a skeptical Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La. “It has been suggested that we shoot the dog,” Sell responded.

“I have to reject that suggestion in the strongest possible way. It is my view we have to have Los Alamos.”

The embarrassing October incident involving the classified documents resulted in a shake up in NNSA, which oversees the lab. Linton Brooks, already rep rimanded for an earlier incident, resigned earlier this month as head of NNSA.

Lab officials have said none of the material found during the drug raid was top secret. A lawyer for the employee, a 22-year old archivist, has said she took it home to catch up on work.

Security problems at the lab date back to the late 1990s.

They include the disappearance of two hard drives containing classified material that later were found behind a copying machine and the disappearance of two computer disks that forced a virtual shutdown of Los Alamos for months in 2004.

It later was learned those two disks never existed.

In response to the hearing, U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said LANL is invaluable to the country and deserves strong congressional support. “I am deeply concerned about the recent loss of classified information, and I expect the NNSA to fully use whatever contractual measures that are in place ... to deal with the situation,” he said.

“But to suggest we could do without the lab is irresponsible and wrong-headed.”

U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R N. M., the committee’s ranking Republican, echoed some of the same concerns while pointing out that officials have made recent personnel and policy changes to bolster lab security.

“Singling out LANL for security problems may generate headlines, but it is hardly the only government agency to struggle with this issue,” he said in a news release. “Massive amounts of personnel and other private data have been lost by government contractors and even agencies, such as the Veterans Administration. I am quite sure, for instance, that the security procedures at Los Alamos far exceed those here in Congress. A government wide effort to improve the way data is handled is needed.”

The New Mexican contributed to this report.

-----

ABQ Journal, Wednesday, January 31, 2007

LANL Hit Hard In Congress

By Michael Coleman, Journal Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON— Members of Congress berated Los Alamos National Laboratory on Tuesday for failing to protect America's nuclear secrets, and some suggested shutting the famous lab down.

Meanwhile, a powerful House Democrat introduced a bill to strip the National Nuclear Security Administration of its LANL oversight role.

Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee that monitors the national labs, said that giving NNSA lab oversight authority in 2000 was a mistake and his bill aims to correct it.

"The risk to security and safety is just too great for us to keep hoping that NNSA gets its act together," Dingell said. "This legislation effectively directs the Department of Energy to work aggressively and do the job that NNSA couldn't do."

Under Dingell's bill, lab oversight would revert to the Department of Energy, which he said would be more accountable than NNSA.

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the House energy panel, co-sponsored Dingell's bill Tuesday and harshly chastised LANL, where the atomic bomb was developed in the super-secret Manhattan Project during World War II, for repeated security breaches.

"If there was a way to start over, I'd say shut down the Los Alamos, fire everybody out there and build a new lab somewhere else," Barton said.

Tuesday's hearing marked the fifth time since 2003 that LANL's security lapses have come under a hot congressional glare.

The most recent congressional scrutiny came after classified materials— including electronic documents stored on a computer flash drive— were found in the home of a LANL subcontractor during an October drug investigation.

Dingell and Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, both compared Tuesday's hearing to "Groundhog Day," the fictional film in which a weatherman experiences the same day over and over.

"This week is Groundhog Day, so it's appropriate we're having this hearing, but it's not funny," DeGette said, adding that recent security breaches at the northern New Mexico lab "are infuriatingly familiar."

Members of New Mexico's congressional delegation said Tuesday that LANL is much too important to shut down, but they also expressed frustration at the continued security lapses.

Rep. Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat whose district includes LANL, said in an interview that he was open to the idea of stripping NNSA of its lab watchdog role.

"From the beginning, I thought the NNSA was an additional layer of bureaucracy," Udall said. "What I'm hearing from employees and managers at Los Alamos is that this is causing more problems than it's solving.

"I think the NNSA gets in the way, in many cases, of good science," Udall added.

Sen. Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican who pushed for the NNSA's creation, said in a statement that the agency should retain its lab oversight role. He said stripping it "would merely restore all authority to the secretary of energy, or lead to the creation of yet another layer of bureaucracy at a department already choking from that very problem."

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said Los Alamos is an indispensable part of America's national security.

"To suggest we could do without the lab is irresponsible and wrongheaded," Bingaman said in a statement.

The lab employs more than 12,000 full-time workers and contractors.

Some members of the committee and DOE officials suggested Tuesday that a consortium headed by the University of California, which manages LANL, could face stiff financial penalties for the continued security breaches.

Clay Sell, deputy secretary of energy and a former Domenici aide, told the subcommittee that closing Los Alamos would do more harm to national security than good. He said certain cutting-edge science, such as the construction of plutonium pits, can be done only at LANL.

"It's been suggested that we shoot the dog, and I have to reject that suggestion in the strongest possible terms," Sell said. "We need Los Alamos."

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., retorted: "Then they owe it to the American people to guard it."

Sell pointed out that Linton Brooks was recently fired as director of the National Nuclear Security Administration partly to send a message that the DOE is serious about making the weapons complex secure.

"It is going to take time to change, but we have an outstanding new leadership team in place," Sell said.

Udall said Michael Anastasio, LANL's new director, should be given a chance to turn the allegedly relaxed lab culture around.

"Let's give them a chance to get on top of this," Udall said. "There are two sides to it here. I think people know this is a very important laboratory and they do important work. I don't think they're going to throw the baby out with the bathwater."

-----

Los Alamos Monitor, Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Congress berates LANL again

ROGER SNODGRASS, Monitor Assistant Editor

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee unloaded on Department of Energy officials during opening testimony on continuing security problems at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

In a bipartisan display of disapproval, the new Democratic majority and the former Republican minority members demanded explanations from the Department of Energy Inspector General, Gregory Friedman and Glenn Podansky, DOE's chief health, safety and security officer about the most recent security breach.

A highly publicized case in October 2006 involved the discovery of what the Republican members described as 1,588 pages of classified information removed from a vault by a contractor employee at LANL and later found in a mobile home in Los Alamos, during a drug-related investigation.

The information, according to the subcommittee members, included information on nuclear weapons.

Representatives searched for explanations for why Los Alamos has been a continuing topic for their investigations, since 1999, when missing hard drives and Wen Ho Lee were the subjects.

Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, the only non-governmental witness gave an explanation in the form of what she called "a joke around the complex."

Speaking in the first panel of witnesses, she said, "The Secretary of Energy tells the three national labs to jump. Sandia asks how high, Livermore makes an excuse for why it's too busy to jump, and Los Alamos asks who the Secretary of Energy is.

"Los Alamos sticks out as the bad child because of its consistent and utter disregard for federal oversight," she said.

During questioning, Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell, in a second panel, answered a question by Subcommittee Chair Bart Stupak, D-Mich., about the follow-up investigation and why Sell had withdrawn his task force in early January before LANL had come into compliance with his new security directives.

"We found out that we were not making progress at a sufficient pace to meet a Jan. 15 deadline," he said. He added that the team was sent out again and that he found out after Jan. 22 that the laboratory had complied with the directive.

LANL Director Michael Anastasio was scheduled to testify later this morning, along with the acting NNSA Administrator Thomas D'Agostino, and other officials.

Monday afternoon, on the eve of the hearings, Republican members of the committee introduced a bill, quickly endorsed by Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., that would strip primary security oversight from the National Nuclear Security Administration and return the function to the Department of Energy.

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What ! ? "It's been suggested that we shoot the dog" ! ?
Not this damn dog, you don't ! ! !
You head on over to DOE and Congress, and shoot them damn dogs ! ! !

--Pat (!)

Lawmakers weigh cutting nuclear security agency

By Jonathan Marino
jmarino@govexec.com

Lawmakers on Tuesday proposed eliminating the agency created seven years ago to oversee the country's nuclear weapons stockpile, citing continued security failures at the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico.

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations said at a hearing that the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency within the Energy Department, has not performed adequately. They cited an October incident at Los Alamos, N.M., in which local police responding to a domestic disturbance call discovered that a laboratory employee had classified data on nuclear weapons stored on small, portable hard drives.

The incident was the latest in a string of breaches that have prompted lawmakers to reconsider NNSA. The oversight agency was created in 1999 as part of Congress' response to the mishandling of classified information - again at Los Alamos - by Wen Ho Lee.

"NNSA was a management experiment gone wrong," said ranking member Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas.

Lawmakers introduced a bill Tuesday they said will give Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman more authority over energy security. They also discussed the possibility of closing the Los Alamos laboratory entirely.

The Energy Department's inspector general testified at the hearing that mismanagement and security gaps - some of which department officials say have been repaired - caused the most recent Los Alamos incident. IG Gregory Friedman criticized management for "a lack of follow-through" on policy guidelines and a failure to conduct frequent enough oversight.

The IG said policies to improve the physical security of classified files need immediate implementation to prevent data theft. Policies for cybersecurity must be implemented universally throughout the Energy Department, he said.

Linda Wilbanks, NNSA's information chief, testified that all data ports, which are what the Los Alamos employee is believed to have used to download classified data, have been sealed.

Energy Department Deputy Secretary Clay Sell told lawmakers that, following the security breach, the department took steps to secure its data quickly. Reviews of security are ongoing, Sell said, but will be completed for Bodman in February. Subcommittee members said they will seek Bodman's testimony after the reports are finished.

©2007 by National Journal Group Inc. All rights reserved.

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Comments from an Anonymous Livermore person on Domenici's "brilliant idea" (NNSA):

"After 20 years at LLNL I can say with conviction that NNSA has been a complete failure and total waste of the taxpayers dollars... NNSA is directly responsible for the incompetent micro-mismanagement of both LLNL and LANL... NNSA is solely responsible the disastrous RFP that forced the creation of a for profit LLC to run LANL and bid on LLNL... NNSA demanded in the RFP that LANL employees be stripped of their UC retirement and benefits by requiring a stand alone HR program (something not required at other DOE labs - ANL, BNL, SLAC, etc or NASA's JPL or DOD's Lincoln Lab)... NNSA is responsible for the selection of the front company LANS LLC that supposedly exists with its unseen and heard from board of directors... and NNSA's bureaucracy is responsible for the convoluted requirements (business, security, ES&H) that confuse lab employees and hamstring effective operation of the labs... So yes Congress, please do the country a huge favor and eliminate NNSA before its incompetent and bungling managers do more damage to science and national security in this nation."

Bush Donor Profile

Joe L. Barton
Occupation: Representative
Employer: U.S. Congress
Home: Ennis, TX
Representative Joe Barton started his career as an aide to Reagan Energy Secretary James Edwards, a pioneer of natural gas price deregulation. Barton parlayed this post into a brief consulting job with ARCO before his 1984 election as one of Congress’ most conservative members. Barton has crusaded against things that politicians arguably cannot control: homosexuality, abortion and drugs. Conversely, he has fought efforts to control guns and tobacco. Critics say tobacco influence explains the jihad that Barton’s subcommittee waged against the Food and Drug Administration. Barton is an even greater champion of the energy industry, which regularly tops off his political war chests. Barton stuck provisions in the 2003 energy bill to give the Dallas-Fort Worth region more time to flunk clean-air standards. The bill failed because of another Barton-championed provision to shield the petrochemical industry from liability for the carcinogenic gasoline additive MTBE. While Barton opposes most foreign aid, he was a top cheerleader for the defunct $11 billion physics super collider boondoggle that Congress started to build in his old district (see George Bayoud, Fred Bucy and Bill Ceverha). Right or wrong, this self-described “cranky contrarian” has been known to stand alone. He was the sole committee member to request the resignation of International Olympic Committee head Juan Antonio Samaranch and to oppose immunity for junk-bond felons Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky. More recently, Rep. Barton played a role in a corporate scandal. Troubled Westar Energy got Barton to insert special provisions into 2002 energy legislation to let Westar split off its regulated utility from its heavily indebted other businesses--a split that would facilitate saddling ratepayers with $1 billion Westar’s non-utility debts. Company documents suggest that four GOP members of Congress whose support Westar solicited, including Reps. Barton and Tom DeLay (see Randy DeLay), directed Westar to channel $56,500 into GOP campaign coffers. The Senate dropped this sweetheart provision after learning that a federal grand jury was probing Westar fraud allegations. “To be told there’s some quid pro quo,” Barton said, “that’s just stupid.” Barton met with Pioneer Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick in February 2003 to discuss redistricting Texas’ Congressional districts—a top priority of Tom DeLay. When powerful House Energy and Commerce Chair Billy Tauzin announced his retirement in early 2004, Barton assumed that helm.

Profile last updated Feb 18, 2004

They are holding other hearings in DC that may be more relevant to science and its potential contributions to the nation, than the "Oversight" Committee grandstanding about LANL "security lapses." Let's let reality intrude on our local angst. Read on, and think about how LANL, SNL, and LLNL might do something more relevant to mankind's future. (As goes man, so goes dog ...)

--Pat

-----



Waxman: White House misled public on global warming

By Johanna Neuman And Richard Simon, Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times
1:20 PM PST, January 30, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The new Democratic chairman of a House panel charged today that the Bush administration tried to mislead the public about climate change "by injecting doubt into the science of global warming and minimizing the potential dangers."

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said at the start of a hearing on global warming that he and the committee's ranking Republican, Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, had repeatedly asked the White House last year for documents to show that senior officials were suppressing scientific reports within the administration about the severity of the problem.

The congressmen were trying to investigate an allegation that Phil Cooney, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality and a former lobbyist for the American petroleum industry, was quashing scientific reports that offered views on global warming that differed from those of the White House.

"The committee isn't trying to obtain state secrets or documents that could affect our immediate national security," Waxman said today. "We are simply seeking answers to whether the White House's political staff is inappropriately censoring impartial government scientists."

In testimony before the committee, the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent advocacy group, found in a survey of government scientists that 150 of them had experienced political interference over the past five years.

"Our investigations found high-quality science struggling to get out," said the group's senior scientist Francesca Grifo. "Nearly half of all respondents perceived or personally experienced pressure to eliminate the words 'climate change,' 'global warming' or other similar terms from a variety of communications," Grifo said.

Rick Piltz, a former U.S. government scientist, who said he resigned in 2005 after pressure to soften his words on global warming, wrote in prepared testimony that Cooney personally cast doubt on the consequences of climate change.

On the other side of Capitol Hill, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) chaired a hearing at which several presidential candidates — Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Barak Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) embraced new measures on global warming. Afterward, she hailed the "consensus" that Congress act soon.

johanna.neuman@latimes.com

richard.simon@latimes.com

From: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/30/politics/main2415055.shtml

Lawmakers Slam Los Alamos Security
Both Democrats And Republicans Assail Nuclear Lab Managers, Energy Dept. Supervisors

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30, 2007

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(CBS/Getty) A Quote "If we have to shut down the Laboratory, then so be it. But we ought to be able to get security right at Los Alamos." Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas WHAT DO YOU THINK? Go To Comments

(CBS) By CBS News Capitol Hill correspondent Sharyl Attkisson

---

At a congressional hearing today, both Democrats and Republicans assailed Los Alamos National Laboratory managers and their Department of Energy supervisors for what they view as the same old security problems. This, despite the fact that Los Alamos, the nation's premiere nuclear weapons center, has been under new management for seven months.

House members of the Energy and Commerce committee, charged with oversight of Los Alamos, today threatened everything from yanking the Lab's security responsibilities to shutting it down entirely.

"There is an absolute inability and unwillingness to address the most routine security issues at this Laboratory," said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas. "If we have to shut down the Laboratory, then so be it. But we ought to be able to get security right at Los Alamos."

Management and security scandals have plagued the Lab for years. Most recently, as reported exclusively by CBS News, a 22-year old former Lab employee named Jessica Quintana walked out unchallenged with hundreds of pages of classified documents. Police found them by accident during a drug raid on the trailer home of her roommate. The FBI's criminal investigation of the case is ongoing.

"Why she hasn't been arrested yet is a mystery to us," an insider tells CBS News.

Sources also tell CBS News that Quintana had access to sensitive secrets including underground nuclear weapons test data and the code that keeps nuclear weapons locked in case they are stolen. In one of several interviews with the FBI, Quintana told officials that security at the Lab was so lax, she was never checked when entering or leaving, and it was easy for her to walk out with hundreds of pages in her backpack, as well as several portable computer storage devices.

The Laboratory and Department of Energy have repeatedly promised Congress big changes. The biggest one was supposed to happen when the federal government put the contract to manage the Lab up for bid for the first time in history. The University of California had held the contract since the Lab's beginnings in 1943. Last June, a new consortium of four organizations took control. But the new faces turned out to look a lot like the old ones, with the University of California retaining a large portion of the contract. That, suggested members of Congress today, may be the problem.

In response, the Lab's director, Michael Anastasio, took responsibility for the most recent security breach and tried to assure fed-up members of Congress that everything is under control.

"We took immediate action when we learned of the breach," Anastasio said, but "there will not be a silver bullet solution because there are none."
Los Alamos National Laboratory employs more than 9,000 people and has an annual budget of $2.2 billion. Taxpayers have financed tens of millions of dollars in security upgrades at the Lab in recent years amidst various scandals.

A recent Inspector General's report said that Lab security remains inadequate despite all the expense.

Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., likened the pattern of security breaches followed by Lab promises to tighten security to "groundhog day." Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich, said "it's dejavu all over again."

It's started already. Bingaman and Wilson reacting to the subcommittee's threats to shut down LANL. I wonder what was discussed in the closed-door executive meeting?

-Pat
_________________________________________________________________

http://www.kobtv.com/index.cfm?viewer=storyviewer&id=30072&cat=HOME

Video

Two New Mexico lawmakers are coming to the defense of Los Alamos National Laboratory after members of a house committee made threats to shut down the lab Monday.

Fed-up lawmakers on a US House oversight committee said Tuesday they want to strip the National Nuclear Security Administration of its security responsibilities.

And they threatened to shut down Los Alamos National Laboratory to correct a decade of security lapses there.

The lawmakers blistered the lab for its most recent security breach in which a contract worker walked out with hundreds of pages of classified documents.

The material later was discovered during a drug raid at her home.

Other security breaches have involved misplaced disk drives, hacked computers and stolen security badges.

Democratic New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman said that he also is “deeply concerned about the recent loss of classified information,” but added, “to suggest we could do without the lab is irresponsible and wrongheaded.”

Congresswoman Heather Wilson says she doesn’t think the lab will be closed but added that she understands the frustration of some lawmakers after years of promises and hearings.

“I think a lot of it is rhetoric, but it does reflect people’s frustration here in Washington,” said the Albuquerque Republican.

Democratic Congressman John Dingell of Michigan says he’s sat through nearly a decade of hearings in which the Energy Department and the lab have promised to fix the problems.

Republican Congressman Joe Barton of Texas says that if problems cannot be solved this time, he’ll ask that the lab be shut down.

Kevin Roark, a spokesman for the lab, noted that the new management team has only been in place for six months and has begun instituting new security procedures.

“This is a new team, under a new contract, and over time it will build trust through good performance,” said Roark.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Anybody who thinks the hearings are "just for show" should tune in immediately. This is hardball. Options being discussed include shutting LANL down, withholding LANS's fee, and moving big chunks of LANL to Sandia.

http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.shtml

-Pat

UPDATE: 10:43 CST -- The Honorable Mr. Burgess, Texas, just quoted a comment from this blog. The comment was from a blog reader who was pleading that LANL not be shut down. In referring to this blog, he called it a "popular LANL blog". So, I guess that settles the issue of whether or not this blog is read by people who have influence over LANL.

UPDATE: 11:37AM CST -- Mr. Barton, Texas: 70% of LANS's $73.x M award fee is at risk, 30% is fixed. Barton and the IG are discussing how much of a fine could be levied against LANS. Later comments by D'Agostino clarified that the entire award fee is at risk, should sufficient cause be determined.

UPDATE: 11:47AM CST -- Mr. Burgess and the IG were discussing the fact that there is currently an FBI investigation ongoing, and that additional security infractions may be revealed as a result. (Mitchell???)

UPDATE: 11:58AM CST -- A number of the panel and witnesses were discussing the the bid process that led to LANS winning the contract, and (circumspect) questions were raised whether the selection hadn't led to the wrong contractor being selected to run LANL. I suspect that this topic will come up in the closed session which will follow.

UPDATE: 12:25PM CST -- Mr. Whitfield, Kentucky, is grilling Mr. Sell, Deputy Secy, DOE, on the specifics of the bid process that D'Agostino's led which resulted in LANS winning the contract. Boy, does Sell sound uncomfortable and nervous. His little voice is quivering.

UPDATE: 12:52PM CST -- D'Agostino is threatening to spank LANS with penalties of up to $70 million, or to even cause them to forfeit their entire fee.

UPDATE: 12:54PM CST -- Ugh. NNSA CIO Linda Wilbanks is blathering buzzwords about computer security. Bottom line of her opening statement -- "It wasn't my fault LANL screwed up!"

UPDATE: 1:03PM CST -- Anastasio is on. Unlike Wilbanks, he is taking responsibiliy for the CREM de Meth case.

BIG UPDATE!!! 1:28PM CST -- Mr. Burgess just flat out asked D'Agostino if it would be contractually possible to terminate the LANS contract immediately, for cause. D'Agostino said "Yes, but (mumbling under his breath) it would be a bad idea because I picked LANS." Ok, D'Agostino didn't actually say that bit about him having picked LANS, but you could see him thinking it.

UPDATE: 1:43PM CST -- Mr. Whitfeld, Kentucky asked Anastasio if LANL had a whistleblower policy, and then in the very next sentence mentioned that John Mitchell had violated his contract by leaving LANL before his contractual term was up. And then the conversation moved on. I believe the stage is being set to have some more discussion about Mitchell, perhaps in the closed session. This may be another big update.

1:54PM CST, the committee broke to go into executive (closed) session. Could be a bloodbath.

Final Observations: 2:19 and 2:54pm CST -- Someone in the House is again looking at the blog:
I suppose this verifies that we now have an effective "whistleblower" program at LANL, finally.






Oh, the Senate too, BTW.

SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION
48th LEGISLATURE – STATE OF NEW MEXICO – FIRST SESSION, 2007

DISCUSSION DRAFT

A JOINT RESOLUTION TO PROHIBIT ANY NEW NUCLEAR WEAPON PRODUCTION FACILITITIES IN NEW MEXICO

PRESENTED BY…


Whereas New Mexico is named as a possible site for the proposed development of a new and consolidated manufacturing facility that the National Nuclear Security Administration is calling Complex 2030, where the intent is to develop and manufacture new nuclear weapons,
And Whereas this proposed facility violates the intent and Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty signed and ratified by the US and entered into force in 1970 which states: "Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament",
And Whereas Article VI of the U.S Constitution states that “all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land”,
And Whereas the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice has decided unanimously that each State is obliged to bring to a close negotiations and begin the process of complete disarmament,
And Whereas the production of new nuclear bomb pits violates Article 6 of the US Constitution, the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice,
And Whereas the Department of Energy argues that nuclear deterrence is a necessary policy for the U.S in order to ensure the peace. However, since World War II, the US has been involved in at least eighteen wars, including in Korea, Guatemala, Cuba, Indonesia, Congo, Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq,
And Whereas the citizens of New Mexico affirm a desire to create a world where true peace prevails
And Whereas the continuation of the do as I say, not as I do foreign policy undermines U.S and global security,
And Whereas if the Department of Energy were to: (1) insist upon the massive cleanup of the contaminated areas; (2) support research in the remediation of radioactive wastes; (3) find the means to make reparations to those communities whose soil, air and water have been contaminated; (4) dismantle the stockpile without replacing the warheads; (5) present a clear plan for consolidating and maintaining the security of the extremely toxic and dangerous nuclear weapons materials in the inventory into perpetuity; (6) invest in the development of renewable energy technologies and other endeavors that affirm life, New Mexico would take the lead in creating a more secure State, America and World,

Now therefore;
The New Mexico House and Senate resolve that the Department of Energy at Los Alamos National Laboratory, under management of Los Alamos National Security, Bechtel and the Regents of the University of California, cannot legally produce or manufacture plutonium pits. Furthermore, any plan or construction or operation of any buildings designed with that purpose in mind will not be permitted.

Video and audio links to the hearings are available here:

http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.shtml

*****************************************************

Santa Fe New Mexican
Congress scrutinizing LANL security

By JENNIFER TALHELM | Associated Press
January 30, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) - Fed-up lawmakers will call Tuesday for a comprehensive
audit of Los Alamos National Laboratory in hopes of discovering why security
breaches continue even after tens of millions of dollars have been spent on
improvements.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said he wants to evaluate whether the footprint
and mission of Los Alamos are too large and whether many of its classified
operations should be moved to another lab.

"I will not tolerate continued security lapses and a thumbing of their noses
at Congress," Stupak said in comments prepared for testimony at a Tuesday
hearing about security at the lab.

Stupak chairs a House oversight panel, which will grill Los Alamos officials
Tuesday about why a worker recently was able to walk out of the lab with
classified weapons-related documents.

The October incident was the latest security breach in a long line of
problems at the northern New Mexico nuclear-weapons research lab, the
birthplace of the atomic bomb.

A new management team was installed at the lab less than a year ago in part
to reverse years of security and safety problems.

But in October, hundreds of pages of classified lab documents were found
during a drug raid at the home of a former lab subcontractor's employee.

The embarrassing incident resulted in a shake-up in the agency that oversees
the lab. Linton Brooks, who already had been reprimanded for an earlier
incident, resigned earlier this month as head of the National Nuclear
Security Administration.

Lab officials have said none of the material found during the October drug
raid was top secret. A lawyer for the employee, a 22-year-old archivist,
said she had taken it home to catch up on work.

But lawmakers and watchdog groups have raised numerous questions since,
including why the employee was able to take classified documents home when
her security clearance required that she be supervised at all times.

Lawmakers also want to know what has happened to repeated efforts to make
the lab disk-less so classified material could no longer be lost or stolen.

The rash of security problems at the lab dates back to the late 1990s. It
includes the disappearance of two hard drives containing classified material
that later were found behind a copying machine and the disappearance of two
computer disks that forced a virtual shutdown of Los Alamos. It later was
learned the two disks never existed.

"A substantial amount of money was being spent on preventing the lab
employees from being able to take information away," said Rep. Tom Udall,
D-N.M., whose district includes Los Alamos. "How much of that has been
spent? Why wasn't this expenditure of money able to prevent this from
happening if they have this new system in place?"

Udall is not on the subcommittee holding the hearing, but he will attend to
make sure key questions are asked and answered, he said.

"This is a situation that demands continuous improvement," Udall said. "Are
they making continuous improvement or are they constantly in trouble on
these types of issues?"

Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said Los Alamos officials are "eager to explain
all the lab has done in response to this latest incident and to outline for
the panel his plan for the future."

"We realize that the questions are serious and that the solutions are
difficult," Roark said.

But officials at the Project on Government Oversight, a private watchdog
group, predict the problems will continue unless the government puts more
emphasis on safety and security in the lab's management contract and
financially penalizes the lab for failing to improve security.

The group also encouraged lawmakers to audit the lab's work to see whether
it reflects Congress' priorities.

"For decades, Los Alamos has operated as a sacred cow with no serious
oversight," POGO's executive director, Danielle Brian, said in testimony
prepared for the hearing. "I hope this is the beginning of a new era."

Here it is, folks: The quintessential reason for LANL's troubles ever since the Republicans wanted to hand over taxpayer money to a defense contractor to run LANL about 12 years ago, and how they finally managed to accomplish it in the last 6 years. Note the lazy media's use of the standard sound bite: "the birthplace of the atomic bomb". Note the reference to "fed-up lawmakers". Note that the panel wants "to know why a Los Alamos National Laboratory worker recently was able to walk out of the lab with classified weapons-related documents", but that they don't mention anything about whether it was an overworked underling or an over-confident (i.e., "arrogant butthead cowboy") upper manager. Note the "long line of [security] problems". Note how "eager" the "Lab spokesman" is "to explain all the lab has done in response to the latest incident and to outline plans for the future".

What a pile of dog crap.

(And I know one when I smell one.)

--Pat, the disgusted Dog


-----

Congress scrutinizing Los Alamos lab security

Last Update: 01/29/2007 5:19:05 PM By: Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Members of a House oversight panel want to know why a Los Alamos National Laboratory worker recently was able to walk out of the lab with classified weapons-related documents.

The October incident was the latest security breach in a long line of problems at the northern New Mexico nuclear-weapons research lab, the birthplace of the atomic bomb.

Fed-up lawmakers are expected to call for a comprehensive audit of the lab tomorrow in hopes of discovering why problems continue even after tens of millions of dollars have been spent to improve security there.

Lab spokesman Kevin Roark says Los Alamos officials are eager to explain all the lab has done in response to the latest incident and to outline plans for the future.



(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

I received this from an Anonymous reader.

-Pat, the Apathetic Dog

*********************************

Pat, the Dog,

At least you're a realist, like most people that I work with every day.

I think most will hang on until they can't take it anymore, for whatever reason. I see a general apathy, perhaps brought on by overstimulation. LANL appears much like someone who no longer responds to stimuli.

I hear comments like:

A: More funds coming.
B: That's good, need to keep the place going.

C: There's 9705 FTE's at LANL: 3593 are TSM/PD; 801 Mgt; 434 Students; 421 Contractors; 2521 Support; and 1935 Techs. Do you think there's an OH problem?
D: No. Don't worry about it, Pete will get us more money.
C: Sen Domenici isn't the head of the committee anymore.
D: Ok, then Jeff will get us more money. He'll say it's for the scientists and engineers. Stop worrying, you act like it's your money. LANL has always had a large OH and no one cares.

E: Think there'll be a RIF?
F1: Director said no RIF. I've got the emails from Beason and Wallace saying the same thing.
F2: Probably, just let me know when. Figure I'll need to look for a new job since I'm not in a protected class.

G: Number 2 guy at LANL left.
H: BFD. That means what to me?

I: Congressional hearings tomorrow about security.
J: Remember listening to Nanos talking about M for Moron as part of LANL CREM security?

K: Worried about drug testing?
L: I only do legal drugs and I've got a prescription.

M: You don't laugh and smile much anymore.
N: Really? Hadn't noticed.

O: Where do you think LANL is going?
P: Does it matter as long as we keep getting funding?

Q: Do you feel stressed?
R: Not really. I've always realized it's just a job. Besides, other than my job, I have no vested interest. I have no stake in any bonus.

S: Remember when our DDL in ESA had everyone print out "ESA is a Great Place to Work" on their computer and post it in their office to boost morale?
T: Still have it.

An Anoymous reader just sent this in.

-Pat

***************************************

From the LA Times:

"The revelations thus far in [Scooter] Libby's trial suggest that, though U.S. officials — especially within the Bush administration — have publicly insisted that secrecy is crucial in national security matters, there is a backstage world inside the government where even the most basic rules for protecting sensitive information may be ignored."

Does that kind of official sloppiness extend all the way out here from Washington, DC, to the upper reaches of LANL?

(That was a rhetorical question for the benefit of certain Congressional inquirers; no answer necessary.)

--Pat, the Dog

Anastasio to testify

ROGER SNODGRASS, Los Alamos Monitor, Assistant Editor

A spokesman for Los Alamos National Laboratory confirmed that Director Michael Anastasio would appear before the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
"Director Anastasio has been asked to come to Washington to testify before the house subcommittee," said spokesman Kevin Roark. "He is very much looking forward to the opportunity to outline all the things we have done in the aftermath of the Oct.17 cybersecurity incident."

Classified materials were found in a mobile home by Los Alamos police investigating a drug case at that time, reviving national concerns about security performance at the laboratory.
In the aftermath, the official in charge of the national nuclear program, Ambassador Linton Brooks, was asked to step down and the National Nuclear Security Administration's local manager was transferred.

NNSA's new acting administrator Thomas D'Agostino came to Los Alamos early last week. According to Jan Chavez-Wilcynski, the deputy manager of the local office, he came to talk to the employees to let them know he was here and probably would continue in an acting role for the two years until the next presidential election.
Wilcynski said he reassured the local staff that the agency's priorities were still the same and that there would be continuity.

He also spoke at an all-hands meeting at the laboratory, which was closed to the press.
D'Agostino is on the extensive list of witnesses for Tuesday's hearing, which does not explicitly include Anastasio.

Also appearing, according to the subcommittee's witness list are the Department of Energy's Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman; the Chief Health, Safety and Security Officer Glenn Podonsky; Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell; and the chief information officers of both NNSA and DOE, among others

Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, is the only non-governmental witness on the subcommittee's list.

An executive session is scheduled to follow the public testimony.

-----

[I'd like to be a fly on the ... wall during the "executive session." --Pat]

The words suggested below will not be the words we hear. The whole shebang really is all for show. Stupak et. al. will give Anastasio a good public whipping, get some camera time and a sound bite or two, and then they'll send Mikey scampering back to LANL with an admonishment to "do better". That's what's really going to happen.

Bottom line: expect no change. That's how it works around here.

-Pat, the Realist Dog

*************************************

Submitted by Anonymous:

The first question out of the mouths of the Congressional committee should be directed to D'Agostino, and be worded as follows:

"Mr. D'Agostino, you don't really plan on giving the LLNL contract to UC/Bechtel, yet again, do you? If so, we'll be meeting with you again, you can rest assured, shortly after the contract is awarded. And take note. It will be a most unpleasant meeting."


To any House members who may scout out this blog -- yes, there are lots of whiners and complainers on this blog. It is also a precious source of information about what is taking place inside the labs that you won't get from any other source.

Use some judicious filtering and take note of what you see. Many of us are like you. We do not like UC running our labs. We are greatly upset that UC got the LANL contract. We see a NNSA that is badly broken. We want our management to improve. We want to work in a place that is not dysfunctional. It's not working out well at LANL. Please help us, and don't hurt the hard working staff who are hoping for a better lab. We are not all cowboys and butt-heads, and most of us deeply love this country and love doing science that helps strengthen our national security. Don't give up on us just yet. Please be careful with your words. Direct them at those who are truly at fault, and avoid belittling comments directed against the whole workforce and against the vital work that we do to help this country.

And one more thing. Yes, you do need a Los Alamos -- a well functioning Los Alamos.

Dirty little secret (some history for you youngsters): All those 63 years that UC "ran" LANL (mainly the retirement system and benefits), the real bosses were: Senator Clinton P. Anderson, Senator Joe Montoya, Congressman Manuel Lujan, and for the last 34 of those years, Senator Pete Domenici. Micromanagement on a day-to-day level was carried out by the successors to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), namely, ERDA (Energy Research and Development Administration), DOE (Department of "Energy"), and Domenici's biggest blunder, NNSA (National Nuclear "Security" Administration), which managed to compound the incompetence of DOE (stupidity emanating from headquarters in Washington, DC, multiplied by even greater bungling and fumbling at the Albuquerque office) with a local office of their very own in Los Alamos.

Now, with Bechtel in charge, things are much, much better. And much more efficient, too. We hear that safety, security, and business practices are running much more smoothly: Incidents have been reduced a mandated 30%, so as to fulfill the RFP and maintain the $79M/year management fee for the Limited Liability Corporation. (However, there have been unsubstantiated rumors to the effect that upper management has interfered with reporting procedures. We will keep you, Dear Readers, informed of any new developments we hear about prior to the upcoming Congressional Hearings.)

--Pat, the ever-watchful Dog

Anonymous posted the following, but notice, Dear Readers (and Congresspersons) that LockMart runs Sandia for $16.6M vs. Bechtel's $79M--a factor of nearly five (for a sister National Lab that is almost as big as LANL). AND, they do it relatively successfully. Think about it! It's sounding too good to be true ... Who would have thought? Sandia National Laboratory at Los Alamos (SNLLA) ...

--Pat, the (hopeful?) Dog

-----

From the latest ABQ Journal --

----------
"Lockheed Martin received a $7.7 million bonus last year for its management of Sandia National Laboratories, on top of its $16.6 million fixed fee for running the nuclear weapons research center."
----------

Based on the ABQ Journal tidbit, I would like to offer the following idea.

*** MEGA-LAB PROPOSAL ***
*** A SNL-LANL Merger ***

I have a radical proposition. How about turning LANL into "SNL-North", and letting SNL help run their errant sister lab up on the Hill? At least SNL has a decent track record of managing a national lab. Why not merge the two into one Mega-Lab entity? SNL is only 90 miles down the road from us, so the logistics of merging the two labs is not that far fetched. If Lockheed had won the LANL RFP, that's probably the direction in which Lockheed management would have moved (i.e, integration of the separate functions between these two labs). For those who don't know LANL's history, SNL started out as a LANL division back in the early 50's.

If nothing else, a lab merger between SNL and LANL would immediately bring about big cost savings by stripping away the duplication of support offices that currently serve both labs. If we merged, we could see significant savings from the integration effort. So far, LANS has only given empty promises on integration efforts aimed at saving money.

We might also be able to reduce some of the bloated management overhead that currently exists at LANL if NNSA followed the Mega-Lab route. Another big plus would be that staff who felt trapped up at Los Alamos might be able to more easily transfer to an office down in ABQ. Likewise, SNL staff who wanted to get out of the "big city" could transfer up to the pristine mountain air up on the Hill.

The more I think about it, the more I really like the Mega-Lab concept. Perhaps it's time for NNSA to seriously start thinking about moving in this direction. The LANL logo has already been destroyed by bad PR, so giving up this title would be a plus. The new Mega-Lab could be given a slick, new name that would satisfy both SNL and LANL.

LANL: Congress set to probe lab's security failings

Andy Lenderman | The New Mexican
January 27, 2007

The name says it all: "Continuing Security Concerns at Los Alamos National Laboratory."

That's what Congress is calling its hearing scheduled for Tuesday to dig into security matters at the lab.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on oversight and investigations is planning to call lab director Michael Anastasio and officials of the National Nuclear Security Administration among its witnesses.

"The director is very much looking forward to cooperating fully with the subcommittee and is eager to explain all that we've done in response to this incident," lab spokesman Kevin Roark said Friday, referring to the October discovery of classified information at the home of a former contract employee. No one has been charged with a crime in the case, but the FBI has investigated it.

The lab became involved in a major national story in 1999 over the FBI's investigation of Wen Ho Lee, a scientist who pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling classified information. Other security-related problems also arose in subsequent years, which congressional sources said was a factor in the government's decision to open up the lab's operating contract to a competitive bidding process.

Now the lab is operated by Los Alamos National Security LLC, which includes Bechtel National and the University of California as partners.

U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman this year fired NNSA's head, and security problems at the Northern New Mexico lab were listed among reasons for the dismissal.

None of New Mexico's three House members sits on the subcommittee, which is chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich.

"There is no denying that Los Alamos has had some serious problems with its security regimen," U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said in a statement. "I hope the House oversight hearings will be focused on solutions and not grandstanding."

Contact Andy Lenderman at 995-3827 or alenderman@sfnewmexican.com.

Here it is: Linton Brooks fired for trying to cover up cyber-hacking of personnel data for more than 1500 employees; hundreds of documents missing from LANL, leading to the FBI investigation of a young woman who was fired from her contractor position for bringing work home under extreme duress from her bosses; no mention of a high LANL official taking classified documents home on his laptop, but the story will not die. Click on the title to see the letter, dated last week, from Congressmen Dingell, Barton, Stupak, Whitfield, and Hastert to David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the GAO, requesting a report on cybersecurity (or lack thereof) at LANL.

The hearing, starring those Congressmen, along with our own Tom Udall in attendance (but not on the subcommittee itself), will be held on Tuesday, January 30, 2007, in the U.S. House of Representatives, with Michael Anastasio (Director of LANL and President of LANS, LLC) sweating away under the klieg lights. Tune in on CSPAN (10:00am EST).

-----

[OK, OK. Now it's time for some REALITY, after all the blathering being posted in these last 18 hours. I got this e-mail message from Brad Holian, which I will share with all of you. --Pat]

I hope you Congressmen are really watching this blog, because here are the facts: Los Alamos National Laboratory was put on the auction block for privatization almost four years ago for no objective reason, though the hyped-up "excuse" for doing so was the claim of ongoing incidents of massive waste, fraud, abuse, unsafe working conditions, and national-security secrets leaking out of the place like a sewer with the valve rusted open. Safety and security at LANL is, indeed, not perfect, nor are its business practices foolproof, but its record for the past 10 years is statistically equivalent to that of the Sandia and Livermore national labs, and maybe just a little bit better (gasp!). I believe that Bechtel came in here at the invitation of the Republican Administration (namely, DOE and its misbegotten ugly stepsister, NNSA) and Congressional Republicans, and they (Bechtel) believed all the negative propaganda about LANL. They really thought they could promise significant reductions in security, safety, and business incidents, and thereby be welcomed with open arms as "liberators" (who could also, by the way, scoop up a big management fee, and pass out big bonuses to their upper brass), only to find to their great dismay that "stuff happens," and it kept on happening right under their noses. In other words, they found out that no truly significant reduction in incidents is possible without lying about them and covering them up. If this is--as it is commonly perceived by the public, thanks to the lazy news media--a "cultural problem" endemic to "arrogant butthead cowboy" scientists, then shutting down Los Alamos, while leaving Sandia and Livermore up and running with their virtually identical culture, makes no sense whatsoever. So, then the question for Congress is: "Now what? Do we subject Livermore to the same privatization nightmare?" (And the real question lingering is: Does science done at national labs even matter to the nation?)

--Brad Lee Holian

This was sent in by an Anonymous reader.

-Pat

********************************************

I keep seeing this discussion on John Mitchell and the issue that he might just have decided that after 5 months he wanted to “spend time with his family”. And you know what, maybe that is true, but something else I know to be true is that all key personnel from both teams were required to sign a commitment letter on their resumes . See below.

If the ____________ is awarded the contract associated with RFP No. DE-RP52-05NA25396, I, the undersigned, hereby agree to accept full-time employment in the above stated position at an agreed upon salary and benefit package, relocate to the work area vicinity, as applicable, and remain in this position for a period of two years.

In addition, it would be reasonable to assume that John Mitchell’s family and their needs existed prior to his signing the above commitment.

An analysis based on available empirical data would lead a rational person to conclude one or all of the following, none of them meritorious:

• John Mitchell’s commitment and word is not worth the paper that it is written on
• LANS had the power to compel Mr. Mitchell to remain with the program and chose not to
• Either something significantly changed with Mr. Mitchell or his relationship with the Lab leadership deteriorated to a point where his continued employment was deemed no longer necessary (Recall the rumors about the argument at the orals between Mitchell and Anastasio and the “I am in charge, Mike is a figurehead” public pronouncement by Mr. Mitchell)
• Bidding John Mitchell as the Deputy Lab Director was nothing more than a classic “bait and switch” on the part of Bechtel. They knew he had no intention of fulfilling his commitment all along. (Remember he had retired after Bechtel’s struggles and failure at Yucca Mountain) And his actions since taking on these responsibilities were consistent with his intended goal. (see above bullet for evidence of a “self fulfilling prophecy”)

It may be that there are some potential catastrophic family issues that require his full time attention and that he has no wish to share that with the world. In which case we should respect his privacy, but I would think that given the current circumstances of the Laboratory, there should be a better explanation from the leadership team than “the dog ate my commitment letter”. If this an accountability issue, you would think that an appropriate response would be full disclosure. But maybe what we get is the Jack Nicholson line “You can’t handle the truth” which is of course just as staggeringly arrogant as it sounds.

Click the image for larger version.

OUR VIEW
Santa Fe New Mexican Editorial, Friday, January 26, 2007

Jeff, Pete, push back that Doomsday Clock

For Northern New Mexicans, whose cheek-by jowl existence with the nuclear-bomb business has an economic upside as well as a moral and environmental downside, there was irony in recent news:

* The Doomsday Clock, a grimly gimmicky, if well meant, artifact of the Nuclear Age, was set forward two minutes by the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago.

The clock was thought up in 1947, and was originally set for seven minutes to midnight — midnight being when our planet is engulfed in nuclear holocaust. Later, the clock came to reflect other ways humanity might destroy itself, including the many forms of environmental suicide.

The minute hand has gone back and forth 18 times, according to the scientists’ views of the prospects for atomic attacks by one nation or another.

This month, the organization declared that it’s five minutes to midnight — the most perilous period since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan.

Citing concerns over a “second nuclear age” involving lunatic regimes in Iran and North Korea, and poorly secured nuclear materials in Russia, not to mention the threat of terrorism and too-little, too-late responses to climate change, the scientists warn that our little globe is in deep doo-doo.

And while nuclear-weapons advocates can point to the other perils, their handiwork remains at the top of the list.

* Yet here’s the Bush administration carefully hyping the need for a new bomb: a Reliable Replacement Warhead so we won’t have so many of those old ones around as backup blasters in case the first ones we fire are duds.

America isn’t hearing a whole lot about this latest round of busy-work for our national labs, says The New York Times — but it’s making our European allies nervous, and as a result it’s not helping our arguments against nuclear-weapons development by Iraq and North Korea.

As the Times tells it, the latest multibillion-dollar project is being advanced in the wake of Republican rejection of then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “bunker buster” bomb.

So, went the pitch for relia-bomb, we’ve got all these “pits” — the plutonium triggers being put together at Los Alamos National Laboratory — lying around getting old. That’s not a big deal, said a group of scientific advisers late last year; those pits are good for another 50 years.

Wella-wella, what about all the other stuff that goes into those thousands of weapons of annihilation we’ve been stockpiling since the days of the Red Menace?

Betcha they’re in danger of dilapidation. We’ve just gotta have a whole new generation of nuclear sabers to rattle at real or imagined enemies ...

Meanwhile, meaningful talks about arms reduction go off the global table.

This is the situation inherited by Jeff Bingaman, once again chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee — the one that oversees our national laboratories.

His fellow New Mexicans should urge Bingaman to begin wringing more sense out of LANL’s mission. The brainpower up on “the Hill” is enormous — but too much of it is misguided. Those scientists and engineers should be playing a lead role in reducing our nation’s — and, eventually, the world’s — dependence on fossil fuels.

Bingaman, and fellow New Mexican Pete Domenici, the energy committee’s ranking Republican, are in excellent position to launch a Manhattan Project for alternative energy.

Science for non-bellicosity might be a foreign concept to some of LANL’s vested interests — but when our nation already is capable of wiping out life as we know it, its military mission should yield to its potential for civilian betterment.

Let our state’s senators take a lead in pushing back the big hand on the Doomsday Clock.

-----

P.S. (by Pat): Harper's Index reports that the US Government spent $7.8B (adjusted for inflation) in 1979 on energy research and development, but only $1.5B in 2006--a factor of five less. Had we been spending at that earlier rate, we would have spent by now about 1/3rd the amount we've poured into the rathole of Iraq. Bottom line: Time for a new mission for LANL ... and regime change for the country.

Will there be questions about drugs and lies (-about "other security lapses")? Does Dingell read this blog?
Stay tuned.
--Pat, the Dog

------


ABQ Journal, Santa Fe Edition
Friday, January 26, 2007

LANL Director to Testify In D.C.

By John Arnold
Journal Staff Writer

Los Alamos National Laboratory director Michael Anastasio is among the witnesses who will testify next week before a congressional subcommittee investigating security problems at LANL.

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has scheduled a hearing for 10 a.m. Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

A committee spokesman said Thursday that the witness list has not been finalized, but LANL spokesman Kevin Roark confirmed that Anastasio has been asked to testify.

"We're looking forward to cooperating fully, and (Anastasio) is eager to explain what we've done to manage cyber security risks since October," Roark said.

The congressional scrutiny comes after classified materials— including electronic documents stored on a computer flash drive— were found in the home of a LANL subcontractor during a drug investigation in October.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General subsequently determined that important security controls weren't working properly when former archivist Jessica Quintana removed the materials from the lab.

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., said earlier this month that the breach "raises great concern over other possible security lapses."

U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., whose district includes Los Alamos, does not sit on the Energy and Commerce Committee. But Udall spokeswoman Marissa Padilla said Thursday that he plans to attend the hearing and will likely have an opportunity to question witnesses.

"There have been many problems with security at LANL over the past years, and it's something that Congress should examine," Padilla said. "(Udall) would just like to get some answers and work toward a solution to the problems that they've had."

Authorities have remained tight-lipped about the nature of the classified documents found in Quintana's home, though LANL officials have said that most— but not all— were classified at low levels and were 20 to 30 years old.

Quintana, who has not been charged with a crime, claimed she took the documents home to catch up on work and did not intend to distribute them to a third party.

Knowingly removing and retaining classified material without authorization is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of a year in prison and up to a $100,000 fine.

Quintana's attorney Stephen Aarons said Thursday his client will not testify at Tuesday's congressional hearing because she's at the center of an ongoing criminal investigation.

However, Quintana could appear in future congressional proceedings once the outcome of the criminal investigation has been determined, according to Aarons.

"There were negotiations about (testifying Tuesday), but because there's an ongoing criminal prosecution, or pre-prosecution situation, they're not going to mess with her Fifth Amendment rights until we figure out what's going to happen with her," Aarons said.

Quintana has met with FBI investigators and federal prosecutors several times, and the investigation is winding down, according to Aarons.

From a Livermore person (verbatim, as received from the Contact link on the upper left side of the blog page):

-----
My Hopes

As a long time lab employee it's my hopes that neither the University of California nor Bechtel gets the contract at LLNL. Having seen how things are being handles at LANL I would think that NNSA and DOE would assure that LLNL is to be managed by an entirely different entity that has proven itself in the aircraft industry by turning out a profitable product through system efficiency and managers that are in fact people and production managers, not dysfunctional physicists deemed capably by virtue of their Phd credential. If NNSA and DOE are truly interested in streamlining LLNL please select someone that has a history of success and that are known to be able to handle the task. It is obvious that the UC and Bechtel are not the correct choice. They are archaic and world class academician's, not effective and efficient entrepreneurs. It is time for a change.
-----

Followed by:

-----
Do you ever reply to people who write you and ask to have stuff posted or is this just a fake address for people to vent to?

Thanks
-----

As you can see, we keep our eyes and ears (and nose) alert to anything that comes our way. If it's just "venting," we let you do that in the privacy of your own dog bed. But we DO NOT reply by e-mail, due to the need to protect privacy in the present overly corporatized environment. Nice try, though. You're not the first.

--Pat

Mikey and his boys recognize that there is a teensy morale problem at LANL these days. This and this should help. It is beginning to appear as if management trusts us every bit as much as we trust them.

Have a nice day.

-Pat, The Dog

A nugget of truth buried deep among the comments on an old post:

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[...] I would guess that around 65% of LANL workers are now living off the various tax rates, overhead charges, LDRD, worker displacement funds, etc. The solution is easy, though. We'll just have to tack on a higher tax rate to all incoming funds. That's been the trend for several years now. It's been LANL management's quick and easy solution. Of course, it also ends up eating the seed corn, but what does management care? Right now, I suspect LANL management is trying desperately to hide the true scope of our poor financial situation.

Too many people want to go for a free ride on the LANL wagon and very few are willing to help pull it by bringing in new funding. I sometimes wonder -- exactly where do many of the people at LANL think the money for their salaries comes from? Do they think the US Government Men-in-Black come by and just dump the cash into LANL's lap. Maybe the NNSA Fairy puts the money under our pillows at night?

With our ultra-high FTE costs, it quickly become an almost hopeless tasks to bring in any new funding. Many TSMs who use to bring in funds are now without funding and are despondent over this situation. In most cases, these are people who don't like being a burden on their fellow staff members. But, with our ultra-high FTE costs, new policy burdens, and lack of meaningful support for the "support" side, these formerly productive TSMs will have only a slight chance of finding any new funding sources. They'll also be the first people to go when the RIF finally hits.

Soon enough, the LANL wagon will slowly grind to a halt. When it does, you can expect many of those who have been riding comfortable in the back of the wagon for a very long time to get mad as hell and demand that something be done about it. Perhaps the only solution at this time is to open the tailgate and begin to lighten the load. The first ones out the tailgate should probably come from the ranks of upper management and their bloated support staffs. Of course, that will never happen. If someone has a better solution, please let us all know about it. I getting mighty embarrassed asking sponsors to fork over $400 K per year to pay for my time. At that rate, just taking a crap on the toilet costs about $50 per flush.

From National Journal's Technology Daily

The leaders the House Energy and Commerce Committee and two of its subcommittees are asking the Government Accountability Office for an investigation into the cyber-security programs at the Energy Department.

The letter from full committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., ranking Republican Joe Barton of Texas and three subcommittee leaders notes that cyber-security weakness at Energy could allow "individuals or groups backed by nation-states" to access classified information.


The department issued a report with new cyber-security rules after a 2005 attack removed detailed personnel information on 1,500 employees of the National Nuclear Security Administration. In an incident last year, hundreds of classified documents from the Los Alamos National Laboratory were found in a worker's home during a drug raid.


The lawmakers note that a year later, "it's unclear whether [the department's] revitalization program is working." They want a GAO report on the security of Energy networks and the success of security improvements.

[This document is located at http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0107/012307tdpm1.htm]

©2007 by National Journal Group Inc. All rights reserved.

Recent posts have collected yet more comments and questions regarding Deputy Director John Mitchell's sudden, bizarre departure from LANL last month. One comment suggested that W. Scott Gibbs was the "high-placed" LANL manager who reported (to NNSA?) that Mitchell had placed classified material on his home computer. The comment also implied that LANS management and NNSA, at a minimum, were fully aware of the security infraction, but were actively attempting to cover it up.

Another comment suggested that if, in fact, these organizations (DOE included?) were participating in a cover-up, wouldn't the FBI be fairly interested in learning about it? If the rumored events did in fact take place, why is it that nobody seems to care? One would expect the FBI to be particularly interested in a high level cover up involving national security matters. What will it take to unearth the truth on this one?

-Pat, The Puzzled Dog

New nuke plans are up in the air
A joint effort by two nuclear labs to design the new warhead has yet to advance.
By Ralph Vartabedian, Times Staff Writer
January 23, 2007

An effort to design the nation's first new nuclear bomb in two decades has run into delays, as top experts question whether a bureaucratic compromise could hamper the new weapon's effectiveness.

The Bush administration was expected to select a winning design from two proposals in late November, but officials put off a decision and began considering whether competing teams at two national laboratories could collaborate in a joint effort.

Since then, senior officials of the labs in New Mexico and California have met but not reached an agreement, according to lab officials and a senior official at the U.S. Strategic Command, the defense agency that operates the nation's strategic forces.



Over the last year, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national labs have developed designs for the new bomb, known as the reliable replacement warhead. As its name implies, the weapon is supposed to be so reliable that it will not require any underground testing.

A winner was to have been chosen by defense and energy officials in the Nuclear Weapons Council, but by November the selection process had grown complicated and conflicted. The Strategic Command official said defense officials had judged both designs as meeting military requirements.

But as Energy Department officials examined the two proposals, they grew increasingly concerned about the political effect of a decision.

Both labs, Los Alamos in New Mexico and Livermore in Northern California, have always had strong backing by their states' delegations in Congress. What's more, the power shift in Congress put Bay Area Democrats in the leadership on nuclear weapons issues in January.

Livermore had submitted a conservative design that the council judged highly attractive. It was based on an 1980s-era warhead that was tested but then removed from further development. But the new warhead is intended for Navy missiles, and Livermore has not worked with the Navy.

The Los Alamos design also had proponents. But if the award went to New Mexico, Livermore would be left with little on its plate. The Energy Department might have difficulty justifying the expense of two major nuclear laboratories.

To solve those political and organizational problems, the Energy Department, through its National Nuclear Security Administration, sought to explore whether the labs could produce a joint design, Strategic Command officials said.

A letter to the directors of Los Alamos and Livermore asked them to explore a collaborative approach.

No formal decision has been made, however.

"It is still in the works," said Sidney Drell, a Stanford University scientist who has long advised the Energy Department on weapons issues. "People haven't converged on anything."

Meanwhile, other outside advisors, including a scientific board known as the JASON group that consists of top academics from across the nation, are worried about a joint design. The group met earlier this month in La Jolla, but decided it did not have enough technical information to endorse a collaborative approach, according to a member of the group.

Scientists are concerned that a design that mixes and matches pieces of different weapons will undermine the confidence of national leaders in the reliability of the weapon.

"I have heard concerns in the technical community that this is risky, but others say it will work," the Strategic Command official said. "It is a mixed opinion."

All,

There as been a request for people who attended D'Agostino's presentation to send a report in to the blog of what was (or was not) said.

-Pat

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Can't wait to hear, since many of us are retired and won't be in attendance at today's meeting, would someone, please give us breif overview of the "talk" (please post) so we can compare it to the Monitor's version.....(this is always intreasting [sic]....the "spin" from the Public Affairs office, The Local Newspaper, and the real thing)
Thanks, -Anon

One of our contributors has left a prediction on the quality of questions that our esteemed LANL staff will be asking Tom D'Agostino after his presentation tomorrow. Here is the prediction, tomorrow we will see how close it was:

-Pat, The Dog

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** What can be done about drivers who get in my way when I leave work?

** How can WE help YOU to help US to help THEM?

** Where's that freebie child-care center you've been promising us?

** Why don't we have more flex-time options?

** Thank you, Mr. D'Agostino.
You're doing a great job!
We appreciate your efforts.
Keep up the great work.
I don't have a question.
I just like to kiss-ass.

** We're all are scared shit-less! Can you protect us from the Boogie-man?

** I have no problem with drug testing. Thanks for starting this program. What other means can we use to monitor our fellow workers? I don't trust any of them.

... and finally...

** I lost my balls, Mr. D'Agostino. Can you help me find them?

By contrast, here are a few questions you won't hear from the audience:

**Why was your boss, Linton Brooks fired?

**Why did John Mitchel really leave LANL after just 6 months? No, really.

**When will the RIFs start?

**How many RIFS will there be? No, really.

**What happened to all of our WFO programs?

**Why has our FTE rate jumped to $400,000 per FTE?

**Why did you pick LANS for for the LANL contract? No, really.

**Tell us again what NNSA does?

I would sure like to be a flea under his collar during the meetings with "senior laboratory officials"

-Pat, The Dog

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D'Agostino talks to Laboratory work force Tuesday

January 22, 2007

An Anonymous reader asks: "Could the LLC become to mean Limited Life Corporation?"

My canine intuition tells me that if the rumors indicating John Mitchell, that late but not lamented former Deputy Director of LANL did indeed get caught en flagrante delicto with classified material on his personal PC, then LANS, LLC stands a better than average chance at quickly becoming the latest former contractor of LANL. Perhaps the forthcoming set of hearings on LANL to be held by Congressmen Dingell and Stupak will shed light on this.

-Pat, The Dog

The answer may well be this one, from Anonymous.
--Pat, the sad-eyed Dog

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Believe it or not, a number of us LANL old-timers are beginning to wonder if perhaps it isn't just time to shut the place down. Too many years of inept management and an inept customer have kind of robbed the place of any good reason to still exist.

I left in the middle of the Nanos bullshit 2 1/2 years ago, after more than 20 years there. Now, after a fresh exposure to the outside world, I've come to recognize that there is *nothing* that is currently being done at LANL that isn't, or can't be done elsewhere. Better. Cheaper. And with a much healthier work environment.

If the outcome of the Stupak and Dingell committees is a recommendation to shut the place down, I'd be behind it. The local economic hardship that will result is sad, but healthier in the long run than keeping that diseased workplace afloat any longer.

-Anon.

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Ongoing P.S.: From the comments on this post so far (1/21/2007), I would have to conclude, either as a casual observer, or as I am, a person stuck in the middle of a flushing maelstrom, that LANL is seriously, seriously ... in trouble ... deep trouble, right here in River City. Never seen this kind of darkness and gloom from the average miserable staff members, even in the middle of Nanos' idiotic Shutdown. Nowhere at LANL (including the chirrupy, overpaid managers) is there a sense of a serious new mission, probably not since 1991, when the Cold War was declared "won" by Bush "One," in the name of Uncle Ron, the Gipper. Now, when the world is faced with human species-threatening global warming, the end of cheap 'n easy oil, and the threat of mass extinctions all over the beleaguered planet, LANL is rudderless and clueless, headed for extinction, thanks to the neocons running everything (into the ground) in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Looks like anyone left at LANL worth his or her salt (NaCl for you few remaining scientists) ought to head to Golden, Colorado, where DOE's one truly relevant lab, the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) is located. Unfortunately, just before Bush "Two" went to visit there last year, they had a big RIF, which was reversed for PR reasons. Life is gettin' jes' a little tough, folks ... everywhere.
--Pat

Los Alamos Monitor, Sunday, January 21, 2007

Waiting for RRW

How new and how reliable will replacement warheads be?

ROGER SNODGRASS Monitor Assistant Editor

An announcement on the nation's new nuclear weapons plans has been anticipated for several weeks now, but another week has passed without news of the Reliable Replacement Warhead.

Only a few weeks remain before the Department of Energy will unveil the administration's budget request for the fiscal year that starts in October 2007.

While not yet a big budget item, the RRW has become the centerpiece and driver of a number of big plans, not only for replacing the current set of warheads, but also for reorganizing the nuclear weapons complex managed by DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration.

"The Reliable Replacement Warhead will provide means to ensure the long-term reliability of the stockpile and enable us to establish a safer and more secure nuclear deterrent," said outgoing NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks in a summary statement. "It will give us the tools we need to build on the president's vision of maintaining the smallest nuclear stockpile that is consistent with national security requirements."

Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories have been engaged in a design competition to help the policy-makers determine if such a warhead can be made that would provide long-term confidence in the nuclear stockpile, but would not entail a return to nuclear testing.

NNSA officials announced on Dec. 1 that they were satisfied with the feasibility of the RRW plan, but they had not yet made a choice between the LANL and LLNL versions. A decision was expected in a few weeks.

In the meantime, Brooks has been dismissed by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman over continuing security breaches at LANL. His interim replacement, Tom D'Agostino, played a prominent role in developing and rationalizing the RRW concept within the administration and before congress throughout the last year.

Regardless of which design is chosen, Congressional approval will be needed to move beyond the blueprints into detailed design and technical feasibility assessments next year, leading toward engineering and development of actual replacement warheads two years later.

Issues

Among the issues surrounding that approval are questions of need and reliability, given that the plutonium pits that trigger the nuclear explosion in the current stock of hydrogen bombs were recently pronounced younger than had been thought by the independent research organization known as JASON.

The group concluded in their "Pit Lifetime" review on Nov. 28, 2006 that the pits should last, not 45 years as had been previously held, but 85-100 years.

Concerning reliability, a report prepared by the Congressional Research Service last month to brief congress on the Reliable Replacement Warhead underlined a number of ambiguities about the terms "reliable and replacement," which the report said no longer seem appropriate.

In presenting the plan to Congress, Brooks found it necessary to emphasize the safety and reliability of the existing stockpile and to de-emphasize the idea of "replacement," when the new weapons are supposed to be "used on existing aeroshells and missiles."

In addressing the issue of newness, Brooks said last year during a visit to Los Alamos that the RRW should not be classified as a new weapon because it is intended as a replacement to do the same job for the same military purpose against the same class of targets.

"It would have the same characteristics," he said. "It is really not about improving military capacity, but increasing reliability to respond to problems."

The idea of whether the "newly designed" future warheads are "new" or "replacements" is highly arguable and the plans to make them have already been judged by some as a breach of international law under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The article calls for each of the parties to the treaty "to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control."

Questions about reliability lead in turn to questions about another sensitive subject, the resumption of nuclear testing.

A recent review of stockpile issues by the Department of Defense Science Board incorporating much of the rationale for RRW simply assumes that weapons should be newly designed every 20-25 years and that underground nuclear tests would go forward "as needed."

Opposition

"I think it is very likely testing will happen. It is going to be very difficult to include weapons with pits with new designs and claim they're more reliable than pits that don't have aging issues," said Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

He said that was especially true if, as the New York Times reported on Jan. 7, NNSA has decided "to seek a hybrid design combining well-tested elements from an older design with new safety and security elements from a more novel approach."

In commenting on NNSA's overall reorganization plan, known as Complex 2030, Makhijani argued that the chances of a resumption of testing for the replacement warhead designs posed "a foreseeable major consequence" much more probable and hazardous than a facility-wide plutonium spill.

"It would be at least one chance in 10 if not a chance in two," he said.

Without testing, the weapon would become "an unreliable non-replacement warhead," he added. "There is no way to tell the outcome, or what the defense department is going to feel about their reliability compared to existing weapons."

Jodie Dart, program director for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability in Washington cited a recent editorial in the New York Times in which two former Republican Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, joined Democrats William Perry and Sam Nunn in calling for nuclear weapons states to end their reliance on nuclear weapons.

"There is now pressure from both sides in opposition to nuclear weapons, Dart said. "We want to turn this into a debate on U.S. nuclear weapons policy. A lot of people don't know we could be starting a new nuclear arms race."

For the 2 or 3 thousand LANL staff who still have not snapped to the fact that management has, once again, abandoned them, I direct their collective (and somewhat) dim attention to the following news item, in an attempt to alert them to that fact that LANL is in serious trouble. Again. Perhaps even, for the last time. Are you all still glad that UC "won the contract", staff?

This time Bechtel has screwed the pooch ( I *really* resent that, BTW) big time. Once Stupak and Dingell sink their teeth into former Bechtel VP Mitchell's blatant disregard for security, and the environment that allowed it to flourish, it might well be curtains for operations on "The Hill". I wish I could have met Mitchell, personally, just so that I could have calibrated my 'arrogant meter'. I mean really, after the Jessica Quintana business: to have the stupidity and, yes, arrogance to allow himself to be caught with classified material on his own personal computer.

Bechtel: nice pick, D'Agostino. I expect you are going to be in the spotlight soon as well. Nice oversight on the whole contract bid process, Bodman. You can probably count on going down too. A big round of congratulations to all involved.

http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2007/01/19/headline_news/news01.txt

-Pat, The Dog

Here's a dream scenario for you: In your wildest dreams, could you ever imagine a death factory being ripped out of the hands of the military-industrial establishment, and turned into a laboratory for the preservation of the living planet? HAH! In your dreams!

--Pat, the incredulous Dog

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Green Company bids to Manage Lawrence Livermore Labs

by Christina Aanestad
Wednesday Jan 17th, 2007 7:05 PM

Livermore Labs GREEN, a consortium of environmental and social justice groups filed a formal complaint with the National Nuclear Security Administration today, alleging the agency wrongfully rejected it’s bid to manage the Livermore National Laboratory. Livermore Labs GREEN claims its bid to manage the nuclear weapons research facility was rejected because of misinformation and its environmentally friendly vision for the labs.

Imagine the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories as a hub for alternative energy and global warming research-a lab that plans to phase out plutonium and nuclear research. That’s what Livermore Labs GREEN LLC is proposing to do in its bid to manage the Lawrence Livermore Labs, one of the nations two nuclear research facilities. Marylia Kelly is executive director of Tri Valley Cares and a founder of Livermore Labs GREEN LLC.

“About 85% of the Livermore Labs budget goes to nuclear research and development. This means nuclear proliferation worldwide. This means nuclear and toxic pollution, here in our communities. We proposed to move all the plutonium and highly enriched uranium out of the labs within 4 years and to transition all of the classified nuclear weapons work out with in 5 years. We would also make Livermore labs a center for the development of alternative non-polluting energy and we’d make it a center for developing new clean- up technologies fort toxic and radio active waste.”

Last year the National Nuclear Security Administration or NNSA announced open bids to manage the Livermore National Labs. So, anti-nuclear proliferation and social justice groups formed a corporation called Livermore Lab’s GREEN, LLC, to bid on the labs’ management. But the NNSA rejected its bid. Kelley believes the bid was rejected because it went against the Department of Energy’s nuclear policy. The NNSA maintains GREEN LLC’s bid was rejected because it did not contain all the necessary paperwork. Julieanne Smith spokesperson for the NNSA says the bids are confidential.

“This is a procurement issue. Which means that ah, there are certain privacy issues certain laws we need to follow. And that isn’t something that we could release. We can’t even talk about how many people have submitted bids and who they are and what was in their bids. That’s inappropriate and not something we would do.”

According to Kelly the two other contenders for the labs management are the UC-Bechtel partnership which manages the Los Alamos Labs and Northrup Grummond [sic] a military defense contractor. Livermore Labs GREEN LLC is challenging the NNSA’s rejection and asking the national nuclear agency to reinstate them as active bidders for the Livermore Labs management. Kelley says the NNSA’s allegations are false.

“The department of energy treated our bid very differently than it treated the bid from UC Bechtel and the bid from Northrup Grummond [sic]. For example, in their rejection document the Department of Energy claimed that there were things missing fro the bid package that simply weren’t missing. All you had to do was look and they were there.”

Livermore Labs GREEN consists of four groups, Tri Valley Cares, the Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, New College of California, and Wind Miller Energy, a green energy company. The management contracts last for 7 years. If denied the right to bid on this year’s contract, Kelley says they may bid again, but, this years bid is to show the viable alternatives to nuclear research and development. Kelly is challenging the winning bidder to follow suit.

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Dear Greenies: The military defense contractor (monster) is Northrop Grumman, not "Northrup Grummond." Maybe DOE/NNSA spotted that typo and nailed you. Finding typos is just about their top speed. Then you messed with their little heads when you talked about "green energy." DOE has energy in it's name, but that's nuclear energy, and even then, it's mainly the energy released by incoming, thereby frying women and children.
--Pat

ABQ Journal, Santa Fe Edition
Friday, January 19, 2007

DOE Budget May Short LANL

By John Arnold
Journal Staff Writer

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, says a looming federal budget freeze could severely affect science programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory and other Department of Energy facilities.

He's urging fellow lawmakers to help protect funding for the DOE's Office of Science.

The Bush administration's 2007 budget proposal requests a $500 million increase from current funding levels for the office. But Congress did not pass a 2007 budget before adjourning last year, and lawmakers are now working to pass a budget resolution that would fund most government agencies this year at 2006 levels.

Bingaman, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, says that flat funding for the Office of Science could result in some lab facilities being closed, increased construction costs for new facilities, layoffs of hundreds of scientist, engineers and support staff and a reduction in university programs across the country.

"The Office of Science funds much of our nation's leading edge (research and development), and it would be a big mistake to allow the proposed budget to be cut," Bingaman said in a news release issued Thursday.

Bingaman and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., are asking fellow lawmakers to sign onto a letter urging energy and water appropriators to keep the proposed Office of Science funding increase intact.

Lawmakers could do this by giving DOE permission to shift existing funds within the department, according to Bingaman spokeswoman Jude McCartin.

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Thanks to Anonymous folks for sending these Web-wide signs of our Blog's impact! Enjoy!
--Pat
P.S. The train wreck in Iraq means lives lost, not just livelihoods. Our hometown wreck is small spilled potatoes in comparison. Still, these wrecks are caused by the same set of saboteurs.

Fake nuke reported stolen
Los Alamos Monitor
ROGER SNODGRASS Monitor Assistant Editor

Ed Grothus, a Los Alamos peace activist, said a mock nuclear weapon weighing 500 pounds was stolen from his salvage store on Monday.
The owner of the Black Hole said he purchased a number of "practice bombs" in Oklahoma about three years ago. He had joined several of them together in a hub to create a sunflower.

The missing fake weapon was lying near the others to give an idea of how the sunflower was constructed.
Grothus said it weighed about 500 pounds. He said he generally sold the "bombs" for about $300 each.

He last saw the replica when he started work on Monday, the Martin Luther King holiday.
"I didn't miss it until I went home at night at 5:30 p.m.," he said.

He recalled that most of the visitors on Monday were from foreign countries, like Canada and England.
"But it would have had to have been a local person," he concluded.

The Black Hole is one of Los Alamos County's most eccentric and popular tourist destinations and is visited by people from all over the country and the world because of its unique collection of vintage high-tech components and salvage from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Grothus was honored last month at the "World Uranium Summit and Nuclear Free Future Awards" in Window Rock, Ariz. He was given an international "lifetime achievement" award, "for his unique brand of gadfly peace activism in the community of Los Alamos, the birthplace of the bomb."

New Warhead Could Siphon Funds From Sub Builders
Two Labs Compete To Design New Tips For Trident Missile

By Seth Owen, Day Staff Writer

Published on 1/13/2007 in Region » Region News

A long-delayed decision on a replacement warhead for the missiles carried on Trident submarines may mean more work for nuclear warhead designers — but possibly at the expense of funding for submarines.
“What it means is less money for submarines. The cost is billions, at least enough for another Virginia,” said New York-based military analyst James Dunnigan, author of “How to Make War” and other books on military affairs.

The latest Virginia-class attack submarine, the Hawaii, was a $2.5 billion project.

The decision on the Reliable Replacement Warhead, expected next week, was due by the end of last year, but it's been a “forever moving target,” spokeswoman Julie Ann Smith of the National Nuclear Security Administration said in a telephone interview.

The NNSA, an agency of the federal Department of Energy, is responsible for choosing between designs submitted by two competing laboratories: Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The nation's nuclear warhead programs have been under the civilian control since the Atomic Energy Commission was created in 1946. The programs later came under the Department of Energy when that cabinet-level agency was created in 1977.

...

Both of the nation's facilities that can design nuclear weapons are taking part in the RRW competition.

The Los Alamos design is expected to be a brand new design that uses existing components that have been tested, Kimball said. This approach is more radical because it introduces uncertainty about whether the warhead will work as expected when put together in a way that's never been tested, he said

Kimball said the Livermore labs design is expected to be a “more robust” version of an existing design in order to achieve the certainty needed.

“More robust in this context means more fuel for the bomb,” he said.

...

Published reports suggest that the final decision may end up supporting some hybrid program that combines the ideas of the two labs, a notion termed “peculiar” by Levi.

A hybrid program seems designed to meet bureaucratic needs by spreading the work around to everyone involved, instead of selecting the best design, Levi said. It could backfire, Levi warns, and end up not really motivating anyone because there would be no consequence to losing the competition.

The argument that the work is needed to preserve jobs at the labs and the ability to design warheads is something of a “straw man,” Dunnigan said, especially if it comes at the cost of other programs in the competition for other defense dollars.

If the country needed to recreate the ability to do the design work after a long layoff, it could be done, analysts said.

[For more of this in-depth article, click on underlined title of this post.]

Dan Glenn: Temporarily moved to Los Alamos
By Jim McBride, Amarillo Globe News
jim.mcbride@amarillo.com

Pantex Site Office Manager Dan Glenn will temporarily take the helm as manager of the National Nuclear Security Administration's Los Alamos Site Office while NNSA officials conduct a nationwide search for a new manager there.
Ed Wilmot, the current manager of the Los Alamos Site Office, is leaving the site to work with George Allen, director of NNSA's Office of Transformation, an agency that will oversee transformation and modernization of the nation's nuclear weapons complex by 2030, Thomas P. D'Agostino, NNSA's deputy administrator for Defense Programs, said in a memo to NNSA personnel.

Wilmot will coordinate activities associated with developing facilities' infrastructure throughout the weapons complex and work to establish consistent business practices across the nation's weapons production plants and laboratories, the memo said.

Wilmot has managed the Los Alamos office, which oversees Los Alamos National Laboratory, since 2004.

He previously was the site office manager at Savannah River in South Carolina and worked at Energy Department headquarters as a deputy in the Office of the Assistant Deputy Administrator for Military Application and Stockpile Operations.

D'Agostino named Glenn to serve as the acting manager for Los Alamos until the agency finds a permanent replacement. Glenn previously served as senior scientific and technical adviser at Los Alamos.

"He will select a team of senior managers to temporarily augment the current LASO management team," D'Agostino's memo said.

D'Agostino also has tapped Steve Erhart, Pantex's senior scientific and technical adviser, to serve as acting Pantex Site Office manager until Glenn's return.

Brenda Finley, a Pantex spokeswoman, said Glenn was out of the office Monday for the federal holiday, but assured his staff he will return to Pantex when the temporary assignment is completed.

D'Agostino, who plans to visit Los Alamos later this month, recently was tapped to take over as NNSA administrator after Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman sought NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks' resignation in the wake of a recent "security breach" at Los Alamos and other management issues.

Brooks was reprimanded in June for failing to report to Bodman the theft of computer files at an NNSA facility in Albuquerque, N.M., including Social Security numbers and other personal data for 1,500 employees.

Personal data for about 180 Pantex workers' personal information also was stolen when a computer hacker broke into an unclassified computer network.

In October, classified weapons documents from Los Alamos National Laboratory were uncovered during a raid at the home of a lab employee.

Now we hear again a clarion call from the New York Times: It's time for Department of Energy laboratories, such as Los Alamos and Livermore, to be steered in the direction of solving more serious problems facing the human species than making more nukes (pits). Read on, and contact your Congressmen, Congresswomen, and Senators. Even scientists in ivory towers are citizens of this once- and possibly once-again great nation.

--Pat, the Dog

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Editorial, January 16, 2007
Energy Time

Al Hubbard, the economic adviser who’s coordinating the administration’s energy strategy, recently promised that President Bush would produce “headlines above the fold that will knock your socks off in terms of our commitment to energy independence.” Every president since Richard Nixon has talked this way, while every year the country slides further into dependency. Mr. Bush’s overpromising has included a forecast that we would all be buying hydrogen-fueled cars in 20 years and his pledge a year ago to rid the country of its addiction to oil.

Still, we must hope that Mr. Bush is serious this time, because we simply cannot continue to hold our national security and the health of the planet hostage to our appetite for fossil fuels.

America’s closest allies, and increasingly its governors, know this. Last week, the European Union — shaken by Russia’s threatened shutdown of oil passing through Belarus — announced a menu of initiatives aimed at reducing Europe’s dependence on unreliable suppliers while cutting greenhouse gas emissions with cleaner fuels and new technologies.

Here at home, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered his regulators in California to require fuel oil companies and refiners to start reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases. The order is expected to help jump-start the production of biofuels and, over time, hydrogen for fuel cell cars. It follows an earlier California directive requiring more fuel-efficient vehicles, and represents an important element in the state’s broad plan to cut global-warming emissions from all sources by 25 percent by 2020.

For its part, Congress is churning out energy bills. But this is a recipe for paralysis unless it observes a few basic guideposts.

¶The last thing America needs is another multi-year debate leading to yet another giant bill that offers something for everyone without really changing the way this country produces and uses energy. Senators Harry Reid and Jeff Bingaman have produced the outlines of a bill that could become the template for more specific action. It sets two basic goals: reducing the country’s dependency on oil and reducing the risks of global warming. And it focuses on a handful of remedies, including more efficient automobiles, the rapid development of alternative fuels and cleaner ways of producing power.

¶Partisanship and posturing must be resisted. Right now, House Democrats are fixated on eliminating unnecessary tax breaks and closing loopholes that favor the oil and gas industry. Fair enough, but that’s not an energy policy. The House has been notoriously unenlightened on energy issues, and Nancy Pelosi, the speaker, has some heavy educating to do to make her colleagues full partners in this essential national enterprise.

¶Doing things right will take serious money. In recent days, for instance, Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana and Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Jim Bunning of Kentucky — any politician, that is, with coal to sell — have jumped aboard the coal-to-gasoline bandwagon as the answer to dependence on foreign oil.

The world has lots of coal, which can indeed be converted to gasoline. But the process releases enormous amounts of carbon, far more than refining oil into gasoline does. Unless we are willing to invest in technologies that can sequester carbon emissions and keep them out of the atmosphere, turning to coal could be a disaster for global warming.

So far, nobody — not the coal industry, Congress or the White House — has displayed much interest in making these investments, just as nobody except for a few states like New York and some plucky private investors has shown much interest in the investments necessary to produce biofuels on a commercial scale. Without them, we’re just talking a good game, which is all Mr. Bush did last year.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Last week, however, the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, in an extraordinary session, heard testimony that the nation is in grave danger of a permanent oil crisis. Some of these senators affected to be shocked and surprised. What planet have they been living on? What is the nation getting for the hundreds of million of dollars paid to their staffers? Outgoing Republican chair, Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), said to the witnesses that “what you told us today is absolutely startling with reference to the future.” Is it too early for a dumbfuck of the year award?

--Jim Kunstler, author of "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century"

[Is it any wonder that the "Department of Energy" can't seem to figure out a credible "mission" for Los Alamos National Laboratory? For more on the morons of DC and their ignorance of "peak oil," and their slavish devotion to "Big Oil," click on the title of this post; it will lead you to
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/.]

January 15, 2007 - Editorial - New York Times

Busywork for Nuclear Scientists

The Bush administration is eager to start work on a new nuclear warhead with all sorts of admirable qualities: sturdy, reliable and secure from terrorists. To sweeten the deal, officials say that if they can replace the current arsenal with Reliable Replacement Warheads (what could sound more comforting?), they probably won’t have to keep so many extra warheads to hedge against technical failure. If you’re still not sold, the warhead comes with something of a guarantee that scientists can build the new bombs without ever testing them.

Let the buyer beware. While the program has gotten very little attention here, it is a public-relations disaster in the making overseas. Suspicions that the United States is actually trying to build up its nuclear capabilities are undercutting Washington’s arguments for restraining the nuclear appetites of Iran and North Korea.

Then there’s the tens of billions it is likely to cost. And the most important question: Nearly two decades after the country stopped building nuclear weapons, does it really need a new one? The answer, emphatically, is no. This is a make-work program championed by the weapons laboratories and belatedly by the Pentagon, which hasn’t been able to get Congress to pay for its other nuclear fantasies.

The Rumsfeld team’s first choice was for a nuclear “bunker buster” to go after deeply buried targets. The Pentagon got concerned about “aging” warheads only after it was clear that even the Republican-led Congress, or at least one intrepid House subcommittee chairman, considered the bunker buster too Strangelovian to finance.

One crucial argument for the new program took a major hit in November when the Jason -- a prestigious panel of scientists that advises the government on weapons -- reported that most of the plutonium triggers in the current arsenal can be expected to last for 100 years. Since the oldest weapons are less than 50 years old, supporters of the new warhead have fallen back on warnings that other bomb components are also aging, and that the nuclear labs need the work to attract and train the best scientists. But the labs are already spending billions on studying and preserving the current arsenal.

Then there’s that guarantee that there will be no need for testing -- one of the few arms-control taboos President Bush hasn’t broken yet. While experts debate whether the labs can really build a weapon without testing it, the more important question is whether any president would stake America’s security on an untested arsenal.

America would be much safer if the president focused on reducing the number of old nuclear weapons still deployed by the United States and the other nuclear powers. The new Congress should stop this program before any more dollars are wasted, or more damage is done to America’s credibility.

Key legislators threaten funds for nuclear weapons overhaul

Bush administration abandoning effort to consolidate, they say

- James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, January 14, 2007

At a critical moment when the government is poised to choose a design for the next generation of nuclear weapons, two influential members of Congress have threatened to eliminate funding for the new warheads due to concerns over the Bush administration's plans for refurbishing the weapons production complex.

In a previously undisclosed letter written to the energy secretary on Nov. 16, Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, who was then chairman of the House subcommittee that controls nuclear weapons spending, criticized the department's planning for the new weapons manufacturing facilities. He insisted he would fight to halt all spending for the new warheads if the department did not embrace what he said would be a more efficient, cheaper approach through consolidation of the production operations.

The letter was significant not only for its angry tone but also because Hobson was an architect and perhaps the single most important congressional supporter of the new weapons plan, known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, or RRW.

Now that the Democrats control Congress, Hobson has relinquished his chairmanship of the energy and water appropriations subcommittee. But his successor, Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., said he holds similar views and will also consider eliminating the funding.

Their opposition puts the troubled program in jeopardy just weeks before a secretive government body, the Nuclear Weapons Council, is scheduled to select a blueprint from two competing warhead designs submitted last year by the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories. No development of the designs can take place without renewed congressional appropriations on a year-to-year basis.

Visclosky's spokesman, Justin Kitsch, said Visclosky shares Hobson's views on the need to consolidate the weapons production complex to make it more modern and efficient. Visclosky is disappointed, too, in the Energy Department's approach, Kitsch said, and plans to hold oversight hearings to question department officials and possibly force change.

"It is fair to say that every option is on the table regarding funding" of the Reliable Replacement Warhead program if the department does not change course, Kitsch said.

Julianne Smith, a spokeswoman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the arm of the Energy Department that manages the weapons complex, said the secretary, Samuel Bodman, "welcomed comments from Chairman Hobson as well as others." She added that it is still possible a consolidated production facility might be considered.

The multibillion-dollar program to design and manufacture the new weapons has been dogged by questions and criticisms from its inception two years ago.

Supporters say that the old weapons, most produced more than 20 years ago, are aging and that a new generation of nuclear warheads would enhance U.S. security and allow the president to maintain a smaller, safer, more reliable stockpile.

Opponents have countered that the current U.S. stockpile of more than 5,000 warheads can, with proper maintenance, continue to serve as a deterrent for decades -- perhaps more than 50 years, according to experts. Bush administration officials have confirmed that the warhead maintenance program, called stockpile stewardship, is working superbly and that there are no uncertainties about weapons reliability.

Opponents also say the program would not only be prohibitively expensive -- probably hundreds of billions of dollars -- but also would send the wrong signal at a time when the United States is struggling to force Iran and North Korea to abandon nuclear programs.

Supporters of the program suffered a blow last year when a government study concluded that the radioactive plutonium that provides much of the devastating explosive force in thermonuclear weapons is effective for 100 years or more, far longer than earlier estimates of 45 to 60 years. The finding undermined earlier arguments that the government needed to replace the old weapons partly because of uncertainty over the useful life of the unstable metal.

A lengthy analysis of the program last month by the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan research body, also raised serious questions: whether the government could meet its stated production schedules, whether there would be any significant cost savings, and whether the new weapons would be as reliable as promised absent underground testing, which has been forbidden by Congress.

Hobson pushed through the legislation supporting the plan, partly with an argument that it would result in a more modern, efficient and smaller complex. Also, the plan is intended to shrink the nuclear stockpile, allowing the United States to demonstrate that it is reducing its weapons arsenal.

Hobson has long suggested that a key part of his plan would consolidate the aging Cold War-era facilities, now spread across the country from South Carolina to New Mexico, into a single large plant, the Consolidated Nuclear Production Complex, or CNPC.

But when the National Nuclear Security Administration released its package of proposals for the new weapons production complex last year, it rejected the consolidated plant and opted instead to maintain facilities in several states.

The plan (called Complex 2030 because it would be completed around the year 2030) infuriated Hobson and Visclosky because, they said, it would not achieve the cost savings or the efficiencies they were seeking.

"Let me make my position clear," Hobson wrote in the letter to Energy Secretary Bodman. "If the department is not willing to conduct a thorough and objective analysis of all reform alternatives including the CNPC, and instead is determined to conduct an obviously prejudicial process aimed at ensuring the department's preferred outcome, then I will not support funding for the Complex 2030 efforts, including the Reliable Replacement Warhead program."

Hobson added, "RRW is a deal with Congress, but the deal requires a serious effort by the department to modernize, consolidate and downsize the weapons complex. Absent that effort, there is no deal."

Visclosky, through his spokesman, also expressed disapproval.

"By simply dismissing a Consolidated Nuclear Production Facility without in-depth analysis or consultation with Congress ... the Department of Energy is sending the message that they intend to approach the issue of modernizing the nuclear weapons complex as an opportunity to rebuild the Cold War complex rather than make the tough calls that will ensure a complex that makes sense 50 years from today," he said.

President Bush came into office in 2001 with an ambitious plan for resuscitating a nuclear weapons complex that had stopped designing or producing new warheads with the end of the Cold War. But proposals for new low-yield warheads and for a specially designed weapon to destroy deeply buried targets -- so-called bunker busters -- were rejected by Congress.

Hobson shaped an alternative, the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, as a way, he told The Chronicle, to allow some new weapons development while also pushing the Bush administration to reduce the U.S. reliance on nuclear forces and cut costs.

His legislation set strict conditions: The new weapons had to be developed without underground testing, which has been banned since 1992, and the warheads had to only replace old ones without being designed for new military missions.

The program has received less than $30 million of funding a year, mostly to start developing designs for the first new warhead, which would be placed on the Navy's submarine-based Trident missiles. Los Alamos and Livermore submitted competing proposals last year.

Several people with knowledge of the process said the Nuclear Weapons Council is likely to combine elements from both designs but designate one lead laboratory with final responsibility for the weapon.

Hobson, however, has expressed growing concern over the Bush administration's claims about the need for new weapons and whether it would adhere to the conditions that there be no testing and no new missions. After the release of the findings that plutonium could last for a century or more, Hobson said the government's credibility had suffered.

"They've been running with RRW like you wouldn't believe," Hobson said, referring to the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. "They see this as a big pot of money to get into. This shows we can take a breather for a while."

Visclosky, through his spokesman, also said he is concerned about government claims and insisted he will not permit the National Nuclear Security Administration to transform the program into an opportunity for developing new weapons.

"RRW stands for Reliable Replacement Warhead, not Reliable New Warhead," Visclosky said.

E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com.

Page A - 4
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/01/14/MNGRPNID5U1.DTL

©2007 San Francisco Chronicle

Holian has an open letter on random drug tests to Director Anastasio further down the page, and I would have left it at that. However, I've gotten so many e-mails asking that today's SF NewMex opinion piece be posted, that I'm going to relent, just this once. His earliest posting on drug testing clearly expressed outrage at such a thing being done at Los Alamos, at least randomly over the entire Lab population. This opinion piece here, however, is more carefully reasoned, much in the spirit of his Physics Today article that was published over two years ago, which showed that the excuses that were put forth for shutting down the entire Lab for seven months were specious. Here, he's saying that a policy that pits management against workers will cause an already demoralized staff to become even less productive. That's clearly not what LANS should want, since a burden of more work is being imposed with fewer resources, thanks to the costs of corporatization. I'm still skeptical that reason will prevail, but you never can tell until you give it the old obedience-school try.

--Pat, the Dog

----------

Santa Fe New Mexican 01/14/2007, Page F03

MY VIEW
 
Random lab drug testing a bad idea
By Brad Lee Holian

Los Alamos National Laboratory’s proposed drug policy sets up an adversarial relationship between management and lab workers, rather than one of cooperative team work.
 
With regard to drug abuse, the approach of the new management team, LANS LLC, in these difficult times should follow LANL Director Michael Anastasio’s stated approach to safety and security, namely, fostering a spirit of teamwork, cooperation, and buy-in to the general program by employees.
 
Former LANL Director G. Peter Nanos said golden words about building mutual confidence between management and workers in both safety and security, but in practice, his short term as director was marked by heavy handed intimidation and fear, from which the lab has not fully recovered after two and a half years. Nanos’ harsh, military approach was encouraged by National Nuclear Security Administration Chief Linton Brooks. Now that Ambassador Brooks has been relieved from command of NNSA by Department of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, there is a new window of opportunity to establish a better footing, possibly even trust, in the relationship between management and workers at Los Alamos.
 
I encourage Dr. Anastasio to consider taking a major step in that direction by eliminating random drug testing from the proposed new drug policy.
 
It is clear that Congress wants the lab to deal with ongoing safety and security lapses, though they don’t seem to realize, nor does the general public, that “zero occurrences” of accidents or security violations is impossible to achieve, even under the very best of safety and security programs.
 
Keeping the nation’s defense secrets safe from foreign espionage and the workplace as free from accidents is humanly possible, both require attention to the frailties inherent in human behavior, most importantly in the area of addictive behavior. The addictions that are most problematic are easy to identify, in rough order of occurrence: Sex, alcohol, gambling, prescription drugs (anti-depressants and painkillers), cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin. (I’ve left out tobacco and caf­feine, but they really don’t pose serious problems in workplace safety or national security.) In addition to long-term health problems, each of these addictions can have deleterious effects on a worker’s family life, put fellow workers at risk of increased accidents, and for Q-cleared workers in particular, make workers prone to blackmail. Moreover, the support of addictive habits can cause grave financial difficulties. Blackmail and financial reward are two of the most effective tools of foreign espionage in prying loose or buying secrets.
 
Clearly, random drug tests cannot identify many of these more serious addictive problems. In the classified arena, there are extensive periodic background checks before a Q-clearance is granted. In addition, the principal tool that conscientious managers have is their eyes and ears, namely, keeping good lines of communication with the workers directly under them.
 
An incident of inebriation on the job obviously has to trigger the threshold of probable cause for a drug test; however, randomly testing the general lab populace, particularly those who do not handle dangerous materials or operate dangerous equipment, is completely uncalled for.
 
But the main difficulty with random drug tests is the adversarial atmosphere they bring down on the lab, and the side effects of demoralization, humiliation, and reduced productivity, not to mention the sheer cost of administering them. Moreover, if a worker is immediately put onto a Performance Action Track, based on a positive outcome of a drug test, and the “positive” is actually an error, there is almost no way to undo the disgrace and disruption to the worker’s career.
 
Rather than attaching permanent blame to addictive behavior, management ought to realize that they can help a worker out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves, and still reap years of pro­ductivity for the Lab and the nation.
 
I encourage Dr. Anastasio to choose teamwork over an “us versus them: Managers against workers” atmosphere for Los Alamos and abandon the random drug tests.
 
--
Brad Lee Holian has been a theoretical physicist at LANL for 34 years and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
 
Copyright © 2007 Santa Fe New Mexican 01/14/2007

I got this from an Anonymous Source, thoughtful and worth further thought, and comment. Think about this, LANL and LLNL folks: The Cold War has been over for 16 years, and it's time to move onto the 21st Century. A new model for the Labs is in order.

...Hello? Is anyone in Congress listening? Udall's staff: Are you there? Bingaman's?

--Pat

-----

If the switch over to LANS as the "new manager" for LANL was meant to bring in a team of new managers directed to improve the situation, I question where are those new managers? Did LANL really get new management or did the "old-boy club" just move their offices, start to wear khakis and nice shirts, and have their salaries cranked up?

When the bids were being put together for the new contract a select few LANL people worked with UC to design the LANS bid. Who were these people? Where do they sit now? RUMINT has it that Alan Bishop, ex Theoretical Division Director, and now Associate Director; Terry Wallace, ex Associate Director and now Principal Associate Director, were part of this select group, who else was in this group, and why? Should anyone of us be concerned that the "new deal plan" that was worked out, included promoting those that wrote the plan? Hmmm? I would like to learn more, actual facts, of who exactly wrote up the plan that was eventually awarded as the LANS contract? How did these "authors" of the plan become selected to do this? Are their ties back to UC, for example President Dynes, and the current lab management -- that is friends and cronies that would indicate nepotism (a common theme...).

However the current LANS management came to be, they have a tough job ahead of them. Some obvious questions they don't seem to be addressing include:

(1) "What is your business model, LANS?". The word on the street back in Washington DC for a long time now has been that there will be a significant drop in budgets for nuclear weapons physics research. You can see that coming! What other new scientific and engineering areas is LANS moving into to make up for this expected deficit?

(2) Who at LANL is in charge of the business model? Using your language, "Who owns this?" In the current funding-lord environment it seems like business as usual -- that is every person, team, group, division, directorate out for themselves, just worry about coverage. Zero coordination, zero corporate teamwork. The AD's fight between themselves, and that behavior is imitated all the way down the chain.

(3) What exactly do you mean you say "We want to do science?" For whom? What customers? Who, with funding, cares about what we are doing? Why should a funding agency pay $400K/yr/TSM compared to half of that for someone at a university or in industry? There is PLENTY of exciting science for the talent at LANL to reorient themselves at (climate change, energy sources, energy efficency, ...). If a LDRD comes across your desk, as an Associate Director, tell us how you really evaluate the proposal? Is it based on coverage, that is how many people in your line organization will be funded by this? By the way..., "Grand Challenges Should Not Be Determined by LANL." Geez!

(4) Are you willing and able to do the toughest part of being a manager? That is, often times you will have to let some of your employees go. This could be due to a number of reasons {lack of performance, etc}. Or, ..., is it easier to just "promote the problem" away from your wave function?

(5) Finally, for now, are you willing to LISTEN? Why is it now that people around LANL dont speak up? Doesn't that seem weird to you? Are you getting any feedback from below? The lab is at its worst right now and going downhill each day. Is your plan, canonical lab manager, to just lay low, collect your big paychecks until you retire at any moment you want? Sure, you must know that things are bad now, you've been here a long time. So, if you do your job as a manager, you will improve things! What does your job description, your performance objectives state, other than being safe and secure? Are there things like financial resposiblity, growth of new areas, attraction of top scientists and staff? Where are the managers at LANL who are supposed to be doing that?

If you want to be "corporate", then perhaps you demonstrate that you are of the caliber of corporate managers. Those managers have a bottom line, if they do not peform they are out the door (of course, we all have the perception of the Ken Lay's of the world in our small world LANL view). The managers of successful corporations have to make tough decisions, grow the company, keep the employees happy, move into new areas and markets to meet the changing customer demand. Are you doing that? If it is each scientists job to get their own funding, as it now seems, then why should we pay your institution more than 3 times our salary? What value added is there in that business model?

Friday June 1, 2007:
The end of the first year of the LANL Contract
(held by LANS, LLC = Bechtel with UC duct-taped to the passenger seat)

Comments abound on the rocky ride: Read on!

This was left outside the doggie door this morning, with a request that it be posted. I think it asks a few doggone good questions.

-Pat
***************************************************

Dare we dream that the LANS contract might be terminated for cause? I don't know anybody who thinks conditions at LANL have improved since LANS took over. Quite the opposite. Unbelievably, the situation at LANL is much worse now than when UC was in charge. Overhead rates are up, thanks to a huge increase in over-paid managers, and the new $79 million per year award fee. Productivity is down, thanks to a huge increase in bureaucratic red tape. Security incidents abound. Morale is in the dumper. A $175 million budget shortfall is looming. WFO (Work For Others) money, once a respectable 23% of the total LANL budget has all but evaporated. Hundreds of contractors have been laid off. Talented staff are leaving.

But the situation might be different now that the Democrats are back in power. From: http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2006/12/01/oversight/

Stuff just keeps on roaring into Grand Central Blog! Stuff just keeps on happening, as Don Rumsfeld was so fond of saying.

--Pat, the patient Dog


-----


NNSA Cybersecurity audit teams found so many problems they gave up and went home. VTRs are "Vault-Type-Rooms" with restricted access. Typically they house secure computers and servers for classified computing. Evidently there was an argument about the evaluation criteria - NNSA had one checklist, LANS had another. Auditors are like that.
--Anonymous

This week the Laboratory hosted audit teams from DOE/NNSA to review vault/VTR, cybersecurity and classified computing operations. During these audits it became clear that there were some problems, including differences in expectations between the auditors and the Laboratory. As a result, the audit teams have ceased their activities while DOE and the Laboratory discuss the expected standards against which these operations should be audited. Currently, the audit is expected to resume the week of Jan. 22.

In the interim, Director Mike Anastasio has asked us to review our vault/VTR and classified computing operations, and ensure that our operations meet current Laboratory guidance. I discussed these actions in a meeting Wednesday with vault custodians, ISSOs, OCSRs and others, and through this message I am sharing my directions and expectations with all of you.

TR will undertake several actions to establish clearly and completely our state of preparedness for classified computing, cybersecurity and vault/VTR operations as measured against the current Laboratory guidance. My goal is to ensure that we can reasonably accomplish our programmatic work and meet the Director's expectations and DOE/Laboratory requirements.
...
Finally, in a November 8 memo, Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Sell established his expectations for cybersecurity throughout the DOE complex. That memo and associated DOE Order 205.1A are currently a topic of discussion between LANS and DOE/NNSA. It is possible that additional requirements will come from those discussions, and I will share information with you as soon as it is available.

Thank you very much for your continued support. I understand the challenge this effort presents to our conduct of programmatic activity -- but it is vital that we provide DOE/NNSA full assurance that our classified computing and vault/VTR activities are being conducted with the highest degree of attention to security. The nation deserves no less from us.

-Doug Beeson

[Thanks to the anonymous leaker of this memo. We really thank people like you; we need all the intel we can get, since the 'official' sources are so unreliable.
--Pat.]

Woof!

******************************

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: MATT LETOURNEAU
JANUARY 11, 2007
(202) 224-7098

DOMENICI STATEMENT ON REASSIGNMENT OF
LASO MANAGER ED WILMOT

WASHINGTON ? U.S. Senator Pete Domenici today issued the
following statement regarding news that the Ed Wilmot, Manager of the Los
Alamos Site Office (LASO), will be reassigned to a new position within the
Site Office.

"I'd like to thank Ed Wilmot for his service as the Manager of
the Los Alamos Site Office and wish him luck as he takes on the task of
implementing Complex 2030.

"For some time, I have been dissatisfied with NNSA. My
dissatisfaction has included the lack of progress on security management at
Los Alamos National Laboratory. Therefore, I welcome a new appointment to
manage LASO. Along with a new NNSA director, I hope we can turn the corner
and make real progress on making our national labs, including Los Alamos,
the safest and most productive installations in the country.

"I would like to invite the new appointees to my office to discuss LANL
operations, oversight, community relations and the need to make LASO
cleanup a higher priority. Rather than fighting over highway bypasses, I
would encourage them to work with the community to release excess property
and facilitate economic growth. I would also be interested to know their
thoughts on how they expect to change the status quo and support the LANL
mission, while providing proper oversight."

EOM

The following question was raised on the previous post:

"When are we going to know who it is and what s/he did?"

In response, I barked:



I wish to emphasize that at this point in time that all we have on this particular tasty subject (in the sense that road apples are tasty, but hey! I'm a dog) is rumor. Further, I suspect that if we are ever going to learn the actual the facts surrounding this event, it will be Congressman John Dingell who will share them with us.

Now I, (being merely a dog), have only the lowest expectations for how you humans will resolve this latest fubar. I mean really, look how you took care of Nanos' mess.

-Pat, The Dog

Hang on to your sox, folks: Life at the 'Top' (or very near to it) of Los Alamos National Security's Lab is about to get a 'little' bumpy. Rumors abound that the security issues at LANL and NNSA are far from over yet. In fact, they may have only just started to ramp up, well beyond a 'little' person, who took old classified stuff home to work on overtime, and who may have on occasion smoked some dope at her home on the weekends. According to George Lobsenz in his January 8th issue of Energy Daily, the heads have not yet stopped rolling over the latest security incidents. Possibly next to go to the chopping block: Edwin Wilmot, head of the Los Alamos NNSA Site Office.

But wait, there's a whole hell-of-a-lot more: rumors of yet another security breach: a whopper! Not just about the 'little' people being randomly 'screwtinized.' Here's a hint: Anybody remember former CIA Director John M. Deutch? Taking 'stuff' (classified--SERIOUS classified) home to work on, at his 'leisure,' while sitting in his easy chair, with his slippers on, smoking his pipe?

Stay tuned, this could be the big one. (Oops. I just piddled all over the Master's slipper.)

--Pat, The Dog

Pat, the Dog, wonders, out loud: Even though these guys have opposable thumbs, can they handle a door knob?

-----

Atomic Fallout: The administration dumps its nuclear chief, but can anyone else do better?

By Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger
Posted Monday, Jan. 8, 2007, at 12:06 PM ET [http://www.slate.com/id/2157150/pagenum/all/#page_start]

In June 2005, we walked into the Washington office of National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks. He was leaning over his shoes, looking slightly flummoxed. He paused and looked up at the visiting reporters, still holding his shoelaces.

"Yes, there's the headline," he sighed. "The man responsible for nuclear weapons can't even tie his own shoes."

Brooks' fatalism was not unfounded. Recent news reports had not been kind to his agency, an arm of the Department of Energy that oversees the nuclear weapons complex. In particular, reporters were fixated on security woes at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the disappearance of classified computer disks had prompted a monthslong shutdown of the facility.

Those "missing" disks, in fact, never existed. But it was a major blow to the NNSA's credibility, and it amplified perceptions of mismanagement at Los Alamos, the birthplace of the atomic bomb.

Unfortunately for Brooks, Los Alamos was unable to shed its image as the problem child of the nuclear labs family. In late October 2006, police stumbled upon thumb drives containing classified information from Los Alamos during a meth bust in a trailer park.

On Jan. 4, Brooks finally took the fall.

While news of his dismissal was overshadowed by a major shake-up in the top echelons of the military and the intelligence community, it came at a critical time for the future of the nuclear weapons complex. With very little public attention, the NNSA is embarking on a project called Complex 2030—an ambitious plan to modernize U.S. nuclear weapons facilities. That effort is about to build serious momentum with the selection of a design for the Reliable Replacement Warhead, a new nuclear weapon that some critics worry could lead to the resumption of underground testing.

For Brooks, the firing offense may not have been the security breaches but failing to inform his boss, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, about computer hacking that compromised the personal information of Energy Department contractors. Brooks learned in September 2005 that the computers were hacked, but he didn't inform senior Energy Department officials until months later.

Brooks' explanation for the delay was the political equivalent of fumbling with his laces.

"It appears that each side of that organization assumed that the other side had made the appropriate notification to the deputy secretary," Brooks told members of a congressional oversight committee.

"That's hogwash," replied Joe Barton, the Texas Republican who is now the committee's ranking minority member.

Barton and another Republican sent a letter to Secretary Bodman in June demanding Brooks' ouster. With usual Washington speed, six months passed before Brooks got the ax.

That Brooks presided over a nuclear weapons complex with serious problems is not in doubt: Security lapses led to clampdowns, which in turn hurt morale at the labs. But it's hard to square the unceremonious dismissal of Brooks, a highly regarded public servant, with the treatment that other administration appointees got. After all, while New Orleans drowned, Michael ("heckuva job") Brown was praised by President Bush for his work at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Paul Wolfowitz—who predicted that Iraqi oil revenues could pay for reconstruction—sits comfortably at the World Bank. And even Donald ("freedom is untidy") Rumsfeld, the recently ousted Pentagon chief, won final commendations from Bush as a "superb leader in a time of change."

The signs pointing to the NNSA chief's downfall, it turns out, were there in our 2005 interview with Brooks.

"I've been a little surprised at the insatiable desire—a combination of the 24-hour news cycle and the Congress—to know everything now," he said of the security breaches. "In fact, when problems occur, the one thing you can almost always be certain of is that your initial understanding is wrong."

An example of that, Brooks continued, was the case of the "missing" Los Alamos disks.

"Almost everything we thought was true in the first 96 hours turns out not to have been true," he said.

Brooks was right. The disks never even existed; a simple clerical error—nonexistent bar codes—led officials to chase after phantom equipment. That same summer, the Project on Government Oversight, a frequent critic of the nuclear labs, had hosted a dramatic press conference featuring the tearful wife of Tommy Hook, a Los Alamos whistleblower who had just been hospitalized after a savage beating. The assault, it was hinted, was linked to upcoming congressional testimony on fraud at the lab. His wife's dramatic appearance sparked a flurry of press stories. Was Hook the victim of official reprisal? Were rogue operatives at work? Had nuclear weapons scientists taken matters into their own hands?

In fact, the truth was more banal: According to later accounts, Hook's night of whistleblowing activities included a lap dance and drinks at the strip club where he was beaten. Few papers reported the eventual unfolding of events.

NNSA is an obscure agency in a department that has long been considered a government backwater. Created in 2000 amid the fallout from the Wen Ho Lee scandal, NNSA's official status is "quasi-autonomous." That adjective gets to the heart of the problem: The agency has multiple lines of authority and overlapping responsibilities that make decision making hard and accountability elusive.

"In theory, it was a good idea to separate nuclear weapons from the day-to-day White House political considerations that encumber any Cabinet-level agency," said Phil Coyle, a former associate director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and now a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information. "But in practice it has only played into the perception that the NNSA and its contractors are not accountable to higher-level authorities, in this case the secretary of energy."

But firing Brooks won't fix the labs, and the administration has yet to answer a fundamental question: What would they have had him do differently? We suspect Brooks' answer would have been much like his response to our questions. When we asked him 18 months ago about why he was unable to persuade Congress to fund the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, a controversial push to design a bunker-busting nuke, he said, "I don't know what I would have done differently, but we'll see."
The critics were right: Linton Brooks failed to fix the labs, but who can? Like Charlie Brown in his eternal quest to kick the football, we wonder if Brooks ever really had a chance. As for why he was fired—and why now—we suspect that Brooks is asking the same question.

Now they'll all be hounding D'Agostino, although I really wonder why Bodman bothered to put him in charge, if indeed he wants to see change happen at NNSA, and within the DOE complex. In any event, just one more screwup at LANL, or any of the other DOE labs and both D'Agostino and Bodman will likely be out on their collective asses.

One has to wonder if Bodman is starting to rethink some of the other decisions that were made by NNSA under the questionable leadership of Brooks and D'Agostino. Like the decision to award the LANL contract to Bechtel and all their little friends. I mean really, handing a national lab over to a construction company? Even I know better than to do that, and I'm just a dog!

--Pat, The Dog

*****************************************

U.S. House Plans Hearings on Los Alamos Security

A U.S. House subcommittee plans to hold hearings “within the month” on security problems at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) said Friday (see GSN, Jan. 5).

Dingell praised Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman’s recent decision to dismiss National Nuclear Security Administrator Linton Brooks following a series of security breaches at the laboratory.

The firing was “the first real accountability we have seen in some time involving yet another security breach at Los Alamos,” he said, according to Environment and Energy Daily.

The Energy Department’s inspector general issued a highly critical report late last year on security troubles at the laboratory (see GSN, Nov. 29, 2006). These included a recent incident involving the discovery of classified nuclear weapons documents at a former laboratory worker’s home by local police responding to a disturbance involving drug use (see GSN, Nov. 6, 2006).

“One wonders, had the meth lab not been raided by the local police, whether Los Alamos lab officials would have ever discovered that the documents were even missing,” Dingell said. “This raises great concern over other possible security lapses” (Mary O’Driscoll, Environment and Energy Daily, Jan. 8).

MY VIEW
Santa Fe New Mexican, Sunday January 7, 2007

Security linchpin is people, not process
By Larry L. Lynn, Ph.D.

Coverage of the latest security breach at LANL (Nov. 29, “Report rips lab’s security”) recounts all the money spent on hardware and software to ensure the safety of classified material kept at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

However, the real linchpin of security is the people you hire and maintain after observing their behavior on the job. This is where the money should be spent. However, the direct opposite is being done.

* The contract is put out for bid and the cost of running the facility increases considerably, while the workload remains substantially the same.

* The contract is underfunded by a large amount of money, so large numbers of contractors are separated (fired seems so nasty).

The underfunding of the contract has numerous consequences for LANL and the surrounding communities, as contractors lose their jobs and their families drop further into poverty. Often these former contractors must seek monetary help, instead of spending their earnings and stimulating the economy.

The loss of contractors means that high-paid LANL employees will have to do “menial” jobs formerly done by low-paid people expert in their jobs. This reduces the productivity and morale of LANL employees. LANL employees will spend more time talking and worrying about losing their positions and cushy lifestyles, once again reducing productivity and morale. The economy will be seriously affected when it becomes necessary to lower the number of LANL personnel.

The morale of the employees is key to maintaining security. I have personally observed how serious deterioration of morale occurred during previous times of uncertainty, shutdown and contract negotiations; for example. The consequences are going to be much more dire this time.

The situation at LANL is only made worse by the fact that the atmosphere at LANL is the most inconsiderate and vicious I have ever experienced. Couple this with the facts that:

* Managers, who are replaced because they have become politically incorrect, routinely regain their jobs when the politics change.

* Most managers do not know how to deal with people. LANL continues to follow the fallacy that good analysts/engineers/ designers make good managers.

* Fraternalism is deeply engrained. Most employees live and interact within Los Alamos County. Children replace their parents. Defensive groups are formed. Grudges are kept active for decades.

The mainstay of security indoctrination and re-training is a series of computer-based refresher courses that deal with security of various types. These must be completed by all employees every year. Sounds great and looks good on paper. But in reality they are worse than a joke. Many can be successfully completed without reading a word in them.

Another problem is that at the Department of Energy — and its quasi-autonomous agency, the National Nuclear Security Agency — employees are uncertain as to what information should be kept secret, and how.

The LANL books are flooded with regulations propagated by federal bureaucrats who must fulfill their oversight mandate in some fashion. In order to show Congress that they are properly executing their jobs, they react in a knee-jerk manner to security “violations.” As a result, they either follow outdated and outlandish bureaucratic procedures or they create new procedures, which must be followed. These latter usually are vague and do not address the real problem.

Often they are so convoluted that employees are not able to perform their duties if they follow the procedures.

The restrictions on unclassified computers (which have been on the books for many years and are covered in a refresher course) are actually much stricter than those for classified computers.

My complaints about this fall on deaf ears. In today’s world, terrorists are of more concern than Russia and China. They do not require elaborate information that needs to be downloaded from computers. The information required by a terrorist group can be carried outside the fence in an employee’s head; possibly supplemented by a piece of paper. As stated above, the people are crucial to security; their morale will be a big factor in determining how they treat classified information.

My own situation is ironic and demonstrates how these new situations are not being considered. A LANL psychologist decided that because of my “sleep problems” (which I have had for 30 years), I could not be trusted to have access to classified information. Stored in my head are 30 years of information gained by working with top secret intelligence information and DOE secret information.

The useful information I would gain by working at LANL for the next five years is like a teardrop in the ocean.

--
Dr. Larry L. Lynn has a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Most recently he has worked in the intelligence component at LANL.

Bush picks new head of nuclear agency

H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The White House said Friday that President Bush has chosen a replacement for the man ousted as head of the government's nuclear weapons program in the wake of reports of embarrassing security breakdowns.

Bush selected Thomas P. D'Agostino, who currently serves as deputy administrator of defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, to succeed Linton Brooks in the top job there on an acting basis.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman had said Thursday that Brooks would resign within the month. The agency maintains the nuclear weapons stockpile and oversees the nation's weapons research laboratories.

"I have decided it is time for new leadership at the NNSA," Bodman said.

Brooks, a former ambassador and arms control negotiator, said he accepted the decision, one he understood was "based on the principle of accountability that should govern all public service. This is not a decision that I would have preferred."

Brooks was reprimanded in June for failing to report to Bodman the theft of computer files at an NNSA facility in Albuquerque, N.M., that contained Social Security numbers and other data for 1,500 workers.

Then in October hundreds of pages of classified weapons-related documents from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico were found during a drug raid in the home of a woman who had worked at the lab.

That security breakdown was especially troubling, a department inspector general's report said, because it came after tens of millions of dollars had been spent to upgrade cyber-security at Los Alamos. A new management group also had been put in charge only a few months earlier - also a fallout over the repeated security problems.

The New Mexico laboratory is one of three major research labs that are part of the nuclear weapons complex under the NNSA. The agency was created after the security flap involving Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee in the late 1990s in hopes that a single agency within DOE might provide more control over security.

Meanwhile, lab spokesman Steve Sandoval said Friday the installation in New Mexico plans to implement an expanded substance abuse policy that includes random drug tests of employees and pre-employment drug screening for lab workers and contractors.

All lab policies, including current substance abuse guidelines, have been under review since last year, before Los Alamos National Security LLC took over the lab's management in June from the University of California, which ran the lab for the DOE for decades, he said.

Michael Anastasio, the lab's director, notified employees about the new policy last month "to let people know this was coming and take it seriously," Sandoval said.

In announcing Brooks' resignation, Bodman said the NNSA had "done its best" to address the problems, but that progress had not been adequate.

"Therefore, and after careful consideration, I have decided that it is time for new leadership at the NNSA," Bodman said.

Some members of Congress questioned whether Brooks' departure is enough to make the changes that are needed.

"It will take more than a new boss to fix the problems, which are far more systemic and pervasive in nature," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is considering hearings on DOE security.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., said she also plans a hearing by her House Armed Services subcommittee on "the important policy and structural changes" planned to improve the nuclear agency. Her aides said she believes the issue is one that goes beyond Brooks, whom she praised.

Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, the ranking Republican on both the Senate Energy Committee and the Appropriations subcommittee on NNSA spending, said Bodman "has sent a clear message" that improvements are needed at the agency.

A number of lawmakers as well as private watchdog groups have maintained that Brooks had not responded forcefully enough to the Los Alamos security breakdowns.

"His departure is long overdue," Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said Thursday. He had called for Brooks' immediate firing last summer when the theft involving information on the 1,500 employees came to light.

In November, the Project on Government Oversight, a private watchdog group, urged that Brooks be fired, saying he had been slow in implementing a two-year-old policy to do away with removable storage devices in weapons-related computers.

In his message to employees, Brooks, who came to NNSA in July 2002, bemoaned the lack of progress in solving security problems at Los Alamos. "We have not yet done so in over five years," he said.

But the rash of security problems date back to the late 1990s, frustrating senior DOE officials.

They include the disappearance of two hard drives containing classified material that later were found behind a copying machine and the disappearance of two computer disks that forced a virtual shutdown of Los Alamos. It later was learned the two disks never existed.

Among other incidents were lost keys to classified areas containing highly enriched uranium, use of less secure e-mail systems to transmit classified material, scientists losing track of vials of plutonium and the alleged improper use of government credit cards.

Dear Mike:

My first reaction upon reading the Lab's proposed drug policy was very
negative, because it sets up an adversarial relationship of management
AGAINST workers, rather than one of cooperative teamwork of management
AND workers. With regard to drug abuse, the approach of your new
management team in these difficult times should be along the same lines
as your stated approach to safety and security, namely, fostering a
spirit of teamwork, cooperation, and buy-in to the general program by
employees.

Former Director G. Peter Nanos said golden words about building mutual
confidence between management and workers in both safety and security,
but in practice, his short term as Director was marked by heavy-handed
intimidation and fear, from which the Lab has still not fully recovered
after 2-1/2 years. Nanos was encouraged in his harsh military approach
by NNSA's chief, Linton Brooks. Now that Ambassador Brooks has been
relieved from command of NNSA by Energy Secretary Bodman, there is a
new window of opportunity to establish a better footing, possibly even
TRUST, in the relationship between management and workers at Los
Alamos. And I would encourage you to consider taking a major step in
that direction by eliminating random drug testing from the proposed new
drug policy.

It is very clear that Congress wants the Lab to deal with ongoing
safety and security lapses, though they don't seem to realize, nor does
the general public, that zero occurrences of accidents or security
violations are impossible to achieve, at least by us human beings, even
under the very best of safety and security programs. Keeping the
nation's defense secrets safe from foreign espionage and the workplace
as free from accidents as humanly possible both require attention to
the frailties inherent in human behavior, most importantly in the area
of addictive behavior. The addictions that are most problematic are
easy to identify, in rough order of occurrence: sex, alcohol, gambling,
prescription drugs (anti-depressants and painkillers), cocaine,
methamphetamine, and heroin. (I've left out two quite addictive drugs,
tobacco and caffeine, but they really don't pose serious problems in
workplace safety or national security.) In addition to long-term health
problems, each of these addictions can have deleterious effects on a
worker's family life, put fellow workers at risk of increased
accidents, and for Q-cleared workers in particular, make workers prone
to blackmail. Moreover, the support of addictive habits can cause grave
financial difficulties. Blackmail and financial reward are two of the
most effective tools of foreign espionage in prying loose or buying
secrets.

What is management to do about these problems? Clearly, random drug
tests could not even discover many of these more serious addictive
problems. In the classified arena, there are extensive periodic
background checks before a Q-clearance is granted. In addition, the
principal tool that conscientious managers have is their eyes and ears,
namely, keeping good lines of communication with the workers directly
under them. An incident of inebriation on the job obviously has to
trigger the threshold of probable cause for a drug test; however,
randomly testing the general Lab populace, particularly those who do
not handle dangerous materials or operate dangerous equipment, is
completely uncalled for.

But the main difficulty with random drug tests is the adversarial
atmosphere they bring down on the Lab, and the side effects of
demoralization, humiliation, and reduced productivity, not to mention
the sheer cost of administering them. Moreover, if a worker is
immediately put onto a Performance Action Track, based on a positive
outcome of a drug test, and the "positive" is actually an error, there
is almost no way to undo the disgrace and disruption to the worker's
career. Rather than attaching permanent blame to addictive behavior,
management ought to realize that they can help a worker out of the hole
they've dug for themselves, and still reap years of productivity for
the Lab and the nation. If a positive program of help for the addict
fails, well, at least the Lab can say it did the best it could.

The bottom line is: I encourage you, as the new Lab Director, to choose
teamwork over an "us versus them: managers against workers" atmosphere
for Los Alamos, and abandon the random drug tests.

Respectfully submitted,

-Brad Lee Holian
Lab Associate, X-Division

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 5, 2007

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - Los Alamos National Laboratory is working on an expanded drug testing policy that includes random drug tests of employees and pre-employment drug screening for lab workers and contractors.

A Los Alamos spokesman, Steve Sandoval, said Friday that all lab policies, including the current substance abuse guidelines, have been under review since last year.

The review began before Los Alamos National Security LLC took over the lab's management in June from the University of California, which ran the lab for the DOE for decades, Sandoval said.

Drug tests also will be conducted in response to reasonable suspicion of illegal drug use and after serious incidents or accidents. Sandoval said those provisions exist now.

Lab director Michael Anastasio notified employees about the proposed new policy in a December meeting "to let people know this was coming and take it seriously," Sandoval said.

Employees also were notified in a memo from Doris Heim, the lab's associate director for business services.

Employees have until Feb. 5 to comment on the proposal.

Comments then will be reviewed and addressed if necessary, and the new policy will go into effect after that, Sandoval said.

He could not say how long that would take.

[Thanks to William Bruno for the following. --Pat]

-----

The proposed drug policy appears to be "one strike and you're out".

Unfortunately, someone failing a drug test may have a 50% chance of being innocent.

This article from US News & World Report, 2002 (below) says the best drug tests are 99% accurate. If 1% of LANL uses drugs, then 50% of those who fail a random test are innocent.

Unless the accuracy is improved to 99.99% or higher (and that has to include human error, like swapping labels, reading the machine wrong, failing to clean the machine, contaminating the sample, which all are plausible at the 1 in 10,000 test level) it is completely unethical to implement a 1 strike policy for random screens.

I hereby volunteer myself to be tested as one of the 10,000 to see if the error rate is low enough. But the test sample should also include those who use Robitussin, Tylenol, diet pills, herbal remedies, weight-lifter's supplements, wear hemp clothing, frequent bars, work in an organic chemistry lab, etc.

http://www.dpeg.org/DrugTesting/Tests_on_trial.htm

-William

--

To/MS: LANL-ALL
From/MS: Doris Heim, ADBS, A108
Phone/Fax: 7-1973/7-5624
Symbol: ADBS-07-001
Date: January 3, 2007

Subject: Policy Changes Opportunity to Review and Comment

As Director Anastasio discussed at the All Employee Meeting on December 19, this notice is to inform employees of the revised Substance Abuse policy and to provide an opportunity for employee input prior to implementation. Additionally, the Director indicated that there would be a comment period for all significant policy changes. Thus, revisions for the Complaint Resolution and Discipline policies are also included for your review. The key features of each policy are outlined below.

Substance Abuse: IMP 732 (replaces AM 110)
The purpose of the substance abuse policy is to ensure that all LANL workers are provided a work environment that is drug-free, safe, and that LANL is in compliance with federal and state laws and regulations. The new substance abuse policy reflects today’s environment and the need to take greater precautions to ensure a workplace that is safe, secure and demonstrates that we are worthy of our nation’s trust. The policy includes pre-employment and random drug testing for LANL employees and subcontractors; drug and/or alcohol testing on the basis of reasonable suspicion; and, drug and/or alcohol testing following an incident or accident that results in a serious injury.

Complaint Resolution Program (CRP): IMP 791 (replaces AM 111)
The purpose of this program is to resolve certain workplace disputes between an employee and his/her management. This policy is updated to improve the quality of the program. CRP is an integral part of the Laboratory’s effort to promote “free and open expression” of concerns. The policy includes a management review and a higher-level management review during which HR Employee Relations will investigate complaints not already investigated. In specific cases, external mediation and binding arbitration can also be used.

Discipline: IPP 731 (replaces AM 112)
This policy outlines when and how to employ the disciplinary process, and provides procedures to implement in the event that employee conduct or performance does not meet expectations. IPP 731 replaces both AM 112 and AM 109.14 – 18, also known as the Performance Action Track (PAT).

The draft policies have been posted to the policy center on-line at:
http://policy.lanl.gov/pods/home.nsf/Pages/DAPP-6WMQDL.
Please review the draft policies and send comments to policy@ lanl.gov by February 5, 2007. Given the subject of these draft policies, additional information and resources are available to employees and managers on-line at HR’s Employee Relations website: http://int.lanl.gov/orgs/hr/relations/index.shtml. Comments will be reviewed and information regarding implementation will be provided through the standard Laboratory policy notification system.

-----
[Note that we still don't have the ACTUAL online draft to post, since no one has yet offered to send me the pdf file from within the Lab. Finally, a critical question: Is the act of commenting a Catch-22? That is, if a LANL employee makes critical comments, will that result in him/her being put on a "PAT" (Performance Action Track)? --Pat, the Dog (yes, I get the irony)]

Woof! (Dog-speak for Good Riddance! Another Admiral bites the dust.)

Brooks ousted as head of NNSA

H.Josef Hebert/Associated Press
Originally published 02:46 p.m., January 4, 2007
Updated 03:09 p.m., January 4, 2007

http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2007/jan/04/brooks-ousted-head-nnsa/

UPDATE: More information here: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070104/D8MEP97O2.html

WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman today dismissed the chief of the country's nuclear weapons program because of security breakdowns at the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico and other facilities.

Linton Brooks will submit his resignation this month as head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the department said.

Bodman said the nuclear agency under Brooks, a former ambassador and arms control negotiator, had not adequately corrected security problems. "I have decided it is time for new leadership at the NNSA," Bodman said.

Brooks was reprimanded in June for failing to report to Bodman a security breach of computers at an agency facility in Albuquerque that resulted in the theft of files containing Social Security numbers and other personal data for 1,500 workers.

Last fall, security at Los Alamos came into question anew. During a drug raid, authorities found classified nuclear-related documents at the home of a former lab employee with top secret clearance.

That security breach was especially troubling, the department's internal watchdog said, because tens of millions of dollars had been spent to upgrade computer security at Los Alamos. The lab is part of the nuclear weapons complex that Brooks' agency oversees.

"These management and security issues can have serious implications for the security of the United States," Bodman in a statement announcing Brooks' departure.

While the agency's management "has done its best to address these concerns, I do not believe that progress in correcting these issues has been adequate," Bodman said.

"Therefore, and after careful consideration, I have decided that it is time for new leadership at the NNSA," said Bodman "Ambassador Brooks will tender his resignation to the president and depart later this month."

Bodman said an acting head of the agency will be named soon.

If you think that resistance to the corporate vise-grip is hopeless (here I'm talking mainly to LLNL personnel, since LANL folks seem to have gone limp, but not even due to passively resisting), check out the website of, by, and for the soldiers in Iraq. Now these people have a serious problem to fix in their lives; they're not just whimpering about keeping their jobs. I guess they may know a bit more about bravery ...

--Pat, the Dog-tagged

-----

http://www.appealforredress.org/

An Appeal for Redress from the War in Iraq

Many active duty, reserve, and guard service members are concerned about the war in Iraq and support the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Appeal for Redress provides a way in which individual service members can appeal to their Congressional Representative and US Senators to urge an end to the U.S. military occupation. The Appeal messages will be delivered to members of Congress at the time of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January 2007.

The wording of the Appeal for Redress is short and simple. It is patriotic and respectful in tone.

As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq . Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.

The Appeal for Redress is sponsored by active duty service members based in the Norfolk area and by a sponsoring committee of veterans and military family members. The Sponsoring committee consists of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans For Peace, and Military Families Speak Out.

Members of the military have a legal right to communicate with their member of Congress.

Attorneys and counselors experienced in military law are available to help service members who need assistance in countering any attempts to suppress this communication with members of Congress.

Appeal for Redress
PO Box 53052
Washington, DC 20009-3052
info@appealforredress.org
Phone: 360-241-1414
Fax: 360-694-8843
© 2006. All Rights Reserved.

W pushes envelope on U.S. spying

New postal law lets Bush peek through your mail


BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

President Bush added a "signing statement" in recently passed postal reform bill that may give him new powers to pry into your mail - without a warrant.

-----

Feds take aim at Internet records
Privacy groups worry about government’s monitoring of citizens

By John Reinan
The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

MINNEAPOLIS — The federal government wants your Internet provider to keep track of every Web site you visit.

For more than a year, the U.S. Justice Department has been in discussions with Internet companies and privacy rights advocates, trying to come up with a plan that would make it easier for investigators to check records of Web traffic.

The idea is to help law enforcement track down child pornographers. But some see it as another step toward total surveillance of citizens, joining warrant less wiretapping, secret scrutiny of library records and unfettered access to e-mail as another power that could be abused.

The following comment from Pliny, the Elder (a.k.a.--you guessed it!--Anonymous) is so damn scary, I just had to give it its own post. After reading it, I felt a constriction in my chest; you will, too, I bet. ... Unless you are floating atop some corporation (limited liability or not).
--Pat, the Dog

-----

In the final days of the American Empire, fear was everywhere to be seen. More people were incarcerated in American jails than in any other country on Earth. Government and corporate spying on citizens was all-pervasive, whether legal or not. The ends always seemed to justify the means. Extra-legal 'preventive actions' were a necessity for the common good. It was all so obvious. Why couldn't the few un-patriotic American see that this was all a necessity? But, in truth, these were the actions of a sick society, choking on the paranoia that frequently results when a population is consumed by the ever-present fear that, somehow, in some major way, "The End is Near."

Citizens can always sense this. It's like a virus that quickly spreads among a population. The Greeks experienced it. The Romans felt it, too. And now, like all other great societies, moral corruption had eaten through to the core of the American psyche. The public had a growing sense of it. And in this type of milieu, it was only natural for a majority of the citizens to attempt one last chance to "get what's due me" before the growing dry rot brought down everything.

Captains of industry pilfered unbelievable treasures from their corporate shareholders and employees. The cult of celebrity trumped artistry. Belief trumped science. It was the best of times for a chosen few, but the worst of times for many. Easy riches were there for the taking if you could only lower your standards. And for most people, they could, as time was clearly running out.

-- "History of America", Pliny the Elder, 2050 --

Charles Reichhardt, LANL theoretician, writes the following cogent letter on the drug-testing program that LANS, LLC proposes to inaugurate at Los Alamos. Reichhardt observes that "Although a smart person on drugs may do dumb things, a dumb person not on drugs will also do dumb things, and the latter will not be identified by random drug testing." (Emphasis mine.)

--Pat

----------

The problem with the new drug testing policy is that it does nothing to address the real problem. The incident that triggered this testing proposal was that a 20 year old woman without a college degree brought classified material home and forgot about it. The documents were found during a meth raid. The woman did not use drugs and would have passed random drug screening. Thus, the new policy would have done nothing to prevent the incident from happening. The real issue in this case is why a high level clearance was given to such a person.

The proposed random drug testing sends a clear message to LANL employees that management does not respond properly to address actual problems. Such actions demoralize the staff since new policies of management seem to be knee-jerk reactions that are ill thought out. It is important to remember that we have only finite security resources at the lab, so random drug testing will divert valuable money and resources to something that will not fix the original problem. In fact, an argument could be made that the original problem will now be worse. Perhaps security personnel will have less time to screen new hires in the first place, causing a larger number of low-quality people to be hired. These people will go on to make more mistakes by pure ineptness, worsening the original problem. Although a smart person on drugs may do dumb things, a dumb person not on drugs will also do dumb things, and the latter will not be identified by random drug testing.

It would make more sense to invest laboratory resources in insuring that high quality people are hired in the first place. This would be far more effective in preventing future incidents than a random drug testing program. The argument has repeatedly been made that we have to show Congress that we are doing something to address the previous incident. I believe that what
Congress in fact wants to be shown is that we are doing something to actually address problems, not something that can make the problems worse. Congressional representatives are intelligent; they will see right through this drug testing stunt and realize that Los Alamos is not actually addressing the real problems. I really do not think that Congress is our enemy; if we explain to them what happened and how we are fixing it, then I think they will listen.

Almost every staff member I have talked with thinks that this new drug testing policy will not solve the real problem and sees it as a mark of incompetent management. Staff members will have faith in management again when it is clear that management does their job and enacts decisions that fix problems and improve the institution. If management acts irrationally or incompetently, it creates cynicism, distrust and fear among the staff. This only leads to further mistakes, mishaps and reduced productivity. Things will only start to improve when management starts to make rational decisions or takes actions that will fix real problems.

Charles Reichhardt
Staff Member, Theory Division
Former Feynman Distinguished Fellow

olson@cybermesa.com

----------
P.S. I think his confidence in Congress is shared by few of the older, more cynical staff members at Los Alamos, but one should always "look on the bright side of life," right? -Pat

Here is a view on Holian's challenge to the staff of LANL, from the Other Side. I would say the Dark Side, but there is hardly any more light of day left at beleaguered Los Alamos--Livermore: Beware! Time is rapidly running out at both places. Get yourselves a flashlight. Or, like me, learn to see in The Dark.
--Pat

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Sadly, successive years of increasingly inept management at LANL have taken their toll. Many of the better scientists have already left, thanks to the unbearable incompetence of the University of California, the former contractor of LANL. Incompetence which culminated last year when DOE put the contract for the laboratory up for bid after 63 contiguous years of UC "stewardship".

Now, a construction company is in charge. As of July 1, 2005, Bechtel and friends are firmly in control of LANL. Bechtel, BWXT, The Washington Group, and yes, The University of California are now all doing business together under the umbrella of a newly formed LLC named "LANS". Bechtel is a construction company. Within LANS, Bechtel is in charge. LANS is guaranteed a fat plum of an award fee, $79 million, every year for running LANL. LANS also has a new agenda for LANL that has very little to do with "World Class Science". That self-proclaimed sobriquet was pompously trumpeted by former LANL director Peter G. Nanos in the final days of his reign of terror as the last official UC-employed director of the place. The new agenda: LANS has indicated to the lab's customer, DOE, that they are in full support of DOE's plans to create a plutonium pit production facility at LANL. Plutonium foundry operations and pit production are to become the number one priority at LANL. "World Class Science" will be a distant number 2, or number 3 priority, coming in far behind pit production and blindly following all of DOE's incomprehensible rules and regulations.

But the world outside of Los Alamos has very little sympathy with LANL staff and their deteriorating work environment. Why should it? LANL staff have (accurately) portrayed themselves over the years as elitist, over-privileged, highly paid, detached, self-centered iconoclasts. Prima donas. Drug tests? It's about time. Polygraph tests? Tough shit. Find a job elsewhere if you think all of this is beneath you.

Bechtel (yes, I know: LANS, but we all know that Bechtel is in the driver's seat) agrees. The budget shortfall for the current fiscal year is very real. The more people that leave of their own volition, the less bad press Bechtel (and friends) will have to take when it comes time to RIF.

The damage that has been done at LANL over the years, both by arrogant, incompetent management, and by arrogant, detached, elitist scientists alike probably cannot be undone. The work environment at Los Alamos will not get any better than it currently is. It will get worse. Those who choose to, and who are allowed to remain on staff at LANL will have to reconcile themselves to the fact that a profit-driven corporation does not have the employee's best interests at heart. Deal with it, or leave.

-Anonymous

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P.S. Anonymous sez: "Deal with it, or leave."
--OR--
Fight back, you *bleeping* cowards! Don't let this guy and The Corporation talk to you like that! Show some goddamn SPINE! Bite 'em in the corporate leg!
--Pat, the not-so-nice-anymore Dog (Grrrrr!!!)

[The following is from an undergrad, who wishes to remain anonymous. Brad Holian sent it on to yours truly, -Pat.]

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I was happy to read about your stand against mandatory polygraph examination at LANL. It resonated very personally with me.

I'm a physics undergrad student at [a prestigious California school], but this upcoming summer, I was considering interning at the CIA. I applied in June on a whim, and got a conditional offer of employment in about August after a phone interview and a bunch of paperwork. In October, they flew me up to Washington to do all their screening for clearance, most of which seemed to revolve around the lengthy polygraph examinations. I was greatly opposed to needing to do that, as I've long considered them to be pseudoscientific hoopla.

When it came time for me to have my examination, it began with a long discussion with the examiner. He asked me what I knew about the polygraph, and I explained what I knew about it's operation...how in monitored breathing rate, skin conductance...etc. I then expressed my belief that there was little to no evidence for a strong correlation between their tests and truthfulness. I also noted that it couldn't be used in a court of law, and that I thought it was strange it was used in screening by the CIA. He reassured me that he'd had a lot of training and all sorts of professional certifications, and that there was hard science backing the whole thing.

After he ran the test a couple times, he said that I wasn't passing all of the questions. He asked me which questions stood out in my mind. I said, "have no clue; one of the controls made me feel kind of funny." He immediately became suspicious, and pressed me as to where I'd learned the term "control," as if it were unequivocal proof I was a spy trained to crack his magic machine. He pressed me as to whether I'd researched the polygraph in preparation for the test. I said I'd certainly read about how it worked in the past, and reiterated my skepticism in its methods. He warned that he doesn't even bother to waste his time with people who refuse to be cooperative.

At this point, I'd become very frustrated. He tested me once more, and then interrogated me for about an hour. There was nothing more I felt I needed to reveal to him. I told him that it was all just a psychological tactic, and they might as well use "good cop, bad cop" as they were both conceived for the same thing. He soon afterwards said we were finished. As a result, they asked me to retake the polygraph a second time. At this point, I'd already been interrogated for four hours, and was barely willing to go along with it. I had come to find the technique insulting.

The second examiner, whom had obviously been informed of my performance the previous day, noted my background in physics, said stuff to the effect of I'm sure your a pretty sharp guy and all that sort of banter. He gave me a pep talk on why I should have trust in their technique, how it had been perfected for decades, and mentioned they were doing me a favor by giving me a second chance. The second time went no better, and I left exhausted and dreadfully unhappy.

A couple weeks ago I got a letter from them informing me that my offer of employment had been rescinded, I would assume because of how I acted at the polygraph. I wasn't terribly unhappy, as I'd already decided I'd rather do physics this summer than work for them, and I'd already begun looking for other summer programs. I can understand how irritating it must be to be forced to do this to do science.

Thanks and I wish you luck.
-Anonymous Undergrad

There appears to be some recognition from the Outside that polygraphy and random drug testing is a 'peculiar institution' at a scientific laboratory (some have argued that LANL has lost the scientific label, but I doubt that all is lost on that score). The link and a few of the posted comments are listed below.
--Pat, the Dog

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http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/01/01/2055249.shtml

Scientist Organizes Resistance To Polygraphs
Posted by kdawson on Monday January 01, @04:53PM
from the drugs-lies-and-security-clearances dept.

George Maschke writes: "Brad Holian, a senior scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is using a blog to organize resistance to plans for random polygraph and drug testing of Lab scientists. Holian writes: 'Polygraphy is an insulting affront to scientists, since a committee of the National Academy of Sciences has declared that, beyond being inadmissible in court, there is no scientific basis for polygraphs. In my opinion, by agreeing to be polygraphed, one thereby seriously jeopardizes his or her claim to being a scientist, which is presumably the principal reason for employment for many scientists at Los Alamos.'"

Comments:

Polygraphs work--sorta
by PurifyYourMind (776223) on Monday January 01, @04:56PM (#17425252)
(http://adultmediaboard.com/)
The idea is to convince people to *believe* that the polygraph machine is scientific and will detect their lies so that they're more likely to not lie, or are nervous while questioning, or even don't take the test at all and just spill it beforehand. It's psychological intimidation, kind of like forcing confessions of bad thoughts in a cult environment. That's one reason you see those "you shall not be subjected to polygraphs at work" posters at your job... a nasty employer could really intimidate people (e.g. union organizers) with it.

Re:Polygraphs work--sorta
by A beautiful mind (821714) on Monday January 01, @05:22PM (#17425530)
So polygraph is a very expensive baseball bat?
"It would be a shame if something were to happen with your kneecaps..."

Polygraphs ...
by b0s0z0ku (752509) on Monday January 01, @04:57PM (#17425266)
I guess I can understand polygraphy IF it's at all accurate. After all, they are dealing with dangerous (from a proliferation standpoint) materials and experiments critical to national security. As for drug testing, I think it should only happen if an employee is exhibiting other problems at work, if then. And it also depends what drug is being tested for. Is there any evidence that enjoying the occasional herbal treat harms work performance in any material way?
-b.

Re:Polygraphs ...
by b0s0z0ku (752509) on Monday January 01, @05:16PM (#17425482)
Have I met, worked with, or been exposed to obvious stoners that are clearly and continually unfocused, un-energetic, bad on short-term memory, and always looking for free food at meetings?
There's a huge difference between drug use and drug *abuse*. Profile based on behaviour, not based on chemical testing. If someone's a lazy obnoxious git, by all means fire him if he doesn't shape up, regardless of the reason.
This is like the difference between a red-faced drunkard and someone that has a glass of wine at dinner.
-b.

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P.S. Brad Holian comments, "As to the title of the SLASHDOT post, 'Scientist Organizes Resistance To Polygraphs,' I would argue that I'm not really 'organizing' anything. I'm merely saying, 'What if 25% of the staff at LANL were to sign these short letters? Could LANS, LLC really fire that many, or would they change course?' The probability of any change in course is absolute zero, if no one says a word."
Brad: So far, I see you are joined by one LANL staff member; ergo, the probability may be small, but it's non-zero.
--Pat, the Dog