LANL: The Corporate Story

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Al Gore may be hated by some, particularly by those who love President Cheney, but he's gotten the future right, while Bodman is stuck head-down in the DOE sands. -Pat

Climate scientist calls for end of new coal power plants in U.S.

(Created: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 12:28 PM MST)

SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON — One of the world’s top climate scientists called for an end to building new coal-fired power plants in the United States because of their huge role in spewing out greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. In the next decade of so, 159 coal-fired power plants are scheduled to be built, generating enough power for about 96 million homes, according to a study last month by the U.S. Department of Energy. “There should be a moratorium on building any more coalfired power plants,” NASA scientist James Hansen told the National Press Club Monday. Hansen was one of the earliest top researchers to warn the world of global warming. Hansen’s call dovetails with an edict by the private equity group buying TXU, a massive Texas-based utility. The equity group, led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. And Texas Pacific Group, agreed to stop plans to build eight new coal-fired power plants, not to propose new coalfired plants outside Texas and to support mandatory national caps on emissions linked to global warming. This is the first time Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, has called for an end to coal burning. He said it’s the No. 1 solution to global warming, and that so far, no coal-fired plants can capture carbon dioxide emissions so they are not released into the atmosphere. While burning oil and natural gas also release carbon dioxide, they will run out and there’s more coal to burn and pollute the Earth, so it’s more of a threat, Hansen said. “Coal is the big amount,” Hansen said. “Until we have that clean coal power plant, we should not be building them. It is as clear as a bell.” Hansen, who said he was speaking as a private citizen, also told the press club that by mid-century all coal-fired power plants that do not capture and bury carbon dioxide “must eventually be bulldozed.” It’s foolish to build new ones if the emissions can’t be dealt with, he said. He said the increased efficiency could make up for the cutbacks in coal. Like the Bush administration, Hansen said he had high hopes for using cellulosic ethanol, or switchgrass, as an alternative fuel. But unlike the president’s plan which is big on this source for cars, Hansen proposes burning switchgrass for electrical power and sequestering the carbon dioxide emissions underwater so it would reduce the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide. Although switchgrass could reduce our dependence on oil, burning switchgrass in cars would not reduce emissions much, he said. Coal provides about half of the United States’ electricity, according to the Department of Energy. Hansen’s call “ought to be vetted by those who have an understanding of the energy demands placed on the U.S. economy,” said National Mining Association spokesman Luke Popovich. “When seen in light of those demands, then statements like that will appear unreasonable, to put it charitably.”

Pat:

PLEASE post this anonymously. I work at NNSA and I was asked to help draft a memo spinning the RRW decision to be announced sometime soon, probably later this week. It seems to me to be the worst way to go about this thing, but the Deciders at the top have reluctantly heeded the military on the POG and chosen the Los Alamos design. But NNSA's going to award the actual project to Livermore, believe it or not. It looks to me like there'll at least be a lot of grumbling at Livermore about having to work on a Los Alamos design, and complete demoralization of the Los Alamos team. Whatever you do with this, make sure you don't publish my e-mail address, or I'm cooked. Thanks.

-Anonymous

[Note to all contributors: When blogspot.com sends me an e-mail, the original sender's e-mail address has been wiped off clean. It keeps you truly anonymous, but at the same time, I had to append a question mark to the title of this post, just for honesty's sake. -Pat.]

UC exempt from paying $1.1 million for violations

By ANDY LENDERMAN | The Santa Fe New Mexican, February 27, 2007

The University of California violated nuclear safety rules at Los Alamos National Laboratory 15 times in 2005, but the university won't pay for it.

As a nonprofit institution, the university is exempt from the fines covered by a federal law that regulates nuclear safety at the lab. The university managed the lab until June 1, 2006.

The university would have paid a record-breaking $1.1 million in fines had they not been exempt, which would have been the largest single penalty ever in the history of the Department of Energy's nuclear safety program.

Monday's announcement by the National Nuclear Security Administration centers on three events from 2005: a March incident where four workers received minor uptakes of radioactive material; a July incident where at least two people were contaminated with americium-241 and a contaminated package was accidentally sent across the country; and a November inspection performed by the department that revealed many problems in the lab's environment, health and safety programs.

Tom D'Agostino, the head of the administration, wrote lab Director Michael Anastasio earlier this month that future fines against the new lab manager, Los Alamos National Security LLC, will not be waived.

"My (expectation) is the prompt and aggressive completion of corrective actions focused at resolving underlying causes will be one of your highest priorities," D'Agostino wrote. "This expectation will serve as the standard to which I will hold you during future enforcement deliberations, should they become necessary."

University spokesman Chris Harrington said in a statement Monday that the university has taken a number of corrective actions to fix the problems outlined by the department. "The University of California takes safety and security issues very seriously as part of our commitment to managing the national laboratories," Harrington said.

The university is one of four partners in Los Alamos National Security LLC, which also includes the construction giant Bechtel.

Pete Stockton of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight criticized the department for taking nearly two years to investigate and take action. "It's so far from the event," Stockton said. "And then of course there's no penalty."

The Department of Energy is authorized by the federal Price-Anderson Amendments Act of 1988 to regulate contract companies that break nuclear safety rules.

Excerpt from an anonymous contributor earlier on this blog:

--

LANL is all about classified work. Nuclear stockpile stewardship (most of the stockpile is still made up of our designs), non-proliferation and (nuclear) threat reduction and response. The very core of LANL's work is addressing the very defense threats that, short of biological warefare, scare the daylights out of decent people everywhere. So, these fools would like to make it go away ... leaving the United States dramatically weaker in the face of monstrous threats from many corners of the globe, and they want to do this for the purposes of political grand-standing, power and control.

It's not about security ... it's about power. If it was about security, we'd see the FBI before Congress for the tens of laptops they lose each year, which they can't account for holding classified information or not. We'd have seen equally public thrashing of Sandia for apparently attempting to cover up the successful hack of their network by hostile foreign powers. We'd have seen the FBI thrashed over the Hansen spy incident. Or the CIA over the Adrich Ames incident. Or the navy over the Jonathan Pollard spy incident.

Instead, what we've got is a continuous piling on, punishing time and again LANL personnel who struggle in the face of byzantine, incomprehensible policies, procedures and rules to work safely and securely. When an individual chooses to violate their oath, everyone pays except the one individual at the root of the deceit. The follow-on is more byzantine rules, policies and procedures, layered heavily on top of the already confusing, contradictory and vulnerable morass of existing rules. And the Congressionally demanded public floggings of the staff who continue to struggle under the crushing weight of management and policies that does not work.

Those among the LANL staff who want to know who got fired or disciplined over the incident need to understand that while it must feel really good and righteous to demand indiscriminant punitive actions, it also means that they themselves could be next. "Oh, never!" they might cry. Well, never say never. Because in the system we have that is ready to collapse under its own weight, a well intentioned, hard working, detail-oriented LANL employee can try as hard as they can to cover every angle and still be buried alive if something goes wrong with safety or security.

You may ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.

Experts in human performance improvement can certainly see the ongoing disaster the LANL management-by-appeasement-to-politicians approach has precipitated. The response to this and past security and safety incidents has effectively taught LANL personnel to adopt a siege mentality, which leaves management standing alone in the face of solving the real problems. The Director's proud and frequent statements about how he's disciplined 24 people should be a shameful admission that he is destroying the incentive for staff to bring security or safety incidents or problems to management's attention. When it's widely known that anyone within sight of a problem will be subject to a witch hunt by HR-ER on the behalf of the Director and devastated by the results, why in the world would anyone trust them with the knowledge that a problem exists?

Congress simply feeds this fire of incompetence by stimulating this defective and destructive cycle of failure.

If LANL is to improve and perform, it has to make it easy, automatic and rewarding to work safely and securely, and it must tap the real-world understanding the personnel have of the vulnerabilities and solutions to our safety and security problems. It must make it safe for individuals to admit mistakes and help the institution learn how to prevent them in the future.

As it is, bureaucrats write new layers of confusion to lay down on top of the rotting old layers of confusion. While they try hard, they have no idea what the real high-probability, high-consequence vulnerabilities really are. They only make the situation worse by giving management the false belief that they've really got the problem fixed this time. It's not going to stop until LANL management, and Congress, stop circling the wagons and firing inward at the lab personnel.

The Laboratory is living in abject fear, which is driving many many people to shut up and keep their head down, depriving the institution of the very experts who could actually be part of the solution. The Lab's done this for years, and it's doing it again, expecting a different outcome.

To remove classified work from the lab is to kill the lab, and probably most of our nuclear knowledge. The capabilities of the Laboratory are totally embodied in the people and the history of our work which lives there. It cannot be transplanted like a tulip bulb. Once it's wiped out, it's gone forever. Whatever might be reconstituted elsewhere will be a different place, starting from scratch.

I'm sure Iran, North Korea, and other proliferant threats to our world would greatly benefit from the setback.

-Anon.

Lab: Violations led to injuries

Associated Press, Monday, February 26, 2007

Subcontractors for Los Alamos National Laboratory did not follow lab safety procedures before a construction accident last year that injured two lab workers, an internal lab investigation found.

The June 28 accident could have been prevented, but lab officials failed to correct unsafe working conditions, did not effectively enforce safety requirements and failed to consider the history of one of its subcontractors, Magnum Steel Constructors, the report said.

In 2003, a Magnum worker died in a work-related accident in Bernalillo, and the company was cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for six serious violations, investigators said.

Magnum workers were using a crane to move a 1,500-pound metal staircase at the lab's Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility last summer when the structure slipped from its rigging, fell more than 50 feet and struck two men.

One of the workers received leg injuries and the other suffered multiple leg fractures and a broken pelvis, the report says.

Representatives with Magnum and Pace Iron Works - a lab subcontractor that hired Magnum to help on the project - said Friday they hadn't seen the report but insisted the accident was unavoidable.

"They worked like they normally work at a job site, as far as I'm concerned," said Shaun Myers, a quality control officer with Pace. "Nobody wants to get hurt. They deal with steel all day long. They don't want to do it in an unsafe manner."

Investigators, however, found that a "poor rigging technique" was directly responsible for the accident, which "very easily could have resulted in two fatalities."

In the past, federal oversight officials in the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration have investigated serious lab accidents.

But NNSA, which is giving more oversight responsibilities to the lab's new corporate manager, opted last summer to let the lab take the lead on last summer's investigation.

Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said the report should demonstrate that the lab's internal investigations are as rigorous, if not more so, than the government's.

"We're harder on ourselves than the DOE is," Roark said.

"An Inconvenient Truth" won the Oscar for Best Documentary. Could it be that Los Alamos National Laboratory will have a second chance, a new future? Could it have other futures than a plutonium pit factory and a nuclear fuel reprocessing reactor? Is the wind changing? Is the Baby Boomer Generation slowly waking up?

Stay tuned. Maybe all is not lost. Maybe the tide is going out for the corporate elite. For now, give a cheer and take a sip of champagne. Atta boy, Moses! (-Best of luck in getting the Nobel Peace Prize, too.)

[Also, two "Al's" won Oscars: Al Gore (Moses) and a local Santa Fe boy who made good, Alan Arkin, the memorable grandfather in "Little Miss Sunshine" and author of the subversive children's book, "The Lemming Connection." Congratulations, Al and Al!]

Dear Pat,
I thought you might find interesting the following articles, one from MIT’s “The tech”, another from the SF Chronicle about Bechtel and the “Big Dig” in Boston. Bechtel’s corporate managers place a high value on superglue type “fixes”, and this is being manifested at LANL. Anything to get the [recordable] rates down, is the motto, safety be damned.
-Anonymous

Attorney General Calls Big Dig Tunnel Ceiling Collapse ...A Crime...

By Scott Allen, THE BOSTON GLOBE, Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Declaring that a fatal tunnel ceiling collapse in Boston last summer was “a crime,“ Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly said Monday that his office’s investigation into the July 10 death of Milena Del Valle has convinced him that people and companies connected with the tunnel’s construction should face manslaughter charges.

Reilly said the investigation, including a review of 400,000 pages of construction documents, suggests that the design and construction of the tunnel ceiling in the Interstate 90 connector was so reckless that it was criminal, a belief Reilly said he has had since first seeing the Del Valle family’s flattened car.

He said that project managers overseeing ceiling construction in 1999 knew that the bolts holding up the ceiling sometimes slipped out unexpectedly and that they pressed ahead with construction anyway. Likewise, he said, managers knew there were problems with the training of some workers putting up the ceiling, but they did not double-check their work. He also said the ceiling design - held up by epoxy bolts that essentially are super-glued to the tunnel roof - was questionable and illegal in some states today.

“They knew enough at some point to stop it, and they didn’t do it,” Reilly said during an afternoon press conference, referring to managers from Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the joint venture that oversaw the Big Dig project, and Modern Continental Construction Co., the firm that built the ceiling.

“The clock was ticking,” he said. “The fuse was lit. It was just a matter of time” before the ceiling collapsed.

“It is clear to me now that they didn’t do it right, and the consequences were grave,” Reilly said.

At his request, a special grand jury has been hearing witnesses since last month, and Reilly has not asked the grand jury to indict anyone.

He said he would first seek to recover the state’s financial damages due to the accident, which has cost at least $30 million in tunnel repair and investigation costs while causing headaches for drivers. The tunnel, a major route to Logan International Airport, has been partially closed for more than four months.

Reilly announced plans to file a civil lawsuit against 15 companies connected with the tunnel ceiling project, including Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff. He declined to say how much money he wants from the lawsuit - expected to be filed in Suffolk Superior Court Tuesday instead of Monday, as his staff had expected - but a state official familiar with the case said he expected damages to exceed $150 million.

Normally, prosecutors wait for criminal cases to be concluded before filing a civil lawsuit, but Reilly said he didn’t want to wait because of a requirement in state law that lawsuits over faulty construction be filed within six years of the project’s completion. In the connector tunnel, a single ramp opened to the public on Nov. 29, 2000, making the sixth anniversary Wednesday. “I’m not personally sure that the opening of a ramp triggers it, but I am not taking any chances,” Reilly said.

[For the in-depth San Francisco Chronicle article, click on the title of this post.]

Hearings this week on DOE reactor plan
LOS ALAMOS MONITOR STAFF REPORT, Sunday, February 25, 2007

A public hearing to discuss the Department of Energy's plan to begin reprocessing the spent fuel from U.S. power reactors will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Hilltop House Best Western, 400 Trinity Drive, in the La Vista Room.
The meeting is one of three to be held in New Mexico, along with a meeting in Hobbs on Feb. 26 and in Roswell, Feb. 27. GNEP is considering 13 national sites for one or more of the proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) initiatives

The plan proposes that the advanced fuel cycle research facility be located at a DOE site. Los Alamos National Laboratory is among the sites under consideration, along with the Savannah River Site, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Hanford Site. Other locations, including Hobbs and Roswell, are under consideration as a location for a nuclear fuel recycling center and/or an advanced recycling center.
As DOE describes the GNEP recycling plan, spent fuel would be received from commercial nuclear reactors and processed in a nuclear-fuel recycling center. Reprocessing separates plutonium and uranium from the other types of nuclear materials which would become waste. The reusable material would be mostly consumed in an advanced recycling reactor, and the reduced volume of non-reusable constituents would be converted to waste forms for eventual storage in a geologic repository or some other long-term storage facility.

Along with the national programmatic activities, the way the whole program fits together, and site-specific consideration about where to locate the main facilities, the environmental impact statement would examine the impact of two complementary international initiatives.
Via a "reliable fuel services program," the U.S. would cooperate with countries that have advanced nuclear programs to supply nuclear fuel services to other countries that refrain from pursuing enrichment or recycling facilities to make their own nuclear fuel. A second initiative would develop "proliferation-resistant" nuclear power reactors suitable for use in developing economies.

The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a press release today calling DOE's plan misguided and urging local citizens to attend the local scoping meetings to express their concerns.
The Bush administration is requesting a FY 2008 budget of $405 million for the GNEP program, a large fraction of which will be directed toward reprocessing the spent fuel from nuclear power reactors.

"Any community hosting a reprocessing facility will by necessity become a long-term dump for spent fuel shipped from nuclear plants around the country," said Edwin Lyman, senior staff scientist at UCS. "Even if this spent fuel is eventually reprocessed, the residual highly radioactive wastes will have to stay where they are generated unless another site can be found to take them - an unlikely prospect."

The comment period runs through April 4, 2007.

An Anonymous comment from an earlier post:

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

It is rumored that this might be the week that the RRW announcement is made. There are 3 potential outcomes of this announcement (none of them good for LANL or consistent with the POG technical recommendation). The scenarios are:

I. LLNL is instructed to implement the LANL design (for the Navy)
II. LLNL is authorized to move forward with their own design (for the Navy)
III. Some version of frankenbomb is given to LLNL as the lead

It might be insightful to have an informal survey of how the weapons staff might respond to the announcement. Many in the weapons program have been kicking around some of the options. The most popular staff responses are:

1. Stay at LANL, but leave the weapons program
2. Go to work at SNL
3. Leave LANL in disgust
4. Stay at LANL in the weapons program, but cut back to a 40 hr week
5. Make no changes

Anyone bold enough to state what you will do (anonymously of course)? This may provide the LANs and NNSA boys a hint at things coming their way (even though they don’t really value weapons experience).

Don't take it from me -- listen to this old guy, "Son of Oppy," boys and girls (-and Congresspersons and Senators):

--

As a real old-timer, let me suggest to all of you that the first priority of Congress should be the annihilation of NNSA (and the permanent firing of every single political hack therein). The second thing should be the abrogation of the contract with LANS. Thirdly and finally, a nonprofit entity should be established to run LANL's retirement and benefits system. By then, any leftover micromanagement by DOE will seem like a relatively tiny burden on the backs of the weary workers at LANL. Trust me.

-Son of Oppy

--

When NNSA goes away, even LANS won't seem so bad ...
--Pat

--

And now, a comment on "Son of Oppy"'s post from (yup, you guessed it!) Anonymous:

There's only one teeny, tiny problem with "Son of Oppy"'s suggestion, and that is:

What if nobody in Congress (House OR Senate) really cares about LANL's gradually dwindling ability to do first-rate science? Bingaman and Udall seem to care, but is that enough? Is there any time to waste? I hope to God that some thoughtful Congressional and/or Senatorial staff members are reading this blog, or else we may slide beyond the tipping point one of these fine, blustery spring days. (By "tipping point," I mean the loss of morale, loss of experienced scientists, and loss of ability to attract bright, young scientists gets so far out of control, that LANL cannot be saved as a viable research lab for years to come.)

--Anonymous

Interesting,

I noticed both the San Francisco Bechtel office and the San Francisco Chronicle spending quite a bit of time reading this blog post today:

http://lanl-the-corporate-story.blogspot.com/2007/02/safety-at-lanl-statistical-game.html

I wonder if an expose on LANS' cooking the books on safety statistics is in the works.

-Pat, the Nosy Dog

This was just sent in by KSFR's Bill Dupuy (Santa Fe Public Radio Station):

Supervisor of troubled Texas nuclear plant moved to Los Alamos (Podcast)

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/ksfr/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1044627

LOS ALAMOS (2007-02-23) -- The federal official in charge of overseeing a Texas nuclear-weapons plant where workers are complaining about safety issues has been transferred to oversee the Los Alamos National Laboratory's nuclear weapons operations.

Los Alamos Site Office Manager Dan Glenn has not returned our call for comment. But we talk to a watchdog group about charges critical of the Texas facility that were aired in a Los Angeles Times article.

Listen to the story.

LANL has not dropped off the radar screen in Washington. Here were a couple of our more interesting visitors this week. Click on an image to enlarge.

-Pat, The Dog

Who says that DOE can't do a lessons learned? The current RFP for Hanford has wording to the effect that if the program manager leaves before his 2 year obligation is up, the contractor award fee is reduced $500,000 per year. If any of the other key personnel leave, the award fee will be dropped $100,000 per year.

So, why did Mitchell leave after just 5 months at LANL?

-Pat, The Dog

Each January NMSR Reports, the newsletter of "New Mexicans for Science and Reason" (www.nmsr.org), publishes it "Best and Worst Awards." They're prepared by NSMR President Dave Thomas, a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

One of the Annual Awards for the year that just ended goes to Sandia
National Labs --

"The 'National Lab for Hire' Award to Sandia National Labs, for letting a
parade of young-earth creationists promote their pseudoscience and hawk
their books in the Steve Schiff Auditorium."

-- From the March/April 2007 issue of "Skeptical Inquirer."

----

[But wait a minute: Doesn't LANL get one for Anastasio's bringing Judith Miller to the Lab, she who is a former reporter from the New York Times, who aided President Cheney in his rush to war in Iraq? (Remember the WMDs that weren't?) Seems a little unfair; Sandia always gets the award, while Los Alamos get left holding the bag ... At least LANL didn't score in the Darwin Awards. -As far as I know.

--Pat]

LANL staff appear to be stunned by recent news; we all seem to be waiting for any number of "other" shoes to drop. By my count here are some of the shoes that are up in the air:

1. the results of Stupak's FBI briefing,
2. repercussions from Dingell's latest threats to slash LANL's work load, and to enlist the GAO to help him do it,
3. fallout from the claims of another LANS attempt at a cover up, this time regarding the latest two on-site accidents, both of which resulted in Pu uptake by glovebox operators,
   
4. repercussions from both Joe Martz and John Pedicini having gone public with some of the sleazy goings-on regarding the RRW competition, and
5. related to (4) above, allegations that our very own UC director, Anastasio, has been instrumental in trying to force the RRW decision to go to his old Alma Mater.

There's been no news today, but when the next news item breaks, I suspect it will be another doozy.

-Pat, The Dog

From today's Santa Fe New Mexican.

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/57424.html

Los Alamos: Obelisks for a bleak future

Anti-weapons activist Ed Grothus holds a model of one of two monuments he plans to have built in Los Alamos as a public-art project to commemorate the first atomic explosion. The two granite obelisks arrived Thursday on the flatbed trailers behind him. Grothus plans to store the obelisks at his Black Hole business in Los Alamos until a place can be secured for them. Tom Sharpe | The New Mexican February 23, 2007 Criticism builds as anti-weapons activist prepares 'doomsday' monument LOS ALAMOS -- Ed Grothus, an anti-weapons activist for 40 years in the hometown of the atomic bomb, has a new public-art project: a large granite monument with inscriptions to commemorate the first atomic explosion. Grothus envisions what he calls his "doomsday stones" someday playing a role similar to that of the Rosetta Stone, which helped researchers decipher hieroglyphics long after ancient Egyptian civilization had faded away. "I'm almost certain we're going to blow ourselves away," the 83-year-old said Thursday. "And when we do that, there will be nobody around. But when the little green men come, they will be able to read everything on earth when they discover my doomsday stones." A pair of 22-ton, 33-foot-high white granite obelisks, quarried in China, arrived Thursday at Grothus' store, the Black Hole, where he sells items salvaged from Los Alamos National Laboratory. His plans call for mounting the obelisks on 52-inch black granite cubes inscribed with the story of Los Alamos in 15 languages. The obelisks would be topped with black granite spheres, 3 feet in diameter. So far, Grothus said, he has spent about $150,000 of his own money on the monument. But he isn't sure where he'll put it. In November, he pitched his idea to the four-member Los Alamos Public Art Advisory Council, which has authorized various statues and plaques around Fuller Lodge, a historic building in the community that grew up around the nuclear-weapons laboratory. However, the council has yet to set a public meeting on the proposed monument. Grothus said an ideal locale would be one of the mesas east of Los Alamos. He imagines something like the Cristo Redentor, or Christ the Redeemer, statue overlooking Río de Janeiro, Brazil, from atop Corcovado Mountain. "It would be neat if we mounted them at the end of a mesa and lighted them at night," he said. "You could see them for miles. But because of the doomsday stones and the message there, it should be an accessible mesa." Not everyone likes his idea. Stephen Stoddard, 82, a former Republican state senator who worked as a ceramics engineer at the lab for 30 years, is among the skeptics. Stoddard is part of a group of military and lab veterans, the Los Alamos Education Group, formed to counter the anti-nuclear Los Alamos Study Group. He attended the November meeting to hear what Grothus proposed to inscribe on the stones. "It was pretty inflammatory stuff," Stoddard said. "Primarily, he said, " 'I'm putting this here for the day when the little green men come down, after we've blown ourselves to hell, so they'll know who developed these bombs.' " To Stoddard, "it was more of a degrading thing to the effort to really save lives (by eliminating the need to invade Japan to end World War II). ... I don't think we need to be memorialized as the place that built the bomb." Grothus offered to give the Los Alamos Education Group space to put its own inscription on the monument. However, Stoddard said he doesn't find that equitable. "At first, we thought maybe he was beginning to relent -- at least seeing our side of the thing too, and there might be some way to compromise," Stoddard said. "But when we saw the projected comments, we said, 'No, no, this is definitely not fair to Los Alamos and Los Alamos history.' " Grothus became a political activist while working as a machinist for the lab from 1949 to 1969. He said he began questioning the Vietnam War, to the chagrin of his peers, and in 1968 was an alternate delegate for Minnesota's U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. After retiring from the lab, Grothus and his wife, Margaret, bought a gift store called the Shalako Shop and started Los Alamos Sales Co. to market outmoded lab equipment. They began to trade in real estate, acquiring the Grace Lutheran Church and the adjacent Mesa Market grocery on Arkansas Avenue, which he converted into the Black Hole. In recent years, he has shown up at rallies on the Aug. 6 anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing to carry banners apologizing for the use of bombs developed at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. In the 1997, he was investigated by the Secret Service for sending cans of food, relabeled as "organic plutonium," to the Clinton White House. Several documentaries have focused on Grothus' activities. For more than a decade, he made a trek to Santa Fe each Nov. 1 to tape to the door of what is now called the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi his "sexual reformation creed" -- calling for acceptance of sex education, population control, homosexuality, birth control and artificial insemination. This act, he said, commemorated the start of the Protestant Reformation in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses protesting Roman Catholic dogma to the door of a church in Wittenburg, Germany. Grothus said he does these "notorious things" because he wants people to know how the nuclear industry endangers civilization. He said his monument isn't meant to celebrate the Trinity Site test in New Mexico in 1945, "just to make note of it." "I've offended some people in town," Grothus said. "Some people think I'm the conscience of the town. Other people think I'm a real pain in the ass."

-----

[One could ask whether "Los Alamos: Obelisks for a bleak future" means a bleak long-term future for mankind or a bleak short-term future for the Laboratory ...

--Pat]

Funds dispersed to homesteaders
Bad feelings remain from 60-year grievance

ROGER SNODGRASS, Los Alamos Monitor Assistant Editor, Thursday, February 22, 2007

More than 60 years after they lost their lands to the U.S. government for a secret project in the mountains of New Mexico, heirs of Hispanic homesteaders who claimed their property was taken improperly are beginning to receive compensation. Sen. Pete Domenici's office announced Tuesday that a down payment of $4.7 million would be dispersed immediately to 394 claimants, to be followed by another 97 payments on Friday. The payments range upwards from a few hundred dollars to $100,000, the result of efforts by three generations of aggrieved property-owners, Hispanic activists and determined individuals who battled the U.S. government for recognition of what they considered in many cases, the theft of their land. Domenici's announcement said the payments are being distributed through the NNSA Oak Ridge Payment Center from the Pajarito Plateau fund, a $10 million account the senator arranged to be added to the Department of Energy's Budget two years ago. A spokesman in Domenici's office said the disbursement was further delayed in "working out who got what." "It was quite an intricate formula," said Matt Letourneau, the senator's deputy press secretary. "They had to factor in not just land, but livestock."

The funds are intended to settle the claims of Hispanic homesteaders who were removed or whose property interest was purchased by the Corps of Engineers to make way for the facility, known first as Project Y, that became Los Alamos National Laboratory. Charges of forced removal, underhanded and heavy-handed tactics and discriminatory treatment toward the Hispanic farmers have embittered some of the participants of the controversial land seizures that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the U.S. into World War II.

Although the list of claimants and the amounts that were paid were not disclosed by the Department of Energy, it seems likely that few of the original claimants survived to see their settlement payments. Jose Gonzalez, a World War II veteran, one of the last surviving named plaintiffs who lived in El Rancho, died last week, said Joe Gutierrez, a program leader in renewable energy at the laboratory. He also mentioned the Gomez brothers, who were born and raised and resided on the Pajarito Plateau all of their lives until they were evicted. "Unfortunately, they passed away before they saw justice," Gutierrez said. Gutierrez was the guiding force of the Homesteader Association that began a concerted push for justice while current N.M. Gov. Bill Richardson was Secretary of Energy. Richardson, and all the politicians rebuffed their efforts, Gutierrez said.

Chuck Montano, a former head of the Hispanic Round Table, said he became involved in the dispute as an outgrowth of laboratory lay-offs in 1995 that were seen as discriminatory toward Hispanics and ultimately settled in court. Of the homesteader settlement, he said, "It's long overdue." He agreed that little came from Richardson's promises to help at the time, and that "forced the homesteaders to take the congressional route."

Gutierrez said and news reports in 2000 confirmed that then-Sec. Richardson offered the homesteaders a parcel of laboratory land for a monument to the Hispanic settlers and other assistance. "I looked at it," said Gutierrez. "It was unusable - wetlands, the skating rink - a place where the sun doesn't shine." It was the land through which the bypass road is now planned. Guitierrez said he has the whole history documented and plans to write a book. "We got shortchanged in 1942. We got shortchanged again with this settlement," he said.

You might as well read about it here, because you can bet your fuzzy butt that you won't be getting it from LANS.













First, from the New Mexican: LANL: Glove-box work back to normal after plutonium exposure

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/57360.html

Then there's this: House decries 'LANL problem' Mostly a Roger Snodgrass dupe of yesterday's news about Dingell's fresh threat to take work away from LANL

http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2007/02/21/headline_news/news03.txt

A reader just sent in another story by Roger Snodgrass entitled Funds dispersed to homesteaders:

http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2007/02/21/headline_news/news01.txt

And then this article with an interesting title, but which is mostly background fluff:
Dropping the Bomb
Government Reconsiders UC-Managed Los Alamos National Laboratories

Finally, a John Arnold piece from the Albuquerque Journal:



LANL Could Lose Classified Projects
By John Arnold, Journal Staff Writer, Thursday, February 22, 2007

Congressional leaders aren't finished scrutinizing Los Alamos National Laboratory over its security failures. Members of a powerful House committee have asked Congress' investigative arm, the General Accountability Office, to evaluate the feasibility of moving classified activities to other laboratories "where there is a better track record with respect to security."

In a Feb. 16 letter to Comptroller General David Walker, House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders said repeated security problems have cast doubt on whether lab manager Los Alamos National Security and the National Nuclear Security Administration"are capable of assuring adequate safety, security, and sound business management practices." The letter comes less than a month after lawmakers grilled LANL and NNSA officials over the lab's most recent security breach, when more than 1,500 classified documents were discovered during a drug raid at the home of a former LANL subcontractor.

At the Jan. 30 hearing, LANL director Michael Anastasio outlined a detailed response to the breach and said he had disciplined more than two dozen lab employees following a lab investigation. But in their letter to the GAO, committee leaders cite LANL's history of security problems and said lab officials haven't followed through on repeated promises to solve security problems. Since the late 1990s, LANL has dealt with a number of high-profile security lapses, including the temporary disappearance of two computer hard-drives containing nuclear weapons information and the case of Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwan-born U.S. citizen who admitted to mishandling nuclear secrets. The Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has held 12 hearings on LANL security, the committee's letter notes.

"More dramatic steps are necessary, and we intend to develop and implement a range of options to solve problems at LANL," states the letter, signed by committee chairman Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., and three other committee leaders. They ask the GAO to inventory LANL's major defense, science and energy programs and to evaluate how the lab can reduce its volume of classified material. Lawmakers also want to know what lab programs could be readily moved "without impairing national security activities."

Members of the state's congressional delegation quickly defended LANL, saying that the lab's new management team— which took over operations last year—is working aggressively to resolve security problems. "I don't think they've gotten enough credit for that," Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said in an interview Wednesday. "The lab by definition is focused on projects which in many cases require classification," he said. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., called Dingell's letter "a dubious response to an issue that deserves productive responses. This newest House push against LANL amounts to unnecessary and counter-productive piling-on," Domenici said in a statement issued Tuesday.

Lab watchdogs, however, praised House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders for continuing to investigate LANL and said other weapons labs should be subject to similar reviews. "It's wonderful that somebody in Congress is finally beginning to take oversight of the nuclear weapons laboratories, or at least of Los Alamos, more seriously," said Los Alamos Study Group executive director Greg Mello.

Dingell also wants the GAO to examine how federal nuclear weapons officials will consider security track records as they restructure the country's nuclear weapons complex. Under the restructuring plan, known as Complex 2030, Los Alamos is one of five sites that NNSA is considering for a next-generation nuclear weapons factory.

Nuclear Plant Safety Is Called Into Question
By Ralph Vartabedian, The Los Angeles Times, Wednesday 21 February 2007

Amarillo, Texas - Electrical failures have shut down the plant. The roof has leaked. Decrepit machinery dates back more than 40 years. Safety lapses led inspectors to levy fines twice within two years. And employees, under deadline pressure, complain they often are worked past the point of exhaustion.
...
The rituals and procedures inside those cells are supposed to be as strict as any operating room, part of a safety culture that reduces any chance of an accidental nuclear explosion to one in 100 million.

But lately, outside experts are questioning whether those safety margins are eroding. Federal investigators are trying to assess the overall safety of the plant, which employs 3,300, amid troubling safety snafus and what employees call an atmosphere of intimidation.

Energy Department officials acknowledge that the plant has fallen behind schedule on reliability testing of weapons. Long delays have occurred in decommissioning thousands of surplus warheads to satisfy disarmament pacts. They also concede the plant has maintenance problems and has violated safety procedures. But they insist there is no danger of a conventional or nuclear explosion.
...
The backdrop to problems at Pantex is a growing concern that the Energy Department has mismanaged the nuclear weapons program. Last year, the Defense Department bluntly said that it had lost confidence in the Energy Department, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman has acknowledged.
...
Conditions at Pantex began deteriorating at the end of the Cold War in 1989, when federal managers started starving the plant of funds. Billions of dollars instead were funneled into nuclear weapons laboratories, giving scientists new supercomputer centers, powerful lasers and physics instruments.

By about 2000, the leaks in Pantex's roof were so bad that workers had to cover bombs with plastic when it rained. In summer 2004, a power overload tripped transformers, causing a plant wide blackout. In July, another electrical failure occurred when rats gnawed through wiring, according to weekly safety reports. And in August, a storm swept over the plant that left standing puddles in nuclear production areas.
...
Dan Swaim, BWXT president at Pantex [a partner of LANS, LLC, who runs LANL], acknowledged that both incidents broke safety rules and were unacceptable, but he said there was no risk of a disaster.
...
In an interview, Rowesome, who retired in 2004, said he did not want to alarm the public, but he believes Energy Department officials are so "overly confident" and "complacent" about safety that they are not alert to deteriorating safety conditions.
...
Meanwhile, Pantex has fallen behind schedule in performing critical surveillance tests required by laboratory scientists to certify the reliability of the bombs, Schoenbauer acknowledged. "That backlog has not affected the lab's ability to certify weapons," he said.
...
John Duncan, who until four years ago headed surveillance testing at Pantex for Sandia National Laboratory, agreed that testing problems at Pantex are undermining confidence in the stockpile. Even today, the certifications of nuclear weapons are being made with less certainty than scientists should have, Duncan and Levine said.

"I knew we were in trouble when I started attending meetings in Washington and was told to work better, faster, cheaper," said Duncan. "They started sending people to the plant with little weapons experience."
...
The Bush administration has ordered the plant to increase dismantlements by 50 percent this year.

Another task looming for Pantex is modernizing the W76 missile warhead used on the Trident submarine. Hundreds of W76 warheads will have to be disassembled and rebuilt with new parts. Swaim said the W76 program will begin on schedule later this year.
...
Although the jobs are sought after in Amarillo, an anonymous letter surfaced in November alleging that the plant was in serious disrepair, BWXT management was letting safety slip, and employees were forced to work more than 80 hours a week in some cases.

The stress of working with nuclear weapons has been exacerbated by an abusive management, according to Henry Bagwell, the former chief of the Metals Trade Council, the principal union at the plant. "They treat people badly," said Bagwell, who left last year after 24 years at the plant.

-----

[Sound familiar, LANL people? Are you scared sh*tless, LLNL people? The Beast is coming for you next! Read the whole story by clicking on the title.

--Pat, the Dog]

Panel may push for removal of secret work
By ANDY LENDERMAN | Santa Fe New Mexican, February 21, 2007

A congressional committee wants to formally study whether classified work at Los Alamos National Laboratory should be taken away and moved to other weapons labs because of security lapses at Los Alamos in recent years.

The Democratic-controlled committee, which is seeking a General Accounting Office investigation, also wants to look at ways to make LANL's classified work area smaller and more consolidated.

"The repeated failures to protect national security assets have cast doubt on whether Los Alamos National Security, LLC ... and the National Nuclear Security Administration are capable of assuring adequate safety, security and sound business management practices," U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., wrote to the GAO. "More dramatic steps are necessary, and we intend to develop and implement a range of options to solve the problems at LANL."

New Mexico's senators quickly stuck up for the lab and the private company that has managed it since June 1.

"The new contractor has been managing the lab for less than a year and already it has taken some aggressive steps toward tightening security -- and I'm sure more steps will follow," U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said in a statement. "LANL scientists are committed to producing world-class science in our nation's best interest, and I believe they deserve our strong support."

U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., called Dingell's move "a dubious response to an issue that deserves productive responses. The lab and the Energy Department are working to implement reforms now at Los Alamos. This newest House push against LANL amounts to unnecessary and counter-productive piling-on."

He also said more needs to be done regarding security at Los Alamos and other labs, which face increasing cyber-security threats.

A lab spokesman had not seen the letter and was not prepared to comment Tuesday evening.

Dingell, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, noted that in the past eight years, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has held 12 hearings on security, safety and management problems at Los Alamos.

Dingell asked the GAO to do three things. First, to come up with an inventory of all the programs at the lab and their cost.

Second, to evaluate how to "reduce and consolidate the volume of classified material and the size of the security footprint at LANL, as a means to make it more manageable, and whether it is feasible to move classified activities to other weapons labs where there is a better track record with respect to security."

And third, Dingell requested the GAO look at how NNSA evaluates a facility's security track record as it makes plans to reorganize the nuclear-weapons complex.

Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, which advocates nuclear disarmament, said he recently returned from a trip to Washington, D.C. "The Energy and Commerce Committee is serious about looking at the mission of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and so are a lot of other people in Washington," he said. He also said the committee is looking at the scale of the lab.

Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico applauded Dingell's move and said Congress should also look at how NNSA provides oversight at Los Alamos.

A veteran Los Alamos scientist questioned the idea of moving classified work out of Los Alamos. "The contribution that we make to classified programs would be lost," scientist David Carroll said. "The quality of the work, the continuity of the work and that kind of thing should not be taken lightly, given the overwhelming 60-year history of the contributions that Los Alamos has made to national security."

[Just to show how fair and balanced this blogmeister (or -mistress) is:]

The New LANL Blog

Written by John Fleck, Tuesday, 20 February 2007

I don't know who Pat the Dog is. And therein lies a problem.

Back in the day, at the heart of Los Alamos National Laboratory's shutdown troubles, a guy named Doug Roberts, a computer scienctist [sic] at Los Alamos, started a frank and deeply useful blog that became a central gathering place for discussions of the lab's troubles. Among labbies and people like us who follow the lab, it was known simply as "the blog." LANL the Real Story was useful for a lot of reasons. But much of its strength derived from the fact that Roberts signed his name. In the Internet world, signing one's name has value. It creates accountability, makes one more conscious of one's words.

Anonymity in the Internet world, on the other hand, creates what psychologists have dubbed "online disinhibition effect ". The disinhibition - the willingness to say things on line that you would never say to someone's face - exists in Internet communications where one signs one's name. But it is far more likely to show up behind the cloak of anonymity. Anonymity allows one to be vile and stupid with no need to be held accountable later for what one says.

You could see this in Roberts' blog. He was civil, thoughtful, hard-hitting at times, but consistently decent. There was a core of contributors who signed their names. They were great. Anonymous posters in the comments on his blog could be uncivil, vile, and often useless. I used to read Roberts' posts, but I largely skipped the comment threads.

There's a new blog on the scene, focused on the recent Bechtel takeover of Los Alamos management - LANL the Corporate Story. In contrast to Roberts' openness, the new blog is run by "Pat the Dog." Pat, apparently a current lab employee, no doubt has good reasons for withholding his or her identity. But Pat's anonymity has led to rather a surfeit of disinhibition.

A recent cheap shot at the Los Alamos Monitor is a great example. If I knew who Pat the Dog was, I'd be able to have a thoughtful conversation with him or her about the underlying issue of media standards of information gathering and reporting versus blog standards, and why his criticism of Monitor reporter Roger Snodgrass is poorly informed. If Pat had to sign his or her name, he or she might be more circumspect about trashing the integrity and ethics of the Monitor reporter with so little evidence to back up the charge.

There's been some great stuff on the new blog, especially the post last week by John Pedicini, the nuclear weapons designer working on the new Reliable Replacement Warhead. It's worth noting that Pedicini signed his name and stood behind his words. (And John, if you're reading, be sure to invite me to your going away party! [Happy-Face sign]).

But mostly, the new blog has just devolved into a bunch of anonymous complaining and whining . Too bad.

----

[As for "anonymity," I will remain in that state for the duration--sorry, John. And I think a significantly larger number of people are choosing to remain anonymous when they post to this blog than Doug's, because of the 'atmosfear' at LANL these days under corporate management and intimidation--see, for example, the earlier post on reporting of safety incidents and the pleth of comments thereupon.

Do you think, John, that all these people from group leader on down are just flippin' paranoids? Wackos? Nutcases? Why more so now than even under Nanos' Infamous Shutdown? Oh, yeah, you always get the outspoken types who impolitely raise their hands and ask for simple, straightforward, but embarrassing clarifications from managers (even signing their names to posts or letters to the papers), but there are plenty others at the Lab who should not be held to some inhuman level of perfection you newspaper reporters seem to prefer. (I might just mention the name of one "reporter" for you to think about when you demand perfection of LANL employees: Judith Miller, formerly of the NYT.)

Now, I promise to do a better job in future of keeping in check my distaste for what looks to me like in-house ("pet") reporters, but I will ask you and your colleagues to do more assiduous digging and questioning of the manager class. They have much to answer for, believe me. And my mission is to provide as fair a forum for my fellow workers as I can for holding managers accountable.

(By the way, Doug's blog was accused at times of descending into a swamp of "anonymous complaining and whining." But you expect that from management shills, both inside and outside the institution; it's just part of the "joys" of being a blogger. Have a nice day. -No Happy-Face sign.)

--Pat, who fetches the paper in the mornings]

We get the news a month later, from a local news station. Welcome to life under LANS.

http://www.krqe.com/expanded.asp?ID=19944

Source: AP
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- Los Alamos National Laboratory has suspended the handling of plutonium in gloveboxes.

A glovebox is a sealed workspace that allows lab workers to handle radioactive materials safely from a separate area.

The suspension of the work comes after two lab workers were exposed to plutonium through cuts they suffered in separate accidents while working in gloveboxes last month.

Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said the amount of plutonium was relatively small.

But he said the seriousness of the accidents is associated with the exposure to open wounds.

Roark said both workers are responding well to therapies.

Lab managers were informed of the incidents Jan. 25 and immediately suspended handling plutonium in gloveboxes pending a full review, he added.

Click the image to enlarge.

Terry "There Is No FBI Investigation of Mitchell" Wallace is checking himself out on the blog (he's a regular visitor here).

Pat, looks like RRW is losing more and more support...

Nuclear arsenal proposal blasted
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER, Inside Bay Area, 02/19/2007

SAN FRANCISCO — Experts assembled by the world's largest scientific organization declined in a report Sunday to endorse a Bush administration plan for redesigning all U.S. nuclear weapons, citing a lack of reliable cost estimates and of proven methods for verifying whether the new hydrogen bombs will work without test explosions.

The new weapons could lead to hardier bombs that are easier to make and harder for terrorists to detonate, but the cost benefits "are less certain and would only be established in the long term," a panel of nuclear weapons experts said

In presentations here before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, weapons officials and military leaders pressed the case for remaking the U.S. arsenal with more durable nuclear explosives, as well as more modern safety and security features than are present in existing weapons built in the 1970s and'80s.

"If the policy is to have nuclear weapons, the policy ought to be to make them as secure as possible, as safe as possible. Anything less is irresponsible," said Gen. James Cartwright, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, the military branch over all U.S. nuclear forces.

Every year directors of the nation's three nuclear weapons labs and top Energy and Defense department officials certify the safety, security and reliable operation of the nuclear arsenal without nuclear testing, and have done so since 1996. An official of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the weapons arm of the U.S. Energy Department, stressed Sunday that the existing bombs and warheads remain fine, but he suggested that senior scientists have uncertainty about what may happen to the weapons in the future as they age and components are replaced.

"We see increased risks absent nuclear testing in ensuring the safety, security and reliability of today's stockpile (of nuclear arms)," said John Harvey, the nuclear agency's director of policy planning.

With the new "reliable, replacement warheads," he said, the United States could move more easily to a leaner, less costly complex of labs and factories that could make the bombs on demand, reducing the need to keep thousands of redundant warheads in storage as insurance against problems, as is the case today.

Under a deal with Congress, the new weapons would have the same military missions as the bombs and warheads that they replace. But the factory to make them would give the United States more agility to manufacture new types of weapons, if needed, Cartwright said.

"It has to," he said. "If 10 years from now, you need a new capability, the question is whether you have the science and the manufacturing capability to respond to it."

But an early report from a panel assembled by the AAAS — most of them former Energy Department or nuclear-weapons lab executives — found many of the benefits of the new warheads distant in time and uncertain, and said there is no clear evidence of future breakdown in the existing nuclear arsenal.

"I think the uncertainty is serious and it's legitimate, but it's not yet empirical," said panel chairman and physicist C. Bruce Tarter, former director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is competing to lead development of the first of the new warheads.

The panel also said it was impossible based on information available now to judge the administration's new RRWs against the current course of simply maintaining the bombs and warheads designed, tested and fielded during the Cold War.

"If there aren't numbers for costs or schedules, how do you know it's better than what you're doing?" Tarter said.

The experts agreed, however, that existing U.S. weapons are changing from their original designs due to aging and gradual component replacement with parts designed to be as close as possible to the original.

"It's a hard problem, and there's no panacea. And it's going to be with us as long as we have nuclear weapons," Tarter said.

The question then becomes whether it is better to stick with maintaining existing, well-tested designs or rely on the new, untested but more generously designed and more secure warheads.

"We would say there isn't enough information to say," Tarter said.

Administration proponents for the new warheads and a new bomb factory coupled with them argued that the plan should allow for more cuts in U.S. weapons held in reserve and make a return to nuclear testing less likely.

But some critics say other nations will read the policy as signaling U.S. intent to keep a nuclear arsenal forever, contrary to promises 30 years ago under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to work toward disarmament.

If the Bush administration chooses to pursue the new warheads, it will take "White House leadership that produces bipartisan support for two decades" and "be coupled with a transparent administration policy on nuclear weapons, including comments concerning stockpile size, nuclear testing and nonproliferation."

The panel's experts also indirectly chided administration and weapons lab officials for pitching such a laundry list of selling points for the new bombs, some of them contradictory, saying that the military should "specify which design features (reliability, surety, manufacturability) are most important since not all can be simultaneously optimized."

Without nuclear testing to prove that the new weapons would work, bomb designers would have to rely on a combination of experiments and measurements, and some members of the expert panel were not convinced that such a recipe has been found to deliver the same confidence as a full-blown nuclear test.

"Certifying a new nuclear explosive package remains an unproven technical feat," said Raymond Jeanloz, a University of California, Berkeley, planetary scientist and panelist.

Cartwright said he was confident, however, and felt future military commanders and presidents would be as well.

"My crystal ball is no better than anyone else's," the general said. But designing the new warheads with more generous specifications, less like a highly tuned sports car and more like a pickup truck, should help, he said.

"And the science has gotten better."

http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_5258486

Letter to the Editor
Santa Fe New Mexican
February 19, 2007

We're best, right?

Far too many things are classified in the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Father of the hydrogen bomb Edward Teller argued that after six months there are no longer any secrets. Automatic declassification after six months would alleviate the problem. Declassify almost everything. This is “forward thinking.”

As for arrogance, it is unfair to single out lab personnel as being arrogant. Isn't our country the best the world has ever known? Doesn’t everyone want to come here? Don’t we have a country wonderfully run by corporations? Isn't our political system which lets everyone vote, with the masses bought by enormous advertising budgets, the very best? Aren't our politicians, bought by lobbyists, the very best money can buy? Isn’t “W” doing his very best to transplant our political system into Iraq? Nothing can be conceived as better than our country as it is. It is the end of history. Our country is arrogant.

Arrogance? Schmarrogance!

Edward B. Grothus
Los Alamos

Roger, Roger, Roger...

I thought you had outgrown that nasty tendency of being a friendly mouthpiece of the LANL Administration. As you well know, the FBI is also investigating the validity of the claim that former Associate Director John Mitchell violated security rules by taking a laptop with classified information on it to his home. That is not mentioned anywhere in your fluff piece.

Small town newspaper -- what else should we expect, I guess.

-Pat, The Dog

*************************************
http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2007/02/17/headline_news/news02.txt

FBI queried on security breach

ROGER SNODGRASS Monitor Assistant Editor

What did the FBI learn from the discovery of 1,588 pages of classified and unclassified documents in the home of a subcontract worker near Los Alamos National Laboratory?

That's what House investigators want to know now about the security breach that came to light in October.

The FBI is investigating the unauthorized access and removal of classified information as an ongoing criminal investigation, but the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee has asked for a briefing on the FBI's clearance system at LANL and, by implication, throughout the nuclear complex.

"The recent incident at LANL, and the findings in the Inspector General's report, indicate there may be significant deficiencies involving the application of personnel security policies and standards within the Department," wrote the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee on Thursday to FBI Dir. Robert Mueller III.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. and Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., presided over hearings Jan. 31 that included testimony by energy department officials and top officials of the National Nuclear Security Administration that oversees LANL.

The congressmen pointed out that security weaknesses were identified in the Government Accountability Office's testimony during an Armed Services hearing and noted that Energy Secretary Bodman was transferring two additional security experts from headquarters to Los Alamos.

The FBI receives about $1 million a year from DOE to perform portions of security clearances and related investigations.

The congressmen want to know if the FBI examined how the subcontract employee involved in the removal of classified material got her clearance and what further assurances need to be made in the system.

An anonymous contributor, whose credentials are unquestionable, has sent me this report on "Safety" under the Corporation. This is precisely what Nanos didn't understand as a military martinet, and will be the downfall of the corporate assembly-line mindset -- if Congress cares to know ...

--Pat, the vigilant, safety-minded Dog

-----

The “safety” area of LANS has now become a warehouse for former Bechtel executives, who are terrified that they may lose their huge bonus fees. Their allegiance is not to LANL, but to their former corporation.

In late November 2006, the LANL site received 20 year record snowfalls and black ice was all over the lab. The result was many slips, trips, and falls sustained by LANL employees, some as serious as fractures, and many in the dreaded “recordable” category. “Recordable” injuries are a safety metric under managerial performance assessments. One former Bechtel employee, now a safety manager, demanded to know if these recordable slip and fall injuries were witnessed, because he wanted “independent corroboration” that they actually occurred at LANL. His attitude seems to be that LANL employees are getting injured just to hurt his safety statistics. We all know how much fun a fracture is …

This Bechtel corporate focus on ”the numbers,” rather than trying to improve real safety at the site, has succeeded in intimidating many employees from seeking medical attention at Occupational Medicine when they are injured. Only those injured seriously enough that they can’t drag themselves off site are reporting their injuries. Managers are now held accountable if their employees get recordable injuries, and the injured employees are now too often the subject of not sympathetic, but punitive attention, for having sustained a serious injury.

-Anon.

Hybrid Warhead Panned

By John Arnold
Journal Staff Writer, ABQ Journal, Santa Fe Edition, Saturday, February 17, 2007

A senior Los Alamos National Laboratory weapons scientist says a program to develop a new kind of nuclear warhead will fail if the government takes a "frankenbomb" approach to its design.

Weapons designers at LANL and California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are competing to design the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which would replace existing warheads in the nation's aging Cold War-era arsenal.

John Pedicini, LANL's design team leader, believes LANL won the competition based on the technical merits of its design. But Pedicini wrote on a Web log that following the technical competition, federal nuclear weapons officials asked the rival labs to come up with a "plan of cooperation," including a hybrid warhead design that would include elements from both teams' plans.

"A hybrid design by inexperienced personnel, managed by committee, is not the best approach... The best appellation I have seen for such an approach is 'frankenbomb,' '' Pedicini writes in an entry posted on the site "LANL: The Corporate Story."

Noting that he was writing as a private citizen and not as a representative of the lab, Pedicini said that he has been told by "multiple highly placed sources, with ranks into sub-cabinet level" that LANL won the technical competition.

He added that there are some features of the Livermore design that are an advance over his own team's plan, and that he would incorporate those advances, should LANL win the competition.

"If this is what is meant by hybrid, then the outcome would be good," said Pedicini, who did not return phone or e-mail messages seeking additional comment.

Weapons designers were asked to come up with plans for a replacement warhead that could be deployed without underground nuclear testing. The teams submitted their designs last year to the Nuclear Weapons Council, an inter-agency panel of Department of Energy and Pentagon officials who decided last fall that the Reliable Replacement Warhead program should move forward.

The Bush administration's budget proposal for fiscal year 2008 calls for tripling program funding to $88 million.

But the weapons council has yet to name a lead design team, fueling speculation among lab workers and observers about the competition's outcome.

"There are a lot of rumors out there, and there are a lot of people who think they know what they're talking about. As I understand it, it's a very small group of people that really do know the situation and are discussing it, and that's the Nuclear Weapons Council," said National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Bryan Wilkes.

LANL spokesman Kevin Roark said that Pedicini's comments were not made on behalf of the lab, but he declined to comment further.

Pedicini is the second senior LANL weapons designer to speak publicly this month, without lab management's permission, about the Reliable Replacement Warhead and nuclear weapons policy.

Joe Martz, LANL's Reliable Replacement Warhead project leader, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the U.S. should consider a nuclear weapons policy that would eventually eliminate the country's nuclear arsenal.

He also believes that it's unlikely LANL will win the Reliable Replacement Warhead competition, due to security lapses highlighted during a congressional hearing last month, according to a Chronicle article published Tuesday.

In his Web log post, Pedicini calls the Jan. 30 congressional hearing "a wild card whose influence I cannot gauge."

The Reliable Replacement Warhead is a key component of NNSA's plan to consolidate and modernize the nation's nuclear weapons complex.

Supporters say the new warhead design will be easier and safer to maintain and will offer more protection against unauthorized use. It will also allow the government to dismantle old weapons and ultimately reduce the size of the stockpile, NNSA officials have said.

However, critics say that programs to maintain and extend the life of the existing nuclear weapons have been successful. Going forward with a new warhead design is unnecessary and will undermine global nonproliferation efforts, they contend.

-----

As to whether the RRW "undermine[s] global nonproliferation efforts," that depends strongly on who runs American foreign policy, and whether or not they prefer to use diplomacy as a rational alternative to the Neoconservative pre-emptive, who-needs-allies approach.

--Pat

Pat -

Is anybody besides myself looking for the Great Copper Heist to become the next LANL scandal du jour? After all, anybody can see that this is just another violation that's the fault of the Arrogant Butthead Scientists and their Academic Culture.

-Anon.

[/Sarcasm Off/ --Pat.]

http://www.kobtv.com/index.cfm?viewer=storyviewer&id=30472&cat=HOME

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two US House members are asking what the FBI has learned about an October security breach at New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The FBI is investigating the breach at the northern New Mexico nuclear weapons lab.

The problem came to light when more than 1,500 pages of documents—some of them classified—were found during a drug raid at the home of a lab subcontractor’s former employee.

Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan and Republican Congressman Ed Whitfield of Kentucky have asked FBI Director Robert Mueller for a briefing on the extent of security problems in the Energy Department complex.

Stupak says he’s concerned similar problems may exist elsewhere in the nation’s nuclear weapons complex.

[This letter to Pat, the Dog, from John Pedicini is one of the most important (along with the article about Joe Martz) on this blog to date. It speaks to the future of Los Alamos National Lab, NNSA, DOE, and even our sister lab, LLNL. For those of you who don't know, John Pedicini is one of those LANL staff members whose word carries real weight; both here at Los Alamos, and in Washington, DC. Be assured that his comments here will not go unnoticed. -Neither here, nor in DC. (For an official LANL-sponsored view of RRW, click on the title.)]

-----

Pat,

I never expected to be the subject of comment in the blog, however I noticed the discussion on RRW and management support while searching the web for information on RRW. Note that I write this as a private citizen and not as a representative of LANL or LANS.

The quotes of mine are accurate, but dated. The outcome of RRW and actual management support thereof are facts not yet fully in evidence. Ultimately the outcome of this competition may be the decisive factor in the upcoming RIF decisions.

Multiple highly placed sources, with ranks into sub-cabinet level, in 5 separate organizations have told me and/or the LANL RRW team that we won the RRW technical competition. Senatorial language prohibits outcome based upon anything but technical merit. This win occurred, despite LANL being severely restricted on what information we could present. These restrictions were particularly constraining in adequately presenting our case to the SAGSAT. The LANL team performed magnificently, despite the uneven playing field, and in this regard I could not be happier.

After the technical competition, there was a directive from the NWC for the lab directors and NNSA to come back with a plan of cooperation between the labs. This was to include examination of a hybrid design. Director Anastasio's confidence in the LANL RRW design is, perhaps, best illustrated by the fact that he declined detailed technical briefings of the sort received by the LLNL director.

Director Anastasio and his senior managers have assured me and the LANL RRW team in many venues that LANS did not take a dive, did not stab the LANL RRW team in the back, and were fully supportive of the design and team. Asking again at the all hands meeting, absent additional facts would be redundant. Currently, it is not unreasonable to take management statements at face value. At a minimum, LANS management is smart enough to know that word parsing would destroy their credibility.

The rumors that the NWC directive was turned into an opportunity for private contractors to override the POG technical decision also seem somewhat hard to credit. LANS, and soon to be LINS, are private contractors under the UC umbrella, and RRW is a weapons purchase. Under DOD contracting rules, I cannot fathom Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrup-Grumman etc being granted such latitude. UC doing so during a time of intense scrutiny would certainly redefine arrogance.

All that remains to judge LANS by, is the result. If LANL wins, we were not stabbed in the back. I am anxiously awaiting the results and any explanations thereof. We can then all judge for ourselves whether the reality speaks differently than the words. Note that the recent security hearings are a wild card whose influence I cannot gauge.

I had hoped to see the revolutionary advances in safety and security achieved by the LANL RRW team highlighted in answer to the legitimate question posed by Representatives Stupak and Barton about what can be done only at LANL. Experiments supported by simulations have unambiguously shown that the LANL design will perform as advertised, LLNL "peer review" notwithstanding. No competing design has been shown to meet the same standards. Hostility to the LANL advances in safety and security are another puzzle to me, as safety and security were not only the top priorities in the RRW competition but also the topic of the recent congressional hearings. In this regard, I am somewhat less than satisfied.

As some of you may know, I have championed the cause for RRW for more than 15 years, yet there are ways to fail at this endeavor. A hybrid design by inexperienced personnel, managed by committee, is not the best approach, and even provoked negative comment at the JASON review. The best appellation I have seen for such an approach is "frankenbomb." That said, there are some features of the LLNL design that are an advance over ours, and if we get the assignment, I would incorporate them in our design. If this is what is meant by hybrid, then the outcome would be good.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

You may sign my name as I stand by what I say. In this case I will take the LANS management claims of no retaliation at face value. In the worst case I am used to being retaliated against for blowing the whistle on national security issues.

Multiple ADC reviews have shown this letter to be unclassified.

--John M. Pedicini

-----

From
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/T?&report=sr274&dbname=109&

"The Committee expects the initial RRW design approved by the Department to be selected based on a combination of considerations, including the ability to certify the warhead without underground nuclear testing, cost production and ease of maintenance and dismantlement. The Committee would oppose the use of workload leveling among the labs as a factor in any design selection decision. The design teams at both Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory have worked extremely hard on their respective designs with the expectation that the best design would be selected. Any selection that isn't decided purely on merits would be a disservice to the Department of Defense, the RRW design teams and the NNSA."

US Energy Secretary Opposes Caps, Profits From Emissions
By Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report, Tuesday 13 February 2007

Two weeks ago, a devastating report by the world's leading climate scientists warned that global warming is no longer a threat, but is a manmade disaster that has already impacted the environment. The report confirmed that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases were to blame for severe heat waves, floods and an increase in more-intense hurricanes and tropical storms. Climatologists predict the temperature will rise by two to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and sea levels are expected to increase by seven to 23 inches by the year 2100. Yet, hours after the report was released, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the Bush administration would continue to oppose mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases in the form of CO2 caps. Mandatory caps could financially ruin some of the energy companies responsible for polluting the air, he said.

"There is a concern within this administration, which I support, that the imposition of a carbon cap in this country would - may - lead to the transfer of jobs and industry abroad (to nations) that do not have such a carbon cap," Bodman said. "You would then have the US economy damaged, on the one hand, and the same emissions ... potentially even worse emissions." The problem with that logic is that it is being peddled by a Bush appointee who for a dozen years ran a Texas-based chemical company that spent years on the top five lists of the country's worst polluters.

It's not just a few clouds of smoke emanating from an oil refinery or a power plant that got Bodman's old company, Boston-based Cabot Corporation, those accolades. It was the 54,000 tons of toxic emissions that his company's refineries released into the air in the Lone Star state in 1997 alone that made Cabot the fourth-largest source of toxic emissions in Texas. Cabot is the world's largest producer of industrial carbon black, a byproduct of the oil refinery process.

Bodman personally contributed $1,000 to Bush's 2000 presidential campaign and $20,000 to Republican committees in the 1999-2000 election. Bodman is the wealthiest member of the Bush administration. His net worth is estimated to be between $42 million and $164 million, the bulk of it in Cabot stock, deferred compensation and other benefits. In 2000, the year Bodman left Cabot to join the Bush administration as deputy commerce secretary, Cabot accounted for 60,000 of the more than half a million tons of toxic emissions released into the Texas air, according to report by the Texas State Summary of Emissions. A loophole created in the 1972 Texas Clean Air Act exempted or "grandfathered" industrial plants built before 1971 from new and stricter pollution controls. But in the mid-1990s, companies such as Cabot were supposed to curb the pollution coming from their refineries. Environmentalists demanded that then-Governor George W. Bush rein in the polluters and close the so-called grandfather loophole as the air in Texas became smoggier. Instead, in 1997, Bush asked two oil company executives to outline a voluntary program that allowed the grandfathered polluters to decide on their own exactly how much to cut the pollution at their plants. The oil execs summoned a meeting of two dozen industry reps at Exxon offices in Houston and presented them with the program.

In a memo obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, one executive wrote that "clearly the insiders from oil and gas believe that the Governor's Office will 'persuade' the (Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission) to accept what program is developed between the industry group and the Governor's Office." And the program was accepted. "And two years later, this joke of a program was enacted into law by a bill written by the general counsel for the Texas Chemical Council, who also lobbies for energy and utility companies. The bill was denounced by newspapers across the state," according to a March 5, 2000, report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

According to people familiar with the legislation, Sam Bodman was part of the original working group that drafted legislation that Bush signed into law. That legislation basically permitted Cabot and other companies to continue to emit the same level of - and in some cases more - toxic emissions as they had been emitting years earlier.

Bodman's response to Friday's global warming report ensures that companies like Cabot can continue to emit carbon black at an accelerated rate. Moreover, as long as he is energy secretary, Bodman said Friday, he will continue to oppose federal measures to force a reduction in greenhouse gases. Doing so, Bodman said, will save jobs.

Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.

Excerpt from email to an Anonymous Contributor from Senator Bingaman. -->

"I certainly do not condone recent statements by Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Bodman blaming 'arrogant' scientists for the Lab's security problems. I believe that any comprehensive evaluation of security situation at LANL should include assessments of the respective roles played by DOE , National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and Los Alamos National Security (LANS), and should not unduly focus on a handful of employees at any one of these agencies. I believe that the organizational relationship between NNSA and DOE may be to blame for recent incidents at LANL as much as any other factor."
--Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)

(No word from the other, R-NM, Senator. Yet.)

Well, boys and girls, yesterday's all-hands meeting with Mike makes it clear: "Stay The Course with LANS" is what we can expect. As some of the comments on the

http://lanl-the-corporate-story.blogspot.com/2007/02/anastasios-task-to-punish-labbies-or.html

post have concluded, there is little hope that Congress will terminate LANS's contract for cause. Mike danced around the issue of whether or not Mitchell had been fired for security reasons when a distinguished looking gentleman from the audience gently asked him about it. This should tell us that Congress has 'factored in' the Mitchell event, and still found it desirable to let LANS run LANL.

Nor will Congress shut the place down. I believe this quote from DOE's Clay Sell explains why:


LANS is perfectly willing to help DOE accomplish DOE's desired pit production mission, and Congress is perfectly happy to let them do it. According to Mike, LANS is hoping for attrition at LANL, and I am certain they will get it.

Long-time contributors to his blog, and to the previous LANL, The Real Story blog have been predicting exactly this outcome from the LANL corporatization process. It is sad to see it happening, but it is no surprise.

-Pat, The Dog

Los Alamos scientist criticizes federal approach to arsenal
"You understand what I'm offering here. I'm offering through our technological achievements the security we need to enter into a real discussion" of nuclear disarmament. -- Joseph Martz, weapons designer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Photo by Amiran White, special to the Chronicle

-James Sterngold, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer, Tuesday, February 13, 2007

(02-13) 04:00 PST Los Alamos, New Mexico -- With the Bush administration and Congress fighting over how to rebuild the nuclear weapons complex, one of the country's top weapons designers said he believes it is time for the United States to consider a radical shift in policy that would ultimately eliminate the nuclear arsenal.

Joseph Martz, leader of a team designing a new generation of warheads at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in a series of interviews last week that he is troubled by how the debate on nuclear weapons policy in Washington is focused narrowly on the number of weapons needed for the future, and how they would be built, rather than on how to eradicate them entirely.

Lab officials originally refused to give Martz permission to be interviewed for this article. Martz, however, said he decided to speak anyway in order to press ideas that he believes can reduce the risk of nuclear war and carve out a central role for the weapons labs, which have been threatened with budget cuts. Martz emphasized that he was expressing only his personal views and not those of the lab. But his comments still represent the first time in recent years that a senior scientist inside the weapons program has proposed making disarmament a concrete policy goal.

Martz said the discussion in Washington needs to reflect technological breakthroughs found in two prime areas: the weapons maintenance program, known as stockpile stewardship, and the new weapon design initiative called the Reliable Replacement Warhead, or RRW.

Martz's aim is to help policymakers understand that, because of a more sophisticated grasp of weapons science, the United States can slowly dismantle its warheads and still protect itself. The country could also bolster its credibility as a leading voice for disarmament by ratifying the long-stalled treaty banning underground testing.

"The time is right," Martz said. "A confluence of events has now allowed the debate to progress, including the changes in Congress, the maturation of the stockpile stewardship program and the recognition by the military that RRW is feasible. A few years ago, we didn't have that."

The key to the new policy, he said, would be slowly reducing the number of warheads over a period of years, and during that time replacing older weapons with the new Reliable Replacement Warhead weapons as an interim phase. But the final goal, according to Martz, should be the elimination of the entire arsenal.

What the United States would retain in its place, he argued, would be the technology to assemble warheads from stockpiled materials if a grave threat to national security arose. The labs now have the capability to do that in a relatively short period of time, he said, without the need for testing. The U.S. nuclear deterrent would be transformed from thousands of weapons deployed on high alert to what has come to be known as the "virtual stockpile."

Martz, 41, described this view as part of the evolution in the thinking of a younger generation of weapons designers eager to rely more on science than missiles to deter foes.

"You understand what I'm offering here," he said. "I'm offering through our technological achievements the security we need to enter into a real discussion" of nuclear disarmament.

Martz believes the U.S. nuclear arsenal has been critical to the country's security and should be maintained for some years. But the nuclear policy debate, he said, has focused too much on producing new bombs and not enough on the next steps needed for broader arms control initiatives.

"I'm trying to offer solutions that say, 'How can we get the benefits of deterrence without having to put thousands of warheads on hair-trigger alert?' " he said.

Some of Martz's ideas have been discussed before, mostly among arms control experts, and there is disagreement over whether the country should deploy new generations of warheads, as Martz is proposing, even as an interim step. These experts argue that the current stockpile will be safe and reliable for decades, and that building new warheads is too provocative.

But this is the first time a senior official involved in maintaining Cold War-era warheads and designing the weapons of the future has proposed a long-term plan for eliminating them. Under current policy, officials say the world is too dangerous to consider eliminating the nuclear deterrent -- the U.S. now has more than 5,000 warheads -- which must be updated indefinitely.

Various treaties have reduced the size of the stockpile -- under the Moscow Treaty of 2002, the United States will decrease its deployed arsenal to 2,200 or fewer weapons by 2012 -- but actual disarmament has never been embraced as a concrete policy objective. In fact, even opponents of Martz's plan are pleased with his ideas, if only because it may inspire a debate on disarmament.

"We should be on a glide path to get to lower numbers of weapons," said Eugene Habiger, a retired air force general and former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, which manages the nuclear arsenal. "It's a glide path we've been on for years, but we need to think about the next step beyond the Moscow Treaty, and nobody is doing that yet."

Under the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, two design teams, one from Los Alamos and the other from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, submitted plans in April for a new generation of warheads. They are supposed to be safer and more reliable than the older weapons, but they must be built without underground testing, which has never been done before.

A high-level government body, the Nuclear Weapons Council, is expected to announce shortly which design it has chosen, or whether, as some have suggested, it will propose a hybrid, combining elements of both.

Some experts, however, have been urging a deeper shift. Two widely-read opinion pieces published in the Wall Street Journal last month argued for total disarmament.

The essays -- the first by former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, and the second by the former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev -- urged aggressive steps toward this long ignored goal.

"Reassertion of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be, and would be perceived as, a bold initiative consistent with America's moral heritage," the former U.S. officials wrote in their essay.

Martz's ideas get a mixed response from experts. Supporters of the weapons program maintain that it is naive to even talk about the elimination of the weapons in a dangerous world. Others argue that manufacturing new Reliable Replacement Warhead warheads is unnecessary under any conditions.

Steve Andreasen, who was involved in nuclear weapons policy in the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations, said he supports the concept of some kind of virtual nuclear force and elimination of the weapons, but opposes Martz's view that Reliable Replacement Warhead warheads ought to be produced and deployed as an interim step. He said it appears to be a way of maintaining the budgets at the weapons labs at a time when government officials have talked about big cuts, and that the new production could encourage more countries to consider weapons production.

"If someone at the labs is saying producing the RRW is essential for getting to our vision, I would not agree," said Andreasen.

Others say the issue is not so much numbers of weapons, but how much U.S. military policy relies on them. Robert Einhorn, a nuclear policy expert from the Clinton administration who favors arms control, said he believes the United States should boost its conventional power to make it more unlikely that it would ever need to use a nuclear bomb.

"We should be putting far more effort into developing more effective conventional weapons," he said. "It's hard to imagine a president using nuclear weapons under almost any circumstance, but no one doubts our willingness to use conventional weapons."

Martz acknowledged that he is motivated both by a desire to shape what he thinks could be a smarter policy debate and self-interest.

Los Alamos has been bitterly criticized in Washington for a series of security lapses, and some lawmakers have threatened to slash its work and budgets. The criticism has badly harmed morale at the lab, and Martz believes his ideas would, by enhancing the importance of the science done at the lab, help maintain budgets and job security, and also bolster a view that the labs can help reduce international tensions.

But he also sees in the virtual stockpile a program that would enable a new generation of weapons scientists to solve some of the policy conundrums left from the Cold War.

"In many ways, this answers the key question many people are asking, including people at the labs -- what is the role of the labs today?" Martz said. "To me the answer is simple. We become the deterrent in the 21st century."

Livermore appears to have edge in competition to design new warheads

Because of concern over security lapses at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, it appears unlikely that the lab will be declared the winner of a competition to design a new generation of nuclear warheads, according to Joseph Martz, head of the Los Alamos design team.

When Congress voted to authorize development of the new weapon, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead, or RRW, it called for the country's two weapons labs, Los Alamos and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to produce separate proposals.

Martz said the labs handed in their designs -- for a warhead to be fitted on submarine-based Trident missiles -- in April. He called the process revolutionary because the weapons have to be not only safer and more reliable than the current weapons in the stockpile, but the labs had to guarantee they could manufacture and deploy them without any underground testing, an unprecedented requirement.

The Livermore design essentially relied on a weapon developed but never deployed some years ago, which had been thoroughly tested, Martz said. Los Alamos took more of a chance by designing a warhead that used elements from previously tested designs, but combined them in a way that incorporated new safety features.

Those features, Martz said, were intended to prevent both accidental detonation and unauthorized use.

The Nuclear Weapons Council has been evaluating the two designs and is expected to render a decision soon.

Martz said there are rumors, which he has not confirmed, that the weapons council will order the two labs to combine the best elements of each design, but with Livermore in the lead role.

-- James Sterngold

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

Los Alamos steps up security
UC-co-managed nuclear research lab has a history of problems, including a data breach last October
-Wafiqah Basrai, The Daily Bruin, Monday, February 12, 2007

In light of a recent security breach at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, as well as other security scares at the nation’s major nuclear research center, the facility is implementing various new security measures. In October 2006, police found confidential data from the lab on an employee’s personal computer. The lab is co-managed by the University of California.

Kevin Roark, a Los Alamos spokesman, said the laboratory is taking measures to ensure that confidential information will not leave the laboratory and that access to lab research will be limited to the people who are supposed to have it. “We’re taking a wide variety of physical and cyber security measures,” Roark said. “We underwent a thorough review of all processes and procedures.” In response to the breach, the lab now has limited and prohibited certain kinds of recording devices in classified-information areas of the facility. Los Alamos officials have also been more careful in monitoring who has access to what in the lab and for what reason, Roark said.

Charles Whitten, a UCLA physics professor, emphasized the importance of security measures at nuclear research labs. He also said security must be conducted in an appropriate manner because it can sometimes prohibit workers from doing their jobs in a timely and complete manner. “You don’t want the data to be hacked, but you don’t want regulations such that you can’t do your business right,” Whitten said.

Security issues, such as the recent incident, have been a problem for Los Alamos for several years. In 1999, former lab scientist Wen Ho Lee was accused of leaking nuclear secrets to China. Two years ago, it was reported that two classified computer disks were missing and an intern at the lab was injured in a laser accident. These two incidents combined resulted in Los Alamos being shut down for a year. It was later found that the missing disks had never existed. Their supposed disappearance was an inventory error. Due to such security issues as well as the security threats that Sept. 11 posed, the lab has been working on bigger security projects.

Los Alamos has completed construction on secret posts that screen vehicles that enter the property so it is known exactly who is going in and out of the buildings, Roark said. He also said lab officials have limited access to roadways that enter the most sensitive areas of their facility. Now only employees are granted access. Lab officials have started to better monitor hardware systems and are implementing new software controls.

But even with the measures the lab has been taking, the House Energy and Commerce Committee has been dissatisfied with the National Nuclear Security Administration’s management of security issues. Last month, the committee introduced a measure to turn back Los Alamos’ security responsibilities to the Department of Energy. Representative Joe Barton, D-Texas, said that if the security problems are not solved at the Los Alamos lab, he will ask for it to be shut down again. “There is an absolute inability and unwillingness to address the most routine security issues at this laboratory,” Barton told The Associated Press.

But deputy energy secretary Clay Sell told The Associated Press that the lab most likely will continue running. Sell said it is the only facility where plutonium pits for weapons can be made and the lab is responsible for most of the strategic nuclear weapons stockpile.

Currently, Bush has proposed a $192 million cut to two of the country’s nuclear research labs: Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos lab. “The budget request is only the first step,” Roark said. “It’s much too early to see how the budget request would impact the laboratory.” But if the proposal is put into action, it could have a negative effect for the country, said Whitten, who stressed the importance of the research laboratories. For one, he said, the United States needs to stay competitive with its research. He added that ideas from the laboratory are used not only for nuclear weapons, but also in many areas that help humans, such as medicine.

(With reports from Bruin wire services.)

PS. For you speed readers, here's the only paragraph that you need to pay attention to:

"But deputy energy secretary Clay Sell told The Associated Press that the lab most likely will continue running. Sell said it is the only facility where plutonium pits for weapons can be made and the lab is responsible for most of the strategic nuclear weapons stockpile."

-Pat, The Dog

We have a report on the All Hands Meeting today, conducted by LANL Director Mike Anastasio, from an Anonymous contributor:

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Mike is a very good politician. He's not smooth in the usual blow-dried sense, but he can dance around a question with the best of them. He began his report on the grilling he and LANL endured at the House Committee hearing by playing a video of the beatings and whippings by Congressmen and one Congresswoman, and followed it with a verbal report of DOE Secretary Bodman's assessment that all the security problems at LANL are due to the "culture" of "arrogant" scientists and engineers down through the years. (I guess you could say it goes all the way back to the Manhattan Project, when Feynman thumbed his nose at the guards, by sneaking out through a hole in the fence and coming back in so many times that even the thickheaded guards got suspicious, and when he made a mockery of rules about safes by cracking an ungodly number of them.) Mike's take on the culture of Los Alamos, as opposed to his experience upon becoming a manager at the explosive test site at Livermore, is that the Livermore people care for each other, because if they didn't, somebody might die, including oneself; he left me with the impression that, by implication, he feels that the folks at LANL's explosive test site don't care as much for each other, and that there is a greater level of incaution in the way LANL people do things. Whether or not this is true, he said that the world believes this about Los Alamos, and that changing that perception is going to be a tough task.

One can conclude from the video clip of Mike's rather tepid defense of the Lab during his answer to a question from a Congressman, and his playing of those clips of the Congressionally administered whippings mean that punishment of the Lab is probably a higher priority to him than defense of it. To be fair, Mike is in a no-win situation: Labbies may want to be defended from the whippings by Washington, but Washington "pays the bills," and so he implied that there will now be a period of tense calm until LANL's inevitable next big screwup, whereupon the whippings will be resumed with a vengeance. This leaves LANL staff in a position of helplessness, since any safety or security infraction of any significance will bring down the wrath of Congress, DOE, LANS, and LANL management on the entire Lab, regardless of who screws up. There are 10,000 people who are the candidates for the honor of sacrificial goat. It is just a matter of time.

Most of the burning issues raised by a handful of questioners were sidestepped. Left hanging and twisting slowly in the wind is whether or not one of the nine people who have so far been fired by Anastasio (some of whom had committed security violations, according to him) included his former deputy, John Mitchell. He was willing to state that none of the managers of the woman contractor, whom Mike said he wished he could have had the pleasure of firing, were fired, though 24 people involved received some level of punishment. As to the drug testing that will begin soon, Anastasio said that upper Lab management was still working out just which suggestions would be implemented. However, it is clear that the number of people now being routinely tested for drugs (approximately 2000) will expand to the entire Lab population in short order. Minor details may change, but not the general outline. He said that about 1/3rd of the comments were in the "you gotta be CRAZY!" category, 1/3rd were "positive" (I guess that means not "false" positive), and 1/3rd proposed some changes to the policy.

At the end, one got a rather mixed feeling about the whole meeting. The level of fiscal uncertainty and resulting RIFs seemed to be slightly diminished: In response to one bold young questioner, Mike talked more about wished-for attrition than the need for RIFs. But hanging over the whole Laboratory will be a sword of Damocles: One more screwup, and God only knows what they in Washington will do to us. Our fate will be out of our hands. Now let us wring them.

-Anonymous Observer

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[This same Congress that gets its knickers all in a twist about the mote or two in LANL's eye (namely, security violations by a lowly worker and by a top manager), has a log in its own eye (namely, its failure to oversee and investigate the myriad of really serious screwups by the Bush Administration). But these Congresspeople have never read the Bible, just thumped it.
--Pat]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/12/fbi.laptops/index.html

FBI loses laptops with classified information

POSTED: 1:48 p.m. EST, February 12, 2007

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The FBI lost at least 10 laptop computers containing classified information during a four-year period ending in 2005, the Justice Department's inspector general has found.

The 10 were among the 160 laptops lost or stolen during a 44-month period ending September 30, 2005, Inspector General Glenn Fine reported. Along with the laptops, an equal numbers of weapons were also missing.

The report said the number of missing items, while still a problem, represents a sharp improvement since a 2002 audit, which found more than 300 laptops and 300 weapons lost or stolen during the previous 28-month period.

Fine said that among the 10 missing laptops known to contain sensitive or classified information was one that had identifying information on FBI personnel.

Several more lost or stolen laptops may also contain sensitive counterintelligence or counterterrorism information, the report said.

"Most troubling, we found that the FBI could not determine for 51 additional lost or stolen laptops whether they contained sensitive or classified information," the report said. "Seven of these 51 laptops were assigned to the counterintelligence or counterterrorism divisions."

The report said the FBI maintains more than 50,000 weapons and more than 20,000 laptops in its inventory.

In its response, the FBI agreed with several recommendations for maintaining tighter control on its weapons and laptops.

The bureau took issue with the count of missing firearms, saying 43 of the unaccounted weapons had been reported missing before the period covered by the report.

CNN's Terry Frieden contributed to this report.

As we collectively sit here at this, the next of what has been a whole series of events that have determined what the next phase of mismanagement events at LANL will be, I, Pat, The Dog, thought you might be interested in a coarse demographic breakdown of visitors to this blog.

Roughly, based on an observational snapshot of visitors, this is the breakdown, geographically speaking (excluding LANL, which seems unusually interested, by Los Alamos standards, in what is going on here):

California - 48% Rancho Cucamonga, Oakland, Livermore, Los Angeles, Napa!, El Cerrito, Hayward, and Turlock!, feature predominantly. Who in Rancho Cucamonga could be so interested in what is going on here?

Washington DC, Virginia, Maryland, Reston: 30% Who is it in Reston that can't make it through the day without knowing what the blog is talking about?

Mt. Laurel, NJ, 10%. Who the Hell is in Mt. Laurel, NJ?

Pasco, SRP, Oak Ridge, INEEL: 10%. Of course they are interested.

Everybody else: 2% The remainder.

So, as we prepare for Monday and Mike's much delayed exposition on the Congressional hearings, [an event which which lab historians will identify as yet another in a series of momentous events that passed by the majority of LANL staff largely unnoticed], this is who is watching us from the outside world.

-Pat, The Dog

Contributed by Anonymous:

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

I doubt that Mike will bring up the topic of John Mitchell on Monday, not that I don't think the incident did not happen. I think Mitchell actually did get caught with a classified laptop in his home, all the indicators point to it. However, I believe that Mike won't talk about it for one or more of the following reasons:

1. The incident is still under investigation by the FBI.
2. LANS has decided to bury the incident for as long as possible. Sound corrupt? It is, but remember back to 2004 and how UC kept Nanos' huge mistake regarding the non-missing DX division disks covered up for six months.
3. All parties involved have decided that it is in the "nation's best interests" of keep the incident from the public eye. Yes this would really be corrupt, but I actually think this option is more likely than LANS 'fessing up.

No, Mike won't talk about Mitchell, because to admit that the number two guy at the lab didn't give a shit about security would signal the end of LANS. There are no promises that Mike could make to Congress that would prevent them from terminating LANS' contract for cause. And think about it for a minute: a mutual cover-up agreement would put Congress in the position of having LANS completely under their collective thumb. LANS would do *whatever* Congress, or DOE, or NNSA wants, from this point on. No more back talk, no more push-back. No more "arrogant LANL scientists".

I expect no major announcements on Monday. Instead, I predict that Mike will give LANL staff another stern talking-to. Another security lecture. Another safety lecture. A "hard times are ahead" lecture.

And then the RIFS will start in earnest.

----

[Defeatist comments here indicate a victim mentality at Los Alamos that isn't entirely justified. Senator Bingaman has made it abundantly clear that he does not think that plutonium pit manufacturing belongs at Los Alamos at all. Do you residents of Los Alamos County REALLY want a Pu facility in your back yard? Gird your loins! Buck up your courage! Push back!
--Pat, the Dog with hackles raised!]

As we listen to Director Mikey on Monday all employees should remember two things.

The first thing is that between 800 to 1,000 of us won’t be working here this time next year based on the President’s budget for FY08. The LANS Board of Governors has informed the Acting NNSA Administrator that they cannot afford us in FY08. This info was provided by the Acting NNSA Administrators to his direct reports and the various site office have thus informed their contactors that approximately 1,000 Q-cleared LANL people will be available in FY08. If you have trouble believing this, ask Director Mikey on Monday. But listen carefully because his response will be LANS has no plans to RIF this year. He means FY07.

Second thing to remember, LANS is on the ropes, they have until June 1st to reach some level of improvement that Director Mikey will show as LANL’s short term goals on Monday. If DOE and the Congressional Investigation Committee are not satisfied that LANS has met these negotiated improvements by June 1st the contract will be terminated for cause based on the October incident and lack of performance.

I wonder if the arrogant LANS management team understands that we are all secretly or not-so-secretly wishing for their demise. LANL does have its problems but the accountability starts with the leadership or lack of it. The problems at LANL can be solved by competent leadership. Unfortunately, you can’t test for that in a urine sample!

Signed,
-Anonymous

-----

Thanks, Anon. Now, what about asking Mikey about Mitchell's laptop and upper managers stabbing LANL in the back on the RRW? Oh, and what Mikey thinks about Bodman's assessment of the "arrogant scientists, engineers, physicists, and chemists" at LANL? (So many questions, so little Q&A time!)
--Pat

Comment from an earlier post:

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

Re: Workforce Mobility...

I was informed this week that I was no longer 'covered'. They appreciate my almost 30 years of service, but they just don't have enough funding. They did some checking and found another Division that I might fit into and they set up a meeting for me next week. If I don't take this position, they will be forced to place me on workforce mobility (in MY mind, they already HAVE!)

Check out the Lab homepage re: workforce mobility and you'll see that once you're on it the 'receiving organization' can reduce your salary. Those of you thinking that your HAPC will continue to rise, albeit slightly, need to realize that your current HAPC is what your retirement will be based on. If you're lucky enough to not have your salary reduced, future raises will likely be in the form of bonuses (thus not an increase in your base salary.)

LANS will continue to make it harder and harder to work here. Their goal of course is to get rid of the employees 'close' to retirement--those with the highest salaries and in the steepest part of the 'retirement factor' curve. This will not only result in immediate savings (younger people are cheaper than older ones) but will also save them money down the road since people will likely retire earlier than they originally planned.

As we circle the bowl for the final few times, it's becoming painfully obvious: LANL will NEVER recover now...

Bumper sticker seen between the Hill and Pojoaque: "God I miss Sig...Hell, I even miss PETE!"

Speaker, Republicans clash in global warming hearing
GOP member insists Pelosi take questions about her plans
-Zachary Coile, San Francisco Chronicle Washington Bureau, Friday, February 9, 2007

(02-09) 04:00 PST Washington -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used the bully pulpit of her new position Thursday to pressure fellow lawmakers to get legislation to combat global warming ready for a vote this summer.

In a highly unusual move for a speaker, the San Francisco Democrat appeared as a witness before the House Science and Technology Committee along with scientists who co-wrote the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which warns of dire consequences if the world does not rein in greenhouse gases.

"We hold our children's future in our hands -- not just our grandchildren or great-grandchildren, but our own children," Pelosi told lawmakers. "As the most adaptable creatures on the planet, it is time for us to adapt."

Pelosi's testimony -- combined with her recent creation of a new House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming -- reflects a deliberate strategy to elevate the issue in Congress this year and press her own Democratic committee chairmen to act quickly.

The speaker said she wants all committees to finish work on their legislation by early June, so the House can vote on an energy independence and climate change package by July 4.

But Republicans made clear to Pelosi that they will try to block her effort to steamroller a bill through Congress, which they warn could raise energy costs and harm the U.S. economy.

"We can't figure out how to write a cap-and-trade bill that does not cause an immediate spike in natural gas prices," said Ralph Hall of Texas, the ranking Republican on the committee, referring to limits on greenhouse gas emissions. "Factories won't compete with utilities to buy gas. Rather, they will move to India and China, where there are no pollution controls, inevitably worsening global emissions."

Pelosi sharply disagreed, noting that many European nations are already implementing carbon limits without damaging their economies.

"Restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions will drive these technologies into the marketplace quickly and cost-effectively, while simultaneously creating the next generation of good-paying new jobs," she said.

Pelosi's appearance sparked a small fight in the committee when Republican James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin objected to her appearing as a witness without taking questions from lawmakers. Pelosi had agreed to make opening remarks, but due to her tight schedule had not agreed to questions.

"It is mandatory," Sensenbrenner insisted, citing House rules. "I just want to see the rules followed."

Democrats objected, criticizing Republicans for failing to extend a courtesy often made to lawmakers who testify. "I'm very disappointed and very surprised," said Jerry Costello, D-Ill.

After Pelosi took several questions, a Republican, Dana Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach (Orange County), apologized for the surprise grilling.

"We should pay her the same respect we paid to Newt Gingrich," Rohrabacher said.

But the questions elicited some captivating exchanges between Pelosi and top Republicans.

"What are you planning to do, Madam Speaker, to make sure that we don't legislate in this area in a way that wrecks the American economy and costs our workers jobs?" Sensenbrenner asked.

Pelosi said lawmakers should consider the impacts of carbon limits on the coal industry, electric utilities and other businesses.

"But we also can't ignore the consequences of not doing something, because that will have an economic impact as well," she said.

Pelosi surprised some lawmakers by saying she was open to nuclear energy, which emits no greenhouse gases, as one solution to climate change -- although she still expressed concerns about disposing of the waste.

"In the early days of my life in Congress, I was an opponent of nuclear energy," she said. "The technology has changed and I bring a more open mind to that subject now."

The committee also heard testimony from leading U.S. scientists who were co-authors of a new global assessment of climate change. The report warned that even if emissions are reduced, past and future greenhouse gases will continue to heat the planet and raise sea levels for more than 1,000 years.

Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, called the assessment a "diagnosis of the vital signs of the Earth."

"What we have found is that the planet is running a fever, so to speak, and the prognosis is that it's apt to become much worse," Trenberth said.

The scientists said the impacts of global warming observed over the past 30 years -- rising temperatures, melting ice sheets and rising sea levels -- will likely accelerate this century.

"Effects expected include more heavy rains, more drought, more heat waves and more sea level rise," said Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the Earth System Research Laboratory. "How much depends on how much we choose to emit on a global basis."

While lawmakers are split over how to address climate change, most on the panel agreed the threat is real.

"I'm one of those people who used to pooh-pooh global warming," said Bob Inglis, R-S.C., who said he changed his mind after a visit with fellow lawmakers to Antarctica in 2005. "Now I'm persuaded."

E-mail Zachary Coile at zcoile@sfchronicle.com.

-----

[And DOE Sec'y. Bodman still has his head ... in the sand. Pitiful. --Pat]

Borat Goes to Washington: Don't Experiment with the US Economy Tuesday, 06 February 2007
by Dave Lindorff

Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, in a press conference following release of the UN Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change report earlier this month, made an interesting comment. Asked why the Bush administration has been opposed to experimenting with carbon caps for American industry, he said, “The U.S. economy is not something to be experimented with, in my judgment.”

Hold on! Isn’t what the Bush administration, and indeed the whole US, has been and is doing, in refusing to deal with global warming, really experimenting not with just an economy, but with the entire biosphere of the earth—that extraordinarily narrow band of climate that sustains life? Aren’t they experimenting right now with the fate of humanity and the millions of life forms that share the planet with us?

How is it that we can be perfectly willing to “experiment” with the survival of the planet and our species, but not with the U.S. economy?

What boggles my mind is this: If the overwhelming majority of climate scientists are correct, the Earth, thanks to an experiment called industrialization, is headed irreversibly into a period of intense warming not seen in the history of mankind, and perhaps not seen since the end of the dinosaur era some 55 million years ago. If the overwhelming majority of climate scientists are correct, this experiment gone wrong threatens to destroy most life on the planet, and certainly the civilization that we humans have developed over the last 10,000 or so years. Given all this, isn’t a little experimentation with the American economy aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and perhaps deferring catastrophe worth a shot?

I mean, what are we talking about here? Let’s say the government was to impose strict carbon emission limits on American industry. Say that we passed a law requiring power plants to reduce their carbon emissions by 50 percent over the next 10 years, whether by new technologies or simply by reducing production of electricity. And say we reduced auto carbon emissions by ordering all vehicles to get a minimum of 50 miles per gallon of gas by 2017—roughly double the current average. What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe we’d see economic growth decline by a few points. Maybe we’d even have a recession. That would be unfortunate, especially for people who lost jobs because of a slowdown. But what’s the tradeoff here?

What’s the worst that could happen if we don’t cut carbon emissions from power plants and automobiles over the next 10 years?

Well, the worst that could happen is that global warming could accelerate (remember, every estimate of the pace of global warming over the last decade has been higher than the last one, so we should be prepared for more bad news). That means the world gets hotter, critical croplands get drier, storms get bigger, and economic losses due to these problems grow—perhaps leading to a serious global economic slowdown. But it could also mean that Siberia’s permafrost could melt faster, and that the 4000 billion tons of methane trapped under that permafrost could start boiling into the atmosphere faster. If that came to pass, we could have temperatures far hotter than predicted by the latest UN report. Indeed, with methane gas 24 times as potent a global warming blanket as carbon dioxide, we could find ourselves facing a run-away heating scenario that could turn most of the world into a desert.

The U.S. economy is not something to be experimented with? Is this guy serious?

Besides, the Bush administration, which claims the only valid way to run an economy is to leave it alone to “market forces,” which says that tinkering with market forces is ipso facto a bad idea, has been quietly plotting ways to tinker with the earth’s weather in a big way. According to a number of reports, the same Bush administration that won’t experiment even with something as benign as carbon trading, is funding research into projects like producing a sun-blocking smog layer of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere, or launching gigantic mirrors into orbit to block some of the sun’s light from reaching earth.

One assumes that Bodman’s alleged fear of economic experimentation stems from concerns that such experiments could lead to negative consequences. Well, just what do these guys think might happen as a consequence of tampering with the sunlight? Cut the amount of solar radiation reaching earth, and you wreak havoc on crop production everywhere—including places where millions, even billions of people can’t afford even a minor crop loss. (Such actions by one country, I might note, would clearly be an act of war against the other nations of the world.) And what about that smog layer? Eventually, the sulfur dioxide will break down into sulfuric acid and fall on land and sea, adding to already worsening acidification problems in both places.

When you consider all this, the Bush administration, and its obstinate and criminal six-year stall on dealing with global warming, starts to look like a kind of Borat government. Stupid statements are launched into the media, where they are treated as though they were serious and worthy of serious consideration. Stupid policies are initiated, and funded by Congress as though they were rational. Stupid people are nominated to office and given responsibility as though they were genuine public servants and skilled managers. The Democrats in Congress, and the voters who put all these people, Republican and Democrat, in power, are looking like Borat’s unwitting extras—taking it all seriously, and acting as though what we had in Washington was a real government of dedicated public servants.

Meanwhile, a vast experiment with the earth as test subject is running wild, like a mad scientist’s unattended array or tubes and flasks. The bunson burners are blasting, the test tubes are boiling over, caustic steam is billowing everywhere, and Borat-Bush and Borat-Bodman are outside the lab, warning the citizens not to experiment.

-----

[Here is the quintessential picture of an Arrogant Butthead Cowboy. --Pat]

















Comment from B.S. (Borat Sagdiyev) on S.B.'s (Sam Bodman's) being called "Tinker-Bell" for saying we shouldn't "tinker" with the economy:

-----

Bodman is NOT Borat, but is BUTTHEAD. Excuse me.

In Borat village Glodh, "bodman" in Kazakh dialect is translating "proud butthead goatherd." Not "proud" is best word, is "haughty" maybe in your language? (Not like "That girl is 'hottie'.") You know what I mean: not good proud, but dumb proud, losing goats every day. Bodman great wrestler and drinker of gmeesh, Kazakh horse-piss wine. -But Bodman is Butthead, not hero of Kazakhstan like me. (Excuse, but "Tinker-bell" is not good Kazakh name. Is bell around neck of goat. Thank you.}

-Borat Sagdiyev

Just to show you that LANL does not have a patent on all of the fun that comes with being a national lab, we should check in on what our friends just to the south have been up to.









The story can be seen here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/bryce05032006.html

and here:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=20396

Oops. Hope the pilot was wearing a diaper.

-Pat

ABQ Journal, Thursday, February 8, 2007
In Gov.'s Vision, No New Nukes

By John Arnold, The Journal's Jeff Jones contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2007 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Staff Writer

Gov. Bill Richardson is expected this morning to propose a halt to new U.S. nuclear weapons development as part of a strategy to curtail nuclear programs in places like North Korea and Iran.

Richardson is scheduled to speak today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., where his presidential campaign says he will discuss "his vision for a renewed and strong American foreign policy."

In the speech, Richardson is expected to say that the United States must lead a global effort to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world, according to campaign spokesman Pahl Shipley.

"If we are going to go forward with nuclear weapons development, it makes it very difficult to prevent weapons from being developed in countries like Iran, or prevent further development in North Korea," Shipley said.

Asked whether Richardson wants to halt all further U.S. nuclear weapons production, Shipley replied, "Not unilaterally, but possibly at some point, as part of a larger nonproliferation agreement."

He declined to comment further on details of Richardson's speech, which comes as the U.S. Department of Energy moves forward with a plan to design a new nuclear warhead and modernize the country's nuclear weapons complex.

It is not clear whether Richardson's proposal would affect ongoing work at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

LANL figures prominently in the government's plans. The lab is one of five sites the National Nuclear Security Administration is considering for a new nuclear weapon factory. And LANL scientists competed with scientists from California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to design the new weapon, known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead.

The Energy Department's 2008 budget request includes $89 million for continued development of the warhead, meant to replace weapons in the country's aging Cold War-era arsenal.

Supporters of the new warhead say it would be cheaper, safer and easier to maintain than existing weapons and would ultimately allow the government to reduce the size of the arsenal, currently estimated at 5,500.

Critics, however, say there's no need for new weapons, especially in light of a recent study showing that plutonium bomb cores, known as pits, have a much longer lifetime than previously thought. Developing a new weapon, they say, would only undermine global nonproliferation efforts.

The U.S. stopped testing nuclear weapons in 1992.

The national labs ensure the weapons' reliability using advanced computer simulations and other technology.

Richardson oversaw the multibillion-dollar program when he served as energy secretary in the Clinton administration.

Albuquerque Tribune Editorial: February 8, 2007
Let's listen to science and use common sense

It probably comes as a great surprise to many Americans, including members of Congress, that there is no mandatory random drug testing at the nation's nuclear weapons facilities - including the two national labs here in New Mexico.

In the rather bumpy wake of repeated security problems - most notably at Los Alamos National Laboratory - this revelation Tuesday during a congressional hearing probably seems like one more threat to the national security.

No routine testing of the folks who handle, research and control our nuclear weapons? Who dropped the ball?

The answer: Maybe no one.

Our nuclear weapons research, development and stockpile programs are more than 60 years old - and, well, so far so good.

If that sounds flip, it's really not. Security, real security, is about common sense, good science and good engineering.

Our best scientists know that. And if the government would just listen to them, it might save itself - and the country - a lot of needless trouble.

Case in point: The Department of Energy and its embattled, befuddled National Nuclear Security Administration decided recently and very quietly to just stop mandatory lie detector testing at the nuclear weapons labs and facilities.

The nation didn't collapse; the nuclear balance of power didn't shift; there is no evidence that nuclear secrets have been smuggled to our enemies.

Odd, because the government had refused to listen to expert scientists who told them that the scientific evidence was overwhelmingly negative against the routine use of lie detector tests in the first place.

Yet new NNSA Administrator Tom D'Agostino thinks it "makes sense" to expand the practice of random drug testing to all of the nation's nuclear weapon facilities from the trial program now underway at Los Alamos. The move was started after some classified materials from that laboratory were found in a home last year during a drug bust that involved a lab employee.

The solution? Mandatory random drug testing for all!

A former Sandia National Laboratories scientist, Al Zelicoff, predicts that up to 10 percent of the nation's nuclear weapons employees will trigger false positives because of the widespread use of anti-depressants and other legal prescriptions.

If so, that could be more distracting, disruptive, costly and threatening to the real national security interests of a safe, secure and reliable nuclear stockpile than the occasional security breach - almost all of which incidentally have turned out to be wrong or grossly exaggerated.

Yes, the nation's nuclear weaponry and secrets warrant top security, including ensuring - as best as possible - that employees are reliable, dedicated and loyal.

The best way to achieve that is the way this nation built the most awesome arsenal in the history of the planet - with strict civilian controls and the best scientific and engineering minds we can hire.

NNSA, the Department of Energy, Congress and the president should tap into some of that expertise now.

Zelicoff and his scientific colleagues were right before. Chances are they'll have the right stuff again. Let's ask them before going off half-cocked.

The Pentagon's not-so-little secret
As the president and Republicans continue to hype the surge -- and stifle debate about it -- Bush's own war planners are preparing for failure in Iraq.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Photo: AP/Wide World
Composite photo of George W. Bush and soldiers from the 1st Infantry at Fort Riley, Kan., who will be deployed to Iraq as part of the troop surge.

Feb. 8, 2007 | Deep within the bowels of the Pentagon, policy planners are conducting secret meetings to discuss what to do in the worst-case scenario in Iraq about a year from today if and when President Bush's escalation of more than 20,000 troops fails, a participant in those discussions told me. None of those who are taking part in these exercises, shielded from the public view and the immediate scrutiny of the White House, believes that the so-called surge will succeed. On the contrary, everyone thinks it will not only fail to achieve its aims but also accelerate instability by providing a glaring example of U.S. incapacity and incompetence.

The profoundly pessimistic thinking that permeates the senior military and the intelligence community, however, is forbidden in the sanitized atmosphere of mind-cure boosterism that surrounds Bush.

From a comment on an earlier post:

I heard today (AD Level) John Mitchell DID have classified data on his laptop at home. Don't lose site of this one because LANS would sure like us to forget it!

Mike needs to address this during his all-hands meeting next Monday. If he ignores it, then we will know that the rumor is most likely true. If he openly addresses it, and says that the rumored event did not occur, then he owes us an explanation of why Mitchell really did quit after just 5 months on the job. The FBI investigation findings are just months away, so an outright lie, or a lie by omission will only purchase that much time. If, by some remote chance someone has the courage to ask him a question about the purported security infraction and Mike says that he cannot comment because of the ongoing investigation, then we will know that Mitchell probably did in fact have classified material on a computer at his home.

Pretending that his rumor is not circulating, as LANS has chosen to do to date, will only cause more damage, although LANS' credibility really can't sink very much lower.

-Pat

"We and "Them" Companies
Is the old-fashioned work ethic gone for good?

BY H. James Harrington

Our forefathers measured the social and moral fitness
of people according to their work ethics. Individuals
who worked hard deserved to reap the harvest of their
work. Since then our attitude toward work has changed
profoundly, shifting from an old-fashioned work ethic
to a cynical, me-first outlook.
The good old days (1900-1960):
• Hard work was considered a sign of personal
Integrity.
• Strong home and family ties predominated.
• Church and schools reinforced the importance of hard
work.
• One parent worked to earn money while the other
worked to manage the family.
• A high school graduate was considered to have a good
education.
• Craftsmanship was important.
• Work was fun.
• Customers were friends and neighbors.
• The person who did the most set the standard.

The transformation (1960-1990):
• People worked to buy items.
• Work wasn't fun.
• Individuals sought fun and relaxation outside of
work.
• A bachelor's degree was considered a good education.
• Employees were required to work overtime, if needed,
and looked forward to the extra money.
• Workers didn't want to use their energy at work;
they saved it until they got home.
• Customers were strangers.

The new work ethic (1990-present):
• Instant gratification rules.
• We live in the most affluent environment ever.
• Today's jobs are temporary--individuals are always
looking for something better.
• Both parents must work to support their desired
lifestyle.
• Physical work is considered undesirable.
• A master's degree is considered a good education.
• Working overtime is considered unacceptable.
• People who work hard are outcasts.
• The person who does the least sets the standard.

Management issues today:
• Employees have little company loyalty and trust.
• People are self-oriented.
• People are professionally oriented rather than
company-oriented.
• A conflict exists between organizational goals, and
individual needs and wants.
• Organizations spend more money on mergers than they
do on capital equipment.
• All but core-capability jobs are candidates for
outsourcing.
• There's little or no job security.

The productive relationship between employees and
management has broken down. Company spirit and pride
have disappeared. Companies used to treat their
employees like fine china, continuously polishing them
and keeping them in good condition. Today, they treat
their employees like paper plates--disposable items
that need little or no maintenance.

Today's employees aren't committed to spending their
working lives with the same employer. After two years
in the same job, it's considered OK to move on. For
example, not long ago we trained two Six Sigma Black
Belts for a company that invested a considerable
amount of money on them. The individuals left the
company within two months of achieving their Black
Belt status. Obviously, this employer received no
benefit for providing the training, but it gave these
employees additional skills so that they could find
jobs that offered more money. Discouraged by such
behavior, companies are more likely to refrain from
investing in their employees. Employees, in turn, will
continue to react the way they do because their
companies are treating them like throw-away items.

It's time for companies to accept their
responsibilities to their employees. They must give
them a reason to be proud of their company. Companies
should build team spirit and invest in developing
their employees. In return, employees must realize
that their prosperity is a gift that the company gives
them. They should realize that the company's
reputation, profits and losses are their
responsibility. Companies and employees both should
feel that they're responsible for providing a fair
return to the people who invested in the organization.
To do that, they must make the best use of their time
and talents. They must ask themselves if their
salaries were fairly earned: Would they pay someone
else the same wage to do their job, or would they
expect much more of them?

There's a direct relationship between the last time we
went hungry and our work ethic. Maybe if we worked
harder, we could take in our belts a few notches.
Our companies are "we" and "them" companies, and we
need to make them "us" companies.

[About the author
H. James Harrington is CEO of the Harrington Institute
Inc. and chairman of the board of Harrington Group. He
has more than 55 years of experience as a quality
professional and is the author of 26 books. Visit his
Web site at www.harrington-institute.com]

Pat,

here's what's happening at LLNL today...
----------
Life After Transition - A moderated panel discussion

10-11:30 a.m.
Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2007
Broadcast live on Lab TV

Please tune in to hear how representatives of various DOE/NNSA laboratories
underwent their own transitions to a new contract manager. Invited panelists
will discuss the issues they faced under the new operator, the changes their
laboratories and fellow employees have undertaken, as well as the challenges
they faced along the way.

All employees are encouraged to watch


Moderator:
Bob Kuckuck, the former Los Alamos National Laboratory director and former
deputy director at LLNL.


Panelists:
- Lanny Bates, leader of the Facilities Development Division at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory.

- Pat Falcone, leader and group manager of systems analysis at Sandia
National Laboratories in New Mexico.

- Scott Gibbs, associate director for Engineering and Engineering Sciences,
Los Alamos National Laboratory.

- Bill Hempfling, Human Resources director, Brookhaven National Laboratory.

- Carolyn Zerkle, deputy associate director of Nuclear and High Hazard
Operations, Los Alamos National Laboratory.

----

Any tips for LLNL employees wanting to fine tune their bs detection meters?

Please post to blog. Thanks. -Anon.

Which Source Outed Wen Ho Lee?
By Leslie Linthicum, Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer (Sunday, February 4, 2007)

On March 8, 1999, Bill Richardson fired Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanian-born computer scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in connection with an investigation into lost nuclear missile secrets.

Lee, 59, had been a spy suspect for several years, but he had not been charged with a crime.

The official information released by the Department of Energy and LANL was only that an employee had been fired.

Richardson talked to reporters that day to announce and defend the firing, saying the employee had failed to disclose contacts he'd had with people from a sensitive country, failed to safeguard classified information and attempted to deceive lab officials about security matters.

But some news wire and television reports that day and newspaper reports the next day identified Lee by name and with detailed information about him.

Where did that name come from?

Circumstances pointed to Richardson or someone else high in his office.

Years later, after Lee filed a lawsuit against federal officials for invading his privacy by leaking his name, a federal appeals court judge would single out Richardson, Energy Department counterintelligence director Edward Curran and deputy security chief Notra Trulock as the three likely suspects.

Richardson denied under oath that he was the source. In testimony to a Senate subcommittee, Trulock said Richardson was the leaker.

In their book about the Lee case, "A Convenient Spy," San Jose Mercury News reporter Dan Stober and former Albuquerque Journal reporter Ian Hoffman also pin the leak on Richardson.

Reporters for The New York Times, The Associated Press, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and ABC News— organizations that published the stories in question— have refused to identify the leaker.

Faced with contempt charges and jail for their reporters for refusing to identify the source, those five news organizations agreed last year to pay Lee $750,000 to settle the suit, and the federal government kicked in another $895,000 for legal fees.

The Albuquerque Journal was not party to the litigation and did not report the initial information attributed to unnamed sources.

In August 1999, Lee still had not been charged with any crimes, and he went on "60 Minutes" to plead his case. Lee said he believed the government went looking for a Chinese scientist to blame for the loss of information and found him.

Lee was the focus of the story, but Richardson was also on camera, telling Mike Wallace that Lee had transferred sensitive weapons information from classified to unclassified computers, where it was accessible on the Internet.

Lee finally was indicted on Dec. 10 on 59 counts related to copying classified information with intent to harm the United States.

The criminal case crumbled over the next nine months and sputtered out in 2000 with a plea agreement. Lee would plead guilty to one count of mishandling classified information, be sentenced to time served and agree to tell the truth about where he had put the tapes of classified data he made.

His admission in court was, "I used an unsecured computer in T-Division to download a document or writing related to the national defense." He said he threw the tapes into a Dumpster in the secured X division at the lab.

U.S. District Judge James Parker apologized to Lee and singled out the Department of Energy's top decision-makers, among others, for a tongue-lashing.

"They have embarrassed our entire nation, and each of us who is a citizen of it," the judge said.

Richardson, appearing on "Meet the Press" shortly after Parker's rebuke, said he disagreed with the conditions of Lee's confinement, but he defended the prosecution and the plea.

"Confinement, shackles, I wouldn't have done that," he said. "But there's no question that I think the deal is good because it would enable us to get what happened with that very, very sensitive classified information."

[Whatta guy, that Bill!
Energy Secretary extraordinaire!
Diplomat extraordinaire!
Frat-boy extraordinaire! ...
Liar extraordinaire!
--Pat]

NNSA considers drug testing at Sandia labs

James W. Brosnan/Albuquerque Tribune Reporter, Tuesday, February 6, 2007


WASHINGTON — The head of the National Nuclear Security Administration said today he is strongly considering expanding a program of random drug testing for employees at security-plagued Los Alamos National Laboratory to all employees at all NNSA facilities, including Sandia National Laboratories.

"This makes sense to me," acting NNSA Administrator Tom D'Agostino told the Tribune after an NNSA budget briefing.

But he said he first wants to evaluate the drug testing program at Los Alamos, which was only initiated last year after a secretary was arrested during a drug bust and found to be in possession of classified and unclassified documents on a flash drive.

The director at Los Alamos, Michael Anastasio, also began drug testing all new hires at the lab, not just those who work in secure areas.

Sandia has always had drug testing for new employees, but follow-up drug screening is limited to drivers and certain other employees in sensitive areas, said Sandia spokeswoman Stephanie Holinka.

At hearings in the House last week on security problems at Los Alamos, some members of Congress were surprised to learn that drug testing is not already required at the eight NNSA labs and plants.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told the House Armed Services Committee last week that he expects to look at expanding drug testing throughout the weapons lab complex. The budget President Bush sent to Congress on Monday calls for a 17.4 percent increase in spending at NNSA on physical and cyber security.

D'Agostino told the Tribune he would make the decision on drug testing at NNSA facilities in consultation with Bodman.

D'Agostino also reporters today that they are well underway with efforts to seal all open computer ports at NNSA facilities either through changes in software or physically sealing USB and Firewire ports.

© 2006 The Albuquerque Tribune

-----

[Insanity spreads like bird flu. But there are voices of moderation at Sandia, like retired physicist Alan Zelicoff; yes, people actually speak out; see attached.
--Pat]

A former Sandia scientist who fought against random polygraph testing at the laboratory said random drug testing is "another foolish decision" and "worse than worthless." Dr. Alan Zelicoff, a physicist with a medical degree, predicted that up to 10 percent of the employees at the labs will trigger positive results on drug tests because of anti-depressants or other legitimate prescriptions. Zelicoff opposed the polygraph tests initiated by Gov. Bill Richardson, who was energy secretary in 1999. Zelicoff left Sandia in 2003 and now works for a medical software company and does consulting. Zelicoff said he supports drug testing of new hires and "for cause," when a manager detects suspicious or erratic behavior in an employee. He said the managers of the labs are trying to avoid the risk of being sued by testing all employees for drugs.

Sam sent one of his boys over to check out what insecurities the arrogant scientists at LANL are up to today. I don't imagine our DOE "friends" will be able to see much with that itty bitty 800 by 600 window.

Please tell Sam we're all just fine back here at LANL, but we are running a bit low on JB Weld. Could you send some more?

Hey, as long as we have your attention, could we ask you something? We were wondering: which one of us arrogant scientists was it that approved Jessica Quintana's DOE clearance?



What? I couldn't hear your answer.

-Pat, The Dog

[For a blow-up of this Non Sequitur cartoon, click on it.]

Note that while an overall cut for LANL funding is represented in this budget, money for pit production is up. Do you see the theme yet, folks? The trend? The future plans that Washington and certain beltway bandits have for LANL? Knock, knock. Anybody home? Still glad UC "won the contract"?

Don't you all worry, though. Mike will manage to put a positive spin on this in his upcoming all hands meeting.

-Pat

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

ABQ Journal
Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Proposed Cuts May Hurt N.M. Labs

By John Arnold
Journal Northern Bureau
The Bush administration is proposing budget cuts that may threaten "the
long-term vitality" of New Mexico's national laboratories, Sen. Jeff
Bingaman, D-N.M., said on Monday.
Bingaman, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, plans
to call Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman before his committee this week to
explain the Department of Energy's $24.3 billion spending plan for 2007-08.
Although the 2008 proposal represents a slight increase over the
department's current spending, Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories
would see significant cuts in weapons and science programs.
The proposed budget "invests in infrastructure and security at the labs
but takes away from science and engineering," Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.,
said.
The Energy Department proposes spending $4.1 billion in New Mexico in
fiscal year 2008, down from $4.3 billion approved for the 2006 budget. (An
Energy Department budget for the current year has yet to be approved, so
spending is continuing at 2006 levels.)
Los Alamos' $1.8 billion budget would be reduced by about $24 million
overall, including a 6 percent cut in weapons programs.
Sandia's $1.4 billion budget would decline by nearly $120 million,
including a $77 million cut in weapons funding.
Although the Energy Department's budget for the American Competitiveness
Initiative— an effort to encourage scientific innovation— would increase by
$300 million, Sandia's science budget would be cut by 6 percent and LANL's
would remain flat.
"While I am glad to see the Office of Science's budget grow, I am
disappointed that our own outstanding labs will not be the beneficiaries,"
Bingaman said.
LANL spokesman Kevin Roark said Monday that Los Alamos National
Security, the company that manages the lab, has been anticipating a flat or
slightly reduced budget. But he noted that the spending plan still must work
its way through Congress.
"This is just the beginning of the budget process," Roark said. "So it
is way too early to tell what this initial budget would mean for Los
Alamos."
Los Alamos Study Group Executive Director Greg Mello on Monday
downplayed proposed cuts to Energy Department spending in the state, saying,
"Continued focus of attention on the DOE labs is exactly the wrong focus for
economic development in New Mexico."
Meanwhile, the Energy Department budget proposes to advance "Complex
2030," the department's plan to modernize and consolidate the nation's
nuclear weapons complex. Funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead, a new
nuclear weapon design meant to replace aging weapons in the existing
stockpile, would increase by $61 million over 2007 levels.
Overall, the Energy Department— through its National Nuclear Security
Administration— plans to spend $6.5 billion on weapons programs, up slightly
from the 2007 request.
At LANL, funding for plutonium pit manufacturing would increase by $14.5
million, environmental cleanup would get a nearly $50 million boost, and
security funding would increase by $45 million.
"This budget will help us expand our nation's scientific know-how,
protect generations from the dangers of our Cold War legacy, and safely and
reliably maintain our nation's nuclear weapons stockpile," Bodman said in a
news release.
But lab watchdogs criticized the plan, including cuts to programs meant
to ensure the reliability and extend the lifetimes of weapons in the
existing stockpile.
The Department of Energy is "betting the house" on the new Reliable
Replacement Warhead design, said Jay Coghlan of the group Nuclear Watch New
Mexico.
"This is folly, in my view. ... We're going to be betting our national
security on untested new nuclear weapons, rather than maintaining
extensively tested weapons," he said.


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

Santa Fe New Mexican
Budget trims lab funding

By ANDY LENDERMAN | The New Mexican
February 6, 2007
President Bush's proposed budget would cut federal spending at Los Alamos
National Laboratory by nearly $18 million, or 1 percent, compared to the
2006 fiscal year.

The lab would receive $1.83 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy in
the 2008 fiscal year, according to the president's budget request to
Congress, released Monday. That's less than the roughly $1.85 billion that
the lab got in the 2006 fiscal year.

New Mexico's senators, who run the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee, were not pleased with the president's proposal and vowed to
analyze the plan thoroughly.

"It underscores the increasing pressure on our federal budget," U.S. Sen.
Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said in a news release.

But he and U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M, said the budget will prompt no
job cuts at New Mexico labs. Domenici said he received assurance from
officials with the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees
the labs.

Congress did not pass most of the federal spending bills for the 2007 fiscal
year, which is why the 2006 number is being used for comparison. But the
president did send a budget request to Congress for 2007, and New Mexico's
senators said the labs got a cut compared to that spending plan, too.

Cuts, in comparison to 2007 budget requests, were proposed in weapons
activities, nuclear nonproliferation and advanced computing. Weapons
programs were cut 6 percent at Los Alamos and 8 percent at Sandia National
Laboratories, Domenici reported.

The Energy Department gave an overall increase to research and development
programs in the Office of Science, but Los Alamos stayed flat and Sandia saw
a cut.

Programs to make plutonium pits, the triggers for nuclear weapons, saw an
increase at Los Alamos.

Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico said that increase, plus other
budget language, concerns him. He thinks Los Alamos could end up being the
country's permanent pit production center.

Money at Los Alamos is tight, and a new private contractor that manages the
lab already has announced several cost-cutting measures, such as layoffs to
contract workers and not filling the jobs of workers who retire or resign.

Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque also saw a proposed cut, from
$1.48 billion in 2006 to $1.27 billion in the 2008 proposal. And overall
Department of Energy spending in New Mexico was proposed at $4.08 billion in
2008, compared to $4.3 billion in 2006.

These cuts to New Mexico labs came despite an overall Department of Energy
budget that proposes to spend $24.3 billion, which is more than last year's
proposal.

Increases in nuclear energy programs, such as the Global Nuclear Energy
Partnership, are included.

"We need to have a comprehensive approach to our energy challenges, using
all of the department's technology strengths," Bingaman said in a news
release. "I am concerned that some of the president's budget choices may
undermine our future energy security, and threaten the long-term vitality of
the New Mexico (Department of Energy) laboratories."

Los Alamos spokesman Kevin Roark said it's too early to speculate on how the
2008 budget would impact the lab specifically.

"We've been planning for flat or slightly declining budgets," Roark said.
"That's just been the trend" in recent years, he said.

Congress never passed a full budget for the 2007 fiscal year, and
negotiations in Congress are ongoing about how to pay for the rest of the
2007 fiscal year, which ends in October. In any case, it's expected to be
relatively flat and close to 2006 fiscal year numbers.

Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, which opposes nuclear weapons,
said the weapons budget is too big.

"At its present size, the warhead budget reflects pork-barrel interests
around the complex, as well as make work missions ... ," Mello said.

Mello also criticized Bingaman for "whining" over the loss of federal
dollars to New Mexico.

"(Department of Energy) dollars have not much helped New Mexico if at all,
and a continued focus of attention on the (Department of Energy) labs is
exactly the wrong focus for economic development in New Mexico," Mello said.

The lab's overall budget, which includes money from other agencies, is about
$2.2 billion. About 8,920 scientists and support staff work as permanent
employees for Los Alamos National Security LLC, the private company that
operates the lab for the government. Another 1,617 students and researchers
also work there, as well as roughly 2,500 contract workers.

At Los Alamos, 57 percent of the budget is spent on weapons work and 8
percent is spent on nuclear nonproliferation, Roark said, which refers to
efforts to keep nuclear materials accounted for.

Since taking over last June, managers of Los Alamos National Security have
been working to fill a $175 million budget shortfall, which stems from
higher taxes and employee costs, and a management fee to the company.

Lab Director Michael Anastasio has worked to avoid layoffs to the permanent
work force by announcing cuts in temporary contract jobs and by not filling
many jobs that come open when workers retire or resign.

Last fall when the layoffs were announced, then Deputy Director John
Mitchell revealed this insight about the lab budget to a group of small
business leaders:

"If you go back and look at the last five years, there's been a general
trend," Mitchell said. "The lab has increased its labor staff faster than
the budget has increased."

McCartin said Bingaman is not satisfied with the president's budget proposal
and that he would work to strengthen it.

U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., called the cuts "unfortunate."

He called for "a comprehensive approach to address our energy needs" and
said the lab could move the country in a new direction on energy with proper
funding.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman noted an increase in alternative-fuels
research and doubling the country's Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the
proposal, a "commitment to strengthen our nation's energy security by
diversifying our energy resources.

From an earlier comment:

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

*** RED ALERT! ***

Even in a Bush budget loaded with pork, the Whitehouse has just decided to cut funding for both LANL and SNL in FY08. If this doesn't convince everyone that hard times are a'coming for the labs, nothing will. We could be looking at close to $100 million in reduced funding for next year. Add in the $200 million deficit due to our new management overhead structure and you're looking at a possible $300 million shortfall for next year.

Yes, Virginia, there will be RIFs in FY08. I would guess at least 10% of the LANL workforce will be hit. If you think the housing market on the Hill is bad now, just wait till next year.

..................

Bush’s Proposed Budget Would Cut Los Alamos, Sandia Budgets - AP, Feb 05, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) - New Mexico’s lawmakers are condemning President Bush’s proposed cuts to the state’s nuclear research labs, saying they reflect the wrong priorities.

Bush’s 2008 spending plan — delivered to Congress on Monday — would cut spending by $192 million for Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.

Although the Democratic-controlled Congress will hash out the budget, the state’s lawmakers say Bush’s proposal is reason to worry about the Energy Department labs.

U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman says he’s concerned the president’s budget choices might undermine future energy security.

New Mexico’s senators have promised they will question Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman about several items in the budget.

Comment from an earlier post:

************************************
"Also, DOE got raked over the coals for their providing a clearance to Jessica, at the closed meeting with the congressional committee. LANL reps weren't allowed in..."

So, naturally, Bodman's response is to blame all of the security problems on "arrogant scientists" at LANL.

Prick.

http://www.theregister.com/2007/02/02/lanl_2007_bash/

Why did the classified paper cross the road?

Stay one step ahead, receive articles like this on your desktop as they happen.

This was just sent in. Why do you suppose LANS is waiting two more weeks before holding a meeting? There will be plenty of news breaking before then. Perhaps Mike is waiting until after the next tidal wave of revelations to have his little chat with us.

In any event, here is my list of questions to ask Mike:

1. When will the findings of the ongoing FBI investigations be made public?
2. Was John Mitchell's sudden departure from LANL security related, as rumored?
3. Since when were all of LANL's security problems caused by "arrogant scientists"?
4. Are you as embarrassed by LANS' performance at LANL to date as we are?
5. Have we run out of JB Weld yet?
6. Why was NNSA's security solution of cardboard and red duct tape over their USB ports not discussed in the hearings?
7. How do you justify an FTE rate of $400K per staff member?
   

-Pat

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




Perhaps a question ought to be asked about "Workforce Mobility." Here's something from the Union (UPTE):

"(1) Is Workforce Mobility Just One Step from Out the Door?
As LANS keeps falling short of money because of management's unanticipated need to pay for gross receipts taxes, groups all around the lab are running short on funds. Employees in these groups are being placed in the workforce mobility program. Often this means great disruption to their former group and a new job that may not fit their skills. While the lab is adhering to the promise of no layoffs for the first year under the new contract, UPTE-CWA is worried that those on workforce mobility will be the first pushed out the door on July 1 when the first year is over.

"If you have been placed on workforce mobility, UPTE wants to hear from you. Send us an email or call us at 662-4679. Tell us how long you have been at the lab, whether you chose TCP1 or TCP2, what you did at your old job and what you do in your new job. We will keep all information confidential.

"We need to know if LANS is doing its best to find work for current employees, or if they are discriminating against certain groups that they hope to layoff in the near future. Only with your input can the union present testimony to legislators and take effect action to ensure that all are treated fairly. We look forward to hearing from you. "

Op-Ed Columnist, New York Times

The Green-Zoning of America

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 5, 2007

One of the best of the many recent books about the Iraq debacle is Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s “Imperial Life in the Emerald City.” The book tells a tale of hopes squandered in the name of politicization and privatization: key jobs in Baghdad’s Green Zone were assigned on the basis of loyalty rather than know-how, while key functions were outsourced to private contractors.

Two recent reports in The New York Times serve as a reminder that the Bush administration has brought the same corruption of governance to the home front. Call it the Green-Zoning of America.

In the first article, The Times reported that a new executive order requires that each agency contain a “regulatory policy office run by a political appointee,” a change that “strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts.” Yesterday, The Times turned to the rapid growth of federal contracting, fed “by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does.”

These are two different pieces of the same story: under the guise of promoting a conservative agenda, the Bush administration has created a supersized version of the 19th-century spoils system.

The blueprint for Bush-era governance was laid out in a January 2001 manifesto from the Heritage Foundation, titled “Taking Charge of Federal Personnel.” The manifesto’s message, in brief, was that the professional civil service should be regarded as the enemy of the new administration’s conservative agenda. And there’s no question that Heritage’s thinking reflected that of many people on the Bush team.

How should the civil service be defeated? First and foremost, Heritage demanded that politics take precedence over know-how: the new administration “must make appointment decisions based on loyalty first and expertise second.”

Second, Heritage called for a big increase in outsourcing — “contracting out as a management strategy.” This would supposedly reduce costs, but it would also have the desirable effect of reducing the total number of civil servants.

The Bush administration energetically put these recommendations into effect. Political loyalists were installed throughout the government, regardless of qualifications. And the administration outsourced many government functions previously considered too sensitive to privatize: yesterday’s Times article begins with the case of CACI International, a private contractor hired, in spite of the obvious conflict of interest, to process cases of incompetence and fraud by private contractors. A few years earlier, CACI provided interrogators at Abu Ghraib.

The ostensible reason for politicizing and privatizing was to promote the conservative ideal of smaller, more efficient government. But the small-government rhetoric was never sincere: from Day 1, the administration set out to create a vast new patronage machine.

Those political appointees chosen for their loyalty, not their expertise, aren’t very good at doing their proper jobs — as all the world learned after Hurricane Katrina struck. But they have been very good at rewarding campaign contributors, from energy companies that benefit from lax regulation of pollution to pharmaceutical companies that got a Medicare program systematically designed to protect their profits.

And the executive order described by The Times will make it even easier for political appointees to overrule the professionals, tailoring government regulations to suit the interests of companies that support the G.O.P. — or to give lucrative contracts to people with the right connections.

Meanwhile, never mind the idea that outsourcing of government functions should be used to promote competition and save money. The Times reports that “fewer than half of all ‘contract actions’ — new contracts and payments against existing contracts — are now subject to full and open competition,” down from 79 percent in 2001. And many contractors are paid far more than it would cost to do the job with government employees: those CACI workers processing claims against other contractors cost the government $104 an hour.

What’s truly amazing is how far back we’ve slid in such a short time. The modern civil service system dates back more than a century; in just six years the Bush administration has managed to undo many of that system’s achievements. And the administration still has two years to go.

-----

Sound familiar, LANL (and LLNL) employees?
--Pat

A comment on the http://lanl-the-corporate-story.blogspot.com/2007/02/its-time-to-hear-from-scientists-dont.html
post asks the question:

Ok - let's take bets. How likely is there to be any "press conference" from the scientists, or a class action lawsuit, or any other action other than silence and grumbling to ourselves? Is it possible to take such a stance without guaranteed retribution, or at least, subtle promotion to the front of the RIF line? I know I'm not willing to martyr myself (sorry - but judging from the pervasive use of anonymous posting here, I'm not alone). Is there a route where there is protection for those who speak out, or are we just screwed if we try?

The fact that his question was asked illustrates the following about LANL: the lab's previous contractor, the University of California, provided no leadership during at least the past half decade. Any leadership that did exist at one time within LANL rose from within the ranks of the institution. Unfortunately, the last example of leadership of any consequence at LANL was Harold Agnew.

Now that our enemies have clearly declared themselves, Sam Bodman, head of DOE being but the latest, we have two choices:

1. Continue to whine about our current state, and wait for the worst that is yet to come, or
2. Find, promote, and support a core of scientist-lead leadership from within the ranks of LANL staff.
   

The resources exist within LANL to take on our enemies, DOE and NNSA in particular, and pick them apart. Pin them to the mat. They have no solid ground to stand on -- they are arguably the least efficient, most incompetent (FEMA notwithstanding) of any of the department-level government organizations. There are plenty of smart people at LANL, unlike at the home offices of our newly declared enemies. Their organizations are huge, bureaucratic, stultified. Their leadership is feeble. We could mount an offense against them that would run circles around their clumsy attempts to continue to shift all the blame for recent events upon LANL's scientists.

If we had leadership.

The next few weeks are critical. They will tell if there is enough collective spine remaining among the scientists at LANL to rise to the need of the institution. Like our most recent former director, Nanos, who purchased his golden parachute from UC by the power of the knowledge that he has of UC's dirty little secrets, LANL scientists have plenty of knowledge of the dirty little secrets of DOE, NNSA, and now LANS. We have the power to turn this current public whipping of LANL into a real fight. A dirty fight.

If we had leadership. I personally know a few LANL scientists who are now angry enough at Bodman's cowardly attempt last week to shift all of the blame for his own organization's incompetence onto 'arrogant' LANL scientists who are now prepared to come forth and publicly fight back. They are now willing to go on the record with facts and proof of decades of DOE and UC malfeasance. You will be reading about this in the press in coming days. This is a good start, but it is not enough. A few courageous leaders need a large support base of courageous staff, if the fight is to be won. The choice is yours. Remain cowards -- watch the lab shrivel. Become brave -- feel good about yourselves, and maybe even help turn LANL back into place where you like working again.

-Pat

This, from Anonymous, deserves a top post. Congressmen: Are you listening?

-----

So Stupak and Barton say to close down LANL and fire everyone. Bodman blames the scientists for all of LANL's problems. It is clear that the scientists are not to blame, so in effect this whole thing is a way to disgrace the workforce.

Is it really a good idea to disgrace the workforce and than fire all of them? It has been understood that a large number of scientists forego the possibility of academic positions by working on national security research that cannot be published. In academics it is your publication record that determines if one gets hired. So if we just throw thousands of scientists out on the streets where are they going to go? In many cases these people have spent years learning how to do very specialized work that is only done at a few places.

The people at the other labs are observing what is happening at LANL and know they are next. The message will also be clear to young people, "do not go into science" your own country will publicy disgace you and throw you away.

And what message is this sending to the rest of the world? LANL is the largest physical sciences laboratory in the United States. On just the basic science side of things, which is only a small part of Los Alamos, LANL publishes more papers than LLNL and Sandia combined. I am certain, but I belive LANL is the third-ranked institution in the United States in terms of scientific output. We are saying to the world that we are destroying our own scientific infrastructure. We are also saying to the world that we are destroying our own national security infrastucture.

-Anon.

-----

Amen to that, Brother! (Or Sister!) Judging from the suggestions posted here on The New Blog, I would propose that some of you LANL scientists get together in the next couple of days and organize a press conference. There are plenty of contacts in the mainstream media who could be called upon to hear the scientists' side of the story, and then throw the panel open for questions.

On another front, but closely related, the most salient part of Mike Anastasio's written comments to Dingell's committee were thoroughly buried. I would like, in all fairness to him, to air them here (my only criticism is that Mike was way too soft-spoken in front of the Congressional grandstanders, which has led to criticism of him for not defending the Lab's scientists from the unfair statements of Sec'y. Bodman):

"From my meetings with several of you and with Subcommittee staff, I know that, very understandably, there is a strong desire for a big, dramatic—even revolutionary—change to fix the problems, security and otherwise, at Los Alamos. I will tell you, however, that I do not believe that such a silver bullet exists. When the LANS team evaluated and bid on the contract, we concluded that what we were inheriting was a great Laboratory with brilliant minds, but an organization that had grown up in secrecy and necessary compartmentalization. As a result, LANL became a less cohesive laboratory and more a set of independent organizations, each with its own manner of operations and expectations. ... I also want to raise this caution: we are aggressively reducing security risks, but we cannot guarantee zero risk as that would necessarily prevent us from performing our mission. All of us who care deeply about national security must continue to work together to both protect our nation’s most sensitive secrets and allow our nation’s best scientists to do their essential work for our future."
--Director Anastasio's written testimony before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations

From an anonymous contributor:

Back in early November, the NY Times reported that the Bush Whitehouse put Secret RD data out on the web. Of course, no one paid any attention to this little story.

Let me emphasize that point once again. The Bush Whitehouse apparently put SRD data on nuclear weapons out on the web where ANYONE could come and get it.

Why couldn't Bodman or D'Agostino point this out to Congress during the hearings? I mean, my God, Bush has his people put SRD data out on the web for all to read and no one seems to mind a bit. But at LANL, if a screw-up occurs, it's "Shut the place down!".

Mr. Barton, where you aware that your man did this? Do you care? Perhaps he should be removed from office. Perhaps all the USB ports on all the Whitehouse PCs should be filled with epoxy. I know, perhaps the Whitehouse should be shutdown for 6 months for remedial training. I'm sure this incident must be due to the "culture of arrogance" that fills the Bush Whitehouse.

You can read the full story here:


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03documents.html?ei=5090&en=ba99ceafb0f67900&ex=1320210000

--------

U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer - Nov 3, 2006 - NY Times

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”

...Peter D. Zimmerman, a physicist and former United States government arms scientist now at the war studies department of King’s College, London, called the posted material “very sensitive, much of it undoubtedly secret restricted data.”

Ray E. Kidder, a senior nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, an arms design center, said “some things in these documents would be helpful” to nations aspiring to develop nuclear weapons and should have remained secret.

---------

Santa Fe New Mexican, February 3, 2007
Lab workers react after a tough week

Eric Fairfield gets calls from people who want to leave town. David Carroll is tired of a few people making all of Los Alamos National Laboratory look bad. And Brad Lee Holian says morale has never been worse.

These current or former lab scientists had a lot to say at the end of a rough week for the lab, capped by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman's comment that "arrogance" among lab scientists contributes to security problems there.

Bodman's comments, made to a House subcommittee, prompted an unusually strong reaction from lab scientists and many anonymous comments at an employee Web log called "LANL -- The Corporate Story."

"It's really interesting that all of the screw-ups are our fault and that (the Department of Energy) and (National Nuclear Security Administration) don't have any culpability in it," said Carroll, a scientist with 38 years at Los Alamos.

He said nearly all the people at the lab take security responsibility seriously but don't get credit for it. "And something goes wrong that's caused by one or two people. ... That gets smeared over all of us," he said.

The FBI has investigated how classified documents ended up last fall at the home of a former lab contract worker. No one has been charged with a crime, but 24 people at the lab have been disciplined.

Former scientist Eric Fairfield is now a financial consultant who advises people on money and how to get a new job. "I get a lot of calls saying, 'Get me the hell out of here,' " he said. But Fairfield said the lab can be run well in the presence of headstrong scientists.

Holian said people "are absolutely incredulous" that they would be hearing the same kind of talk years after former director Pete Nanos shut the lab down to review safety and security procedures.

"It's never been worse," Holian said of worker morale. "And that includes Nanos' shutdown. It's a real low." He also said people are "appalled" that no one seems to be defending the lab.

Director Michael Anastasio was unavailable for comment Friday. In any case, spokesman Jeff Berger said, Anastasio prefers to speak to employees before speaking publicly about the events of this week.

Anastasio's written testimony to Congress this week said there's more to last fall's security incident.

"This incident exposed a problem not only involving employees' attention and attitude but also the laboratory's reliance on a very complex and confusing set of cyber-security policies and procedures that made it difficult for the employees to make good, immediate judgment calls," Anastasio said.

On Friday, U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., disagreed with Bodman's comments. U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said he would speak to Bodman about the matter Wednesday and that he has encouraged scientists "to recognize their own personal responsibilities" regarding security.

U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., believes "security issues should be addressed, but they should not be placed at the doorstep of the scientists themselves," according to spokeswoman Marissa Padilla.

----- And there's more bad news from the Santa Fe New Mexican -----

Report: LANL could make do with much less
Andy Lenderman | The New Mexican, February 3, 2007

Fewer workers and buildings could be in store for Los Alamos National Laboratory's future, a new report shows.

The nation's nuclear-weapons complex, which includes the lab, could have 25 to 33 percent fewer workers by 2030, according to a new report released Friday by the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The lab also could have 40 percent fewer buildings, as outlined in a report to Congress about Complex 2030, which is the agency's vision for the complex. However, it's likely that Congress will have a role in shaping that vision, and some have questioned the program it's based on, called the reliable replacement warhead.

The specific work force at Los Alamos was not addressed in the new report. But it's clear that the agency seeks a smaller, more efficient and less costly nuclear-weapons complex by replacing Cold War weapons and buildings through the reliable replacement warhead program.

Much of the report is old news, save some details. But it comes at a time when many in Congress are questioning the lab's role and at least some scientists report low morale.

The lab has also experienced a budget shortfall this year and underwent layoffs of contract workers last year.

Eight facilities across the country, with roughly 27,000 contract workers, make up the nuclear-weapons complex.

The report also said the agency is considering a center to consolidate weapons and plutonium work.

The government also is considering Los Alamos and four other sites to house a consolidated center for its work with plutonium, the radioactive material that makes up a pit, or trigger, for a nuclear weapon.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said Los Alamos is not well-suited for permanent plutonium production and storage. "I look forward to the hearings on this report in the Senate Armed Services Committee," he said in a statement.

U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is concerned about the potential job cuts associated with the Complex 2030 plan, a spokesman said Friday.

"It has been clear, however, for some time that NNSA budgets are expected to start going down," Domenici spokesman Chris Gallegos said via e-mail. "It will be important that the focus is on generating savings from such things as eliminating the unnecessary storage of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, on which hundreds of millions are spent now to secure. That funding could better be invested in training, technology and scientific expertise so the labs are ready to meet changing national security challenges."

Son of Oppy sez:

With regard to Jessica Quintana, let me suggest that, in order to arrest someone for a crime, you have to have reasonable suspicion of criminal intent. If she was struggling under an atmosphere of intimidation and fear of imminently being fired, so that she wanted to appear to be a Superwoman, more hard-working than a speeding bullet, then it is doubtful that any jury would convict her of taking classified work home for the purpose of espionage or selling secrets for money or drugs. It's not even clear that she thought she could use the materials as some kind of blackmail to keep her job; at least, no inkling of that has leaked out.

No one who is familiar with the ancient archival stuff she had in her pitiful single-wide would even equate it with the stuff Wen Ho Lee took out from behind the fence, and he, too, was told that he was at the top of a RIF list. What are the chances, do you think, that out of 10,000 LANS employees, probably half of whom have Q-clearances, there will be someone who cracks, thinking in their fevered minds that their job is at risk, and that the secrets they can get their hands on will be bargaining chips for saving their job?

The atmosphere of intimidation has now escalated to an all-time high, even higher than under Nanos and his foolish shutdown. And now, it comes from the top of the nuclear weapons complex.

Thanks for nothing, Sam.
--Son of Oppy

-----

-Don't play it again, Sam.
--Pat, the Dog

Hello, Pat and Friends:

I've heard this story from many reliable sources over the past few days, but I haven't seen anything about it on the blog.

Sometime this week (I'm told it was Wednesday) someone in the management chain of the deployed security people held a meeting; I'm told that a fairly large group was addressed.

The deployed people were told somethng along the lines of the following:

If there is a security incident in the area for which you are responsible, and it rises to a level that it causes the company embarrassment (i.e., makes LANS look bad in the eyes of the government or the media), then you are liable for disciplinary action, up to and including termination. You will be disciplined even if you were unaware of the action; even if there was nothing that you could have done to prevent it.

You need to go home tonight and think long and hard about whether you want to accept these conditions; we will help you find a new job if you cannot.

I figure most of these deployed people are our first line of defense for any security incident. They are also, in all likelihood, the lowest-paid members of the security chain. And also the ones with the least authority.

They certainly aren't Bodman's "arrogant scientists".

People should certainly be disciplined for actions that they take that lead to problems, but I don't see why you should penalize someone for actions they could not have prevented. And terminating someone simply because they were tangentially involved with an "optics" problem is just plain wrong.

Way to go, LANS. You have threatened the first line of defense against security incidents. Will good people want these jobs now?

Post it if you like.

Regards,

Anonymous

-----

And this just in from an anonymous contributor:

A meeting of laboratory fellows this week discussed Mitchell's removal of classified information, according to the anecdote, perhaps unknowingly.

His admin, while doing property, realized a laptop was at his house, that it contained classified information, and bravely (and correctly) notified SIT.

Mitchell is described as a computer idiot, who did not even do his own email. Why did he bring a laptop home? To look like he was working? Who knows.

Or so the story goes.

-Anon.

And the beat goes on ...

--Pat, the Dog

Ok, Sam. You want a fight? You've got it.

Stay tuned, some of the ugly underbelly of LANL and DOE management is about to hit the presses, literally. Stay tuned.

-Pat, the Pit Bull

----- And from an Anonymous contributor: -----

Pat, I hope you bite Bodman right in the crotch and rip his... oh, wait, he doesn't have any, does he?

If he did, he'd have said, "Organizational culture is a product of management, regulations, organizational structure, and individual behavior, and the Laboratory has really struggled with the first three while its staff have taken the blame for management problems over which they have little control. Here's a list of what we're fixing, why we think these fixes are important, and milestones for demonstrating success in improving our management practices."

He'd have followed this with, "I'm proud to say that Los Alamos is a national treasure and a DOE laboratory peopled by talented secretaries, scientists, technicians, engineers, and other dedicated staff. Individual arrogance is the least of LANL's problems."

Oh, and the crowning statement would have been, "I personally apologize to every employee at Los Alamos for the upheaval and stress of the past few years. I will personally work with Congress and with LANL staff to identify and implement changes that make management of this very complicated institution more effective."

Maybe I should nominate myself as Energy Secretary.

-Anon.

[Dear Anon: Your sensible nature and the lack of a recognizable name preclude your being considered for DOE Sec'y. Sorry.
--Pat]

Budget favors labs
Domenici says no need for employee layoffs

-ROGER SNODGRASS, Monitor Assistant Editor, Los Alamos Monitor, Thursday, February 1, 2007

At-risk projects at Los Alamos National Laboratory, like the Chemical and Metallurgy Research Replacement facility and the environmental cleanup program mandated by the state are expected to survive in the new federal appropriations bill.

An omnibus, long-term continuing resolution scheduled for a vote today will "suitably treat" New Mexico's national laboratories, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., reported Tuesday.

There will be no need for layoffs this year, according to commitments from the National Nuclear Security Administration, he said.

"The staff has been working full time over the last several weeks to see that the labs were taken care of," said Chris Gallegos, the senator's spokesman.

Appropriations for the current year were not completed during the last session of Congress, causing many projects envisioned for the year to face cuts or abandonment.

Rather than start at the beginning of an appropriations well into the new fiscal year, Democrats last December decided to go with a budget based on last year's numbers, vowing to cut out "earmarks," often considered pet projects of senators and representatives.

"I adamantly dislike the manner in which we're handling the FY 2007 appropriations process, but I have been working to make sure that we ended up with a best case scenario for the DOE work, particularly in New Mexico," Domenici said in an announcement. The Waste Isolation Pilot Project in Carlsbad should also be fully funded for the rest of the year.

The two national nuclear laboratories in New Mexico will keep "major priorities, like the weapons program, largely intact." Domenici added.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Committee greeted the decision with measured approval.

"Like all of my Senate colleagues, I wish the leadership in the last Congress had taken up and passed the spending bills in the fall. That said, I believe the continuing resolution was fair to the Department of Energy, funding initiatives that affect New Mexico such as the NNSA stockpile stewardship efforts at Sandia and Los Alamos and effective operations of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant," Bingaman said.

Under the new appropriations, divvying up the funding pie will fall to each department.

"Congress is going to leave it up to the agencies to decide where funding goes," said Gallegos. "It's up to lawmakers to point out why projects in their states need funding.

Another piece of funding that was salvaged under the new arrangement, he added, would boost DOE's Office of Science. Gallegos said competitive initiatives sponsored by New Mexico's two senators will gain $330 million under the adjustments worked out with energy officials.

Approval of an interim budget will clear the table for debate over next year's spending proposals.

Hey Sam - who gave Jessica Quintana that Q-clearance? Oh yeah, it was DOE. What, did they forget to ask her neighbors about who frequents her humble abode? Hmmm. Must have been the arrogant scientists fault.

Hey Sam - who hired the LANS team? Oh yeah, that would be NNSA (and you). Hmmm. Must be due to the LANL bad culture.

Hey Sam - who sets the rules and regulations that the arrogant scientists must follow? Oh darn, that would be DOE and NNSA.

I ask - why is nobody in Congress realizing what is going on here? We follow the rules that we we are given. Bottom line: The security controls are not set by the arrogant scientists. I am shocked that Bodman was allowed to pass the buck today.

Here is a thought - perhaps Congress is being clever and is simply giving Sam and pals enough rope to hang themselves. I sincerely hope that Congress comes and asks the scientists some questions to find out what is really going on at this place.

Woof!

Now we know-- it's those damn arrogant scientists

By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON –— U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman yesterday told Congress that endemic security problems at one of the nation’s nuclear laboratories are caused by the “arrogance” of the scientists who work there (see GSN, Jan. 31).

Waving off the suggestion that an unwieldy Energy Department bureaucracy has caused continuing security problems, Bodman called for a change in attitude among Los Alamos National Laboratory workers.

Bureaucratic issues are not “at the heart of the problem,” he told the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee. “The heart of the problem is a cultural issue at Los Alamos.”

“Many” of the problems have been addressed, but issues remain, he conceded. Changing a culture takes time, Bodman told the committee, although he did not elaborate on the steps that have been taken.

Asked by Representative David Loebsack (D-Iowa) to sum up the cultural impediment to security at the nuclear weapons facility, Bodman responded bluntly.

“Arrogance,” he said. “Arrogance of the chemists and physicists and engineers who work at Los Alamos and think they’re above it all.”

Los Alamos has been the focus of intense scrutiny after a number of security problems in recent years. Most recently, local police raiding a mobile home found hundreds of classified, weapon-related documents that a 22-year-old contract archivist had taken from the laboratory (see GSN, Nov. 6, 2006).

In other instances, two computer hard drives containing sensitive information were found behind a copying machine at the facility, and the laboratory was temporarily shut down while workers searched for two missing disks that ultimately were found never to have existed (see GSN, Mar. 4, 2005).

Lawmakers at a hearing Tuesday lambasted Los Alamos management and suggested removing security oversight from the National Nuclear Security Administration as well as simply closing the laboratory. NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks lost his job last month over the persistent security problems (see GSN, Jan. 5).

Scientists at the New Mexico facility, which conducts weapons research and produces plutonium cores of nuclear bombs, do not see security as a central part of their work or as a serious concern, Bodman said.

“It has been that way for a long time, and that in my judgment is the issue,” he said. While avoiding specifics, the secretary said laboratory management would become stricter to address the problem. The laboratory has also instituted mandatory drugs testing, a requirement that could be instituted across the U.S. nuclear complex, he said.

A report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office stated that security lapses at Los Alamos, the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee were in part a result of administrative problems.

Pointing to the GAO report released yesterday, lawmakers questioned the effectiveness of the relationship between the Energy Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Since it was created in 2000, the nuclear agency has failed to develop the degree of autonomy needed to improve security at nuclear sites and improve management, said Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.). The idea was that creating a semiautonomous agency to lead nuclear security management agency would streamline bureaucracy and simplify lines of authority and accountability.

“I needed confidence that DOE is enabling NNSA to achieve top-notch science and security rather than serving as one big, bureaucratic roadblock,” she said. “Frankly, Mr. Secretary, after reading your submitted testimony, I am losing that confidence.”

Government auditors found that until recently the National Nuclear Security Administration had no consistent leadership for its security program, and since its inception, five of its six site offices have not been staffed at needed levels.

Also, the Energy Department’s database for tracking security issues identified in assessments is incomplete. Not all security deficiencies have been entered into the database because it is “very difficult to use,” connections are slow due to the lack of high-speed encrypted modems and it often crashes.

As a result, the security administration fails to have a full understanding of problems, according to the GAO report.

“Management problems continue, in part, because NNSA and DOE have not fully agreed on how NNSA should function within the department as a separately organized agency,” auditors wrote. “This lack of agreement has resulted in organizational conflicts that have inhibited effective operations.”

Bodman agreed that the National Nuclear Security Administration has not had the effect intended by lawmakers. “It remains my belief that the creation of NNSA as a separately organized entity within the department has not yielded all the beneficial results that the legislation’s authors intended,” he said in his testimony.

Bodman criticized the redundancies created by the two linked agencies and said the structure “imposes severe limitations” on his management authority. The secretary is unable to directly control subordinate NNSA personnel, he said. The structure also prohibits DOE officials from addressing problems arising from NNSA activities, he argued.

Despite his reservations, the secretary said he was committed to the relationship between the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Energy Department. “We’ve made it work,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.”

The question of whether or not any more security infractions (Mitchell?) will be revealed by the ongoing FBI investigation into recent security failures at LANL is interesting, but not central to learning what the eventual outcome will be for LANL.

Almost regardless of what happens from this point on, LANL is the loser. Science at LANL will never be the same. The attack on science at LANL that was begun by George Nanos in 2004 has turned into a complete rout. Science is the loser, and bloated, inept corporate structure is the winner.

The only remaining question is: will it be a slow lingering death for LANL's current contractor, or will there be a brutal Saddam Hussein-style execution of LANS at the abrupt end, like there was for its predecessor?

Here is what we can expect to be in store for LANL, now that the hearings are over:

1. In the coming weeks the slow, dawning realization will gradually come to even the most obtuse, oblivious LANL staff that a fairy tail ending is not in the script.
2. Months will drag by without resolution. RIFS will occur during those months. LANS, however, will remain. The FBI report will not be released. There will be a total news blackout regarding any possible outcome from the hearings.
   
3. An official Public Affairs stonewall campaign will be in full force. No real news will be released by LANL PA, only PR fluff.
   
4. Finally, seven months or so down the road the FBI will release their report, perhaps towards the end of August. If the report reveals that no substantive additional security episodes occurred at LANL other than the CREM de Meth fiasco, then the worst that LANS can expect is a slight-to-moderate reduction of their award fee.
5. On the other hand, if Mitchell is named as having committed the security infraction that recent rumors have hinted at, the recourse against LANS will be more severe. Their contract will be terminated earlier than the 7 year term. Three or four years early, perhaps.
6. Attrition will have taken its toll by this point. There truly will not be much science at LANL left to save by this point. Staff and programmatic dollars will have migrated to Sandia, Livermore, and other science centers.
7. Ultimately, those who wished to reduce LANL's role to that of plutonium pit manufacture will have won, no matter what the interim path was that we took to get there.
8. The politicians will declare success.

Are you all still glad that "UC won the contract"?

--Pat, The Realist

An alert anonymous reader has sent me a comment that deserves to be a banner posting. Cooler heads need to prevail when the subject of "security lapses" at the "birthplace of the atomic bomb" comes before the TV cameras.

--Pat, the Dog

-----

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

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

-Anonymous

-----

And here's another Anonymous donor, extolling the recently little extolled about LANL:



"Where in all of this public flogging is the LANL 'Communications and Government Relations' Office? The lab offers so much more to the country than pit production and nuclear weapons and yet it is extraordinarily rare to see anything about the lab's other accomplishments. The new '1663' http://www.lanl.gov/science/1663/ magazine title doesn't even tie itself into the lab (a la LA Science of a few years back). (I suspect that not all of the general public has toured the Bradbury Science Museum to learn the significance of the 1663 reference.) There are fewer and fewer press releases and it seems that if it isn't covered in a master management memo, it didn't happen. The 'Communications and Government Relations' management should be on a full-court press to get out the good word that there is so much more here.

Thanks for your blog. Your time and effort are deeply appreciated here at the krill level of the LANL food chain."