Source:
San Francisco ChronicleBy Keay Davidson 16 Jun 2007
Officials at Los Alamos National Laboratory sent top-secret information about nuclear weapons through open e-mail networks, fueling concerns that security lapses, long an issue at the New Mexico lab, have not been solved by the recent installation of a UC-
Bechtel management team.
The latest security breach was acknowledged Friday by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman after it was revealed by two congressmen. In a letter obtained by The Chronicle, Bodman assured Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, that the incident was immediately and fully investigated and that "appropriate measures have been taken to address the situation."
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Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who chairs the oversight and investigations subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, called the latest security lapse a fresh example of Los Alamos' "mind-bogglingly poor track record" on security issues.
The scandal comes less than two years after the Energy Department awarded a consortium led by the University of California and Bechtel Corp. a new contract to run Los Alamos partly in order to prevent a repeat of numerous scandals involving the security of weapons information at the lab. The consortium operates under the name Los Alamos National Security LLC.
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Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/16/BAGG3QGHF01.DTL
Another quote from the article:
"The UC-Bechtel consortium at Los Alamos has taken what was a bad managerial situation and made it a lot worse," said Marylia Kelley, head of Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, which is based in Livermore. "As long as the United States continues to design and develop new nuclear weapons, some of that information can and will leak out. ... Better management cannot solve that deeper problem."
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