Officials Deny Charges of Cover-Up in Drug Probe at Weapons Lab

Hit by charges of a massive cover-up, top administrators at the Energy Department and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on Wednesday angrily defended their decision two years ago to close an undercover probe into alleged widespread drug use and sales at the weapons lab.

Testifying before a congressional panel, Energy Undersecretary Joseph F. Salgado discounted as “double or triple hearsay,” the assertions of lab investigators that 127 lab workers--some handling top-secret research--may have been involved with drugs at the time the “Operation Snowstorm” probe was stopped in September, 1986.

“You have to look at what your evidence is,” Salgado told the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight. Based on the lack of hard evidence available then, he said: “The decision (to end the probe) was reasonable and I don’t believe there was a cover-up involved.”

Skeptical subcommittee members persisted in trying to show that Energy Department and Livermore officials ignored signs of widespread drug problems, abruptly slammed the books closed on the case for fear of “bad publicity,” demoted investigators who tried to press the case and sought to hide the inquiry from Congress.

“Operation Snowstorm ought to be called Operation Snowjob,” Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) declared.

The intense congressional scrutiny of the Alameda County weapons laboratory, which is operated by the University of California under contract with the federal government, comes as part of a broader inquiry into security safeguards at nuclear weapons facilities.

In their review of the Livermore case, Salgado conceded, Energy Department officials who testified before the same House subcommittee in March, 1986, remained misleadingly silent when asked about the existence of drug investigations at weapons facilities. At the time, the inquiry at Livermore was well under way.

“It was dumb. What can I tell you?” Salgado said when asked about the silence then of some of his top aides.

But that was the only ground yielded by Energy Department and Livermore officials. They clashed repeatedly with congressional investigators--and with their own agents who carried out the probe--on several points:

- The extent of the drug problem at Livermore. At the close of Operation Snowstorm, drug enforcement officers arrested six lab workers, including the prime suspect in a reputed drug network, and forced the resignation of a dozen others who were suspected of drug involvement and theft of some government property related to the drug trade.

Investigators who worked on the case said that when the case was closed, they were following up solid tips from inside informants that linked 127 other workers to the drug trafficking. Undercover agent Robert Buda told the subcommittee that he was “flabbergasted” when word came down that the case was closed, only days before he was to gain clearance to top-secret areas of the lab. “The door closed before we got in,” he said.

But Energy Department and Livermore officials said that because the remaining evidence was slim, they decided to nab the suspects they had and in the process send a strong message to the rest of the lab’s 11,000 workers. “Unjustified undercover activities were not the policy of the laboratory,” said Dr. James S. Kahn, the lab’s associate director at the time.

- The security risk at Livermore, where extensive research is conducted on the Strategic Defense Initiative and other high-technology military projects. Energy Department officials said that the drug problem was limited to security guards and other low-level workers, but investigators said it had reached employees with the highest clearance ratings.

- Pressure from administrators to end the inquiry. Energy Department and Livermore officials maintained that they closed the case only after a careful review of the evidence.

But a Drug Enforcement Administration agent testified that she was pressured to stay away from the Livermore investigation. And Timothy L. Mitchell, a security manager at Livermore, said that when he tried to look into the dealings of a lab chemist who carried rolls of $100 bills to work and owned several sports cars and yachts, associate director Kahn warned him to “butt out” and asked him: “What’s the matter--are you jealous?”