Clinton Appointees Spar Over Nuclear Spying Issue

In an unusual dispute between two of President Clinton’s key appointees, the chairman of an influential White House intelligence panel on Tuesday sharply criticized Energy Secretary Bill Richardson for appearing to resist fundamental reform of his troubled department, despite an ongoing espionage scandal.

It “boggles my mind,” former Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) said in an interview, that Richardson continues to publicly claim the nation’s nuclear weapons secrets are now safe.

“His recent statements are the best proof of why you need reorganization,” Rudman said. He added that Richardson is “being seduced by his own bureaucracy.”

Rudman said that Richardson “has no idea” if a spy remains in the nation’s vast nuclear weapons complex. He said someone still could download classified information from a computer onto a disk “and walk out the door.” Richardson, he added, “still doesn’t have a handle” on the thousands of foreign visitors to the nuclear weapon labs each year.

Rudman spoke a day after the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which he heads, issued a scathing report about security lapses at the Energy Department and called for a dramatic restructuring of the nuclear weapon programs. Clinton asked the board in March to review the problems and come up with recommendations to fix them.

In response to Rudman’s comments, Richardson was equally combative.

“I want to see evidence [from] the malcontents he’s been talking to,” Richardson said in a telephone interview from Chicago. “I want to see evidence of nuclear security problems.”

Richardson argued that he has ordered a sweeping overhaul of security and counterintelligence since taking office last September. “I can’t guarantee 100% nuclear safety,” he said. “But I can guarantee an aggressive counterintelligence effort.

“I’m not admitting perfection,” he added. “But I want to see evidence of where we are weak, where we have shortcomings. It seems there are a lot of anonymous sources here. I want to see the evidence of where we’re not up to par.”

Rudman said that he had guaranteed anonymity to the more than 100 witnesses the panel interviewed, including current and former Energy Department officials and employees. Rudman said that no taped transcripts were kept but that two people took notes.

The panel portrayed the department as having a history of “abysmal” management, dire warnings and aborted reforms. “Second only to its world-class intellectual feats has been its ability to fend off systemic change,” the report warned.

The clash suggests there is a growing divide within the White House on how best to prevent future theft of nuclear weapons secrets, as well as how best to reform a department that has repeatedly resisted major change.

Rudman’s comments about Richardson went considerably beyond those included in his panel’s report. The review generally praised Richardson for battling a deeply entrenched bureaucracy to institute overdue changes.

The report specifically calls on Congress and the White House to consider creating a semiautonomous agency within the Energy Department for the nuclear weapons programs to improve accountability and authority. An alternative would mandate an independent nuclear weapon agency, similar to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, outside of the department.

Richardson said that creation of an independent agency for the nuclear weapon programs is “totally unacceptable, totally a nonstarter.” He said, however, that “we can discuss” restructuring the department as long as it doesn’t undermine the reforms he already has begun.

“We need to streamline, to centralize authority. That’s what I’ve done.”