Energy Dept. ‘Security Czar’ Vows to Be a ‘Dictator’

Under intense pressure to act more aggressively to plug leaks and tighten security at the nation’s nuclear weapon facilities, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson named a retired four-star Air Force general as the department’s first “security czar”--only hours after meeting him Wednesday.

Gen. Eugene E. Habiger, who last served as commander in chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, told reporters that he sees his newly created government job--director of the Office of Security and Emergency Operations--in distinctly draconian terms.

“I will be a dictator,” he said. Richardson, who sat beside Habiger at a hastily called news conference, appeared taken aback but later laughed and said: “I like the dictator line.”

Habiger, 60, vowed to “work very quickly, very aggressively and I will get this thing fixed.” He said he looks forward to working with nuclear scientists but joked: “I barely know how to spell ‘physics.’ ”

Richardson also announced that he has ordered the nation’s three nuclear weapon laboratories to freeze all operations next Monday and Tuesday to “train people and get the attention” of scientists and other employees who may still be resisting stricter security and other reforms, despite an ongoing Chinese espionage scandal.

Richardson said the two-day “stand-down,” as well as new plans to reorganize the department’s intelligence division and create the position of undersecretary of national security, were in response to the blistering criticism aimed at the department in separate reports by a House investigative committee and by President Clinton’s top intelligence advisors.

“This is to respond to some of the concerns [in the reports] that we still don’t have our act together,” Richardson said.

The House panel was headed by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), while the president’s foreign intelligence advisory board is headed by former Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.). Richardson publicly challenged the conclusions in both reports and verbally sparred with Rudman this week.

The two reports have fueled growing momentum on Capitol Hill to force dramatic restructuring of a department widely castigated as culturally incapable of fundamental reform.

At a press conference, Richardson appeared to soften his opposition to proposals in Rudman’s report, as well as in Congress, to create a stand-alone executive agency within the department to direct the nuclear weapon programs.

“We’re not that far apart,” he said. “I’m willing to work with the Congress on ways to merge what I think are slight differences.”

Richardson repeated his refusal to consider removing the weapon labs from the department entirely and to place them in a separate new government agency. That plan is far more controversial, and even some of its proponents have suggested that it is being offered mostly as a worst-case negotiating tactic.