Firings Promised After Security Lapses at Lab

For the first time, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said Sunday he will fire department officials for failing to act on signs China was stealing secrets from a U.S. nuclear weapon lab.

Dismissals and demotions could come as early as this week after Richardson receives an internal report on security lapses at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that may have contributed to China’s alleged thefts of U.S. nuclear secrets.

“There were communications breakdowns. There were incompetent acts. Security was not considered important,” Richardson said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

On “Fox News Sunday,” he cited “individuals at the Department of Energy and the labs that, in my judgment, did not do their jobs.”

Meantime, the fallout continued from last week’s release of a select House committee’s report on China’s 20-year campaign to steal America’s nuclear technology.

Edward Curran, director of the Energy Department’s counterintelligence office, said the FBI in 1997 gave Sen. Richard C. Shelby, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, “very, very significant proposals” with 26 recommendations on improving security at Los Alamos, as well as a request for $12.5 million to begin implementing them. “And I never heard anything since.”

Curran, on ABC-TV’s “This Week,” acknowledged that the department later adopted those recommendations. Shelby, a Republican who represents Alabama, said Curran was “out of bounds in some areas.”

Shelby, appearing later on the same show, said that in 1996 the Senate Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), did respond to counterintelligence problems and provided additional money. Shelby said the department ignored the committee’s advice.