Nuclear Data Vanishes From Los Alamos Lab

Two highly classified computer hard drives containing nuclear weapons data have disappeared from a vault in the heavily guarded weapons design division at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, officials said Monday.

The disclosure marks another severe embarrassment for the Department of Energy, which owns the New Mexico lab, and for the University of California, which manages it. Critics in Congress and elsewhere long have accused the lab of lax handling of national security secrets.

The portable hard drives--one a backup copy of the other--were used by the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, a little-known group trained to respond to nuclear accidents and terrorist threats. Officials said it is not clear if the computer drives were mislaid, stolen or accidentally destroyed.

The multi-gigabyte hard drives contain secret military plans and other operational files to help the interagency emergency team identify and defuse nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal, as well as those built by America’s adversaries around the world. “These are meant to be readable and usable,” said a senior U.S. official. “I won’t sleep well until they are found.”

The hard drives, each the size of a deck of cards, were last seen in a special suitcase in a high-security vault in early April, officials said. They had disappeared by May 7 when an official went to remove the suitcase in the event that the nuclear emergency team was called into service during an approaching forest fire.

The lab closed the next day for two weeks as the huge Cerro Grande fire overran the mountainside complex, causing $300 million in damage to lab equipment and property. The fire also burned more than 200 dwellings in the neighboring town of Los Alamos and forced the evacuation of 25,000 people.

The weapons lab reopened May 22 and a quiet search was launched for the missing computer drives. For reasons still unclear, the loss was not reported to the Department of Energy in Washington until June 1. The department notified the FBI the following day. The bureau has assigned at least 22 agents to the case.

A senior Energy Department official said the loss would be “extremely serious” if the nuclear weapons data fell into the wrong hands. He said officials believe they more likely were mislaid in the confusion surrounding the evacuation of the lab as the fire approached.

The hard drives were stored in containers in a walk-in vault deep inside the lab’s super-secret X Division, where most of America’s nuclear weapons are designed and developed.

Wen Ho Lee, an engineer who is awaiting trial on 59 charges of misappropriating highly classified computer files from Los Alamos, worked in the X Division for nearly 20 years until he was fired last year.

Congress, infuriated that the lab clearly ignored Lee’s downloading of classified files, as well as other security violations, ordered a reorganization of the nation’s nuclear weapons labs and other facilities last year.

Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), who heads the Energy and National Resources Committee, said he is “gravely concerned” about the latest loss. “If they can’t keep track of this kind of information, it raises serious concerns about overall security,” he said.

The FBI and the Energy Department are investigating the case, and have jointly interviewed 86 lab employees and others believed to have had access to the materials. Several will be given polygraph examinations this week.

Officials said an intensive search of desks, safes, vaults and other areas at Los Alamos has failed to locate the missing computer material or to determine if it was mistakenly destroyed. Copies of the material exist at the lab.

Several areas and organizations at the lab, including the X Division, “stood down” during the search as scientists and other employees suspended normal activities to help account for all classified materials.

Edward J. Curran, who heads the Energy Department’s office of counterintelligence, said that “at this point” no evidence “suggests that espionage is involved in this incident.”

Only the two hard drives were missing from material used by the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, which had completed an exercise at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in early May. Officials said a spy presumably would have taken more, so they believe--or hope--that the hard drives were mislaid, perhaps in a special classified-mail delivery just before the fire.

“There was ample opportunity for lots of confusion,” said a senior Energy Department official.

John Browne, director of the lab, said in a statement that both the lab and the University of California are making inquiries.

“This is an extremely serious matter, and we are taking swift actions to deal with it,” Browne said. “If the inquiry reveals that individuals did not fulfill their responsibilities with respect to this matter, they will face certain and appropriate disciplinary actions.”

Deputy Secretary of Energy T.J. Glauthier is overseeing the department’s inquiry. He sent Eugene E. Habiger, a retired Air Force general who heads the Energy Department’s office of security and emergency operations, to the lab last week to investigate. Habiger returned Monday to brief Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.

“Our inquiry has been conducted during a period in which employees are still recovering from the effects of a major emergency disaster,” Habiger said, referring to the fire. He said he anticipates that the missing drives will turn up.