Lost Los Alamos Hard Drives Found Behind Lab Copier

Investigators unexpectedly recovered two highly classified computer hard drives Friday behind an office copy machine down the hall from where they disappeared at the beleaguered Los Alamos National Laboratory, Energy Department officials said.

“We think someone who had [the hard drives] was afraid to come forward with all the attention . . . so they dropped them behind the copy machine,” said one official familiar with the investigation.

The discovery, in a corner of a room searched repeatedly in recent weeks, marked a surprising twist in a bizarre case that has roiled Congress, sparked a massive FBI investigation and rekindled doubts about the safeguarding of national security secrets at the New Mexico lab.

The hard drives, containing a broad array of classified data about nuclear weapons, were discovered inside the lab’s X-Division, where nuclear weapons are designed. The hard drives originally had been stored in a nearby walk-in vault.

The FBI was treating the area as a crime scene late Friday.

Sources close to the investigation said they don’t know who returned the hard drives, and thus don’t know whether the drives were deliberately or inadvertently removed from the vault. Nor is it clear if the data was copied during its absence.

Investigators will subject the hard drives to a battery of electronic and forensic tests to determine if they were “compromised,” a Clinton administration official said. The official said the tests should indicate if the hard drives have been infected with computer viruses and added that it may be possible to determine if the information had been copied.

“I will continue to aggressively pursue this serious matter,” Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said in a brief statement. “There will be accountability and disciplinary actions regarding the Los Alamos incident.”

Richardson said the FBI was working to confirm “official validation of the hard drives’ authenticity” and that an “intensive investigation continues.”

But the discovery of the missing drives is unlikely to end the controversy swirling around Los Alamos lab, which is managed for the Energy Department by the University of California.

The loss of the hard drives was only the latest in a series of embarrassing events that began with the arrest last year of former lab scientist Wen Ho Lee, who has been accused of security violations. Lee has pleaded not guilty to 59 felony counts. Last month a wildfire in the Los Alamos area burned some laboratory facilities and raised concerns about its vulnerability to natural disasters.

On Capitol Hill, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) said the recovery of the drives left unanswered a host of troubling questions.

“Apparently the disks were found in an area that was searched on several occasions,” Shelby said. “It is extremely disturbing that the drives may have been surreptitiously placed back in the X-Division. If that is, in fact, what happened, the counterintelligence ramifications have increased by an order of magnitude.

“We may have someone on the inside that doesn’t want anyone to know that they had the drives or what they did with them,” he said. “Once they leave your control, you have to presume that they have been compromised.”

Details About Nuclear Weapons

The hard drives were used by the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, which responds to nuclear accidents and terrorist events involving nuclear devices. The drives contained diagrams and other details about America’s weapons, as well as those held by France, Russia and China.

The hard drives disappeared between April 7, when they were seen in an inventory, and late on May 7, when two members of the emergency group rushed to grab the team’s hard drives and other equipment from the vault as the raging wildfire threatened to sweep though the lab complex.

The two team scientists realized the hard drives were missing, but they didn’t report the loss to their superiors for 24 days. The Energy Department in Washington was notified of the loss on June 1, and the FBI was called in the next day.

The two scientists have not been identified, but the lab has put six senior managers and scientists on paid leave pending various investigations into the security lapse. They include Stephen M. Younger, head of the nuclear programs division, as well as officials in charge of the lab’s weapon design division.

Word of the recovery of the hard drives surfaced in Washington late Friday afternoon, a time when most Capitol Hill offices had already emptied for the weekend. Shelby issued a statement on behalf of the Senate Intelligence Committee, but few other lawmakers were available for immediate comment.

A joint hearing earlier this week by the Intelligence Committee and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee was marked by harsh criticism of the lab’s operation. Such criticism continued to grow Friday, before discovery of the hard drives.

Termination of UC’s Contract Urged

Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), senior minority member of the House Commerce Committee, and five other Democrats on the panel wrote an angry letter to Richardson demanding that he terminate the University of California’s contract to run the Los Alamos lab.

“It is clear to us that the University of California, whose contract to run Los Alamos gives it the full responsibility to maintain security at the lab, is incapable of carrying out its contractual obligations,” the House members wrote.

The University of California has managed the Los Alamos lab under government contracts since the facility, built in a rugged corner of northern New Mexico, was secretly established to develop the first atomic bomb in 1943. The current five-year contract expires in September 2002.

Earlier this week, the Senate voted unanimously to confirm the long-stalled nomination of Gen. John Gordon as head of the new National Nuclear Security Administration to oversee security at the nation’s nuclear weapons complex. His nomination had been blocked for months by Democrats who opposed creation of the new agency.

At Los Alamos itself, the lab director, John Browne, said he had ordered equipment installed at the lab’s 100 or so vaults to strengthen security.

The devices will require those accessing the vaults to use a sophisticated handprint reader, thus leaving a clear record of who is entering and leaving.

Browne said the lab also would require officials to create a record of what material is removed from the vaults.

The lack of that record in the current case hampered the investigation and led to widespread criticism in Congress.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this story.