Los Alamos Security Reports in Question

Security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory may not have been accurately reported by the lab in self-assessment reports because of pressure from managers to improve security, according to an Energy Department investigation.

The department’s inspector general said in a report that there are “legitimate concerns that the overall security” at the laboratory in New Mexico, including the safeguarding of nuclear secrets, “was not being accurately reported” during that time.

The report, which came to light only recently, was completed May 30, two days before Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and other senior Department of Energy officials were notified that two computer hard drives were missing from a vault at the Los Alamos lab. Lab scientists did not notify senior management or the department of the missing drives for three weeks.

The investigation was prompted by allegations from two workers that the lab’s security evaluations were not accurate. It focused on the lab’s “self-assessment” reports and separate security evaluations conducted by the Department of Energy’s regional office in Albuquerque.

Investigators found that eight of 28 security operations personnel at Los Alamos said they had been pressured by managers to soften security concerns raised as part of the assessment. In one case, a report was written without a security review having been done, the report says.

Separately, the investigation found that managers at the Department of Energy’s regional office in Albuquerque changed the Los Alamos lab’s annual security ratings in 1998 and 1999, overruling the department’s security teams that had conducted the reviews.