[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13817-13818]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                        RELEASE OF RUDMAN REPORT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 19, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STEARNS. Madam Speaker, the report of the President's Foreign 
Intelligence Advisory Board that criticized the state of security at 
the Department of Energy nuclear weapons laboratories and recommending 
certain structural reforms was released last week. This advisory board 
was chaired by former Senator Warren Rudman and includes detailees from 
the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Defense. The report was titled, 
quote, Science at Its Best, Security at Its Worst.
  Even though the Clinton administration has tried time and time again 
to pass the buck on taking responsibility for the security failures and 
has attempted to place the blame on previous administrations, a current 
administration spokesman at the White House who was intimately involved 
in the preparation of the report said the current administration is 
more culpable than any since the Department of Energy was created in 
1977. The Rudman report denounces the administration for ignoring the 
Republican-proposed reforms at the Energy Department when it took 
office in 1993.
  Here are some of the findings from the Rudman report: One, an Energy 
Department employee was dead 11 months before officials realized four 
documents with classified and restricted data were still assigned to 
him.
  It took 45 months to fix a broken doorknob that was stuck in an open 
position, allowing access to sensitive nuclear information.
  Energy Department officials took 35 months to write a work order to 
replace a lock at a weapons lab facility containing sensitive nuclear 
information.
  Ordering security for mislabeled software took 24 months.
  No one knows how many months passed before a security audit team 
discovered that the main telephone frame door at a weapons lab had been 
forced open and the lock destroyed.
  And lastly, correcting a mistake that allowed secure telephone 
cryptographic materials to go improperly safeguarded for 51 months.
  But most damaging of all is the following section of the Rudman 
report, and let me read it: ``Never have the members of the special 
investigative panel witnessed a bureaucratic culture so thoroughly 
saturated with cynicism and disregard for authority. Never before has 
this panel found such a cavalier attitude towards one of the most 
serious responsibilities in the Federal Government, control of the 
design information relating to nuclear weapons. Never before has the 
panel found an agency with a bureaucratic insolence to dispute, delay 
and resist implementation of a Presidential directive on security as 
DOE's bureaucracy tried to do on the President's Decision Directive No. 
61 that was issued in February of 1998.''
  This directive mandated new counterintelligence measures at the labs, 
but the Advisory Board found that implementation of this directive 
suffered from ``bureaucratic foot-dragging and even,'' Madam Speaker, 
recalcitrance'' by DOE and lab officials. The report further notes 
that, quote, ``DOE and the weapons laboratories have a deeply rooted 
culture of low regard for and at times hostility to security issues, 
which has continually frustrated the efforts of its internal and 
external critics,'' end quote.
  The Rudman report makes two specific recommendations. The first is 
that the DOE's ``weapon research and stockpile management function 
should be placed wholly within a new semiautonomous agency within the 
Department of Energy that has a clear mission, streamlined bureaucracy, 
drastically simplified lines of authority and accountability'' and the 
agency's Director would report directly to the Energy Secretary.
  The second alternative recommendation was to create a wholly 
independent agency to handle the previously mentioned functions, and 
its Director would report directly to the President.
  Unfortunately, I personally do not believe that a reorganization or a 
shake-up of the Department of Energy and how it handles nuclear secrets 
will be sufficient in destroying the pervasive antiestablishment 
culture that exists in the Department and at the

[[Page 13818]]

weapons lab as detailed by the Rudman report. Instead, I agree with the 
conclusion of the Rudman report which states that the Department of 
Energy is, quote, ``incapable of reforming itself, bureaucratically and 
culturally, in a lasting way even under an activist Secretary,'' end 
quote.
  Therefore, Madam Speaker, the only way to protect our Nation's 
nuclear weapons is through the abolishment of the Department of Energy 
itself and placing all of its offices in other Federal agencies. I 
believe the management of our Nation's nuclear weapons and all 
classified related functions of the Department of Energy should be 
transferred to the Department of Defense. All other nonclassified 
functions should be transferred to a semi-independent agency within the 
Department of Commerce.
  The bureaucratic stranglehold that has become the Department of 
Energy has placed our Nation's security at risk, and the only way out 
of effectively ending this ineptitude is through the ending of the 
Department of Energy.

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