[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10653-10654]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                          LOS ALAMOS SECURITY

  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, a few days ago, June 12, we were 
advised of a security incident associated with our Los Alamos National 
Laboratory in New Mexico. The particular notification initially came 
out in a press release from Los Alamos, unlike a press release from the 
Department of Energy. It specifically stated that the Los Alamos 
National Laboratory announced a joint Department of Energy-Federal 
Bureau of Investigation inquiry underway into the missing classified 
information at the DOE Laboratory. The information was stored on two 
hard drives. It was an electronic transfer. These two hard drives were 
unaccounted for.
  This is a serious matter, to say the least. The press release 
indicated that at this point there is no evidence that suggests 
espionage involved in this incident.
  Today we had an opportunity to hold a joint hearing between the 
Intelligence Committee, chaired by Senator Shelby, and the Energy and 
Natural Resources Committee, which I chair. It was rather enlightening 
because the Secretary of Energy was not there, although he was invited. 
The significance of what we learned was that no one bears the ultimate 
responsibility. The Department of Energy suggests that they designated 
certain people to bear this responsibility. There was a process and 
procedure underway, but circumstances associated with the disastrous 
fire, the need for evacuation and other factors, all led to the missing 
documentation and the two hard drives.
  I can generalize and suggest that, well, our national security to a 
degree went up in smoke at the time of the disastrous fires in New 
Mexico. You can lose your car keys, but you don't lose these hard 
drives.
  What we are talking about is the very highest security interests of 
this Nation. Missing on the hard drives is the highly sensitive 
information that covers not only the Russian nuclear weapons programs 
but how we arm and disarm nuclear devices. Imagine what this would mean 
if it fell into the hands of terrorists. They could theoretically steal 
a nuclear device and either arm it or disarm it. That is the kind of 
information for which we cannot account.
  Earlier today this body voted 97-0 to confirm the new czar, Gen. John 
Gordon, who has been waiting since May for confirmation. It had been 
held up by Members on the other side who had a hold on his nomination. 
The question of responsibility is a reasonable one. We had the 
assurance of the Secretary of Energy that he bore the responsibility 
for security in the laboratories after we had the Wen Ho Lee incident. 
That was widely publicized; it was widely debated. Not only that, at 
that time, Members will recall, there was a special commission set up. 
This commission came as a result of a report from the House. That 
report ultimately resulted in the appointment of a former respected 
Senator, Warren Rudman, who has since retired. The purpose of that 
report was to analyze the security at the laboratories at that 
particular time.
  I will read a couple of inserts and findings from that report because 
I think they bear on the credibility of what we are hearing from the 
Department of Energy. One of the findings stated:

       More than 25 years worth of reports, studies and formal 
     inquiries--by executive branch agencies, Congress, 
     independent panels, and even the DOE itself--have identified 
     a multitude of chronic security and counterintelligence 
     problems at all of the weapons labs.

[[Page 10654]]

       Critical security flaws . . . have been cited for immediate 
     attention and resolution . . . over and over and over . . . 
     ad nauseam.

  They haven't been corrected.
  Further, the report again was the Rudman report. The open-source 
information alone on the weapons laboratories overwhelmingly supports a 
troubling conclusion: Their security and counterintelligence operations 
have been seriously hobbled and relegated to low-priority status for 
decades.
  That, again, is associated with the Wen Ho Lee security breach.
  Finally, Senator Warren Rudman indicates:

       The Department of Energy is a dysfunctional bureaucracy 
     that has proven it is incapable of reforming itself. 
     Accountability at DOE has been spread so thinly and 
     erratically that it is now almost impossible to find.

  Well, we heard this morning that the Secretary is going to appoint--
or has appointed--our respected colleague, Senator Howard Baker, and a 
very distinguished House Member, Lee Hamilton, to give a report on the 
findings as to the security adequacy at the labs. Well, I welcome this 
in one sense, and I reflect on it with some question in another, 
because clearly what Senator Rudman recommended in his report, 
``Science at its Best; Security at its Worst'' was not followed by the 
Department of Energy.
  The action taken by both the Senate and the House in the manner in 
which we proceeded with legislation to authorize an energy czar was 
objected to by the Secretary of Energy through the entire process, 
almost to the point of eluding congressional intent in the law, and the 
fact that others felt inclined to hold up his nomination until the vote 
today, 97-0. I think that reflects on the squeaky wheel theory. The 
wheel squeaks enough today, and we finally put our czar, Gen. John 
Gordon, in a responsible position.
  But the barn door has been left open, and it is inconceivable to me 
that we have not had adequate explanations of how this could occur. You 
can go to the library and get a card, take out a book, and they know 
who took out the book. If you are overdue, you pay a penalty. But not 
in the Department of Energy secured area. They have their so-called 
nest people who have access to this. It is estimated that that number 
is 86 or so. They take this material in and out.
  What happened is rather interesting on this particular day, according 
to the testimony we had. I will leave you with this concluding thought: 
On May 7, the fire was moving toward the laboratory. The obligation of 
this nest group is to ensure that if the laboratories were to fall 
victim to the fire so that no one could get in for a period of time, 
they would have these hard drives available if somewhere there were a 
nuclear device that was prepared to or exposed somewhere to go off, 
that this team could take this technology on these two hard drives and 
go off and disarm them. They had that obligation. So they proceeded to 
go into the secured area and they asked permission and got permission 
from one of the deputies to enter. They went to remove the two hard 
drive disks, and they found that they were gone; they weren't there.
  Now, what they did is rather interesting. They didn't notify their 
senior officials. They simply moved over to another shelf where a 
duplication of these hard drives was available and they took those. 
Then, after the fire, they went back and searched the place, could not 
find it, and finally they reported it, I think, on May 24. It was a 
timeframe from May 7, when the fire started, and on May 24 a team went 
back and searched again, and then at about the end of May, they called 
the DOE and in early June the story broke.
  Those are the facts up until now. When you hear the explanations, you 
just shake your head and say, how could this happen? And then, of 
course, the questions we have are: Who might have this information? If 
they had it, what might they be able to do with it?
  Some of these questions have to be responded to in a secure 
environment because of the national security interest. Some have said, 
well, the appropriators didn't give them enough money to ensure a 
foolproof system. They asked for $35 million and I think they got $7 
million. It doesn't take $7 million to put in a foolproof checkout 
system. They don't even have cameras in these secured areas. They don't 
know who is going in and out--other than they have to have a certain 
security clearance to go in. But there is no checkout system. It is 
unbelievable.
  We need answers and we are going to pursue this matter. As a 
consequence of the situation to date, clearly, the DOE and the labs 
have not been under control. I hope now that we have cleared the 
nomination, with the vote of 97-0, of the National Nuclear Security 
Administrator, that process can get underway. But there are a lot of 
questions that remain. The two missing hard drives contain secrets 
about every nuclear weapon in the world--just not ours. We should 
pursue this matter because clearly the buck has to stop somewhere.
  When Congressmen Norm Dicks and Christopher Cox in their report 
concluded that China had design information--the Wen Ho Lee case--that 
should have been enough. The report by Senator Warren Rudman should 
have been an alarm, and the action by the Senate and the House to 
establish the energy czar should have been enough. But it wasn't. 
Today, as I said, the squeaky wheel got some grease. We have Gen. John 
Gordon in the position, but we have a lot of questions unanswered and a 
lot of people who assured us that they bore the responsibility that 
everything was under control. We found out today that it isn't.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho is recognized.

                          ____________________