RELATED VIDEO U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson spoke with CNN Wednesday morning about security improvements (May 12) Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K

May 12, 1999
Web posted at: 1:51 p.m. EDT (1751 GMT)

In this story: Senators: Computer search warranted Officials decline to testify in open Security 'czar' sought Declassification slowdown Security failings RELATED STORIES, SITES

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It's easier to steal nuclear secrets from a U.S. weapons laboratory than to shoplift from a store, a senator charged Wednesday during a hearing into Energy Department security breaches.

"You can set off bells when you walk out of a drugstore or department store with a tagged item," said Sen. Frank Murkowski, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

"But you can walk out of the most secret room in our laboratories with a Zip drive disc ... full of the nuclear legacy codes and nobody knows, with the possible exception of China's top spies," the Alaska Republican added.

The hearing comes one day after Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Bill Richardson moved on several fronts to prevent security lapses and assure Congress his department should continue to control the nation's weapons research labs.

Senators: Computer search warranted

Murkowski and other senators said the agency should have searched the personal computer of a suspected spy at the Los Alamos weapons lab even if it jeopardized the case in court.

The Energy Department's top lawyer was asked why the computer of Taiwan-born scientist Wen Ho Lee was not searched after officials at the New Mexico facility offered such a search as early as 1996.

Mary Anne Sullivan, the DOE's general counsel, said the FBI had advised that such a search could jeopardize its investigation and that a search would violate Lee's privacy and likely make the evidence unusable in court.

"It's clear we had the authority ... to search," Sullivan testified. But she said if the department proceeded with the search over the FBI's objections, "We would have subjected ourselves to another criticism. That we compromised their ability to conduct an investigation."

Richardson

When Lee's unsecured computer was searched in early March, investigators found he had removed more than 1,000 files of top-secret computer codes that he allegedly transferred from the lab's highly secure computer system in 1994-95, according to government officials.

Officials decline to testify in open

Murkowski had wanted to publicly question officials of the FBI and the Justice Department, but he said they declined to appear and would limit their testimony to a closed session because of security concerns.

He's expected to press them on why a communications mix-up apparently prevented Lee's prompt removal once the scientist came under suspicion of giving secrets to China.

Los Alamos officials told Murkowski's committee last week that Lee was allowed continued access to the most sensitive nuclear warhead secrets even though senior FBI officials in Washington concluded in mid-1997 that his removal would not harm their investigation.

Word, however, never reached Los Alamos managers.

Lee, who was fired two months ago, has not been charged with any crime, and his lawyer has denied any wrongdoing. China also denies stealing U.S. secrets.

Scientist Wen Ho Lee was fired from his job at Los Alamos National Laboratory, but he has not been charged with any crime

Richardson, announcing a consolidation of security at the Department of Energy (DOE), said Tuesday he hoped to avoid such confusion in the future.

He said security will be centralized under a "security czar" who will oversee a new structure that groups all the agency's security functions together.

"As soon as possible, what I want to hire is, hopefully, a four-star general with an extensive security background," Richardson told CNN on Wednesday.

"I want to give this post a lot of mandates, a lot of very strong direction, but also the ability to bring all of the nuclear weapons labs, all the security initiatives, all the DOE sites around the country, under one roof," he said. "This has been the problem, a lack of accountability."

In a previous move, Richardson elevated the department's counterintelligence program and put senior FBI officials in charge.

Both moves, administration officials said, were to consolidate control of security matters in the department and away from the labs, where historically there has been a "culture" of giving security short shrift.

"Other past (DOE) secretaries have not wanted to deal with this problem, because of enormous political difficulties in the Congress, different constituencies," Richardson told CNN.

The Energy Department, which had been criticized in the past for its secretiveness, changed directions in the early years of Bill Clinton's presidency.

In 1993, then-Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary overruled reservations from some of the DOE's defense and security experts and began an aggressive move to declassify Cold War-era nuclear documents.

Richardson, who took office seven months ago, ordered a slowdown of that effort. While some declassification will continue, he said material will be reviewed to ensure that sensitive weapons-design documents are not released by mistake.

In another security move, Richardson said that current management contracts at U.S. nuclear weapons labs are not assured of automatic renewal. He said he likely will open the contracts to competitive bidding, although a final decision is still a year way.

The Energy Department overhaul, coming amid allegations of espionage, also follows recent reports critical of lab security.

A DOE report in March concluded that of 12 sensitive facilities and programs, nine received the highest rating of satisfactory, but three received only marginal ratings: Los Alamos, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the DOE's Transportation Safeguards Division which is responsible for transporting nuclear material.

In testimony before a House Commerce subcommittee last month, a senior General Accounting Office official found a number of major security problems, including:

• An instance in which one Energy facility could not account for 10,000 classified documents.
  
  
• Lax physical controls, such as security personnel and fences. At one facility, 78 percent of the security force failed a test of required skills. In some cases, the GAO said security officers could not even shoot accurately.
  
  
• Missing property valued at millions of dollars.

Historically, the research labs have flaunted their autonomy, cultivated strong allies in Congress and resisted control -- on security matters or anything else -- from the Energy Department in Washington. They have been viewed by some as semiautonomous fiefdoms managed by private contractors.

Since its inception, Los Alamos, as well as the Lawrence Livermore lab, has been managed by the University of California.

At times this structure has resulted in unclear lines of authority and confusion, communications lapses and development of a "campus atmosphere" at the labs, which employ some of the nation's top scientists.

"There was a view that they're the crown jewels (of research). Don't mess with them," said a senior Energy Department official, asking not to be identified further.

Correspondent Pierre Thomas and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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