Richardson says he is tightening security to prevent future leaks RELATED VIDEO U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson spoke with CNN Wednesday morning about security improvements Windows Media 28K 80K  MESSAGE BOARD: China tomorrow

May 12, 1999
Web posted at: 11:42 a.m. EDT (1542 GMT)

In this story: Security 'czar' sought Declassification slowdown Security failings RELATED STORIES, SITES

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It's easier to steal top secret information from a U.S. nuclear laboratory than to shoplift items from a drugstore, a U.S. senator looking into security breaches said Wednesday.

After a stunning array of security failures involving U.S. nuclear know-how, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson is moving on several fronts to prevent future lapses and assure Congress his department should continue to control the nation's weapons research labs.

As a Senate hearing opened Wednesday, Sen. Frank Murkowski criticized the department's security procedures.

"You can set off bells when you walk out of a drugstore or department store with a tagged item," the Alaska Republican said. "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."

Murkowski also was expected to press officials of the FBI as well as the Energy and Justice departments on why a communications mix-up apparently prevented the prompt removal of a weapons lab scientist suspected of giving secrets to China.

Officials from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico told Murkowski's Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week that the scientist, Wen Ho 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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