[UPDATED] Feeling Safer? Nuke Secrets Uncovered in Meth Raid
Tue Oct 24, 2006 at 08:20:31 PM PST
Despite at least two major breaches in the past decade, the Department of Energy has failed to improve security at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
A drug raid on a Los Alamos scientist's home in New Mexico turned up what appeared to be classified documents taken from the nuclear weapons lab, the FBI said Tuesday.
Police discovered the documents at the scientist's home while making an arrest in a methamphetamine investigation, according to an FBI official in Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case.
The police alerted the FBI to the documents, prompting a federal search of the unidentified female scientist's home. The official would not describe the documents except to say that they appeared to contain classified material.
UPDATE The initial article was changed within an hour of its original posting on Yahoo News. The blockquote above has been removed and the article now says that the woman involved was "a contract employee". This doesn't change the fact that the security breach is due to criminal neglect of national security by the Rethugs.
More...
UPDATE II Wow! Apparently, the new management of Los Alamos has been distracted by
labor woes:
The recent announcement by Los Alamos National Security LLC, the lab's new operator, that hundreds of contractors' positions must be cut because of budget problems has the town on edge.
"We've all been on a bit of a roller coaster here," motel owner John Smallwood told the lab's deputy director, John Mitchell, at a Chamber of Commerce business breakfast last week.
"Los Alamos is a company town, and whether we like it or not, this company, this board of directors, is making decisions for us," said Smallwood, who relies on contractors to fill his motel rooms.
The number of cuts is not yet clear.
Los Alamos National Laboratory officials say it's likely to be at least 350 over the next year -- 10 percent of the contractor work force -- and could reach 600...
A handful of contractors contacted by The Associated Press said they feared retaliation if they complained publicly about the cuts.
North Korea developed nuclear weapons largely because the US decided that Pakistan's' co-operation in the war against the Taliban was worth turning a blind eye to AQ Khan's network that was trading in nuclear secrets with Iran, Libya and North Korea. But what excuse could there possibly be for allowing nuclear secrets to walk out of Los Alamos and into what was likely a meth lab?
What excuse could there possibly be for not improving security in the wake of the :Wen Ho Lee espionage case?
What excuse could there possibly be for not improving security after "sloppy inventory control and security failures" led to Los Alamos being shut down until two missing disks containing nuclear secrets were determined to never have existed.
This latest breach is simply unforgiveable, five years after 9/11 and mere weeks after the failure to break the AQ Khan network bore radioactive fruit in North Korea.
Tell us again how safe we are, GOPers. Remind me again where Osama bin Laden is, another guy that Khan says he did business with? The biggest threat to our security right now is two more years of unaccountability and incompetence.
