June 28, 2000
NYTimes
Report Faults Energy Dept. as Failing to
Gain Lab Staff's Support for Tighter
Security
By JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, June 27 -- The
Energy Department has failed to
convince scientists at the government's
nuclear weapons laboratories of the need
for tougher security and counterintelligence
measures to prevent espionage, according
to a new Congressional report.
Because senior officials have not won the
support of the scientific community at the
three national weapons laboratories, their
efforts to impose tougher security rules have
fallen short, according to the report by the
House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence.
New regulations imposed by the Energy
Department in the wake of accusations of
Chinese nuclear espionage at Los Alamos
National Laboratory were not accompanied
by a strong effort by department officials to
sell the changes to the rank-and-file at the
laboratories, the report said. As a result,
there has been open rebellion against plans
to subject key weapons scientists to polygraph examinations, while
counterintelligence training efforts at the laboratories have been dismal.
"No organization, governmental or private, can have effective
counterintelligence without active, visible and sustained support from
management and active 'buy-in' by the employees," the report said.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's plan to require about 800 laboratory
employees to undergo polygraph examinations as part of a more stringent
counterintelligence program has drawn intense criticism from laboratory
employees over the past few months. Laboratory employees have worn
buttons to work with slogans like "Just say no to the polygraph."
"The attitude toward polygraphs at the laboratories runs the gamut from
cautiously and rationally negative to emotionally and irrationally negative,"
the report found. "Moreover, since the polygraph is a highly visible part
of the overall counterintelligence effort, the entire counterintelligence
program has been negatively affected by this development."
The report was the result of a review of counterintelligence at the
laboratories conducted by a special panel headed by Paul Redmond,
former chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency.
The Redmond panel was created by the House intelligence committee in
response to the furor over charges that China may have stolen nuclear
data from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The study
was conducted before the latest security problem: hard drives containing
sensitive information about nuclear weapons that were missing for several
weeks.
The report acknowledged that the scientists have some legitimate
concerns about whether such a large polygraph program could be
implemented fairly. But the report also noted that part of the problem
was that the scientists believed they were "indispensable and special, and
thus should be exempt from such demeaning and intrusive measures as
the polygraph." The report criticized the Energy Department's effort to
explain the need for polygraphs to employees as "ineffectual." The
Redmond panel found that while the resistance to polygraphs had in
some cases been "unreasonable," the Energy Department's response had
been "dictatorial and pre-emptory."
The panel urged the Energy Department to get local managers at the
laboratories more heavily involved in selecting the employees who should
undergo polygraph examinations because of the sensitive nature of their
work.
The panel also recommended that the Energy Department and the
laboratories model their counterintelligence programs after those used at
the National Security Agency, the government's secret code-breaking
and eavesdropping arm. The agency, like the national laboratories,
employs many highly educated people with strong academic
backgrounds. While the laboratories employ physicists and other
scientists, the security agency employs world-class mathematicians and
cryptographers.
"The key factor in N.S.A.'s success in the training and awareness
appears to be that its overall integrated security and counterintelligence
program has been in existence for many years, and the mathematicians
enter a culture where, from the very beginning of their employment,
security, counterintelligence and the polygraph are givens in their daily
work," the report said.
The Energy Department, it continued, "is now starting virtually from
scratch and would do well to learn from the positive experiences of
agencies such as N.S.A."
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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