What's Going on at Los Alamos?

What's Going on at Los Alamos?

Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, June 14, 2005

[Editor's note: This is the first in a two-part series on the nation's nuclear weapons laboratory. Part two: "Troubles at Los Alamos Mask Record of Achievement."]

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The recent case of a Los Alamos whistleblower – and his claims that he was beaten by thugs who don't want him to talk about corruption at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab – has raised fresh questions about what is really going on there and prompted some nuclear community heavy hitters into defense mode.

Linton Brooks, National Nuclear Security Administration director, pointedly apologized to Los Alamos employees June 10 for characterizing the laboratory as suffering from "a culture of noncompliance" in a recent report to Congress, saying it was "an extremely poor choice of words."

"I know the majority of the people are trying to do the right thing," Brooks said.

Brooks faulted media reports that spread rumors that the Laboratory might be on the chopping block and allegations that the Laboratory might have had something to do with the June 5 assault in Santa Fe of auditor Tommy Hook:

"I'm outraged at the slur on the Los Alamos Laboratory community," Brooks said. "I think the notion that there are people here who would do that is just despicable." He added that he is hoping for, but not necessarily expecting, a full apology from those who rushed to blamed the Laboratory for the beating.

"This is a great lab. I am proud to be associated however remotely with it," Brooks said.

Officially known as the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the facility is the chief resident of the attractive town of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Located on the Pajarito Plateau at the foot of the majestic Jemez Mountains, this small Northern New Mexico town is noted for its excellent schools, safe neighborhoods and abundant outdoor recreational activities.

LANL is one of the nation's three chief installations responsible for maintaining the nation's nuclear arsenal and manufacturing weapons components. The awesome and vital mission: ensure the reliability and safety of the existing atomic arsenal and develop ways to counter nuclear proliferation.

Uncertain Prognosis

But a review by NewsMax of its historic problems – even when weighed against its impressive achievements - suggests an uncertain prognosis for the key national lab, at least for its continued stewardship by the University of California.

Los Alamos sprawls across 43 square miles and employs more than 10,700 people - two-thirds of them working for the University of California (UC), which has managed the facility since it was created as part of World War Two's infamous Manhattan Project that launched the world into the nuclear age.

Over the years, John Q. Public has been assaulted with media reports about one embarrassment after another at the site - from credit card fraud and allegations of espionage to disappearing files and dangerous safety lapses.

So what gives? Are egg-head scientists myopically peering into smoking test flasks as the "China Syndrome" percolates under their feet? Is something more sinister going on?

"These are brilliant scientists," concludes Danielle Brian, executive director of Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group that has worked closely with whistle-blowers at Los Alamos. "They are told daily they are brilliant scientists. That creates hubris ... almost defiance ... They believe the work they are doing is so important that it supersedes everything else."

"The culture at Los Alamos was one in which it was more important to protect the good name of the university and the lab than to protect the taxpayer from being ripped off," once opined Rep. James Greenwood, R-Pa., formerly the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's investigative panel that probed Los Alamos in 2003.

Greenwood cited a memo from the lab's Office of the Chief Information Officer to employees who were facing a Department of Energy audit of cyber-security, which encouraged workers not to be forthcoming.

The memo, titled "Surviving the…Audit," gave tips to employees: "Resist the temptation to ‘spill your guts'" and "Handwritten notes can be especially damaging… They are not easily disavowed" and "Finger-pointing will just make the program look bad."

By May 2003, the embarrassing incidents, coupled with that confounding culture and hubris highlighted during Capitol Hill hearings, finally caused the shoe to drop, and the lab's management contract, heretofore a monopoly of UC, was put up for competitive bidding. The proverbial straw: the lab was unable to account for $1.3 million in property and used $14.6 million in lab monies for meal and travel expenses.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which oversees lab management for the Department of Energy, has set a July 19, 2005 deadline for bids and expects to award the contract by Dec. 1.

UC Management Extension Granted

On June 11, it was announced that the University of California was given an eight-month contract extension to run the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the federal government. The National Nuclear Security Administration said the contract was extended to allow more time to pick the next lab manager and to give lab workers more time to examine their employment options. The UC contract was to have expired Sept. 30.

The public affairs office at Los Alamos offered this statement to NewsMax: "The University of California welcomes the extension and is pleased that it is now in place. We are aware that LANL employees are concerned about having the necessary information to make future personal decisions and hope this extension is of assistance to them. In the meantime, the UC and Bechtel-led team is aggressively preparing the proposal for submission to the Department of Energy for the competition for the future management of LANL."

Flare Up

With UC no longer in control of the Los Alamos contract into perpetuity, things slowed down on Capitol Hill, but Los Alamos flared up again as an issue in mid-March of 2005.

When continued episodes of mismanagement emerged, there was a stand-down at the lab which left a multi-million-dollar tab to the taxpayers. Congress fretted whether the University of California shouldn't share the bill.

"It just seems to me that the University of California was hired to do a job and they didn't do it," said U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore. "It resulted in a stand-down that may cost taxpayers maybe upward of $360 million. The University of California should have to pay something in this process. It's just outrageous."

Walden was among several participants at a March hearing convened by U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.

"You have to do things right or take some responsibility," said U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak from Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the committee. "In this case these costs should be paid by the university, not the taxpayer."

The controversial stand-down came as a result of the then-apparent loss of several removable disks and a lab employee's injury related to improper use of one of the facility's lasers.

To date, UC has maintained that the stand-down did not cost anyone nearly that cited $360 million – and it hasn't written a compensation check to the beleaguered taxpayers.

Whistleblowers

Most recently, the committee has been concerning itself with the treatment of whistleblowers at Los Alamos.

Indeed, the lab was back in the headlines as a Los Alamos National Laboratory whistleblower, who uncovered irregularities involving millions of dollars of taxpayer money at the government-backed facility, was brutally beaten over a recent June weekend.

In 2003, Tommy Hook, the man who sustained the beating, and a colleague, Chuck Montano, released an internal report that showed millions of dollars in fraudulent billing. For example, many local contractors overcharged. Identical bills were paid more than once. Purdue University was awarded $180,000 in unrestricted gifts, which is not allowable under the laboratory's rules.

Both men had been invited to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about how the laboratory has treated them as whistle-blowers.

Although Hook has steadfastly maintained that he was meeting a man who said he had information about more fraud at the lab and was threatened by his attackers to keep his mouth shut, a lawyer representing one of the men involved in the fracas has since come forward and said that the dispute had nothing to do with the nuclear research laboratory.

"This was an altercation in the parking lot of a topless bar, nothing more," attorney Doug Couleur said. "This has absolutely nothing to do with Hook's employment, his witness status, his employment status, or any of that."

A joint federal and local investigation continues.

Despite all the bad press, Capitol Hill condemnation, and general infamy, after some initial infighting at UC, the university decided to bid to keep its job at Los Alamos. (UC, by the way, continues to manage Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under contracts with the Department of Energy.)

Enter Some Possible Irony

The new contract will be for seven years, with potential extensions for 13 more, and will pay as much as $79 million a year - nearly 10 times the amount the University of California now makes.

The apparent bottom line: if UC wins the bidding process, it will be - for all intents and purposes - rewarded for its past performance.

But the Los Alamos public affairs office points out to NewsMax that the windfall is somewhat illusory, directing attention to a recent statement by Tyler Przyblek, chair of DOE's Source Evaluation Board.

Przyblek explained that the fee — between $53 and $79 million — to be awarded the new contractor, along with projected new gross-receipts taxes owed to the State of New Mexico and other new contract expenses, will be part of the overall operating budget for whoever wins the right to run the Laboratory.

"The new contractor is going to have to manage all these expenses out of the same budget," Przyblek said, adding perspective to the apparent windfall.

Teaming With the Business Sector

This time out in the bidding process, UC will be teaming with global construction giant Bechtel National Inc., national security firm BMX Technologies, Inc. and engineering company Washington Group International.

The presence of Bechtel is seen as an important component of the overall UC bid – a key move away from academia to pragmatic sound business.

UC is competing against at least two other corporate-academic teams, including Lockheed Martin Corp. with the University of Texas, and Northrop Grumman Corp. with an undisclosed academic partner.

There are critics, of course, who think that not only should UC be nixed for Los Alamos, but that other contracts it has should be rethought:

"The verification of the allegations of mismanagement, cover-up and retaliation against the brave individuals who were just trying to keep Los Alamos secure is yet another reason to remove the contract from the University of California," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Ma. "You also have to wonder why DOE isn't taking a look at the university's contract for Livermore as well... Enough is enough."

A Record of Achievement

To its credit over the years, UC has scrambled, changing-out directors and other leadership, revamping procedures and admitting mistakes pointed out in scathing Inspector General reports.

The Los Alamos public affairs Office points out to NewsMax that Los Alamos, despite rough patches in the road, has a solid record of achievement and strong allies, not the least of which is Brooks.

NNSA director Brooks has pledged he will battle for key programs and for the health of Laboratory-Directed Research and Development (LDRD) funds, which are currently part of ongoing Congressional budget negotiations and a key part of the Los Alamos lab's lifeblood.

He characterized LDRD as a foundation of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

"LDRD is maybe the most important investment we make in the future of American science," Brooks said.

"The weapons complex exists because of the importance of preserving the stockpile," Brooks added. "It's my belief that great stockpile stewardship grows out of great weapons science, and great weapons science grows out of great general science."

"It was the strong science base built up at Los Alamos through the LDRD program was a key factor in the Laboratory's quick response to new technology requirements identified in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks," Brooks said.

Speaking of those new technology requirements, Los Alamos spokesman Kevin Roark points out to NewsMax that the lab's work goes far beyond the safeguarding of nuclear stockpiles, to include significant contributions to research and development in some of the following areas vital to national security:

Bioinformatics and the HIV Database

Fuel Cells

Global Climate Model

High Magnetic Field Research

Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

Quantum Information Science

The Science of Drought

Superconductivity

Threat Reduction Overview

Space Initiatives

Bacillus Anthracis Indentification

Border Protection

Counter Terrorism, including the Biological Aerosol Sentry and Information System

Information Analysis

Palm-sized Radiation Detector

Achievements in such areas are expected to count heavily in weighing the UC bid to recapture the permanent management contract.

But notable accomplishments aside, the lab's track record under UC management has been, to say the least, spotty.

It was all the way back in 1945 that Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist involved in the Manhattan Project, gave the then Soviet Union the main elements of the design of the atomic bomb. Admitting the espionage, Fuchs was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

The lab was the epicenter of a 1999 espionage controversy involving lab scientist Wen Ho Lee. Never charged with espionage, Lee was fired for security violations. He eventually pleaded guilty to a felony count of mishandling classified information and admitted copying classified files. Lee always maintained that he disposed of the purloined files on site, but they have never been found.

One year later, two computer hard drives containing nuclear secrets disappeared from a guarded vault at Los Alamos. Mysteriously, the drives turned up behind a copy machine, but the underlying mystery has yet to be solved.

From a year 2000 Inspector General's report to the Secretary of the Department of Energy: "Approximately 30 percent of the LANL Security Operations Division personnel interviewed, who had been involved in the conduct of self-assessments, believed they had been pressured to change or ‘mitigate' security self-assessments…. [T]here are legitimate concerns that the overall security condition at LANL, specifically for Fiscal Years 1998 and 1999, was not being accurately reported."

A credit card fraud scandal in 2002 brought charges of an attempted cover-up after the lab fired two investigators it had assigned to get to the bottom of the case. One of them eventually received a nearly $1 million settlement with UC. Auditors found $4.9 million in questionable credit card expenses over four years, although lab officials said all but $195,246 had been accounted for.

In the same era, two Los Alamos workers were contaminated from exposure to plutonium. One case prompted a $770,000 fine from the Energy Department.

In December 2003, an inventory couldn't account for 10 computer disks used in the nuclear weapons program, prompting a suspension of classified work.

May 2003, another disk comes up missing. As in the case of the 10 disks, officials eventually surmised that the materials were destroyed with no records kept.

Also in 2003, auditor Tommy Hook and colleague, Chuck Montano, released that internal report that showed millions of dollars in fraudulent billing.

In 2003, the Department of Energy's inspector general released a report accusing Los Alamos National Laboratory officials of failing to police widespread fraud and theft at the nuclear weapons lab and then concealing information from those trying to investigate wrongdoing. Among the inspector's findings:

Lab officials failed to keep reliable inventories of lab equipment and rarely tracked or reviewed employee purchases, making it nearly impossible to discover if theft had occurred.

Lab managers discouraged workers from exposing wrongdoing.

The lab fired two investigators after they found evidence of rampant fraud and theft by lab employees - a decision the inspector general called "incomprehensible."

Deliveries to the lab are often left in "drop points" for long periods of time, with little or no security.

Laboratory managers are rarely held accountable for the property that is stolen or is missing from their units.

In the summer of 2004, lab director Pete Nanos, who was replaced May 16 by an interim director, presided over another case of vanishing classified disks. Nanos shut down all classified work at the lab for seven months at a reputed cost of hundreds of million. Later, it was surmised that the disks were not missing at all and an inventory error was to blame.

In 2005, Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations regarding a review of security initiatives at DOE nuclear weapons facilities:

"I would be remiss if I did not report to the Committee that, while not a part of former Secretary Abraham's initiatives, the treatment of whistleblowers throughout the complex remains abysmal."

Safety Concerns

But it's the safety concerns that really grab your attention.

Safety specialist Don Brown, who is an expert on nuclear facilities, was employed at Los Alamos in 2003. When he sounded alarms that seemed to him to fall upon deaf ears, he went to the media, charging among other things that the area of the lab, known as TA-18, lacked a basic containment structure to hold in radiation in case of a nuclear accident.

Brown noted that according to the government's own analysis, TA-18 could release fatal doses twice as high as Chernobyl: the worst nuclear accident in history. Other nuclear buildings at the Lab are vulnerable to earthquakes, airplane crashes and fire, he claimed.

At the time, the National Nuclear Security Administration countered: "The safety and security of our employees and their communities is the top priority of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Los Alamos National Laboratory has just undergone a thorough examination of its safety and security practices, including many of the issues raised by this particular employee."

Brown is by no means a lone Chicken Little.

As far back as February, 2001, Ronald E. Timm, president of Los Alamos contractor RETA Security, Inc. and a certified protection professional, felt compelled to write an ominous letter to the Secretary of the Department of Energy Spencer Abraham:

"RETA Security, Inc has provided security engineering and analysis services to the DOE and its contractors since 1984. Since 1994 we have been designated as ‘key persons' in the prime support contract to the Headquarters Office of Safeguards and Security….

"Considering the lax security at DOE, and the resultant vulnerability of Special Nuclear Materials, terrorists have a ready supply of Special Nuclear Materials already existing and available within our borders. The DOE has avoided addressing this serious fact for the past eight years….

"Special Nuclear Materials were at risk then, Special Nuclear Materials are at risk today, and, without significant changes, Special Nuclear Materials will be at risk in the future. The issue of risk to Special Nuclear Materials cannot be avoided by a ‘new' process that does not provide protection (detection, delay, and response) at the affected sites."

Past Performance Only One Factor

If after digesting the track record, one wonders why UC would even try to bid on the Los Alamos management contract, consider this calculus used in the selection process. Only 75 of the 1,000 points that will determine who wins the contract will be based on past performance - compared to, for instance, 325 for science.

But win or loose in the bidding war, there are plenty of unhappy campers in the UC cadre. The new deal calls for a stand-alone pension plan for all lab employees - which would exclude UC lab scientists from existing UC pension benefits, lauded as some of the best in the country.

"Morale is at an extreme low. We dedicated our professional careers to the lab and the nation, and we're terribly frightened that it is going to be lost," says Charles Mansfield, president of the lab's retiree organization.

Mansfield says that more than 1,000 of the lab's 14,000 employees have said they will retire regardless of who wins the contract because of the stand-alone provision. He suggests the number could reach 1,400 retirements.

The bottom line no matter who wins the new contract: the academics that now run the lab will be getting a new injection of real world know-how and management savvy as they team with partners from industry.

But the bad news is that no one is expecting an overnight fix to apparently rooted issues with security, safety and fiscal responsibility.

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