LOS ALAMOS NUCLEAR SECRETS MISSING

by Joseph Hebert

WASHINGTON (June 12) - Two computer hard drives containing an array of nuclear secrets have disappeared from a highly secured vault at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, prompting a top-level investigation, laboratory and Energy Department officials disclosed Monday.

Energy Department officials first learned that the nuclear secrets and other sensitive material were missing on June 1 and have not ruled out the possibility that the disappearance is related to the forest fire that threatened the lab and forced its evacuation last month.

Senior officials expressed doubt that it involved espionage.

''This is an extremely serious matter, and we are taking swift actions to deal with it,'' said John Browne, director of the federal nuclear weapons research lab. The facility was embroiled in an espionage controversy involving a former lab scientist for much of last year.

The two hard drives, each slightly larger than a deck of cards, contained material used by the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, or NEST, which is trained to respond to nuclear accidents or threat of terrorism. They contain detailed nuclear weapons data needed to render weapons safe in an emergency or as part of a threat by terrorists.

''It's very sensitive ... technical data,'' said retired Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger, the Energy Department's top security official. He briefed Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on the disappearance Monday after a week-long investigation and search at the Los Alamos lab.

Habiger said in an interview that it is too early to determine what happened to the two hard drives.

But he said he has not ruled out the possibility that the materials might have been misplaced or destroyed during the confusion last month caused by the threat from a wildfire that destroyed much of the community of Los Alamos.

Even if the computer drives are found, it is an embarrassment for the Los Alamos lab, where the nuclear bomb was created more than a half-century ago. The lab was the center of a security controversy in 1999 surrounding allegations against one of its former scientists, Wen Ho Lee.

Lee was arrested in December on charges he misused secret nuclear data and is in jail awaiting trial. Although under investigation for three years in connection with the alleged loss of U.S. nuclear secrets to China, Lee has not been charged with espionage. He has denied giving secrets to anyone.

Senior Energy Department officials said there is no evidence the latest missing data involved espionage.

''The indicators are just not there,'' Ed Curran, DOE's director of counterintelligence, said in an interview. He noted that two identical drives, containing the same material, disappeared when someone seeking the information for espionage likely would have taken only one.

More likely, he added, the drives ''were either misplaced, misused or accidentally destroyed.''

Nevertheless, Curran and Habiger said an intense investigation was continuing, including polygraph tests on all individuals who had any connection with the material. ''The information on the hard drives is extremely sensitive. It enabled the NEST teams to do their jobs,'' said Curran, a veteran FBI counterintelligence specialist assigned to the Energy Department.

The two drives were in containers in a vault in Los Alamos' most highly classified area, the so-called ''X Division,'' where designers of nuclear weapons do their work.

Senior Energy Department officials intimately involved in the investigation gave this series of events:

Los Alamos lab officials late in the evening of May 7 sought to secure the nuclear data from possible harm as wildfires threatened the laboratory complex, but found them missing from their containers in the vault. Three days later, Los Alamos was evacuated because of the fire threat and did not resume significant operation until May 22.

The fire threat and evacuation interrupted the search, but after May 22 Los Alamos officials began ''an intensive search'' for the material. Still, they did not report it missing for 10 days. Habiger said the delay in reporting would be looked into as part of the investigation, but that security was maintained during the entire period of the fire threat.

On June 2, Curran brought in the FBI, and a week ago 22 FBI agents and 12 DOE investigators, led by Habiger, flew to Los Alamos for an intensive search for the material and investigate its disappearance. But officials still don't know what happened to the two drives.

''I don't want to speculate,'' said Habiger.

The lab, managed by the University of California, said in a statement: ''Officials are conducting an exhaustive search of computers, safes, containers and vaults and have interviewed all staff members who had access to the vault where the media (nuclear materials) were stored.''

Curran said the NEST team had used the material only a week before it was discovered missing as part of an exercise at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and it has not been ruled out that the material was misplaced at that time. He said such exercises are not unusual.

END

Joseph Hebert
Associated Press

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