Pages

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Where are 14 Nuclear Secrets Computers?

I am in total shock that we spent 4 days on Imus and the following revelation is mute in the media.

An internal audit has discovered that twenty computers have disappeared from a critical counterintelligence agency tasked with protecting America's nuclear secrets. Fourteen of the computers contained classified material. How can The United States survive such a violation of security. Heads should be rolling, but we are worried about Imus. I believe that this is the reason we have cavemen out in the middle east making the materials necessary for our own destruction. Its just Another day in a string of embarrassments for the Department of Energy:
The office in charge of protecting American technical secrets about nuclear weapons from foreign spies is a failure. 14 computers, have been used for classified information. The Energy Department inspector general reported on Friday. Unbelievable to me that this is the 13th time in a little over four years that an audit has found that the department has committed such a blunder. The fact is that these national laboratories and factories do most of the work in designing and building nuclear warheads, has lost control over computers used in working on the bombs.
Aside from the computers it cannot find, the department is also using computers not listed in its inventory, and one computer listed as destroyed was in fact being used, the audit said.
“Problems with the control and accountability of desktop and laptop computers have plagued the department for a number of years,” the report said. Amazing, What is the matter with video surveillance? How about signatures for who signed out the computer. Why is there no investigation of who, what, when and where these computers were accessed. Instead democrats are investigating the firing habits of the Attorney General of the United States. Government Oversight (POGO) calls for the resignation of Linton Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the agency in charge of managing America's nuclear weapons complex.Brooks has failed in his role as chief overseer of security in the Department of Energy (DOE), as evidenced by the many security lapses we have witnessed at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Government Oversight (POGO) calls for the resignation of Linton Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the agency in charge of managing America's nuclear weapons complex.Brooks has failed in his role as chief overseer of security in the Department of Energy (DOE), as evidenced by the many security lapses we have witnessed at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory. In the past five years, the agency has failed to prevent the loss and possible theft of America's nuclear secrets (Brooks took over the top spot in July 2002, according to NNSA's website).In May 2004, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham outlined his strategy to tighten security throughout the nuclear weapons complex.In testimony to Congress that same month, POGO's Executive Director Danielle Brian, said, "We are not sanguine that the agenda outlined by Secretary Abraham will become a reality. He will need to fight the weapons complex bureaucracy, its contractors, and its handmaiden the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which wants to protect the status quo at all costs. Frankly, the NNSA has repeatedly proven itself eager to place the lab's interests over the nation's security interests."
There have been crucial security breaches at Los Alamos under Brooks's two-year watch:
a. Los Alamos can not account for 2 pieces of Classified Removable Electronic Media, and additional classified items may be missing from the lab.
b. Los Alamos employees sent classified information over an un-classified email system 17 times over a two month period - which is strictly prohibited.
c. In June, Los Alamos lost two keys to Technical-Area 18, a site that contains highly enriched uranium and plutonium. The DOE considers this site highly vulnerable to attack.
d. Since January of this year, the University of California has lost track of classified material on three occasions.
e. In June 2003, lab officials lost two vials of plutonium.
f. The Energy Department's Inspector General disputed a fall 2002 claim by the Los Alamos managers that more than 200 missing computers, some from "black" programs at the lab, contained classified data. The Inspector General said lab officials did not know if the missing computers contained classified material.

Time and again, Brooks has acted as an apologist for Los Alamos officials, abdicating his role as chief security officer. During a January 2003 probe, the DOE's Inspector General found that Los Alamos management had admonished employees to "resist the temptation to spill your guts" during interviews with DOE investigators tracking security problems at the lab. Brooks, in a June memo, discounted the Inspector General's findings and sided with the Los Alamos brass. Compare the language of the Inspector General's report to Brooks, who merely spins for Los Alamos.
The Inspector General reported that Los Alamos managers instructed employees to "resist the temptation to spill your guts." Brooks claims they really meant to "caution against providing information in the areas beyond an individual's responsibility."
According to Inspector General, Los Alamos officials told personnel that "finger pointing will just make the program look bad." Brooks equivocated that the managers really intended to "discourage blaming others for shortcomings uncovered in an audit."
The Inspector General reported that Los Alamos managers warned employees that "handwritten notes can be especially damaging... they are not easily disavowed." Yet Brooks again defended the officials, writing that they meant to "stress the importance of proper classification."
Brooks should do the honorable thing, and step down as head of the NNSA. America deserves an aggressive watchdog for its homeland security, and Linton Brooks has failed that mission.
POGO investigates, exposes, and seeks to remedy systemic abuses of power, mismanagement, and subservience by the federal government to powerful special interests. Founded in 1981, POGO is a politically-independent, nonprofit watchdog that strives to promote a government that is accountable to the citizenry.
The White House fired Linton Brooks in January for the security problems noted in this report. Linton Brooks should have faced a firing squad after a military trial. Earlier audits had revealed over 140 computers which investigators could not find. The National Nuclear Security Agency got its start because of the security breaches of the 1990s. Its including the Wen Ho Lee scandal, but it appears just as plagued by incompetence as the Department of Energy was back then. What is the matter with George Bush? Its on his watch.
Only two months have passed since the departure of Brooks, and these problems will not be solved overnight. However, one would hope that the NNSA could conduct an accurate inventory of its computers, especially considering the kind of material stored on them.
Most likely, the discrepancies come from paperwork errors, but that gives little confidence in the ability of the NNSA to secure the nation's secrets. Let us all now procrastinate and rationalize our reasoning, My God, the USA is in serious trouble.

No comments: