DOE Proposes Fine for Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Lab

The Department of Energy proposed to fine managers of the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab $3.3 million, because of a security breakdown in which classified documents were found in a trailer-park drug raid; this is the largest such fine the department has ever imposed.^[1] We have previously blogged about this, here.

The enforcement action stems from several incidents since October 2006, when police found more than 1,000 pages of classified documents and several computer storage devices in a trailer occupied by Jessica Quintana, a former worker at the lab.^[2] New Mexico police responded to a call about a domestic dispute in a trailer park near Los Alamos National Laboratory last year.^[3] Within the trailer, strewn throughout, was paraphernalia for making the drug crystal meth; and thousands of pages of highly classified documents detailing the designs of U.S. nuclear weapons.^[4] Some 1,219 pages of documents and a dozen computer data devices from the lab were compromised when they were taken to her home where the material was discovered during the police raid.^[5]

Last month it was also learned that a consultant to the board of the new management consortium had sent an e-mail containing highly classified, non-encrypted nuclear weapons information to several board members, who forwarded it to other board members over unsecured computer systems.^[6] Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman called that incident a human error and not evidence of widespread security failure.^[7] The investigation into the security breach found that “management deficiencies by both contractors were a central contributing factor” in the employees' unauthorized removal of the classified material from the highly restricted nuclear weapons complex at the laboratory.^[8]

The DOE said it was proposing a $3 million civil penalty against the University of California, although the university was no longer the lab's primary manager when the incident was discovered, and $300,000 against Los Alamos National Securities LLC, the consortium that succeeded the university in June 2006.^[9] The university was assessed the much larger fine because investigators determined the security deficiencies that led to the October 2006 incident were establish during the university tenure as prime contractor. It also said the new management team did nothing to correct the vulnerabilities.^[10] The university and Los Alamos National Securities have 30 days to respond to the findings, but in all likelihood the penalty will stand, at which time the contractors then could challenge the fines in federal court.^[11]

Among the security violations cited were that the University of California “failed to correct a known vulnerability'' when it did not adequately oversee the archiving of classified material by Quintana and did not have the needed physical checks to keep material from being taken out of the “vault-type room'' where the scanning was being done.^[12] Investigators don't believe hostile governments have exploited this latest round of security lapses, but they don’t really know.^[13] Those with access to the nation's nuclear secrets would be priority targets of foreign intelligence services, and problems such as drug-abuse make them vulnerable, and easy to manipulate.^[14] Quintana's motive for breaching the rules appears to have been benign, but there is no way to be sure.^[15]

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^[1] H. Josef Hebert, US Proposes $3.3M Fine for Los Alamos, Associated Press Newswire, July 13, 2007, available at LEXIS, News Library, Wire News Services.
^[2] Id.
^[3] Adam Zagorin, A Breach in Nuclear Security, Time Magazine Online, Apr. 19, 2007, available at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1612912,00.html (last visited Apr. 23, 2007).
^[4] Id.
^[5] Id.
^[6] Hebert, supra note 1.
^[7] Id.
^[8] Id.
^[9] Id.
^[10] Id.
^[11] Id.
^[12] Id.
^[13] Zagorin, supra note 3.
^[14] Id.
^[15] Id.