Classified Work at DOE Lab Stopped

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Classified Work at DOE Lab Stopped

YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) - Classified work at the Pacific Northwest 
National Laboratory was temporarily halted after a secret document 
was mistakenly photocopied and left in an unsecured but locked 
office. 

The security breach occurred June 29 when an employee at the lab in 
Richland copied several unclassified drawings along with a classified 
one in a secure area, then took the papers to an office outside the 
secure area and left them locked up there, lab spokesman Greg Koller 
said Monday. 

The lapse was discovered the next day by another employee, and lab 
staff reported it to the U.S. Department of Energy, Koller said. The 
employee involved in the lapse was not disciplined. 

``These security concerns happen occasionally,'' Koller said. 

A security stand down, in which managers meet with staff to review 
security procedures involving classified projects, was ordered July 
3. Some classified work has resumed and the remainder should start 
again later this week, Koller said. 

The security flap comes on the heels of the national uproar over a 
security breach at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, 
where two computer hard drives with information used to disable 
nuclear weapons were determined to be missing in June before turning 
up mysteriously the next day. The breach was not reported to DOE for 
more than three weeks. 

In December, former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee was charged with 
illegally copying top-secret nuclear weapons files. He is in jail 
awaiting trial. 

The Northwest lab is operated by the private company for the DOE. It 
does classified work both at the Hanford nuclear reservation and at 
its main campus just south of the reservation. 

The incident occurred as a range fire swept across the nearby Hanford 
nuclear reservation, but the security lapse was unrelated to the 
blaze, Koller said. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandy Perle					Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100   				    	
Director, Technical				Extension 2306 				     	
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Division		Fax:(714) 668-3149 	                   		    
ICN Biomedicals, Inc.				E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 				                           
ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue  		E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com          	          
Costa Mesa, CA 92626                                      

Personal Website:  http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com

************************************************************************
The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html