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[Lee_M_Livesey@rl.gov]

Thursday, January 18, 2001
By Tom Doggett 

President-elect Bush's choice for energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, will
have to explain to Senate lawmakers at his confirmation hearing Thursday why
he should head the department that he once tried to abolish. 
While serving in the U.S. Senate, Spencer co-sponsored legislation to
abolish the Energy Department and move its programs to other government
agencies. 
Despite his prior efforts to kill the department, the Michigan lawmaker, who
lost his re-election bid for a second six-year term in November, is expected
to win approval to the nation's top energy post. 
Abraham was also expected to be peppered with questions by members of the
Senate Energy committee on whether the Energy Department's vast nuclear
laboratories and weapons stockpile program should be folded into the
Pentagon. Nuclear weapons and materials account for about half of the
department's $18 billion annual budget. 
An embarrassing lapse in security at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons
laboratory in 1999 caused some lawmakers to question if the Energy
Department was able to handle top-secret programs. 
Former lab physicist Wen Ho Lee eventually pleaded guilty to one felony
count of downloading nuclear weapons design secrets to a non-secure
computer. 
In a separate incident, two missing computer hard drives were found behind a
copying machine. 
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