Los Alamos Memo to Employees Stirs Fear

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@EARTHLINK.NET>]

Index:



Los Alamos Memo to Employees Stirs Fear

Suit Against Cheney Task Force Dismissed

IAEA forum agrees on need for stronger nuclear safeguards

U.S. concerned at nuclear smuggling in Central Asia

=================================



Los Alamos Memo to Employees Stirs Fear



LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) Dec 10 - A memo from the Los Alamos National 

Laboratory telling employees to give the lab copies of documents they 

provide to federal investigators compromises the confidentiality of 

employees, critics said.



The message from the lab's associate director, Richard Marquez, was 

in a memo Thursday that ordered employees at the nuclear weapons lab 

to cooperate with investigators.



The Department of Energy and the FBI are looking into allegations of 

theft and fraud at Los Alamos, including millions of dollars in 

missing equipment and abuse of lab credit cards.



The memo instructed workers to forward any documents they provide to 

investigators to the lab's Audits and Assessments Office. But critics 

say the order prompts fears of retaliation by lab management.



``How duplicitous to say, 'Feel free to say whatever you want. We 

just want to know everything you said,''' said Danielle Brian, 

executive director of Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-

based watchdog group.



Lab spokesman Jim Danneskiold said the audit division maintains a 

list of materials provided to the Inspector General to ensure the lab 

can assist investigators.



Two lab employees who were investigating fraud charges and other 

problems within the lab were fired last month.



Lab officials said they had lost confidence in the pair.



On the Net:



Los Alamos National Laboratory: http://www.lanl.gov



Project on Government Oversight: http://www.pogo.org

-------------------



Suit Against Cheney Task Force Dismissed



WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite impending Republican control of both the 

House and the Senate, the investigative arm of Congress may 

nonetheless pursue its court battle to force information from Vice 

President Dick Cheney's energy task force.



A federal judge rebuffed congressional efforts to learn about 

meetings that industry executives and lobbyists had with the task 

force while it formulated the Bush administration's energy plan.



U.S. District Judge John Bates noted Monday that only seven lawmakers 

had expressed support for efforts to get the information. All seven 

are Democrats.



``This case, in which neither a house of Congress nor any 

congressional committee has issued a subpoena for the disputed 

information or authorized this suit, is not the setting for such 

unprecedented judicial action'' in a battle between the executive and 

legislative branches, wrote the judge.



The White House said the ruling underscores the necessity for the 

president to receive ``unvarnished advice.''



Comptroller General David Walker said the General Accounting Office 

is ``very disappointed'' and will consult with congressional 

leadership before deciding whether to appeal. The Senate goes over to 

Republican control next year and the House continues with a GOP 

majority.



Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., called it ``a convoluted decision by a 

Republican judge that gives Bush and Cheney near total immunity from 

scrutiny.'' Bates was appointed last year by President Bush.



The Cheney energy plan, issued in the spring of 2001, called for 

expanded oil and gas drilling on public land and easing regulatory 

barriers to building nuclear power plants. The plan's recommendations 

included steps to increase conservation and encourage the use of 

alternative fuels as well as to protect the environment.



Aside from a few details the Bush administration revealed amid the 

collapse of Enron Corp., the White House has refused to identify with 

whom the Cheney task force met. Enron representatives met six times 

with the vice president or his aides. Enron has been George W. Bush's 

biggest campaign donor over the years.



Democratic Reps. Waxman and John Dingell of Michigan first requested 

information more than a year and a half ago about which industry 

executives and lobbyists the Cheney task force was meeting with.



As the dispute grew, Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan, Joseph 

Lieberman of Connecticut, Ernest Hollings of South Carolina and Byron 

Dorgan of North Dakota joined the fight, urging Cheney to disclose 

data about his industry meetings. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., endorsed 

going to court.



On Monday, Lieberman said the vice president's task force was making 

important decisions about national energy policy that the public has 

a right to know about.



``What are they hiding?'' asked Lieberman. The Bush administration 

noted that tens of thousands of pages of documents have been released 

on the energy policy by various departments that were assisting 

Cheney's task force.



Lawyers for the GAO had argued that information from the Cheney task 

force would reveal whether the Bush administration's policy was based 

on input from a broad representation of affected groups or whether 

Congress ought to elicit the view of other interested parties.



The judge said those grounds were insufficient to warrant court-

ordered disclosure.



``If it is these general interests in lawmaking and oversight that 

are allegedly impaired by defendant's failure to produce the 

requested records, then the possible injury to Congress is too vague 

and amorphous,'' Bates wrote.



Other lawsuits involving the Cheney task force are not affected by 

Bates' ruling:



Two private groups, Judicial Watch and Sierra Club, are seeking 

release of documents under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.



The Natural Resources Defense Council is seeking disclosure of 

records of the Cheney task force's executive director and other 

staffers, all of them Energy Department employees.



On the Net:



U.S. District Court: http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/

-------------------



IAEA forum agrees on need for stronger nuclear safeguards



TOKYO, Dec. 10 (Kyodo) - A Tokyo forum on Tuesday agreed on the need 

to strengthen the U.N. nuclear watchdog's safeguards system to 

prevent nuclear proliferation, chairman Yukio Takasu said.



Strengthening International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards 

''is particularly urgent in view of recent challenges to the nuclear 

non-proliferation regime,'' the chairman's summary says, referring to 

the question of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and reports about 

North Korea's nuclear development program.



Over 80 participants representing 36 countries from around the world 

reached the agreement during the International Conference on Wider 

Adherence to Strengthened IAEA safeguards, Takasu, Japan's envoy in 

Vienna to the U.N. agency, told a press briefing after the two-day 

event ended Tuesday.



''In order to maintain the political momentum for strengthening the 

safeguards system, states concerned and the IAEA should cooperate 

closely in their outreach efforts, share information and continue to 

bring the issue to the forefront of international discourse,'' the 

summary adds.



Meanwhile, Takasu said that participants proposed forming informal 

''friends'' of the IAEA's so-called Additional Protocol, which aims 

to strengthen the Vienna-based agency's capability to detect 

undeclared nuclear materials and activities, to coordinate their 

national and regional efforts and maintain the momentum.



The participants also expressed their hope that all states that have 

signed but not yet ratified the additional protocol ''redouble their 

efforts to finalize their national ratification procedures promptly 

in order to maintain political momentum.''



A total of 67 countries have so far signed the protocol and it has 

taken effect in 28 countries including Japan.



At the start of the conference, IAEA Director General Mohamed 

ElBaradei referred to recently resumed IAEA weapons inspections in 

Iraq. He said they have gotten off to a good start and hopes Iraq 

continues to cooperate.



On the report concerning North Korea's uranium enrichment program, 

ElBaradei said, ''The existence of such a program would be a 

concern to all. I sincerely hope North Korea will rethink its 

possession.''

------------------



U.S. concerned at nuclear smuggling in Central Asia



GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany - Radioactive material that could 

potentially be used to make so-called dirty bombs has 

been seized at border posts in Central Asia in the past 12 months, a 

U.S. Defense Department official said Monday.



The smuggled material -- contaminated metals -- was confiscated at 

checkpoints along the Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan borders, 

Harlan Strauss, director of International Counterproliferation 

Programs at the Defense Department, told Reuters.



"It is possible to be reprocessed and to be utilized in a way that 

radioactive material can be used for a dispersal device or a small 

weapon to contaminate an area," he said.



Dirty bombs scatter radioactive material using conventional explosive 

devices.



"There continues to be movement of material across borders which is 

of concern," Strauss said on the sidelines of a conference on 

terrorism.



"We have recently, particularly in Central Asia, stopped some 

shipments of radioactive material exiting the region.



"In this case, it was contaminated metals. How radioactive is a 

question of debate and discussion. Where it was going was unclear 

because the papers were not legit."



The United States has been concerned since the fall of the Soviet 

Union in 1991 that instability and economic hardship could prompt 

low-paid scientific workers to smuggle material that could be used to 

make nuclear or biological weapons.



Worries that a fundamentalist Islamic group such as al Qaeda could 

acquire such destructive items have increased since the Sept. 

11, 2001, attacks on the United States.



Over the past decade, at least 88 pounds of weapons-usable uranium 

and plutonium have been stolen from poorly protected nuclear 

facilities in the former Soviet Union, according to a report 

published by Stanford University's Institute for International 

Studies earlier 

this year.



While most of that material was subsequently retrieved, at least 4.4 

pounds of highly enriched uranium stolen from a reactor in 

Georgia remain missing.



In Russia, U.S.-funded radiation detectors installed at eight border 

crossings have detected more than 275 cases involving contaminated 

scrap metal, irradiated cargo and other radioactive materials that 

could pose a proliferation concern, a General Accounting Office 

official told a U.S. congressional committee in October.



The United States has spent about $86 million to help about 30 

countries, mostly in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 

combat the threat of the smuggling of nuclear and other metals that 

could be used in weapons of mass destruction.



-------------------------------------------------

Sandy Perle

Director, Technical

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Service

ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue

Costa Mesa, CA 92626



Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100  Extension 2306

Fax:(714) 668-3149



E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net

E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com



Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/



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