Nuclear Insecurity

["Gerry Blackwood" <gpblackwood@justice.com>]

The labs really took a beating on 60 Minutes Sunday night.....

Gerry



Nuclear Insecurity



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/12/60minutes/main599957.shtml



Feb. 12, 2004



Nuclear Insecurity 

 

Even after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, security is inadequate

at some of the facilities that house America's nuclear weapons. 

(Photo: CBS/AP)





"If you understand the consequences associated with the loss of

that kind of material, it would make the World Trade Center event

of Sept. 11 pale in comparison." Richard Levernier conducted mock

terrorist assault drills for the Department of Energy for the

years leading up to 9/11.  

 

(CBS) Of all the places in the United States that you'd think

would be prepared to defend against a terrorist attack, the nine

nuclear weapons factories and research labs - operated by the

Department of Energy - would be at the top of the list. 



But a recent investigation by the government's General Accounting

Office found that the Department of Energy may not be up to the

task . and that security at these sites is inadequate. 



Richard Levernier, a senior Department of Energy nuclear security

specialist, whose job it was to test how well-prepared America's

nuclear weapons sites were to defend against a terrorist attack,

says security is not only inadequate, but some facilities are at

high risk. 



.And when you're dealing with nuclear -- assets in terms of

weapons and materials, operating at high risk is unacceptable,.

says Levernier, who ran annual performance tests in the years

leading up to Sept. 11. 



These were tests in which U.S. Special Forces, playing the role

of terrorists, armed with simulated weapons, would try to

penetrate the facilities, steal imitation nuclear material, and

then escape. The security guards there were expected to stop the

attackers. 



.Overall, the test results that I was responsible for showed a 50

percent failure rate,. says Levernier. .If you understand the

consequences associated with the loss of that kind of material,

it would make the World Trade Center event of Sept. 11 pale in

comparison.. 



Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security

Administration (NNSA), oversees the Department of Energy's

nuclear weapons facilities -- where some 10,000 nuclear warheads

and the tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium used to

manufacture them are stored. 



He calls the state of security at those facilities .perfectly

acceptable,. and says that he.s comfortable that these nuclear

weapons facilities are safe. 



Is there a problem defending against terrorists? .'Safe' and 'no

problem' are not the same thing,. says Brooks. .I am convinced

that these facilities are secure and that nuclear material is not

at risk. That's not the same thing as saying the there aren't a

lot of things that we're working on, because this is a very

difficult and demanding business.. 



But to Levernier, "difficult and demanding" is no excuse for the

fact that the mock terrorists were able to penetrate nuclear

weapons sites half the time -- even though the security guards

knew exactly what day and virtually what time to expect the

attacks. 



When Levernier conducted an unannounced inspection of security

guards one January weekend at a nuclear weapons plant in

Colorado, he says he was stunned by what he found. 



.We found that the patrols that should be patrolling and moving

around the facility were not observed,. says Levernier. .Upon

further investigation, we found that the vast majority of the

patrols were in a facility watching the Super Bowl game.. 



The Department of Energy has admitted that security guards at

other nuclear facilities have recently left front gates wide

open, and failed repeatedly to respond to emergency alarms in

top-security areas. Some have actually been caught sleeping on

the job. 



.People should know that the Department of Energy facilities

cannot withstand a full terrorist attack,. says Levernier. .I

mean, a realistic attack. Serious, state-sponsored, for

business.. 



What does Brooks think of this? .These are training exercises, so

we don.t think that simplistic measures of won or lost are

correct,. he says. .I don.t want to suggest that we're entirely

happy with the results of all of these things. If you never do a

test that shows a problem, you are not doing a rigorous enough

test.. 



Since 9/11, 60 Minutes has learned that terrorists have

penetrated multiple layers of security on at least three

occasions at the Y-12 nuclear complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the

country's primary facility for processing weapons-grade uranium;

and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where

the first atomic bomb was developed. 



The Department of Energy says it is now taking steps to bolster

security, including more performance testing, installing more

razor wire, better lighting, motion detection sensors and other

new technologies, as well as the hiring of more guards. 



But Matthew Zipoli, who's a member of a SWAT team of security

guards at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory just outside San

Francisco, and vice president of the Guards Union, says that's

not enough. 



.It.s all window dressing. There's really no substance to the

security. It's what looks good from the outside,. says Zipoli. 



He adds that guards are required to participate in annual

counterterrorism drills with neighboring police departments, but

said it never happened on his watch. 



.1996 was the last time local law enforcement agencies

participated in exercises with Livermore Laboratories,. says

Zipoli, who adds that he doesn.t think he.s been adequately

trained to perform his job. 



.We haven't been trained on the proper skills to get past an

enemy. We don't have the proper equipment, so no, we don't have

the proper training. And that degrades the effectiveness of our

force.. 



What's more, terrorists who might want to get into a nuclear

facility may not even have to fight their way in. Hundreds of

master keys and electronic key cards - some of which provide

access to classified areas - have disappeared. 



The Energy Department's inspector general found that officials at

Lawrence Livermore lab, which holds top secret information about

the country's nuclear arsenal, failed to immediately report their

missing keys. 



And at Sandia National Laboratories, near Albuquerque, N.M., the

locks have just been changed -- three years after keys there were

reported missing. But this is something that Republican Sen.

Charles Grassley, who's been leading the charge in Congress to

improve nuclear security, finds hard to believe. 



.If you were going to have your house keys stolen, you would

change your locks right away, wouldn't you? It's unconscionable

that after three years, locks had not been changed,. says

Grassley. .In that three-year period of time, how many times were

those doors entered, and our classified information compromised?. 



.I am concerned that bad guys could have had those keys. We don't

know for sure if they did. But, the fact that they were lost, and

there wasn't the proper concern about it, is a bigger problem,.

adds Grassley. .Because it -- once again, is evidence of people

at these labs not taking their job at security seriously.. 



.I find it inexplicable and unacceptable that people don't take

them seriously,. says Brooks. .All I can tell you is they do

now.. 



As the Department of Energy's senior safety official at Los

Alamos, Chris Steele has seen his share of problems. He's

responsible for making sure that the lab's operations do not put

workers or the public at undue risk from an accident at a nuclear

weapons plant. 



What kind of grade would he give them? 



.I'm giving -- in the process of giving them an F -- because

they've had systematic and systemic nuclear safety violations,.

says Steele. 



In 2003, Steele says he cited Los Alamos for an unprecedented 45

major nuclear safety violations: .Forty-five shows that their

normal mode of operation is to have violations. That they view

these as glitches, that there's no sense of urgency in fixing

them. And they could be precursors to disaster.. 



For example, Steele says Los Alamos came up with a flawed set of

safety guidelines that said that in the event of a large

explosion at its radioactive liquid waste facility, the

subsequent fire in thousands of gallons of nuclear waste would be

extinguished by the sprinkler system. The sprinkler system there

would extinguish the estimated hundreds of thousands of gallons

of nuclear waste, which would catch fire. 



.Under the tons of rubble, the sprinkler head would rise up

somehow and put out the fire. Of course, this is impossible, for

a sprinkler to work under tons of rubble,. says Steele. 



After pointing out this and other safety hazards to his bosses,

Steele was suspended, allegedly for breaching security in an

email exchange with his co-workers at Los Alamos. 



Matthew Zipoli, the Lawrence Livermore security guard, was fired

after he allegedly organized a walkout of his fellow guards. 



And as for Richard Levernier, who ran the mock terrorist drills,

he was demoted after giving unclassified information about his

security concerns to a newspaper. 



All of them claim it was retaliation, which the Department of

Energy denies. But it turns out many of the allegations they told

us have been substantiated by various federal government

agencies. 



Zipoli has since been reinstated, and Steele was cleared and is

back on the job. Over at the Department of Energy, Linton Brooks

says they take all incidents and allegations of lax security

seriously. 



.All of these concerns have been outlined in reports since 1997.

And they continue to occur as recently as just in the last few

months. Why is that?. Bradley asked Brooks. 



.Because this is a complex system. Because there are always going

to be problems, and you have to continue to deal with those

problems,. says Brooks. 



.And what we're trying to do is to make sure that when you're

sitting here with my successor, that you don't have repetitions

of these problems. Because we've got a long-term system to fix

it.. 



Just last week, the Department of Energy's inspector general

found that security guards at the Y-12 weapons plant have been

cheating on mock terrorist drills for the past 20 years, claiming

they were successful in defending their facility when in fact, in

some cases, they were not. 



In response to continuing security problems, Brooks and the

Department of Energy are conducting special inspections of all

nine nuclear weapons sites. 



© MMIII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. 



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