THOUSANDS OF LOS ALAMOS COMPUTERS M.I.A.

Los Alamos National Laboratory hasn’t kept track of thou­sands of its com­put­ers — includ­ing ones con­tain­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion. The lab’s own guards stole four of the machines. And employ­ees didn’t have to pay the gov­ern­ment back when their lap­tops sud­denly went miss­ing.
Those are just a few of the con­clu­sions of a dis­turb­ing report from the Department of Energy’s Inspector General, who has been exam­in­ing how the world’s best-​​known nuclear lab han­dles its inven­tory of lap­top and desk­top PCs. The University of California oper­ates Los Alamos on the Energy Department’s behalf.
As Defense Tech read­ers know, Los Alamos has been involved for months in a series of scan­dals involv­ing nod-​​off man­age­ment and droopy-​​eyed secu­rity. This lat­est report offers more evi­dence for just how nar­colep­tic lab offi­cials have been.
Many lap­top com­put­ers that couldn’t be found were sim­ply “written-​​off,” with­out a for­mal inquiry. One was used for clas­si­fied work, with­out proper approval. And 762 com­put­ers bought with gov­ern­ment credit cards didn’t receive “prop­erty num­bers,” which are required to track all “sen­si­tive items” at the lab.
To Project on Government Oversight’s Peter Stockton, a long­time lab critic, this report gives fur­ther evi­dence that “these char­ac­ters run­ning the lab are out of con­trol.“
Stockton’s watch­dog group today sent a let­ter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, ask­ing him to put the $2 billion-​​per-​​year Los Alamos up for bid now, instead of wait­ing until 2005, when the agree­ment runs out.
On Thursday, the House Energy Committee will hold the last of three hear­ings into the lab’s man­age­ment. Witnesses will include Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman and University of California pres­i­dent Richard Atkinson.

April 29th, 2003 | Los Alamos and Labs | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.