[Peace-discuss] nuc security

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

As I said in a previous message a few days ago. Nuc security is broken!!  The 
good guys (U.S. DOD and DOE officials), who claim everyone else is causing 
the security breaches are the bad guys and the bad guys are also bad guys. 

doug 

**

Los Alamos National Lab Inquiry Broadens
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


Filed at 3:16 a.m. ET

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Another congressional committee has asked for 
federal oversight at Los Alamos National Laboratory, while critics questioned 
a newly released audit.

The House Committee on Science has asked the General Accounting Office to 
review the laboratory's credit-card program, inventory controls and security 
systems.

``We ask that you undertake a thorough review of the management systems at 
LANL as they pertain to purchase order or credit card abuses, property loss 
and most importantly, facility security,'' committee Chairman Sherwood L. 
Boehlert, R-N.Y., and ranking member Ralph M. Hall, D-Texas, wrote in a Dec. 
13 letter to GAO Comptroller General David M. Walker.

``The review should examine management practices at all levels at least since 
the start of the current director's tenure at LANL.''

The lab is facing mounting scrutiny over allegations of purchase card abuse, 
missing lab equipment and cover-up by officials.

``We are particularly interested in how management reacts and has reacted to 
reports of missing property that may have security implications,'' Boehlert 
and Hall wrote.

The Science Committee letter added that there had been reports of hundreds of 
computers missing from LANL. One former investigator, Glenn Walp, has said 
many of the computers were brand new.

The FBI, Energy Department Inspector General, House Energy and Commerce 
Committee and Senate Finance Committee are all investigating allegations of 
purchase card fraud, theft and cover-up at the lab.

A team of Energy Committee investigators were in Los Alamos this week 
interviewing current and former laboratory employees.

Committee spokesman Ken Johnson said the team left late Thursday. He would 
not comment on the audit report released by the lab this week.

The audit of Los Alamos' purchase card program was commissioned by lab 
officials after potentially fraudulent purchases by lab employees were 
discovered this year.

A PriceWaterhouseCoopers audit team headed by former Energy Department 
Inspector General John Layton found $3.78 million of purchases in accounts 
that had not been reconciled. It also reported $790,000 in questionable 
transactions and $316,000 in disputed charges that had not been credited by 
the bank.

The lab said this week it stands by those figures and that its own auditors 
have accounted for all but $316,000.

But the Project On Government Oversight, a Washington, D.C.-based media 
watchdog group, has questioned the validity of the report, which reviews 
transactions between October 1998 and June 2002.

Both the group and former lab investigator Steven Doran say the Layton team's 
figures should be much higher based on a Nov. 7 progress report that the 
Washington-based group says came from the audit team.

Walp, the former head of the lab's Office of Security Inquiries, and Doran, 
who also worked in the office, were fired last month after they alerted lab 
officials to credit-card misuse and missing equipment.

Lab spokeswoman Linn Tytler said Friday she did not have the document and 
could not specifically respond to their statements.

``However it is obvious, as they (the auditors) reviewed more than four years 
of data, that an initial of sweep of the universe of suspect accounts might 
be considerably larger than what both they and the laboratory were able to 
bring to closure prior to the issuance of the final report,'' Tytler said.

She also said University of California auditors are double-checking the lab's 
numbers.

A university spokesman on Friday said a report from its auditors reviewing 
the laboratory's numbers should be due out sometime in January.