Thank you, Mr. Chairman for holding this hearing, and for the bipartisan staff work that led up to it. Security at DOE weapons laboratories is a longstanding and stubborn problem. For example, last year, after the downloading of nuclear weapons information by a weapons scientist from classified computers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Rudman panel concluded that the Department of Energy "and the weapons laboratories have a deeply rooted culture of low regard for and, at time, hostility to security issues, which has continually frustrated the efforts of its internal and external critics, notably the GAO [General Accounting Office] and the House Energy and Commerce Committee."

But even the recommended changes in structure – even if fully implemented – could not guarantee security. According to Senator Rudman, "[T]he most powerful guarantor of security at the nation’s weapons laboratories will not be laws, regulations, or management charts. It will be the attitudes and behavior of the men and women who are responsible for the operation of the labs every day." Those attitudes ranged, according to the panel, from "half-hearted, grudging accommodation" to "smug disregard."

Secretary Richardson took many steps to correct deficiencies. Most significantly, the Department hardened its security and greatly expanded the counter-intelligence operation. I wish that I could say the same about the laboratories. Upon the order of Secretary Richardson, the laboratories had a two-day security training stand-down last year, but apparently it was not sufficient to change the culture.

In many ways, the loss of the hard drives at Los Alamos reflected that ingrained culture even more than the Wen Ho Lee incident did. It involved not one person, but many who knew that they were violating DOE’s security directives when they did not report the missing disks. Someone – deliberately or otherwise – removed the hard drives from their secure location. Many, many other people tried to cover up the loss. But why shouldn’t they? No one was disciplined for the weak cyber security last year. Why would anyone be punished now?

The University of California will tell us today of its "integrated security and safeguards management" system which will instill security awareness in every employee. Perhaps it would have prevented the latest incident. But it is still not operational. Mr. Chairman, the chronic security problems at Los Alamos led me and five other Democrats on this Committee last month to call for the removal of the University of California as the contractor at Los Alamos. Only when contractors understand that there are real consequences to pay for security breaches will they make necessary changes.