June 22, 1999

Mr. Chairmen, Ranking Members, and members of the committees, thank you for allowing me to provide testimony to your committees. No Congressional committee has spent more time and effort on oversight of the Department of Energy’s security efforts than our House Commerce Committee. During my tenure as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations we conducted dozens of hearings over a decade. We looked at numerous security lapses, such as the inability to account for nuclear material, the lack of security at our weapons facilities, and problems in the security clearance process, the handling of classified information, and the foreign visitors program. Now the rest of the country knows why we were concerned.

I have reviewed the report by Senator Rudman and the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and I want to commend the Senator for an excellent report. It documents security lapses over the past several decades in a clear and comprehensive fashion. It is a wakeup call to the country that these problems are extremely serious and in need of correction.

Reports alone will not suffice. Nor will good intentions. I note with interest that on Sunday, Senator Rudman stated that bureaucrats at the Department of Energy are still balking at implementing a Presidential order on security. He said, "The attitude of people within that department, in that bureaucracy, is astounding."

To that I say, "Amen."

The question before us is what to do next. In his report, Senator Rudman gave good marks to recent actions by Secretary Richardson. He stated that more reforms are necessary. More importantly, he noted that even if the Secretary made all of the appropriate reforms, we need a statutory restructuring, because a future Secretary could undo the reforms.

Indeed, we have already seen reforms adopted by one Administration, such as an independent Office of Safeguards and Security Assessments, undone by the next Administration.

Yet Chairman Bliley and I share concerns about current legislative efforts to establish an autonomous or semi-autonomous agency in charge of nuclear weapons for precisely the reasons described by the Senator. We are concerned that those same bureaucrats, who are refusing to accept the President’s security order, would be the ones running this agency, with even less oversight than is currently in place.

None of us wants to use these serious security problems as an excuse to put the inmates in charge of the asylum.

This concern is not hypothetical. It is real. In every investigation concerning problems at the DOE weapons facilities and labs, the individuals responsible for the operation of defense programs consistently and repeatedly denied the problems, punished the whistleblowers, and covered up the problems to their superiors and Congress.

Unfortunately, two provisions that are currently before Congress – one in the House-passed Defense Authorization, and the other a pending amendment to the Intelligence Authorization in the Senate – would give these recalcitrant bureaucrats total control over these programs. I strongly oppose these provisions. I was joined in my opposition to the House provision by Chairmen Bliley and Sensenbrenner, but we were not permitted to offer an amendment to strike it.

I want to turn attention to an even greater problem. Senator Rudman’s Panel’s report is entitled, "A Report on Security Problems at the US. Department of Energy." As a report on security problems, it is excellent. But in crafting legislative solutions to security problems, we must not create other problems. I refer specifically to safety, health, and the environment.

Throughout the report, I found no references to the safety and environmental problems at the DOE facilities, and I understand why: that was not the panel’s mandate. However, some of the legislative proposals would certainly affect those activities.

I am taken aback by those who say, in effect, that we need to return to the days of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Do they want to return to the days when the operators of the Hanford facility put thousands of gallons of highly radioactive waste in steel drums and buried them in the ground, and then for years tried to hide the environmental damage that is now costing the country billions of dollars a year to clean up their mess?

Do they want to return to the days when safety was so bad at our weapons facilities that every plant had to be closed down, and we still do not have the capacity to produce tritium for our weapons?

Do they want to return to the days when radiation experiments were conducted on human guinea pigs, and then were covered up for decades?

The answer, of course, is "no." I am pleased that the Rudman panel report appears to recognize the need for independent oversight for security and counterintelligence. I note that the recommendations also expect the independent oversight board to "monitor performance and compliance to agency policies." In my view, health, safety and the environment must also be subject to oversight that is independent of national security officials.