<DOC>
[109th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:99905.wais]
A REVIEW OF SECURITY INITIATIVES AT DOE NUCLEAR FACILITIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 18, 2005
__________
Serial No. 109-66
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
house
______
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COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
JOE BARTON, Texas, Chairman
RALPH M. HALL, Texas JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan
MICHAEL BILIRAKIS, Florida Ranking Member
Vice Chairman HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
FRED UPTON, Michigan EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
CLIFF STEARNS, Florida RICK BOUCHER, Virginia
PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
CHARLIE NORWOOD, Georgia BART GORDON, Tennessee
BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois
JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois ANNA G. ESHOO, California
HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico BART STUPAK, Michigan
JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
CHARLES W. ``CHIP'' PICKERING, ALBERT R. WYNN, Maryland
Mississippi, Vice Chairman GENE GREEN, Texas
VITO FOSSELLA, New York TED STRICKLAND, Ohio
ROY BLUNT, Missouri DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
STEVE BUYER, Indiana LOIS CAPPS, California
GEORGE RADANOVICH, California MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania
CHARLES F. BASS, New Hampshire TOM ALLEN, Maine
JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania JIM DAVIS, Florida
MARY BONO, California JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
GREG WALDEN, Oregon HILDA L. SOLIS, California
LEE TERRY, Nebraska CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas
MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey JAY INSLEE, Washington
MIKE ROGERS, Michigan TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho MIKE ROSS, Arkansas
SUE MYRICK, North Carolina
JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
Bud Albright, Staff Director
David Cavicke, Deputy Staff Director and General Counsel
Reid P.F. Stuntz, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
______
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky, Chairman
CLIFF STEARNS, Florida BART STUPAK, Michigan
CHARLES W. ``CHIP'' PICKERING, Ranking Member
Mississippi DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
CHARLES F. BASS, New Hampshire JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
GREG WALDEN, Oregon JAY INSLEE, Washington
MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan,
JOE BARTON, Texas, (Ex Officio)
(Ex Officio)
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
__________
Page
Testimony of:
Brian, Danielle, Executive Director on Nuclear Security,
Project on Government Oversight............................ 104
Brooks, Hon. Linton F., Administrator, National Nuclear
Security Administration.................................... 22
Nanos, G. Pete, Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory..... 80
Podonsky, Glenn S., Director, Office of Security and Safety
Performance Assurance, U.S. Department of Energy........... 30
(iii)
A REVIEW OF SECURITY INITIATIVES AT DOE NUCLEAR FACILITIES
----------
FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 2005
House of Representatives,
Committee on Energy and Commerce,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:30 a.m., in
room 2123, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ed Whitfield
(chairman) presiding.
Members present: Representatives Whitfield, Walden,
Burgess, Blackburn, Stupak, and Inslee.
Staff present: Dwight Cates, majority professional staff
member; Mark Paoletta, Chief Counsel; Alan Slobodin, majority
counsel; Lisa Miller, deputy communications director; Chad
Grant, legislative clerk; Chris Knauer, minority professional
staff member; and Voncille Hines, minority research assistant.
Mr. Whitfield. Good morning, and I want to welcome everyone
to this hearing today on the review of security initiatives at
DOE nuclear facilities. We appreciate your being here.
The subcommittee will focus on several security matters at
the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons laboratories,
weapons production facilities, storage facilities, and
environmental cleanup sites. The protection of nuclear
facilities and weapons secrets is a priority for us and has
been the subject of several subcommittee hearings over the
years.
The Department has made several significant changes to its
security policy in the year since the subcommittee's May 2004
hearing. For instance, last November, the Department made
supplemental revisions to the Design Basis Threat, or DBT, that
it had previously finalized in May 2003. The supplemental
revisions to the DBT in October 2004 have significantly
upgraded the characteristics of the postulated adversary.
Consequently, additional security requirements will be
necessary at each site.
These changes came about in response to extensive
interagency discussions regarding the potential size and nature
of the terrorists that may seek to attack a domestic nuclear
facility. I welcome these additional changes, but I really
would like to know how quickly each DOE and NNSA site will
comply with these extensive new requirements. These upgrades
will be expensive and they could take years to implement.
In the past, the conventional management response to
increased security requirements was to hire a larger guard
force. I am encouraged that the Department may consider a
greater use of available security technologies that could
increase security and reduce the cost of security management at
each site.
At our May 2004 hearing, then-Deputy Secretary Kyle E.
McSlarrow presented the subcommittee with a series of new
security initiatives. Several of these proposals have already
been completed or are under development, while some initiatives
have not started. Mr. Glenn Podonsky, Director of Security and
Safety Performance Assessment, will present testimony regarding
the status of these initiatives.
I am particularly interested in the Department's efforts to
consolidate nuclear materials across the complex, increase the
use of new security technologies, and enhance protections to
classified computer information. I would also note that Mr.
Podonsky has been to my district on several occasions in the
past few years to review safety matters in Paducah, at the
Paducah site, and I welcome him here today.
Today, we will also hear from Ambassador Linton Brooks,
Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Administrator Brooks has the responsibility for the weapons
laboratories, including Los Alamos National Laboratory. Ongoing
safety and security problems at Los Alamos are a serious
concern for the committee. We have had numerous hearings on
security, safety, and business management problems at Los
Alamos. We hope Administrator Brooks and Lab Director Pete
Nanos, who will also testify today, can explain how we can turn
the tide on the bad news at Los Alamos.
This is the first of what I hope will be several hearings
on the status of security at DOE nuclear facilities. Protection
of nuclear materials within our borders is a critical line of
defense against terrorists. In the future, I plan to focus on
the DOE and NRC's efforts to secure sealed sources scattered
across the country. These are radioactive materials found in a
range of industrial equipment, including medical devices and
devices used to gauge oil wells.
After today's third panel, we plan to move the hearing to a
secure room where we can continue to discuss security matters
in closed session with Administrator Brooks, Mr. Podonsky and
Director Nanos. We look forward to your testimony today and
thank you once again for being here.
At this time, Mr. Stupak is recognized for his opening
statement.
Mr. Stupak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
having this important hearing.
Today's hearing will be yet another glimpse by this
committee into the myriad of issues surrounding the security
status of DOE's weapons complex. I am very pleased to report
that considerable progress has been made over the past 5 years.
I remain concerned that a range of issues still requires
attention by this committee, the Department of Energy, and the
National Nuclear Security Administration. These matters, which
I intend to delve into in closed session, will be the mainstay
of this hearing.
I look forward to exploring with our witnesses why it is
that we still haven't addressed certain known deficiencies at
key sites and when we can expect some conclusions on these
matters.
Mr. Chairman, as you know, there are a number of sites in
this complex that receive very formidable attention. While I
fully agree that additional progress must be made to ensure
that the DOE sites meet the new Design Basis Threat
requirements, I intend to ask our witnesses to explain in
detail where gaps remain.
For example, we will need to clearly articulate a list of
top priorities needing attention and then offer a detailed
explanation on what must occur to bring finality to these
matters. Many of the problems that we have discussed today are
the very same concerns that have plagued the complex for nearly
a decade.
So let me pose to both to Mr. Brooks and Mr. Podonsky that
you both succinctly tell us what is still vulnerable and why,
what needs to be done to rectify any such vulnerabilities; and
provide this committee with key dates on when it will get done.
During the course of this hearing, I am sure a number of
key facilities and their security status will be discussed. I
am also expecting that this committee will continue to examine
this area and assess the ongoing progress throughout the next
18 months, as you have indicated, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I have urged that both of us personally visit
a variety of these facilities as soon as possible. I would like
to personally visit those sites where considerable progress has
been made and those sites where there is considerable work
going on. I would ask that Mr. Brooks work with us to set up
such field visits in the near future.
If there is good news in today's discussion, it is the fact
that the DOE complex, as compared to other potential targets
across the United States, have considerably improved and are
hardened. Of course, more can and should be done, and I will
work with all parties to ensure that forward progress is made.
Nonetheless, as you know, over the course of the past 3
years, this committee has worked incredibly hard to address a
range of other issues related to homeland security,
specifically on the nuclear materials proliferation and
smuggling fronts. It is my opinion that this Congress must be
far more aggressive in addressing the many roles that DOE, the
Department of Homeland Security, and NNSA are playing in that
arena.
Specifically, I am interested in all aspects of how these
agencies are securing the many sources of materials throughout
the globe and the myriad of issues surrounding the
identification and interdiction should such material fall into
the wrong hands.
Mr. Chairman, this committee has already expended
considerable time and effort on some of these matters,
including spending considerable resources examining the roles
DOE plays in setting up detection technology in foreign ports.
In fact, as part of our effort, staff from this committee have
visited almost 30 ports and border crossings to assess what
kinds of equipment are being installed domestically to make
sure there are no smuggled nuclear materials, and to assess
what roles the national labs and DOE are playing in assisting
the Department of Homeland Security in this capacity. It is my
understanding that we will continue to work in this regard. I
sincerely believe it is among the most important matters being
addressed by this committee.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, it is my understanding that this
committee will continue to examine these matters and that we
will soon hold additional hearings on these topics. I applaud
the effort and will continue to lend my full support to this
effort.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, I do have one housekeeping matter
I would like to discuss. I note that Mr. Nanos from Los Alamos
will be testifying today. I have a great deal of respect for
his work and I look forward to his testimony. In particular, I
am looking forward to hearing about how Los Alamos is
progressing since the major events of last year.
Nonetheless, I do have documents that I hope he will be
able to shed some light on. This is the White Paper which
characterizes an audit by Mr. Don Brown. I know Mr. Nanos is
familiar with this audit. Mr. Brown was apparently an auditor
at that facility with considerable quality assurance, quality
control expertise. Mr. Brown conducted a series of audits at
Los Alamos; and according to this document, major issues
involving quality control and quality assurance were found and
may continue to plague the facility.
This document appears to have been created by an individual
who, I am guessing, had at least some standing at the Los
Alamos complex, at least enough to be allowed to do these kind
of audits. I think we need more information on this matter, Mr.
Chairman, and I would like to indulge your help in seeking some
clarity about this audit.
I would also request that Mr. Nanos provide in writing a
point-by-point response to each of the concerns laid out in
this document. I assume this would not be too burdensome. While
this may not be directly related to the site security, per se,
I nonetheless believe that if the matters are true and they
involve quality assurance and quality control issues, then
those could indeed seriously affect how this lab is run and,
ultimately, impinge upon both safety and security. I am hoping
that Mr. Nanos will be able to provide the information to us
and resolve this matter quickly.
Let me finish by again thanking you, Mr. Chairman, for
having this hearing. I would greatly like to thank our
witnesses, Mr. Brooks, Mr. Podonsky, who are certainly key
players in this arena and both have been very supportive of the
committee's work.
As the new ranking member of the subcommittee, I am indeed
looking forward to working with you both over the course of
this Congress. I would also again like to welcome Mr. Nanos
from Los Alamos. As you know, while we do not always agree with
some of the decisions made at your facility, I nonetheless look
forward to working with you and appreciate the hard work you
and your colleagues have put forth in the mission of protecting
the United States and in the efforts of trying to get the
facility back on track after the events of the last few years.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Ms. Brian from the
Project on Government Oversight. Ms. Brian's organization has
been a continuous source of information about what corrections
are needed at the DOE complex. As always, we are pleased to be
provided with her expertise and that of her organization, and I
want to thank her for being here.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you again and yield back the balance
of my time.
Mr. Whitfield. Thank you, Mr. Stupak.
Without objection, the document that the gentleman referred
to will be made a part of the record, and we will ask that Mr.
Nanos respond to those questions as you asked, and we look
forward to his response on that.
[The information referred to follows:]
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Mr. Whitfield. At this time, I will recognize Dr. Burgess
for his opening statement.
Mr. Burgess. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
calling the hearing. I will waive the opening statement. I have
one I will put in the record, but in the interest of time and
hearing from the witnesses, I will submit that for the record.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Michael C. Burgess
follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Michael C. Burgess, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Texas
Thank you Mr. Chairman, and thank you for having this important
hearing.
At this time in American history, our national security has become
the most important issue facing our nation. It is critical that we do
everything within our power to ensure that our nuclear weapons are
highly secured and protected. We cannot allow our national security to
be compromised because of inadequate safeguards that are poorly
implemented. The recent security incidents at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory illustrate that changes must be made to guarantee the safety
of weapons and top clearance material.
I share my colleagues' deep concern with regards to the safety of
nuclear sites in America and abroad. I look forward to the opportunity
to review both the security status of nuclear weapon facilities and
discuss security initiatives that can be implemented to better ensure
that our nation is protected. I also hope that additional insight can
be provided regarding the security matters at Los Alamos.
Again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for this crucial hearing in which
we can address some of these essential concerns regarding nuclear
facilities and the security of our nation.
Mr. Whitfield. Thank you very much. At this time, I
recognize Mr. Inslee for his opening statement.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you. I just wanted to thank the Chair for
his continued interest in this, because trust of the public is
really paramount here, and we have some work to do to get to
the level we need. Thank you.
Mr. Whitfield. I would also note that all Members will have
30 days to submit their opening statements for the record. The
Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Mr. Barton, was
not able to be with us today but did want me to emphasize his
interest in this subject matter and that he will be submitting
his opening statement as well.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Joe Barton follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Joe Barton, Chairman, Committee on Energy
and Commerce
I thank the Chairman for holding today's hearing on security at the
Department of Energy's nuclear facilities.
At the Subcommittee's DOE security hearing last year, DOE announced
several important security initiatives. I look forward to testimony
from Mr. Podonsky and Administrator Brooks on the status of each of
these initiatives. I recently wrote to the new Secretary, Mr. Bodman,
regarding these initiatives. I hope he will support them and ensure the
Department follows through on all of them.
I also look forward to testimony from Los Alamos Director Pete
Nanos. This past year has been another difficult year for the Lab. Last
fall, Director Nanos told me that the recent stand-down at Los Alamos
would cost the taxpayers $100 million. I was not convinced this would
be the final figure, and DOE now estimates the cost of the stand-down
at $370 million.
I supported the stand-down because of the severity of the security
and safety problems at Los Alamos. However, the necessity for the
stand-down and its duration are the direct result of recurring
mismanagement by the University of California, and I believe UC should
pay at least some of the stand-down costs.
The University of California's repeated mismanagement of security
and safety matters has been the topic of several oversight hearings. At
each hearing, the university promised to fix the mismanagement, but
these promises never seem to get implemented.
I hope Director Nanos can explain a recent audit report that
discovered 21 unauthorized sheds built at Los Alamos to store millions
of dollars of supplies and equipment that seem to have been accumulated
by circumventing normal inventory controls.
Structures stashed with shiny new gear that is available to vanish
without being missed--does this sound familiar? It should. The
Subcommittee held three hearings in the Spring of 2003 that revealed
weaknesses and outright fraud in procurement and inventory controls at
Los Alamos.
In my opinion, it is just not fair to continue asking the taxpayers
to pick up the tab for the university's ineptitude.
Probably the only real opportunity to begin to solve the problems
at Los Alamos is to hire a new contractor, and I support DOE's decision
to re-compete the Los Alamos contract.
I look forward to today's testimony, I thank the Chairman and I
yield back.
Mr. Whitfield. At this time, I will recognize the
witnesses. Our first panel includes, as I have already
indicated, the Honorable Linton Brooks, who is Administrator of
the National Nuclear Security Administration; and Mr. Glenn
Podonsky, who is the Director of the Office of Security and
Safety Performance Assurance at the United States Department of
Energy.
As you know, it is the custom with our Oversight and
Investigation Subcommittee to ask that the witnesses testify
under oath, and advise you that also have a right to counsel if
you wish to do that.
So I would ask both of you, are you willing to testify
under oath this morning?
Mr. Brooks. Yes, sir.
Mr. Podonsky. Yes, sir.
Mr. Whitfield. Do either of you prefer to have counsel with
you.
Mr. Brooks. No, sir.
Mr. Podonsky. No, sir.
Mr. Whitfield. Then, if you will rise.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Whitfield. Thank you. You are now sworn in, and at this
time, I would call on Mr. Brooks for his opening statement.
TESTIMONY OF HON. LINTON F. BROOKS, ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL
NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION; AND GLENN S. PODONSKY,
DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SECURITY AND SAFETY PERFORMANCE ASSURANCE,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Mr. Brooks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for this
opportunity to discuss this important issue. Before I give my
opening statement, I would like to associate myself with the
remarks of your ranking member. I would very much like to have
members of this committee visit our facilities. They are large,
they are complex, and it is a case where a visit is worth a
thousand words.
I would be happy in the question period to answer questions
on the broader subject of materials and would also be willing
to do that at a later date.
I want to cover three areas, and I am abbreviating, with
your permission, my formal statement. I want to talk about what
we have done to improve physical security, to improve
classified material security, and to improve Federal
supervision of our contractors.
My basic message is simple. While we still need to improve,
none of the national security assets entrusted to NNSA are at
risk, and our security program is robust and effective.
Physical security has been focused on the need to respond to
the increased threat that you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, in your
opening statement.
In May 2003, the Secretary approved the Design Basis Threat
that increased the number and sophistication of attackers. We
are scheduled to meet the Department's requirements to be fully
compliant by the end of fiscal year 2006. In May of last year,
we undertook a review of threat intelligence, and we made
changes for still further enhancements and will meet this new
standard by the end of fiscal year 2008.
We will be happy to discuss in closed session the
intelligence that led us to those changes and what the changes
are and the degree to which or the difficulty we will or won't
have in meeting them.
In general, what we have done is, first, increase the
number of uniformed protective forces and improved their
weaponry. We have added barriers, we have closed roads, we have
increased security patrols, we have increased access controls,
and we have enhanced employee awareness of threats.
Now, our near-term solutions relied on the application of
more guards and more guns. Those are costly measures we cannot
afford to apply indefinitely, so we are also focusing on
consolidation of special nuclear material, primarily right now
within sites, but ultimately, by eliminating material at sites,
and on the increased use of technology.
At the Y-12 plant, construction of a Highly Enriched
Uranium Materials Facility has begun and is scheduled for
completion in April 2008. That will lead us to consolidate all
the special nuclear material in an exceptionally secure
facility. It will be ultimately matched with a processing
facility that will be within the same security perimeter and
connected by an underground passageway so it is an effective
single site. In the interim, the site has done some innovative
efforts to use containers to form de facto forts in order to
slow the potential path of an attacker.
At Los Alamos, we have removed nuclear material from five
facilities since 2001. We are moving material from Technical
Area 18 to a facility at the Nevada test site. Technical Area
18 will be empty of Category I and II special nuclear material
by later this year.
At Sandia National Lab we will shut down the Sandia Pulsed
Reactor in 2007, and that will end operations with special
nuclear materials at Sandia.
Over the longer term, we have charged a congressionally
mandated weapons complex review with looking at how we might
end plutonium operations at Livermore while maintaining their
capability to participate in the stockpile stewardship. These
findings will be available in late April.
Now, consolidation is important, but it alone is
insufficient. America's strength is technology, so we are
deploying advanced concept armored vehicles, we are deploying
remotely operated weapons systems, we are beginning integration
of smart camera systems into security, and we are implementing
new vehicle detection systems. In the longer term, we are
looking at additional active denial systems, more remotely
operated weapons and more advanced detection systems. Finally,
we are working with Mr. Podonsky's office to expedite the
fielding of technology we had developed in the past but not
fully implemented.
Now, consolidation and technology help, but security will
always depend on well-trained protective forces. We are going
to try to reduce the reliance on protective forces, but we will
never eliminate it. Most of our protective forces are dedicated
and competent but we have had problems.
Three years ago, for example, at Sandia, we had security
officers sleeping on duty, we had incidents of racial tension,
and we had an unprofessional attitude. Under our direction,
Sandia took major steps to improve the leadership. To make sure
they were adequate, I commissioned a retired Air Force major
general to go out and personally observe the steps Sandia was
taking. Based on his reports, my reports, and those of my
observations, I think performance and morale at Sandia, in the
protective force, are remarkably improved.
We have also had problems with lost keys. Keys didn't allow
access to classified material or special nuclear material, but
their loss showed--there were a series of incidents about 2
years ago that showed that security procedures needed
improvement. Basically, we had too many keys. And so we are now
in the process of moving to a keyless environment. At the Y-12
plant, we have reduced the number of keys by 85 percent.
Finally, working with Mr. Podonsky, we are working toward
the creation of a true elite paramilitary force among our
guards. Progress is steady but uneven. For example, Mr.
Podonsky discovered substandard performance by the protective
force at the Nevada test site last summer. The site manager was
sufficiently concerned to turn over routine operation of her
site office to her deputy and take personal supervision of the
recovery plan.
Security of nuclear materials has to be matched by security
of classified information. We have initiated efforts to reduce
classified holdings at all facilities. Classified information
for us is not just documents and computer disks but also a
large number of classified parts. At Y-12, we have moved a
million pounds of classified material to long-term secure
storage.
In July of last year, Dr. Nanos, Director of Los Alamos,
imposed a stand-down on essentially all operations at the lab.
He did that because of a series of safety and security
problems, including an inability to locate two classified
computer disks. Three separate investigations have now
convinced us that the missing disks never existed, but those
investigations revealed significant security management
problems. In essence, the problem is, it took us several months
to realize what happened.
I provided the committee a copy of the report the former
Deputy Secretary and I prepared, and a copy of the letter
outlining the significant fee reduction imposed on the
University of California for this decision. As a result of
these problems, the Department has tightened restrictions on
accountable classified material throughout the complex. We now
require these items be maintained in centralized lending
libraries with a formal checkout procedure and full-time
trained custodians.
Once again, the key, however, is to reduce the amount of
material. Los Alamos, for example, has reduced from over 90,000
pieces of accountable removable electronic media to about
23,000. We are now in the process, however, of enabling further
reductions by working toward a so-called ``diskless computing
environment,'' where classified computing does not depend on
removable hard drives, removable Zip drives.
When I came to this position 3 years ago, I became
concerned that I did not have enough competent Federal security
professionals. In March 2003, I asked retired Admiral Hank
Chiles to look at our approach to staffing. As a result of his
work, we are trying to revitalize the Federal security
workforce. We are improving formal training and certification
of security officials, we are about to implement an intern
program to recruit for the long term, and we are improving
training and management.
Under the structure that I have created, supervision of
contractors is carried out by Federal site offices located at
each of the eight NNSA facilities. Last summer, when the
investigation at Los Alamos revealed significant security
problems, I became concerned because the problems came as a
surprise to the site office. This was in sharp contrast to the
safety problems, where the site office had, I submit, at least
as good an understanding as the laboratory and probably better.
Then, when we had the poor inspection at Nevada, I became
concerned because the results were a surprise to the site
office. I wasn't concerned that the inspection went poorly--if
inspections never go poorly, they aren't tough enough--but I
was concerned that my people were surprised by the result.
So I led a team of senior officials to visit each of my
sites to look in depth at how we were providing our supervisory
responsibility. I concluded I needed to fix four areas: I
needed to fix leadership, I needed to fix the numbers and
training of our security experts, I needed to improve hands-on
involvement, and I needed to provide more help from
headquarters.
I replaced two of the six senior site security officials. I
had previously replaced one other. Some of my site managers had
a tendency to think of security as somebody else's problem; I
have corrected that misperception. We are working on improving
training and qualification, and we are increasing the number of
security professionals at the site offices.
I also became concerned with the way we were providing our
supervision. In safety, we get out into the facility a lot. In
security, we have a tendency to review reports. So we are
gradually trying to move toward a more day-to-day, hands-on
approach.
Finally, my only way to know my site offices were doing
well was when Mr. Podonsky came every other year with a full-
scale inspection. I concluded that I needed more frequent
feedback. So I'm establishing an office to assess and validate
security performance and provide assistance to the site
managers as a supplement to what Mr. Podonsky does. I believe
the steps we have put in place will improve our supervision of
security, but I won't know that for a few more months.
Mr. Chairman, we remain committed to maintaining the
security of the facilities and the materials and the
information we guard. I am as confident of the security of our
facilities as at any time in my tenure. I am not, however,
satisfied. It is essential we continue the improvements we have
under way. Only by doing so can we ensure long-term security.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Linton F. Brooks follows:]
Prepared Statement of Linton F. Brooks, Under Secretary for Nuclear
Security and Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration
introduction
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for this
opportunity to address security at the National Nuclear Security
Administration's nuclear weapons research and production facilities. I
would like to cover three major areas:
NNSA's progress on improving physical security
NNSA's progress on improving the security of classified material
NNSA's progress on improving Federal supervision of contractor
security operations.
It is important to recognize that there are other important
security areas such as material control and accounting, the management
of personal security clearances and human reliability,
counterintelligence, and cyber security. Mr. Podonsky and I would be
happy to respond to questions in these areas but because they have not
been contentious I will not cover them in my statement.
Let me begin by stating none of the vital national security assets
entrusted to the NNSA--nuclear weapons, Special Nuclear Material, or
classified materials--are at risk anywhere within the nuclear weapons
complex. Our security program is robust and effective. Secretary Bodman
has re-affirmed the Department's commitment to the security of the
nuclear weapons complex.
At the same time, there have been significant security problems at
some of our sites. Later in this statement I will describe what we have
been doing to correct those problems and where we still have work to
do.
physical security
In the past three and one half years, physical security at NNSA
sites has been dominated by the need to respond to the increased threat
in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Prior to 2001 we
assumed a relatively limited threat of attackers who sought to steal a
weapon. For example, we could counter the threat by trapping the
attackers in a weapons vault so they could not escape. 9/11 taught us
that larger attacks were possible and that terrorists were willing to
die to inflict massive damage. We shifted to a strategy of denying the
attacker any access to nuclear weapons. In May 2003, based on an
Interagency Working Group postulated threat, the Secretary approved a
Design Basis Threat (DBT)that significantly increased the number of
attackers against which we plan. Because the May 2003 DBT dramatically
increased both the numbers and sophistication of the adversaries, it
will take until the end of Fiscal Year 2006 for the Department to be
fully compliant. That effort is on track within NNSA and all our
facilities will meet the requirements of the May 2003 Design Basis
Threat by the end of FY2006.
In May, 2004 the Department undertook a review of all available
threat intelligence. Mr. Podonsky and I will be happy to discuss the
results of that review in detail in closed session. As a result of that
review, the former Deputy Secretary approved changes to our graded
protection strategy for certain types of special nuclear materials and
a further increase in the size of the attack against which we must
defend. His decision was codified in an October 2004 revision of the
Design Basis Threat. Once again, we will be happy to go into details in
closed session. The revised threat sets an exceptionally demanding
standard and uses very conservative planning assumptions. We plan to
meet this new standard by the end of FY2008.
A new round of vulnerability assessments is under way across the
complex to determine enhancements required to meet this threat. Sites
will submit their implementation plans and resource requirements by the
end of July 2005. Once these plans have been reviewed, we will be able
to formulate the impact of these requirements on security costs, but
almost certainly additional resources will be required in FY2007 beyond
those shown in our budget projections.
Many will conclude that such an attack is highly unlikely. No
matter how low the probability, however, the potential consequences
demand that we deter our enemies and deny them access to nuclear
weapons or special nuclear materials.
To deal with this threat we have increased the number of uniformed
protective forces, added barriers, closed roads, increased security
patrols and detection procedures, increased access controls, and
enhanced employee awareness of potential threat concerns. We were
forced by necessity to meet the increase in threat with proven near-
term solutions that rely on the application of more guards and guns--
costly measures that we cannot afford to apply indefinitely.
Because of this we are also focusing on consolidation of special
nuclear material and on increased use of technology. At the Y-12 plant,
one of our oldest sites, we are implementing a modernization strategy
to consolidate special nuclear material storage and operations in
facilities with designed denial features. Non-SNM operations will be
moved outside high security areas to reduce costs. Construction of the
Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, which will provide us with
more secure storage for SNM, has begun and is scheduled for completion
in April 2008. In the interim, the site has provided for additional
delay through an innovative use of large containers to form de facto
forts protecting areas of greatest concern.
At Los Alamos National Laboratory, we have removed critical special
nuclear materials from five facilities since 2001 and consolidated
those operations within a single technical area. Material from Los
Alamos' Technical Area 18 is currently being moved to the Device
Assembly Facility on the Nevada Test Site--a facility designed for high
levels of security in a more defendable area. Prior to the recent Los
Alamos stand down, we expected TA-18 to be empty by September of this
year. (Some of the material scheduled to go to Nevada will be stored on
an interim basis within the protected area of the plutonium production
facility.) We are still evaluating whether this schedule can be met
without compromising safety. Any delay will be brief.
At Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, shut down of the
Sandia Pulsed Reactor in 2007 will end operations with special nuclear
material at that site. Over the longer term, I have charged the Weapons
Complex Review Team to look into ending all plutonium operations at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, while still
maintaining Livermore's capability to participate in the Stockpile
Stewardship program. This team is examining the future of the entire
weapons complex and will present its findings in late April.
NNSA has also begun to work with the Department's Office of Nuclear
Energy, Office of Science and the Office of Environmental Management to
evaluate the use of two facilities at the Idaho National Laboratories
for interim storage of material from throughout the NNSA complex. One
of these facilities was built to provide high levels of security for
reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels; the other is a well-protected
material storage building. We are in the opening stages of this
evaluation and still must determine any legal barriers and additional
physical security or construction requirements, but these facilities
may offer exceptional opportunity to consolidate materials and
components in a location with robust security features in place.
Consolidation is important, but it alone is insufficient for
protecting nuclear materials from terrorists. America's strength is in
technology. To continue the transformation of security in the nuclear
weapons complex we must harness the technological prowess of the United
States to reduce our reliance on manpower-intensive solutions. We have
already begun deployment of advanced concept armored vehicles and
remotely operated weapons systems at Y-12. We are beginning integration
of smart camera systems into the existing security systems at two
facilities. Y-12 will also be implementing new vehicle detection and
assessment systems and a new access delay system that utilizes
activated delay technology that will not damage facilities.
In the longer term, we are looking at employment of additional
active denial systems, remotely operated weapons, and more advanced
detection systems that will reduce our reliance on manpower and provide
earlier detection and attrition of an adversary. The Nevada Test Site
will serve as a test platform for developing these concepts. To ensure
the effective use of technology and system design we have established a
Safeguards and Security Engineering Team with representatives from each
of our sites and several of our Federal components to share best
practices for physical security and to conduct peer reviews of proposed
new security line item construction projects. This Team has already
completed reviews of projects at Los Alamos and Y-12. Finally, we are
working with Mr. Podonsky's Office of Safety and Security Performance
Assurance to expedite the fielding of technology developed in the past
but not fully implemented.
While consolidation and technology help, security will always
depend on well-trained protective forces. While most of our protective
forces are dedicated and competent, we have had problems. Three years
ago, for example, the Sandia protective force had significant problems
with officers sleeping on duty, incidents of racial tension and a
general unprofessional attitude. Under our direction, Sandia took major
steps to improve the leadership and supervision of the force. To ensure
those steps are adequate, I commissioned a retired Air Force Major
General to assist my local Site Office in overseeing corrective action.
Based on both my personal observation and on those of my subordinates,
I believe the performance and morale of the Sandia protective force is
vastly improved.
Starting two years ago we had significant problems with lost keys
at both the Y-12 plant and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Although in no case could these keys allow access to special nuclear
material or classified information, we saw their loss as a sign that
security procedures needed improvement. In addition to instituting
improved procedures, we concluded we had too many keys. I therefore
established an initiative to move to a ``keyless'' environment. At Y-
12, for example, we have reduced the number of security keys by 85
percent and no key type security locks are used to protect special
nuclear materials.
Working with Mr. Podonsky's Office of Safety and Security
Performance Assurance, we are working toward creation of a true elite
para-military force at all our sites. Progress is steady, though
uneven. For example, an independent assessment by Mr. Podonsky's office
last summer uncovered sub-standard performance by the protective force
(and other contractor elements) at the Nevada Test Site. The NNSA Site
Manager turned over the routine operation of the federal Nevada Site
Office to her Deputy and took personal supervision of the recovery
plan. While corrective action is well along, I am disturbed by what
this incident says about the quality of NNSA's day-to-day supervision
of our contractors. I will have more to say on this point in a few
minutes.
classified material control
Security of nuclear materials must be matched by security of
classified information. To improve our ability to protect such
information, we have initiated efforts to reduce classified holdings at
all facilities by destroying excess classified material and moving some
holdings to areas where they can be better controlled. At Y-12, for
example, we have moved over 1 million pounds of classified materials to
approved long-term storage containers. Similar efforts are underway at
all facilities.
The Committee is well aware of the problems with classified
removable electronic media (CREM) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In
July 2004 the Laboratory Director imposed a stand down on essentially
all activities because of a series of safety and security problems,
including an inability to locate two classified computer disks. While
separate investigations by the University of California, NNSA, and the
FBI all concluded that the missing disks never existed, they also
revealed serious problems with security management at Los Alamos. I
would like to provide the Committee for the record a copy of the report
prepared by the former Deputy Secretary of Energy and myself that
outlines the problems in detail. I would also like to submit for the
record a copy of a letter outlining the significant reduction in the
management fee awarded the University of California for the operation
of Los Alamos that I imposed as a result of these deficiencies. In
addition, the Laboratory took disciplinary action including terminating
three individuals, demoting several supervisors and suspending several
individuals without pay.
In addition to correcting the specific performance problems at Los
Alamos, the Department has tightened restrictions on accountable CREM.
We now require that these items be maintained in centralized lending
libraries with formal checkout procedures enforced by full time trained
custodians. Still, a contributing cause of the problem at Los Alamos
was that we simply have too much classified material throughout NNSA
and the rest of DOE. Los Alamos itself, for example, has gone from over
90,000 pieces of accountable CREM in January, 2004 to about 23,000 in
September. To reduce this number further, we need to move to a diskless
workstation computing environment. When classified information is
stored on central servers with no desktop ability to remove such
information, we will be able to significantly reduce the potential for
inadvertent or intentional mishandling of classified information. We
are now forming a task force under my supervision to accelerate the
shift to diskless computing throughout the entire Department.
One element of both physical security and classified material
control is control of access. We are conducting analysis of the current
access control infrastructure throughout the nuclear weapons complex
and examining technologies used by the private industry. This analysis
will establish a baseline for enhancements to ARGUS, an access control
and intrusion detection system that has become the standard application
for NNSA facilities. We have also formed an Integrated Project Team for
dealing with Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12--Policy for a
Common Identification Standard for Federal Employees and Contractors,
which requires ``smart cards'' for physical and logical access to
Federal sites, buildings and systems.
federal supervision
I would like now to turn to Federal supervision of security.
Congress created NNSA in response to security lapses at our national
security laboratories. While I believe we have had a number of
successes in various areas, I am aware that this Committee and Congress
as a whole will judge us by the degree to which we ensure adequate
security throughout the weapons complex.
Shortly after assuming my current position, I became concerned that
I did not have adequate competent security professionals to carry out
my responsibilities. In the short term, I sought to deal with this
problem by additional recruiting, but to ensure the long-term health of
the Federal security community, in March 2003 I commissioned retired
Admiral Hank Chiles to conduct an extensive review. Such a review had
not been conducted previously. As a result, we are implementing a Human
Capital Management Program to revitalize the Federal security work
force that oversees security at our laboratories, plants, and storage
facilities. In addition to provisions for the formal training and
certification of Federal security officials, we will soon implement an
intern program designed to attract and train the new Federal security
officers who will provide leadership and guidance to the NNSA of the
future.
To provide further focus and clear direction, in June, 2004 I
created a new Associate Administrator for Defense Nuclear Security,
reporting directly to me on an equal footing with the heads of my major
programs. This office consolidated all NNSA security functions and is
headed by a security professional with over 35 years of security
experience both at Headquarters and in the field, as well as recent
experience in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of Nuclear
Security and Incident Response.
Under the NNSA structure I have established, supervision of
contractors in all areas--security, safety, and business practices--is
carried out by Federal Site Offices located at each of the eight NNSA
facilities. Last summer, when investigation of the apparently missing
disks at Los Alamos began to reveal significant security management
problems, I became concerned not just by the problems themselves but by
the fact that they came as a surprise to the security professionals at
the Site Office. This was in marked contrast to the safety problems at
Los Alamos, all of which we were aware of in advance.
My concern heightened when the contractor at Nevada performed
poorly on a periodic inspection by Mr. Podonsky. I was not as concerned
with the actual performance--if no one ever does poorly the tests are
too easy--as with the fact that the Site Office expected much better
performance. As a result of these two incidents I personally led a team
of senior security officials to the six sites with special nuclear
material. At each site I focused on security performance and, in
particular, on how supervision of the contractor was conducted. The
results varied widely. At some sites we had impressive supervision,
with strong involvement of the Site Manager, an active program of
surveillance and inspection, and an exceptional understanding of the
strengths and weaknesses of the contractor performance. At other sites
we were far poorer.
Following my review, I concluded that I needed improvements in four
areas: leadership failures, inadequate numbers of trained Federal
security experts, a lack of hands-on involvement, and failure to
provide sufficient headquarters supervision. We took the following
actions to correct these problems:
Not surprisingly, the most important determinant of our effectiveness
was the leadership provided by the senior security professional
at each site. After consulting with the local federal Site
Manager, I replaced two of the six senior security officials (I
had previously replaced one other). A second leadership issue
involved the local Site Managers themselves. Although they were
the senior Federal official at each site, some had a tendency
to leave supervision of security to their subordinates. I have
corrected this.
As a result of the Chiles Commission I referred to earlier, we were
already working on improving training and qualification of our
security professionals. In addition, we are just finishing a
detailed review of staffing that will result in increases in
the numbers of security professionals at most Site offices.
A third problem concerned our method of supervising the contractor.
In the area of safety our experts spend a great deal of time
out in the facility observing operations. At the better sites,
this is true for security as well, but at some sites our
security experts spent much of their time reviewing paper
rather than conducting hands on observations, except for an
annual survey conducted over a period of less than a month. We
are gradually shifting our approach to emphasize continuous
surveillance as a supplement to annual surveys.
Finally, my only check on the performance of the Site Offices was the
inspections conducted every other year by the Office of
Security and Safety Performance Assurance. To provide
assistance to Site Managers and assurance to me that our
performance is adequate in between these inspections, I am
moving to formally establish an Office of Performance Assurance
under the Associate Administrator for Defense Nuclear Security.
The Office will assess and validate security performance across
the NNSA and identify opportunities for improvement. It will
work closely with the Office of Security and Safety Performance
Assurance in the conduct and response to annual security
surveys and periodic independent oversight reviews. I am
confident that this new Office will strengthen the capabilities
of individual site offices to perform effective supervision of
NNSA's security contractors.
In parallel with this effort, initially at my request and
subsequently at the request of another Committee of Congress, the
Office of Security and Performance Assessment conducted a review of
NNSA supervision of security. Their conclusions validated my own and
also indicated the need for greater attention to monitoring of
corrective actions. I believe we have provided the Committee a copy of
that review. I believe the steps we have put in place will dramatically
improve our supervision of security at our sites.
conclusion
NNSA remains fully committed to maintaining the security of the
national treasures we guard. I am as confident of the security of our
facilities as at any time in my tenure. I am not, however, satisfied.
It is essential that we continue the security improvements we have
underway, upgrade the protective forces, and improve Federal
supervision. Only by doing so can we discharge our responsibilities,
fix our problems as they occur, and ensure the long-term security of
the nuclear weapons complex.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Whitfield. Thank you, Mr. Brooks.
At this time, Mr. Podonsky, you are recognized for your
opening statement.
TESTIMONY OF GLENN S. PODONSKY
Mr. Podonsky. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee, for holding this hearing and for the invitation
to testify today regarding the status of security at the
Department of Energy.
The story of security at the Department of Energy over the
past several years is one significantly affected by change,
change in the global security situation and in the recognized
threat we face; change in the missions and configurations of
our weapons complex; and change in how we approach and practice
our security responsibilities.
Today, I will summarize the progress made and the efforts
to enhance the security posture of the DOE, and I will also
discuss with the committee those areas where the efforts have
fallen far short and require additional work. I have addressed
these in some detail in my written testimony.
The DOE has made significant, but not sufficient progress
in the past 3\1/2\ years. Following the September 11 terrorist
attacks, the DOE took immediate actions to increase security,
as Ambassador Brooks just said in his opening statement. We had
an elevated security condition imposed; we added additional
physical security measures, such as increasing protective force
posts, enhancing access controls, and erecting barriers to
increase standoff for vehicle bombs; and we modified some
operational procedures.
Follow-on actions included initiating a review of our
Design Basis Threat, and creating my office to increase the
effectiveness of interaction on security matters between
headquarters and the field.
Last May, the DOE initiated a wide-ranging set of security
initiatives to address known security problems and to begin
transforming our protection systems to meet our future security
needs. These initiatives are central to the current security
enhancement efforts and encompass four broad areas.
Information security initiatives involve efforts to improve
our cyber security programs by expanding the performance
testing and improving capabilities and procedures for
recognizing, reporting, and disseminating and reacting to
attacks on our cybersystems, as well as moving to a diskless
desktop environment for classified computing.
Our security technologies initiatives are aimed at
addressing specific problems, such as creating a keyless
security environment and enhancing our protection programs
through other technologies.
A third set of initiatives addresses our need to
consolidate our inventories of special nuclear materials.
Our final set of initiatives involves improving our
security of human capital and includes a range of activities to
improve recruitment, training for security professionals, as
well as the development, as Ambassador Brooks just mentioned,
of the elite-level protective force at our more sensitive
facilities.
These initiatives, 15 in all, represent an aggressive
agenda to transform and enhance our protection programs and
meet the requirements of our revised Design Basis Threat and to
respond to emerging threats.
The Department is continuing to pursue these initiatives.
Some have been completed, most are progressing, some
significantly more slowly than we prefer. DOE must pursue these
security initiatives aggressively, especially since we have
continued to experience problems with implementation of our
protection programs and related management systems.
For example, some local line management feedback and
improvement mechanisms, such as Federal security survey
programs and contractor self-assessment programs, have not been
effective enough to detect and correct existing protection
program deficiencies. This is verified by deficiencies found by
our independent oversight office at sites such as Hanford, Oak
Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Y-12,
and Nevada test site. These problems, which included such
things as poor protective force performance, deficient nuclear
material control and accountability programs, inadequate
classified document control, and deficiencies in physical
security systems should have been identified and corrected by
the local management before our independent oversight office
found them during their inspections.
On a somewhat wider scale, we have experienced problems in
the last year or two, as you know, with lock and key control
systems and with maintaining adequate controls for classified
removable of electronic media, or CREM, as we have learned to
call it. Again, in many cases, line management control
mechanisms at individual sites did not properly detect and
correct the conditions.
We can expect that various problems are going to emerge
from time to time in systems as large and complex as our
protection programs. What is important is that we identify
those problems as they are emerging and correct them before
they do us harm. We depend on local DOE line management for
this timely identification and correction. However, the local
management, as I have stated, has not always been up to the
task.
The most significant security-related changes we face today
and in the near future are those associated with implementing
our current Design Basis Threat. Meeting the elevated
requirements of the revised DBT will require significant
changes in many of our protection systems, and at a significant
cost. This effort is going to require the identification,
procurement, and integration of new technologies into our
protection systems, significant efforts to raise the skill
levels of some of our protective forces and other security
professionals, and a concerted effort to reduce and consolidate
our special nuclear material inventories.
To address the first of these efforts, we currently have a
site-assistance visit activity under way that is intended to
apply our best technological, analytical, and tactical
expertise to assist our most critical facilities in identifying
security technology applications and innovative strategies to
effectively and efficiently meet the requirements of the DBT.
We are encouraged by the ideas resulting from these visits,
but individual sites will have to follow up that effort to
finalize the designs and compute the costs of their proposed
protection system upgrades. Ultimately, Mr. Chairman, the
Department will have to devise ways to integrate new security
technologies, new protective force weapons, and tactics with
operational needs and safety concerns; and we will need to find
the funding sources for those enhancements.
We are upgrading the capabilities currently in the
curricula at our National Training Center in Albuquerque, which
will play a central role in elevating the skill levels of our
protective force and other security professionals, as well as
those managers responsible for the security and safety program
implementation or oversight.
Consolidating the special nuclear materials to the greatest
degree practicable may prove to be the most difficult
challenge, because even after we identify consolidation
opportunities and address the related programmatic issues, such
as construction of storage facilities, funding, and relocation
programs, we will be faced with Federal, State and local
political obstacles to relocating these materials that the
Department will not be able to solve internally.
In closing, we believe the Department is, in fact, actively
pursuing initiatives that will improve the capabilities of the
security systems. I am confident that Secretary Bodman and
Ambassador Brooks are, in fact, committed to continuing these
efforts. Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, the Department has not
always followed through on its commitments. However, it is my
opinion that it is a new day with Secretary Bodman. He has made
it clear he will not tolerate missed commitments and inadequate
management controls, and that the Department will enact
innovative and effective methods to foster the necessary
changes in our security practices and cultures to counter the
evolving threat.
While this effort is large and is difficult, it is not
impossible. With support from this committee and others on
Capitol Hill, and together in cooperation with our stakeholders
at every level, we can and we will succeed.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Glenn S. Podonsky follows:]
Prepared Statement of Glenn S. Podonsky, Director, Office of Security
and Safety Performance Assurance, U.S. Department of Energy
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for
inviting me to testify today regarding the status of security programs
in the Department of Energy. The story of security in DOE over the past
several years is one significantly affected by change--changes in the
global security situation and in the recognized threat we face; changes
in the missions and configurations of our weapons complex; and changes
in how we approach and practice our security responsibilities. Today I
will discuss the progress we have made, amidst those changing
conditions, on our efforts to enhance our security posture. I will also
discuss those areas in which our efforts have fallen short and in which
additional work is needed, and discuss the major security challenges we
face over the next few years.
Let me start by reaffirming what I hope the members of the
subcommittee fully recognize: the Department understands that we have
custody of some of the nation's most vital national security assets, in
the form of both information and materials. We know that the protection
of these assets is vital to our national security, and we are committed
to protecting them. There is no item more important than security on
the agenda of the Department's senior management. During the past four
years, former Secretary Abraham and former Deputy Secretary McSlarrow
championed the cause of security and actively guided our efforts to
improve our protection posture. Secretary Bodman has continued that
legacy by strongly affirming his commitment to protecting the
Department's vital national security assets, facilities, and employees.
While we remain convinced that we have in the past, and continue to
adequately protect our vital national security assets, we have
acknowledged all along that our efforts have not been flawless. We must
continually adapt our security programs to a changing world and to an
evolving threat environment, and we can and must find ways to further
strengthen our security posture. It is with those convictions that we
have been aggressively pursuing security improvements during the past
four years.
security enhancements since 9/11
The September 11th terrorist attacks made it painfully clear that
our long held ideas of postulated threats had become all too real. To
ensure that we were adequately protecting our assets against this
elevated threat, we knew we needed to take immediate action. Let me
summarize some of the things we have done since 9/11 to strengthen the
Department's security posture and to contribute to the Nation's
security efforts.
On September 11th, we imposed an elevated Security Condition, or
SECON, and instituted a number of other actions to increase physical
security measures at our facilities, and particularly around our most
sensitive targets. These actions, which varied from site to site
depending upon local needs and characteristics, included: increasing
the number of protective force posts and patrols; closing key streets
and parking areas; and, erecting additional barriers to increase stand-
off distances for potential vehicle bombs. Because these enhanced
security measures had to be implemented immediately, in many cases our
line managers were forced to turn to manpower-intensive solutions
involving increased protective force activity. We have been at a
heightened state of alert at varying SECON levels, since 9/11.
Our protective forces could not bear this level of burden
indefinitely so to relieve that additional burden and seek cost
effective and efficient ways to maintain enhanced security, we turned
to technology solutions. We selected the very best security
technologies available to deploy at our sites, ranging from explosives
detection to chemical defense and cyber security. At the same time, we
evaluated the human factor associated with highest risk environments.
Resulting changes in the Departmental Human Reliability Program have
improved the measures by which we assess the physical and mental
suitability of individuals who occupy our most critical positions.
We reassessed the Design Basis Threat--the planning basis for our
protection requirements--in an effort to ensure that our increased
security measures were responsive to our new understanding of the
threat. A new Design Basis Threat policy was issued in May 2003. Each
site developed implementation plans and began efforts to meet the
requirements of the new policy. As a consequence of our efforts to
upgrade security since 9/11, our security spending increased from $883M
in 2001 to $1.44B in our 2006 request.
The series of Secretarial Security Initiatives announced in May of
last year represents the most ambitious and comprehensive of our
current security enhancement efforts. The initiatives are broad and far
ranging, and impact most major elements of the Department's protection
programs, including those of the National Nuclear Security
Administration. The initiatives can be grouped into four broad program
areas: information security; new security technology solutions;
consolidation of materials; and strengthening security human capital
expertise. Together, they directly or indirectly impact every aspect of
our protection programs. These initiatives are so central to our
current effort that is it worthwhile to briefly describe each one and
its current implementation status.
One set of initiatives involves information security. Much of the
information we possess today, including classified information, is
created on computers and stored on computer media. Unfortunately, the
fast pace of technological development of computer hardware and
software seems to be equaled by the pace of development of methods for
adversaries to exploit that hardware and software. If we are to
continue to operate effectively, we have to actively protect the
confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all of the information
on our automated systems, and we have to be able to do that even while
we are under cyber attack. Consequently, we have to be on the cutting
edge of cyber security and must employ tools, systems, procedures, and
configurations. Recognizing the urgency of this imperative and the
potential consequences of falling behind in this area, we resolved to
do more to ensure that our protection systems keep abreast of emerging
threats. The three cyber security initiatives are aimed at: increasing
testing used to identify (and eliminate) our cyber vulnerabilities
before an adversary does; enhancing protection and training measures
within our information security systems; and reducing the exposure of
classified information stored on computer media. While these
initiatives include some longer-term developmental activities, most can
be implemented in the near term. The cumulative effects of these
initiatives will significantly enhance our cyber protection abilities.
A synopsis of each of these three initiatives and our current progress
in achieving full implementation follows.
Expand Cyber Security Performance Testing. This initiative expands
our independent oversight organization's cyber security
performance testing program for both classified and
unclassified information systems by: expanding the scope and
increasing the frequency of unannounced penetration testing;
conducting continuous scanning of unclassified computer systems
to reduce the exposure to Internet threats; and expanding
testing of classified computer networks to ensure appropriate
need-to-know protection boundaries are in place and are
effective.
The institutional structures necessary to implement this
initiative have been put in place, and expanded testing has
already begun. The necessary additional personnel, computer
systems, and testing tools have been procured and operating
procedures and testing protocols have been validated. Expanded
unannounced penetration testing and enhanced testing of
classified systems has commenced. We are preparing to begin
continuous network scanning and penetration testing to reduce
Internet exposure, starting with Headquarters and subsequently
phasing in additional sites.
Cyber Security Enhancements. This initiative consists of integrated
steps intended to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and
availability of our information systems by quickly
disseminating cyber threat information, expanding intrusion
detection systems that rapidly identify cyber attacks, reducing
the exposure of our information systems to Internet threats,
and improving workforce cyber security training.
DOE's Chief Information Officer is leading the efforts associated
with this initiative. To date, we have: increased inter- and
intra-agency sharing of cyber threat and vulnerability data;
incorporated intrusion detection and prevention into our cyber
security enterprise architecture; completed independent reviews
of Headquarters implementation of the Department's Cyber
Security Management Program; upgraded cyber security training
programs; and developed a methodology to identify inappropriate
information on publicly accessible websites. This methodology
was applied to an initial website cyber security analysis.
Diskless Desktop Computing. The use of Classified Removable
Electronic Media (CREM) to store information has been a
persistent security challenge, primarily due to the ubiquity of
the media. This initiative seeks to eliminate or greatly reduce
this challenge by moving, within a five-year period, to
diskless workstations for classified computing. The National
Nuclear Security Administration has been tasked to identify and
implement appropriate diskless technologies. Successful
technologies will then be implemented Department-wide.
A ``tiger team'' completed a review of potential technical and
management solutions to this issue. The team identified
requirements for providing high-speed desktop workstations and
proposed a set of standard diskless workstation solutions, cost
estimates, and related recommendations. On January 31, the
former Deputy Secretary directed the formation of a Project
Management Office within NNSA to manage implementation of this
initiative.
Another set of initiatives involves the development and deployment
of new security technologies. Two of the security initiatives are aimed
specifically at enhancing our protection programs through increased use
of security technology solutions. One is focused on addressing an area
that has been associated with several security incidents--specifically,
replacing lock and key systems in security areas with modern, keyless
entry control systems. Although fairly narrow in scope, this initiative
represents a massive undertaking, given the number of locks and keys
currently in use at our security areas throughout the complex. The
other security technology initiative is a much broader effort aimed at
identifying, evaluating, or developing a broad range of useful
technologies and facilitating deployment at DOE sites. We are
particularly interested in identifying technologies that can help our
protective forces better counter the ever-changing threats to our
national security assets. Properly applied, such technologies can act
as force multipliers to assist our protective forces by reducing the
burden of routine activities, reducing the risk to them in case of an
attack, and, through enhanced recognition, provide additional response
time to meet and defeat an attack.
Keyless Access Control Technology. NNSA is researching and
identifying suitable technology that will enable the Department
to transition, over a five-year period, to a keyless security
environment where no single item that provides access to
protected assets, can be lost or stolen.
We are making progress in this area. My office has developed a
current technology matrix that provides specific descriptions
of keyless systems, their costs, and locations where they are
currently in use. The NNSA formed a multi-organizational
Technology Review Team to analyze these alternatives.
Additionally, the efforts of the Integrated Project Team which
is addressing HSPD-12--the Policy for a Common Identification
Standard for Federal Employees and Contractors, which requires
``smart cards'' for physical and logical access to Federal
sites, buildings, and systems, will complement these efforts.
Blue Sky Commission. This initiative involves the identification of
off-the-shelf security technologies available for rapid
deployment and the establishment by NNSA of a Blue Sky
Commission to evaluate promising emerging technologies that the
Department can invest in or develop to enhance our future
protection systems.
While we are taking action to identify and apply existing
technologies to enhance our protection systems, we have not yet
taken the formal steps necessary to coordinate investment in
emerging security technologies. The Technology Development
Program, within my organization's Office of Security, has
disseminated information about current off-the-shelf items
suitable for integration into security systems. Last July we
established the Center of Excellence for Technology Deployment
at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland,
Washington. The Center's mission is to find technologies with
security applications that are deployable today; to assist in
implementing pilot programs at DOE sites to test those
technologies; and to assist in the further deployment at other
DOE sites of those technologies that prove to be effective and
useful. Let me emphasize that this Center's job is not to
develop new technologies, but rather to seek out new
technologies that are available today and to expedite their
evaluation and, when appropriate, their speedy integration into
security systems at DOE sites. In an effort to assist sites in
choosing appropriate technologies to implement the current
Design Basis Threat, we are in the final stages of a series of
Site Assistance Visits to our facilities possessing Category I
quantities of special nuclear materials. During these visits,
our multi-organizational, multi-discipline teams work with site
security personnel to analyze the existing and future site-
specific protection systems and identify security technologies
that could be employed to increase the effectiveness and
efficiency of those systems. This effort, which I will come
back to in my discussion of the Design Basis Threat, has been
beneficial to the sites. Our progress in enhancing our efforts
to identify and invest in the development of emerging
technologies has been somewhat slower. Although we anticipated
that NNSA would formally establish the Blue Sky Commission last
October, that action has yet to occur.
Before I leave this topic, let me mention some of the progress we
have made in technology deployment. Several technologies have recently
been deployed at sites throughout the complex to significantly improve
their ability to mitigate our Design Basis Threat policy. For example,
newly developed armored vehicles with advanced fighting capabilities
are being deployed at two sites. These vehicles will allow protective
forces to be forward-deployed and engage adversaries earlier, while
relying on improved armor to increase their survivability and
externally mounted weapons and optics to neutralize adversaries.
Chemical agent detectors are also being deployed at six locations.
These detectors are unique in that they are able to operate 24 hours a
day for extended periods (years), require minimal maintenance, and
provide sufficient time for response forces to don protective gear and
engage the adversary. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles UAVs are also being
deployed to help conduct surveillance of vast areas outside of a large
remote site. The UAVs will be equipped with sensors that will detect
the adversary earlier, and deny them the luxury of being able to pre-
stage attackers and equipment and initiate an attack at a time that is
advantageous to them. The UAVs will also be used to improve combat
situational awareness should the site come under attack. One of the
threats seen almost every day in the news is the large vehicle bomb,
lending credibility to our need to defeat it. A new type of affordable
($300/ft) vehicle barrier has been deployed at one site, and is being
installed at a second. What makes this barrier unique is its ease of
installation, and its ability to stop very large vehicles moving at
highway speeds. We are also in the final stages of deploying remotely
operated weapons at one of our facilities, before expanding the
deployment to other sites. These weapons are a formidable barrier for
the adversary, particularly when deployed with visual obscurants. Not
only do we expect them to improve our ability to neutralize
adversaries, but they will also improve the survivability of protective
forces in fire fights and situations where an adversary might use
lethal chemicals. Our future plans call for assisted targeting to be
integrated into these weapons, and we are hopeful that this will
eventually lead to manpower savings by proving that an operator can
control more than one weapon. We believe that the expanded application
of security technologies, such as those just described, will be
critical to the successful mitigation of the evolving and increasingly
capable threats we will face in the future.
A third set of initiatives addresses our need to consolidate our
inventories of special nuclear materials. Our successes in
consolidating significant quantities of special nuclear materials have
typically been limited to facility closure programs, such as at the
Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site. While we still need special
nuclear materials at some sites to accomplish ongoing national security
missions, both the amount of materials needed and the number of
locations where they are needed have substantially decreased since the
days of the Cold War when our production facilities were building our
nuclear deterrent. Protecting these materials is among our most
difficult security challenges, but it is also one of our most important
missions, since the consequences of their loss are unacceptable. We can
greatly reduce the difficulty, risk, and costs associated with
protecting this material if we can consolidate that which we cannot
safely and properly eliminate. This has become an increasingly
important consideration with the increased difficulty and costs
associated with defending against the elevated threats described in the
current Design Basis Threat. Since reduction and consolidation of
special nuclear materials has perhaps the greatest potential impact on
our future protection requirements and programs, we have identified
seven separate initiatives related to this subject. These initiatives
range in scope from developing plans for terminating the use of a
reactor to altering the configuration of the Department's weapons
complex. This group of initiatives addresses the essential challenges
we face in our efforts to reduce and consolidate our special nuclear
materials inventories and to accurately assess the threats to these
materials,
Sandia Pulsed Reactor. This initiative involves completion of the
Sandia Pulsed Reactor's mission and removal of the special
nuclear material (reactor core) from Sandia National
Laboratories-New Mexico.
To enhance the reactor core's physical protection, Sandia has
disassembled it and placed it in special protected storage
until needed to support essential testing. The reactor will be
re-assembled and used for a period of approximately one year to
support testing and to qualify theoretical models and
simulation methods that will eliminate future needs for the
pulsed reactor. Upon successful completion of the test series,
the reactor material will be returned to a secure storage
condition that greatly reduces the security risks and cost. The
testing and modeling work is currently planned to support the
cool down and completion of reactor defueling by March 2007.
Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF). This initiative
is to expedite the construction of the HEUMF project, which
will provide a new state-of-the-art storage facility for highly
enriched uranium now stored at various locations at the Y-12
National Security Complex. Its design will incorporate a robust
denial strategy that includes passive design features to
address the DOE Design Basis Threat Policy. Goals of completing
facility construction and readiness activities by April 2008
and relocating existing material from current locations into
the new facility by September 2009 will greatly enhance the
security of highly enriched uranium within the United States
and decrease long term operating and material safeguarding
costs at Y-12.
The primary facility construction contract was awarded on
schedule on August 27, 2004. Construction is currently 9%
complete, including site preparation. While construction is
approximately two months behind schedule due to above normal
rainfall and unanticipated soil conditions, it is expected that
the original schedule will be met. Associated activities, such
as storage container assessment and characterization and
material movement and reduction of material in current storage
areas are underway.
Resolve Materials Criteria for Acceptance at Long-Term Storage Sites.
This initiative addresses the need to resolve situations where
nuclear materials are being stored at sites only because they
do not meet the acceptance criteria at longer-term storage
sites. Increases in the Department's Design Basis Threat
necessitate creative approaches to maintain strong security for
the Department's special nuclear material assets in a cost-
effective manner.
A Nuclear Material Consolidation Task Team studied the issue of
materials consolidation with a focus on reducing the number of
nuclear facilities that need high-level protection and reducing
the number of potential terrorist targets. A draft report was
issued in December 2004. The report identifies and prioritizes
candidate materials for consolidation using a set of defined
criteria which address security impact, schedule, cost, and
programmatic use. The report also provides recommendations for
implementation in both the near, mid, and long term. To
formally institutionalize this important effort and to cut
across programmatic lines, a multi-program senior-level
steering group, under the direction of the Secretary's Senior
Policy Advisor for National Security Matters, will provide
guidance and recommendations to the Secretary on nuclear
material consolidation issues.
Weapons Complex Review. This initiative involves reviewing the
requirements for the weapons complex for the next 20 years in
light of the size of the stockpile, the new Design Basis
Threat, and the opportunities for consolidation, with the goal
in mind of reducing the footprint of the complex to the minimum
needed to support long-term national security missions.
The Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) chartered a Task
Force which consists of five members who were briefed by
members of the Department of Defense, National Security Council
and NNSA Program Offices in February. The Task Force has
visited most of the weapons complex facilities and will
complete their tour by mid-April. Once the study is complete
and consolidation opportunities are identified, we anticipate
that political (e.g., involving moving material between states)
and programmatic (e.g., construction) barriers will remain to
be confronted.
Down-blend Large Quantities of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) to make
it unattractive as a terrorist target. The goal of this
initiative is to determine whether, via the early disposition
and down-blending of up to 100 metric tons of HEU currently
stored at the Y-12 National Security Complex, we could
strengthen the security of existing HEU operations and storage
at that facility.
Review results recommended a course of action to increase the
security of remaining HEU and promote the President's
nonproliferation objectives. The review recommended that a
substantial quantity of HEU be removed from any future use in
nuclear warheads. This is in addition to the 174 metric tons of
HEU declared in 1994 to be in excess of national security
needs. The NNSA Administrator endorsed the recommendations of
the study and directed coordination with the Departments of
Defense and State.
Design Basis Threat (DBT) Reexamination. This initiative reexamined
the May 2003 DBT and the supporting intelligence data to ensure
currency in relationship to the changing threat.
Actions on this initiative are complete. The DBT was reexamined,
changes were recommended, and on October 18, 2004, the Deputy
Secretary approved DOE Order 470.3, ``Design Basis Threat (DBT)
Policy'' for implementation. In conjunction with the DBT
revision, we revised the Adversary Capabilities List to reflect
the most current intelligence information regarding the
observed and postulated capabilities (e.g., weapons, equipment,
tactics, etc.) of the adversary. Although this initiative is
complete, follow-on activities through April 2005 are focused
on conducting the Site Assistance Visits mentioned previously
to provide sites with technology and protective force tactical
options to address the requirements of the October 2004 DBT
Policy. I will discuss the Design Basis Threat and its impact
on protection strategies and systems in more detail later in
this testimony.
Removal of Category I/II special nuclear materials (SNM) from TA-18.
The object of this initiative is to relocate programmatic SNM
from Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL) Technical Area -18
to the Device Assembly Facility (DAF) at the Nevada Test Site.
Implementation of this initiative is in progress. On March 31,
2004, NNSA directed the initial shipment of LANL TA-18
programmatic SNM to the DAF ahead of the previously scheduled
date of March 2006. Three shipments of programmatic materials
were completed as of December 2004. Approximately seven
shipments are planned for FY2005. NNSA currently projects that
approximately 50% of the TA-18 programmatic SNM will be moved
to the DAF by March 2006 and 90% by the end of fiscal year
2007. Programmatic SNM needed by NNSA to maintain mission
continuity, especially to support training for Emergency
Response, will remain at LANL in other storage locations.
The final set of initiatives concern our security human capital. Of
all the components of our protection systems, the human component is
the most critical, and the performance of our people will largely
determine the success or failure of our protection efforts. When we
speak of security personnel in this context we refer to two groups of
people: the people who develop, implement, maintain, and oversee our
security programs; and the protective force personnel who are on the
ground 24/7 protecting our assets. The robustness of our protection
programs depend largely on the abilities and performance of these two
groups of people. Three of our security initiatives deal with
strengthening our security human capital. They include efforts to
implement the recommendations of the Chiles Commission (regarding
management of security expertise in the NNSA) within the NNSA and
possibly throughout the entire Department. In addition, the initiatives
also address options for protective force configuration and management,
with special emphasis on determining the best approach for creating an
elite force dedicated to protecting our most critical sites.
Implement Chiles Report recommendations. The Chiles Report focused on
the NNSA nuclear weapons complex and recommended several
actions to resolve impending human capital shortfalls in
safeguards and security and related disciplines. Specific
recommendations involved: developing and executing a
comprehensive human capital management program; improving the
training, qualifications, and stature of the workforce;
reengaging in national markets to hire security professionals;
instituting a long-term practice of security staff rotation;
identifying options for accelerating the security clearance
process; improving security information flow; revising the NNSA
Safeguards and Security Strategic Plan; identifying specific
budget support and tracking recommendation progress.
NNSA is actively pursing implementation of this initiative. For
example, to address human capital management, workforce
analysis methodologies and protocols--were--piloted at the
Pantex Site Office. Five professional development data
assessments were completed at the Pantex Site Office, Y-12 Site
Office, Sandia Site Office, Nevada Site Office and the NNSA
Service Center. This same assessment is also planned for the
Los Alamos Site Office. NNSA is partnering with the DOE
National Training Center to provide centralized training for
safeguards and security professionals to meet qualification
standards established for each safeguards and security
functional area. Additionally, NNSA has developed a web portal
to improve security information flow, implemented a process for
rotating security management positions between headquarters and
the field, and began recruiting for an Intern Program.
Examine the Applicability of the Chiles Report recommendations to the
Department. This initiative calls for an examination of the
Chiles Report recommendations--which were addressed to the
NNSA--to determine their applicability and appropriateness to
enhance security human capital and training programs throughout
the Department.
The human resource challenges facing the Department were
identified previously and analyzed in the context of the
President's Human Capital Management Plan. Efforts have been
underway at our National Training Center to promote skills
development in identified critical areas through on-going
Professional Development Program activities. The first four
recommendations of the Chiles Report are being implemented
through activities at the National Training Center and through
the Human Capital Management Plans developed by my
organization, the Office of Security and Safety Performance
Assurance, and by the Under Secretary for Energy, Science, and
Environment. Concerns regarding the lengthy clearance process
are being addressed through ongoing implementation of the
approved action plan entitled ``Options for Accelerating the
Security Clearance Process in the Department of Energy'' signed
by the former Deputy Secretary on January 7, 2005. My
organization addressed security communications concerns
following the completion of a Communications Study Report last
July, and a DOE 25-Year Strategic Security Plan is pending
review and approval by the Under Secretaries.
Review Options for the Protective Force. This initiative directs the
examination of existing protective force organizational
structures (including existing contract mechanisms) to
determine changes needed to develop an elite protective force.
The ultimate goal is to transform the protective forces that
guard our most critical national security assets into elite
units, trained and equipped for advanced tactical operations,
and comparable in capability to the nation's elite military
units.
Actions on this initiative are complete. This review was
completed and a final report containing recommendations was
provided to Senior DOE Management. A joint memorandum from SSA
and NNSA was submitted to the former Deputy Secretary in
January of this year, recommending that those actions that
could be initiated within the current force structure be
approved. The Deputy Secretary directed immediate
implementation, which is now ongoing. Follow-on activities
continue relative to implementation of the identified options
resulting from the review.
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, we have made
significant progress in our efforts over the past several years to
improve our protection systems. The security initiatives I have just
outlined, and the ongoing and planned actions, represent a sizeable
effort and significant commitment of resources by the Department aimed
at addressing past security concerns and materially enhancing our
present and future protection postures. Our work to implement many of
these initiatives continues, and in some cases will continue for
several more years. I believe that the progress we have made to date in
implementing these far-reaching initiatives, while significant, will
pale in comparison to the benefits that will accrue to our protection
programs when the initiatives are fully realized.
ongoing security challenges
The job of adequately protecting the Department's national security
assets is an immense undertaking. While we are aggressively pursuing
actions to address known deficiencies and improve the robustness of our
protection systems, we recognize that we have a lot more to do.
As evidenced by our need for the security initiatives and other
previously described enhancement activities, we continue to experience
problems associated with both management systems and program
implementation. Our independent oversight organization has indicated
for years that many local line management feedback and improvement
mechanisms, such as Federal security survey programs and contractor
self-assessment programs, were not sufficiently comprehensive or
adequately performance based to effectively detect and correct all
existing protection program deficiencies. This is verified by problems
we found at sites such as Hanford, Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
Sandia National Laboratories-New Mexico, Y-12, and the Nevada Test
Site. These problems, which included such things as poor protective
force tactical performance, deficient nuclear material control and
accountability programs, and inadequate classified document controls,
should have been identified and corrected by local line management
feedback mechanisms before we found them during our inspections. I must
acknowledge, however, that once we identified problems at these sites
the local line managers were responsive in taking action to correct
them. Our Independent Oversight organization similarly reported slow
progress in implementing Integrated Safeguards and Security Management
processes, and we have continued to experience other protection system
problems that are directly related to inadequate line management
oversight, attention, and accountability.
For example, in the past few years we experienced several highly
publicized incidents involving the loss of keys or key cards affording
access to buildings or rooms within security areas at a few of our
facilities. Although there is no indication that these losses resulted
in compromise of classified information or other security assets, they
are disturbing nonetheless. A review of lock and key programs revealed
that management attention to these programs was largely absent. As a
result, there were too many spare keys, no strict accountability for
all keys, and inadequate accountability/security training for lock and
key program personnel and key custodians. These incidents were among
the motivations behind our initiative to transition to a keyless
security environment at some facilities.
Another recent problem involved control and accountability of
Classified Removable Electronic Media (CREM)--computer floppy disks and
such. As I am sure the members of the subcommittee are aware, last year
the Department discovered that we had some deficiencies in our
procedures and practices for handling and protecting the classified
information contained on CREM. An incident at Los Alamos National
Laboratory--which subsequent DOE and FBI investigations determined did
not involve the loss of CREM--raised questions about accountability
systems and control procedures for handling CREM. Even though our
Independent Oversight organization had been reporting conditions that
could lead to such an incident, local line managers in many cases
failed to give sufficient attention to this matter. While we
acknowledged the obvious fact that incidents such as this can occur, we
do not concede that they must inevitably occur. We simply will not
tolerate continued incidents of this nature. In order to ensure that
conditions that would allow a similar incident to occur do not exist
anywhere in the Department, the Department's senior management took a
series of aggressive, even unprecedented actions. For the first time in
the Department's history they ordered a complete cessation of all
classified operations involving accountable CREM. Facilities were not
allowed to resume those operations until they fully complied with a set
of restart protocols, whose key aspects included:
Ensuring and certifying that all employees who handle accountable
CREM receive training in proper handling procedures and have
reviewed information regarding the incidents at Los Alamos.
Conducting a 100% physical inventory of all accountable CREM on hand
and reconciling that physical inventory with baseline inventory
records.
Implementing strict requirements and procedures for the storage of
CREM (pertaining to approved repositories, keeping repositories
locked except when removing or replacing CREM, use of security
seals on repositories, etc).
Limiting access to each repository containing accountable CREM to one
Custodian and one Alternate Custodian, and establishing and
performance testing formal checkout processes for authorized
users to obtain accountable CREM from a Custodian or Alternate.
Conducting weekly physical inventories of all accountable CREM, and
reconciling the inventories with accountability records.
Establishing procedures which ensure that accountable CREM is
destroyed only by approved DOE destruction procedures and which
assure that accountable CREM is reproduced only if authorized
by the specifically appointed Federal authority.
Ensuring that a local CREM validation team independently verifies,
using performance testing, the implementation and effectiveness
of all restart protocol requirements.
The former Deputy Secretary, designated by the Secretary, was the
only person who could authorize a facility to resume operations with
accountable CREM, once they satisfied the restart protocols. All of our
facilities have satisfied the stringent requirements and have resumed
operations with accountable CREM.
Following this process, my Office of Independent Oversight and
Performance Assurance sent teams of experts to our major facilities to
perform additional independent validations, to make sure that that the
restart protocol requirements were fully and effectively implemented.
Various problems were observed during this validation step. For
example, the Nevada Site Office/Nevada Test Site needs to establish a
centralized accountability system to improve efficiency; Los Alamos
required a lengthy period to achieve restart of classified operations
and the quality of their revised procedures still requires validation.
As evidenced by these unprecedented measures, we are serious about
protecting our classified information and about ensuring that
additional incidents involving the protection of CREM do not occur at
any of our facilities. While our intended move to a diskless desktop
classified computing environment will largely eliminate the potential
for such incidents, the use of CREM will be common for at least the
next several years, and we will maintain strict enforcement and
oversight of our current requirements for handling CREM.
As a final example of our experiences with insufficient line
management attention to security programs, let me address the results
of our Review of NNSA's Federal Line Management Oversight of Security
Operations. Our Office of Independent Oversight and Performance
Assurance conducted this review at the direction of the Secretary. Data
collection methodologies included reviews of the results of other
recent studies that had examined this issue in whole or in part. These
included Independent Oversight reports, the Chiles and (draft) Mies
Reports, and the reports of internal focus groups studying various
security-related Departmental management challenges. The review
identified or confirmed a number of issues that reflect significant
weaknesses affecting the performance of line management oversight
responsibilities. These include:
NNSA has insufficient personnel resources and expertise assigned,
particularly at site offices, to effectively conduct the
quantity and quality of oversight activities necessary to
reliably determine or assure the effectiveness of site
safeguards and security programs. The general aspects of the
shortage of security expertise at appropriate locations in NNSA
are multi-faceted, involving work force demographics,
recruitment efforts, training and education opportunities,
career path opportunities, and resistance to geographical
relocation. The specific problem at NNSA site offices, where it
currently has the greatest impact on security oversight, is
manifested in two ways: in the numbers of security
professionals available and in the skill mixes represented by
currently assigned personnel.
NNSA site office survey programs are not sufficiently effective in
assessing the adequacy or effectiveness of site safeguards and
security programs. Surveys are a primary oversight tool
available to the site offices. Many survey programs are not
effectively or reliably achieving their primary goal, which is
to accurately determine the effectiveness of site safeguards
and security programs.
NNSA does not consistently apply or enforce appropriate corrective
action program requirements on site contractors. DOE has
specific requirements for the corrective action process that is
to be applied to all formal findings assessed against
safeguards and security programs by Federal oversight
activities. NNSA oversight responsibilities are an integral
part of that process, but in common practice, this process is
often not fully invoked or enforced by the NNSA site offices.
NNSA has not effectively taken advantage of the opportunity to use
award fees and performance incentives to spur intended results
in safeguards and security program performance. Site offices
have generally been ineffective in appropriately emphasizing
security through contractor performance incentives and in
formulating performance indicators that are successful in
achieving the intended results.
These issues have all been identified through internal oversight
activities and/or through the efforts of independent teams commissioned
by NNSA. DOE, including NNSA, managers have initiated the following
significant actions to address these issues and to improve Federal line
management oversight of NNSA security operations.
DOE, including NNSA, is taking steps to address shortages in security
manpower resources. As part of the security initiatives
announced in May 2004, the Secretary of Energy directed NNSA to
implement the recommendations contained in the Chiles Report,
several of which deal with (security-related) human capital
management. NNSA actions associated with this initiative were
discussed above.
NNSA has initiated actions to address the education and training
needs of its Federal security workforce, including those
specifically applicable to oversight responsibilities. NNSA is
working closely with SSA's National Training Center to expand
the course offerings in the Professional Development Program to
encompass identified NNSA needs, including curricula in
leadership and management development, incumbent training in
safeguards and security technical disciplines, and training and
orientation for security interns. In an immediate action to
expand the experience level of security professionals, NNSA has
implemented a rotation program to afford security professionals
in the field the opportunity to work at headquarters and
security professionals at headquarters the opportunity to work
at field sites. At present, two individuals are participating
in this program.
DOE, including NNSA, is taking positive steps to clarify and
strengthen Federal oversight responsibilities at various
management levels. Draft DOE Policy 226.1, DOE Oversight, and a
corresponding DOE Order are currently in the review process.
They are intended to clarify and assign oversight
responsibilities, including those of headquarters
organizations. NNSA is currently implementing a Defense Nuclear
Security Performance Assessment Program that integrates Federal
line management oversight activities. In furtherance of this
objective, NNSA has recently established an Office of
Performance Assurance to head this effort.
NNSA has increased its efforts to reorient day-to-day oversight of
contractor security operations. Senior managers are involved in
an effort to alter the previous philosophy of telling the
contractor the ultimate goal (what to do) and allowing the
contractor to decide how to reach the goal (how to do it).
While avoiding actions that might stifle contractor initiative,
NNSA is encouraging site office personnel to focus more
attention on how contractors are performing security operations
and to provide more input to contractors regarding preferred
methods of operation.
Our review concluded that while these deficiencies in line
management, and their underlying conditions, exist and have been
adversely affecting NNSA's ability to exercise adequate line management
oversight of security operations, the problems are known to NNSA and
the Department, including NNSA, has initiated actions to address them.
While solutions to these issues are being pursued, some of those
solutions--such as increasing the security workforce and implementing
necessary training and education programs--will take several years to
implement fully, and will require the sustained support of DOE,
including NNSA, senior managers.
We also acknowledge that, while protection programs at our sites
are generally effective overall, potentially significant lapses in
protection program implementation do sometimes occur at our NNSA sites
as well as at sites under the purview of the Under Secretary for
Energy, Science, and Environment (ESE). For example, at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory (an ESE site) portions of the protection system
lacked the defense-in-depth that we require, and the site relies on an
agreement with a neighboring site for special response team (i.e.,
offensive combative) capabilities. Our most recent Independent
Oversight inspection at the Hanford site (ESE) found that the
protective force needed to improve its tactical training, planning, and
skills, and that some local human reliability program processes
required reexamination. Since that inspection, the Hanford site has
implemented corrective actions designed to correct these deficiencies.
Our three most recent Independent Oversight inspections at NNSA
sites (Sandia National Laboratories-New Mexico, Y-12, and Nevada Test
Site) identified some common implementation problems, including
insufficient frequency of large scale force-on-force performance
testing/exercises and inadequate weapons and equipment to fully deal
with today's threat (e.g., armored vehicles, anti-armor weapons,
weapons with high rates of fire). Additionally, the Nevada Test Site
exhibited deficiencies in protective force operations and material
control and accountability procedures; Sandia exhibited deficiencies in
physical security systems and in handling classified matter; and Y-12
exhibited significant deficiencies in most major protection program
elements. Since those deficiencies were identified, line managers have
been responsive and the sites have been engaged in corrective actions.
Our Independent Oversight organization is currently inspecting Sandia-
New Mexico to determine its current protection system status and the
progress it has made in addressing deficiencies. It will inspect Y-12
in May and June and the Nevada Test Site in July and August of this
year.
When implementation problems such as those described do occur, we
do not ignore them. We employ a formal corrective action and validation
process to ensure that identified problems are fixed, and in cases
where a deficiency results in a potential vulnerability, immediate
compensatory measures are required. I would also like to point out that
as we continue to make Department-wide progress on the security
initiatives discussed above and in our system upgrades in response to
the requirements of our current Design Basis Threat, we expect that our
protection programs will become more robust and the historically
troublesome protection elements (e.g., locks and keys, CREM, training,
etc.) will be addressed through these efforts (specifically through the
application of technologies or other solutions).
The last security challenge I would like to discuss is perhaps our
major challenge--implementing the requirements of our new Design Basis
Threat. After a prolonged development process, the Department issued a
revised DBT in May of 2003. In May of 2004--in response to internal
concerns, Congressional concerns regarding the robustness of the threat
portrayed in the DBT relative to that portrayed in the Defense
Intelligence Agency's Postulated Threat, and questions raised by the
General Accountability Office--the Secretary directed the NNSA
Administrator, the Director of the Office of Intelligence, and me to
reexamine the May 2003 DBT and its supporting intelligence data to
ensure that it was still current in relationship to the changing
threat. We formed a task team comprised of individuals with the
expertise necessary to assist in conducting the review, and the results
of that effort were reported to the Secretary in late August 2004. In
October 2004 the former Secretary approved a revised DBT, one which
included some significant changes from the previous DBT. Since the DBT
is classified, I cannot discuss some of its specific provisions in this
open forum, but I will discuss some of its generic attributes and
comment on some of the differences between the current and previous
versions.
Our DBT policy is intended to provide consistent and appropriate
safeguards and security system performance specifications that
Departmental elements must meet. It delineates a graded threat scale
based on the sensitivity of the asset being protected and the potential
consequences of asset loss. Assets are categorized into one of four
``Threat Levels'' based on the general consequences of their loss or
destruction, or the possible impact of their loss or destruction on the
health and safety of employees, the public, and the environment. The
protection requirements for those assets are graded in a commensurate
manner. Performance-based standards must be met to protect Threat Level
1 (most critical), 2, and 3 facilities and assets. Threat Level 4 (non-
critical) facilities and assets must meet compliance-based standards.
The most significant changes reflected in the current (October
2004) DBT are:
The policy now exists as a formal DOE Order. Procedures requiring a
formal annual review have been issued.
The policy is more concise, and understandable, and the number of
Threat Levels applying to various assets and facilities have
been combined and simplified. Threats associated with
improvised nuclear devices and radiological, biological, and
chemical sabotage have been folded into the Threat Levels.
The terrorist numbers and attributes associated with the threat
levels were increased to reflect current intelligence and
geopolitical assessments.
In December 2004 the former Deputy Secretary directed that all DBT
implementation plans be revised to ensure that all requirements
contained in the October 2004 DBT are met no later than the end of FY
2008. The NNSA Administrator has expressed his full support and
intention to develop and execute implementation plans on schedule.
However, full implementation of the DBT on schedule is a major task
posing many difficulties. For example:
At some facilities it will require fundamental departures from
institutionalized protection strategies, such as shifting from
a containment strategy (preventing an adversary from escaping
with target material) to a denial strategy (preventing an
adversary from reaching target material).
The postulated impacts of the DBT mandate that the Department
consider aggressive material consolidation efforts, which will
likely encounter operational, programmatic, and political
opposition.
The adversary numbers and capabilities postulated in the DBT allow
the adversary much greater tactical flexibility, causing
significant planning and response difficulties for current
security systems.
The appropriate security technology solutions are still being
identified and developed. Consequently, developing accurate
budget estimates is difficult at this time.
Sources of funding and alternatives to current operations that will
be necessary to implement the DBT are still being explored.
We are fully cognizant of these difficulties and are prepared to
deal with them. We believe that the current initiatives that will
contribute most to our DBT implementation efforts are: increasing the
use of security technologies, implementing the elite protective force
concept at select facilities, and consolidating our special nuclear
materials to the greatest practical degree. As mentioned earlier, our
Site Assistance Visit effort--now underway and almost complete--is
intended to apply our best technological, analytical, and tactical
expertise to assist our most critical facilities in identifying
security technology applications and innovative protective force
strategies that will enable them to effectively and efficiently meet
the requirements of the DBT. So far we are encouraged by the progress
resulting from these visits. Individual sites will have to follow up
that effort with detailed vulnerability analyses to finalize the
designs and compute the costs of their proposed protection system
upgrades. Ultimately, we will have to devise ways to integrate new
security technologies and new protective force weapons and tactics with
operational needs and safety concerns.
conclusion
In closing, we believe the Department of Energy under the
leadership of Secretary Bodman is, and will continue to, actively
pursue initiatives that will improve the capabilities of our security
systems and procedures, and we have forcefully responded when elements
of those systems have not performed according to our expectations. We
will continue seek innovative, effective, and efficient methods, as
well as the resources, to foster the changes in our security programs
and practices that are necessary to effectively counter the evolving
threat.
Thank you.
Mr. Whitfield. Mr. Podonsky, thank you very much for your
opening statement.
As is the custom with oversight investigations, we will
have 10 minutes of questions for each of the members of the
panel, and I will start off here.
Administrator Brooks, since 2000, we have talked about
moving Category I and Category II nuclear materials out of
Technical Area 18 at Los Alamos and move it out to Nevada. And
there have been all sorts of delays, but I notice in your
testimony this morning that you made the comment that you do
intend to have Category I and II material out of TA 18 by the
end of the year. Is that still your commitment?
Mr. Brooks. That is correct. Before the Los Alamos stand-
down, we were slated to complete removal by September 30. I now
believe, as a result of the delays imposed by the stand-down,
that it will be mid-November, about a 6-week slip.
We will have half of the material in Nevada by the end of
the year. That is actually slightly earlier than we expected.
The rest of the material will be moved from TA 18 to another
location in Los Alamos temporarily, and then will be moved to
Nevada over the next couple of years. So we are--we will have
all Category I and II material out, middle of November.
Mr. Whitfield. But out of the site in a couple of years.
Mr. Brooks. Out of Los Alamos in a couple of years, but out
of the vulnerable site at TA 18 by November.
Mr. Whitfield. By the end of the year.
Mr. Brooks. Yes, sir.
Mr. Whitfield. Okay. Good.
Now I would like to also review basically the relationship
between the respective offices of the two of you gentlemen. Of
course, Mr. Podonsky, you work for DOE?
Mr. Podonsky. Yes, sir.
Mr. Whitfield. And you are in charge of independent
oversight at all DOE and NNSA sites.
Mr. Podonsky. That's correct, sir.
Mr. Whitfield. And, Ambassador Brooks, you are in charge of
NNSA nuclear weapons labs and productionsites, including Los
Alamos.
Mr. Brooks. Correct.
Mr. Whitfield. Now, we have this memo dated December 2,
2003, which was signed by former Secretary Abraham, which
established the Office of Security and Safety Performance
Oversight, and I ask unanimous consent to enter this document
into the record.
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Mr. Whitfield. This memo clearly authorizes Mr. Podonsky's
office to continue the independent oversight of NNSA's
safeguard and security, cybersecurity, environment, safety and
health, and emergency management programs.
Now, Mr. Brooks, you indicated in your testimony that you
will create your own Office of Performance Assurance to conduct
security oversight at NNSA sites. Have you created this office
with the intention of replacing the work of Mr. Podonsky, or
what was your goal there?
Mr. Brooks. No, not at all. And part of the problem I have
had is finding the right name for this office that doesn't
allow that misperception.
Mr. Podonsky provides independent oversight. He provides it
on behalf of the Secretary. He also provides it on behalf of
me. We have an agreement that if I see a need for an outside
observation, I can call on Mr. Podonsky; and I have done that
from time to time. But Mr. Podonsky comes in at periodic
intervals, and he is the verification to the Secretary that we
are doing our job.
I don't want to replace that. I need that independent
oversight.
What I did 2 years ago was to centralize authority and
responsibility in site offices. That authority and
responsibility was diffused before then. And to emphasize the
importance of those site offices, I didn't provide periodic
supervision from headquarters. And in two areas that was a
mistake--nuclear safety, unrelated to the subject of this
hearing, and security.
So what I want to do is provide a routine interaction
between my office that the site manager can call on when they
need help and that will make sure I know that when Mr. Podonsky
comes, I don't have to wait the 2 years till his next visit to
make sure that we are performing correctly. It is the
difference between line supervision, which is my
responsibility--and this is a tool to aid me in it--and
independent oversight, which is Mr. Podonsky's. But the
functions are quite separate.
Mr. Whitfield. Mr. Podonsky, do you agree with Mr. Brooks'
assessment of the situation.
Mr. Podonsky. I agree with how he describes it, and I
certainly hope that it will be enacted that way.
My experience, Mr. Chairman, is that this Department does a
lot of checking on itself without much improvement. I have
every confidence that what Ambassador Brooks is talking about
is reasonable and makes sense.
If I were in Ambassador Brooks' position, I would want to
know how my sites were performing before independent oversight
came as well. I just want to make sure we don't fall into the
same predicament that we have had in past years, where previous
Secretaries have created what we call ``checkers checking
checkers.'' That is not a good situation, because we get a lot
of reports and not a lot of action.
I don't believe that is the intention, as Ambassador Brooks
has described the program.
Mr. Brooks. And I agree with that completely. One of the
advantages Mr. Podonsky has is that we are both going to be in
these jobs for the next few years, so we will be sure to make
sure these get off.
Mr. Whitfield. I hope that is the case because, as Mr.
Podonsky just said, we do seem to have a lot of checkers
checking checkers, and we do need a lot more action. And there
certainly seem to have been a lot of problems in these
programs.
Mr. Brooks, the University of California stated that the
cost of the stand-down at Los Alamos was around $160 million.
However, we have an NNSA memorandum dated February 22, 2005,
from the NNSA's chief financial officer in Albuquerque to the
Los Alamos site manager, and according to this document, the
total programmatic cost of the stand-down is about $367
million.
I ask unanimous consent to enter this document into the
record.
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Mr. Whitfield. It seems the difference between those two
estimates relates to whether we include indirect costs in the
estimate.
Do you think this $367 million estimate from your staff
represents the actual cost of the stand-down?
Mr. Brooks. It represents an upper limit.
There are two points of difference, if I may. This gets
into a little bit about how we account for costs with our
contractors. There are two differences, and the application of
indirect costs is actually the smaller.
Here is what we do: An individual laboratory is working on
a project, and they keep a record with a little code of what
project they are working on. We then take that labor cost, add
whatever other direct costs, materials, and that is the cost,
the direct cost of the project. We then apply to that the
things you need to run a lab--the fire department, the salary
of the laboratory director--and those are indirect costs.
There are two differences between the laboratory
methodology and ours. At our direction, the laboratory kept
track of the cost of the stand-down. But the way it chose to do
so was to continue to have people charge to their projects and
to apply an algorithm that estimated the amount of time that
was purely stand-down. That is not auditable. It is not done
with any malicious intent, but it is not auditable. What we did
is, here is the period of the stand-down; here is what they
charged to their projects. So that gave us a substantially
larger direct labor cost.
Now, the truth is almost certainly somewhere in the middle.
The laboratory assumes about $119 million of direct labor cost,
we assume about $200 million direct labor costs, and there is
no way to allocate between that as to what people would have
been doing if there had never been a stand-down, because that
is not the way the records were kept.
Then the laboratory chooses to say that indirect cost is
inappropriate here. We believe that the way we compare cost is
using indirect cost. So that is the difference. It is an
accounting difference.
I believe that the assessment of Mr. Martinez, who is my
field chief financial officer, is correct, but it is
conservatively correct. In other words, it is an auditable
accounting standard assessment of what can be documented. The
actual-cost money that was spent only because of the stand-down
is almost certainly less, but because there is no way to
determine how much less, we do not accept the laboratory's--I
would call it ``estimate.'' Dr. Nanos would probably not use
that same word.
The real cost of the stand-down, however, is not just
monetary; it is what has happened to the programs. And we are
working very hard with the laboratory to minimize that.
But I stand by that report. That's a good report.
Mr. Whitfield. That the costs are significant.
Mr. Brooks. The costs are significant.
Mr. Whitfield. My time has expired here, but I notice that
you did reduce the fees to the University of California. Do you
feel like the University of California should pay some of these
costs caused by the stand-down?
Mr. Brooks. The determination of whether these are
allowable charges to the government is a formal determination
that will be made by the contracting officer. In the report you
referred to, the chief field financial officer offers an
opinion that the bulk of these costs are allowable charges to
the government.
Let me give you an analogy. If we at our lab go build
something, anything, and it costs more than we expected, the
government is responsible for that extra cost. We may decide to
reduce the fee, we may decide to hire somebody else to run the
lab, but we cannot change the rules of the contract in the
middle. This may be an analogous situation.
Our recourse, first, is to reduce the fee, which as you
know I have done; and second, this is a performance issue which
will be taken account in the upcoming competition. I believe
those are likely to be our recourse. But I want to be very
careful not to prejudge the independent determination of the
contracting officer who is responsible for deciding whether
these are allowable costs.
Mr. Whitfield. Thank you very much.
Mr. Stupak.
Mr. Stupak. If I may pick up right there, stand-down cost
is not addressed at all in the contracts?
Mr. Brooks. No, and that is what makes it more complex. But
some of the stand-down costs can be regarded as the necessary
cost of doing business.
I don't want to suggest that this is a completely black-
and-white determination, and I don't want to suggest we have
made a final judgment, but I also don't want to mislead the
committee. Two independent looks have suggested that under the
contract, these are probably going to be allowable costs.
Mr. Stupak. How do you ever change the culture, then, if
the security, the lax security, the quality assurance, then the
stand-down costs.
Not only do we have the loss of work being done at the lab,
but then you also have other costs for the cost of the stand-
down. And you say, Well, that is part of doing business with
the government, so the taxpayer has to foot the bill, while the
University of California, that oversees this--how do you ever
change this culture that you have to do things right or there
is going to be some responsibility? And in this case, these
costs should be borne by the university and not the taxpayer.
Mr. Brooks. Well, first of all, sir, I think you change the
culture on the ground in the lab. I believe that the very
strong actions Dr. Nanos took to hold people accountable,
including terminations and reductions, I think that the time
spent in reviewing procedures and working on culture, those are
going to pay off.
In essence, we have spent $300 plus million to make the lab
better. Now, if we screw it up and the lab isn't better as a
result of this, then that has been an enormous waste of time
and energy. And we will not know for some period of time.
In the stand-down, for example, the laboratory uncovered
some 350 issues that had to be corrected before they started.
They uncovered another 3,000 issues of long-term improvement
that are being built into this. If we follow through on that,
we will have----
Mr. Stupak. If you go in looking for 300 and you come out
with 3,000 more, what does that say about the quality of the
security and the quality assurance and quality control at the
lab? It says, it is pretty ridiculous, to put it mildly; and
then these costs are just passed back to the taxpayer.
See, you are going to get 3,000 again when you go back down
there in the next stand-down, and I hope you don't have another
one, if we're not doing anything; if we're not holding anyone
responsible. I guess that's the culture I'm looking for.
Mr. Brooks. Yes, sir, and I understand.
Mr. Stupak. The only one being held responsible is the U.S.
taxpayer, because they are paying for all these indirect and
direct costs. Aren't we really paying the University of
California for their expertise so we don't have these stand-
downs and all these costs to the taxpayers and so that labs can
run.
Mr. Brooks. Well, we are certainly paying them to manage
the lab. We are certainly unhappy with their management, which
is the reason for the significant reduction in fee. The
university, as you know, operates the laboratory in a way that
it neither benefits nor pays. That is, the fee it receives is
plowed back into the lab and it does not go into its general
area.
I believe there's no question at all that the university
understands that it screwed up and that it is actively trying
to make sure that the problems are really fixed.
Mr. Stupak. But from where we sit, this is my tenth year on
this oversight subcommittee, and I have heard this 10 years
now, that we think they really understand, they really get it
this time.
At Los Alamos, I have been there. When I said we should go
see these, I have been there because of the problems there. I
go there and they have these real strict procedures, and I
think Dr. Nanos has really tried to put some strict procedures
in there, but if the overseer, the University of California
here, is going to have this relaxed attitude and there is no
real cost to them because they can just put that cost back off
to the taxpayer, I just think we are going to be here for
another 10 years going over the same thing and hearing from you
or someone else in your position that I think they really
understand. I just don't see it.
Mr. Brooks. The one difference, sir, I will submit, is the
competition. I think that for the first time, as a result of
past problems----
Mr. Stupak. You bet.
Mr. Brooks. We have made a decision, and we are working
very hard to make sure this is a genuine, not a pro forma,
competition; and I believe that is having a salutary effect.
Mr. Stupak. I hope when you do these competitive bids you
put in there that if there is a stand-down, you are going to be
responsible for part of the stand-down, because we are relying
upon your expertise so that we don't have these stand-downs
that cause extra money.
You used the analogy, if we are building a project there
and the project costs more money than what we anticipate, the
government is responsible for it. Well, we pay to run these
labs at a certain price. If it is going to cost more because of
lack of quality control, I don't think the taxpayer should have
to pay that price. I think the University of California should,
or whatever is managing it.
In my opening, I mentioned that I wanted to ask each of you
about some areas that you feel we need to address and address
now. So if you could generally do that--I don't want you to say
anything classified; we will have that discussion later.
But, Mr. Podonsky, what do you think are the three or four
most important issues we need to address and address them now?
Is it the classified removal of electronic media? Is it the
theft of nuclear material? What do you think our top three or
four things are, just generally?
Mr. Podonsky. Generally, Congressman, it is the
consolidation of nuclear material that needs to be addressed
now, and as rapidly as possible, as I said in my opening
statement. It is the deployment of technology. We are in the
21st century, and we are still depending on more guards, gates
and guns than technology. And so we definitely need to do that.
As Ambassador Brooks and I also mentioned, we are moving in
that direction. We are just not moving as quickly as we would
prefer to move.
The improvement of the existing security force, we talk
about an elite force in former Secretary Abraham's initiatives;
well, we need to establish a paramilitary group for our most
valuable assets and Category I facilities. We need to continue
to improve our physical security at many of our sites. And all
this is rolled up into our DBT.
Last, I would say, Mr. Congressman, that Federal management
and oversight of the sites needs to be improved. And as you
have heard, Ambassador Brooks intends to do that at NNSA sites,
and we need to do that also at the DOE sites.
Mr. Stupak. Let me hit two points. You have mentioned
consolidation and technology improvements. I was a little
concerned when you said we're going to move this stuff out of,
was it TA 18 there, and it is going to go up to Nevada. Part of
it, we are going to take it out of the building it is in now
and put it in another building; and then later on it will get
shipped up to Nevada. Why is that taking so long? Why don't you
just move it all to Nevada? Why are we hopping from spot to
spot.
Mr. Podonsky. I think that would with better answered by
the program, which would be Ambassador Brooks.
Mr. Stupak. Okay. Because when you say ``consolidation
now,'' what do you mean by ``now''? This year.
Mr. Podonsky. In my capacity for the Secretary and for
Ambassador Brooks, looking at it independently, I don't have to
worry about running the programs, so I can look at it and say,
Why aren't we moving the material now?
Like the Sandia Pulsed Reactor, without getting into
classified now, sure, we ought to just go ahead and terminate
that activity. But, clearly, the program has other requirements
that I'm not familiar with, and that would have to be
Ambassador Brooks' decision.
But it seems to me, after a number of years in this agency
and overseeing it, that we just don't move rapidly enough, for
reasons that are not always clear. Some of them are legitimate
and some of them, separate from Ambassador Brooks, I think are
just more excuses as to why we don't do what we should be
doing.
Mr. Stupak. So TA-18, if I remember correctly, we have been
talking about moving this for 10 years.
Mr. Podonsky. That is correct. But, I would also say, and I
was there in 2000 when it was first brought up with former
Secretary Richardson. At least now they are doing something
about it. Back then, it was still just talk.
Mr. Stupak. You guys are starting to sound like the EPA.
They told me the other day: Soon. Government moves slowly but
should not move that slowly.
Ambassador Brooks, could you give us a little bit more on
why this consolidation, why can't we just give it up to Nevada?
Mr. Brooks. A couple of reasons. One is that there is a
safety reason; that is packing and moving special nuclear
material takes time. We have a couple of shipments that have
already gone; we have several shipments that are going. But the
problems of Los Alamos were, in my view, much more severe in
the safety than in the security area.
And we are not going to do high-hazard operations other
than in a safe manner. Second, there are programmatic issues.
We need--this material exists in part because of some
criticality training that we are going to have to ultimately
replicate in Nevada.
We are trying to balance the requirements to get it out of
TA-18, still maintain the program and do everything safely. And
what we have come up with is to move out of TA-18 by the end of
the year to an area where there is already a good deal of
material and a very robust amount of security--I can talk a
little bit more about that in the closed session--while
continuing to move it as rapidly, as safely to Nevada.
So, even if I could, if I could press a button now and have
it all in Nevada, probably will not want to do it, I need some
of it to continue the criticality experiments that are
important for our emergency management.
So what I am doing is putting it in a safer place in the
interim until I can get the capability at Nevada.
Mr. Stupak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Whitfield. Dr. Burgess, you are recognized for 10
minutes.
Mr. Burgess. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Podonsky, in your testimony, you discussed the
importance of local Department of Energy site management to
identify and correct security problems on their own. However,
you also point out that local management has not always been up
to the task. Los Alamos has had problems with managing their
classified data inventories for many years.
Why do you think that Los Alamos, at the site level, has
been unable to effectively identify and correct management
weaknesses before the problems occur?
Mr. Podonsky. I do not think that Los Alamos has a corner
on that market of not being able to identify all of the
problems at the site. What has traditionally happened, in my
experience, in the Department is that the site offices have not
always had the depth of capability among their Federal staff to
go out and do the work that, for example, that my independent
oversight office does.
And because of restrictions on the number of people that
they can afford to have at these sites in the past, I think
what we term oversight, I think oversight is a misnomer; it is
really managing and directing the M&O contracts is what we need
to recognize. And there needs to be more of that.
I cannot give you a specific, Congressman, as to why they
did not have a more robust management in the direction, but we
have confidence, my oversight group now, has confidence in the
team that Ambassador Brooks has there onsite. We also have
confidence, and that is not to impugn people who have served in
those capacities previously, but there are various degrees of
talent that the Federal Government is able to attract and keep,
and I think Ambassador Brooks has got some of the best that he
can find for the management of that site right now Mr. Burgess.
Ambassador Brooks, is the problem primarily one of funding?
Mr. Brooks. No. The problem is the things I tried to allude
to in my statement. Los Alamos is a good example, because, for
years, we have not developed security as a career progression.
We have not built the cadre of very, very experienced and
knowledgeable security professionals. We have some, but we do
not have enough. And that is what Admiral Chiles has helped us
to see for the long term.
So the people who are doing this at the Los Alamos site
office, there were not enough of them. There are more now, and
they were not as experienced as you would like. Second, there
was the leadership issue within that group which no longer
exists. Third, there has been a tendency at many of my site
offices, including, I think, Los Alamos, to defer to the
security people for security and to worry about all of the
other things the site office had to do.
And my site managers now understand they cannot do that,
that security is too important. And, fourth, in my
responsibility of supervising the site offices, I did not have
as good a mechanism to make sure that they were doing their
job, and that is the purpose of this new office.
So it was all of the things that I alluded to in my
statement; it was not an issue of funding. It was an issue of
organization. We had, before 2002, an extremely--when you look
back, there are a number of past reports--an extremely
fragmented organization in the Department of Energy. It was
very difficult to tell who is in charge.
And one of the things we have tried to correct is to make
it clear that I am in charge, and under me, my site manager.
You know, in all areas, we are still working to make sure that
that concept is fully understood, but it is clearly the right
way to run the complex.
Mr. Burgess. Thank you. Mr. Podonsky, are there examples of
other sites in the weapons complex where line management has
been effective in identifying security matters before they
emerge? Have we done it right in other places?
Mr. Podonsky. From our perspective, yes, sir. Pantex is an
excellent example.
Mr. Burgess. A Texas facility, I might point out Mr.
Podonsky. I do notice that, Congressman, yes. But, and
considering the mission that is there, that is also quite
heartening to know that they have such a strong site management
program.
Mr. Brooks. If I may, Congressman. It is the same sized
program. So that is why it is not primarily a question of
resources; it is a question of leadership and training. And we
are trying to use those standards at Pantex as a model for the
rest of my sites.
Mr. Burgess. Well, Ambassador Brooks, do you feel that you
are going to be able to convince Los Alamos and other sites to
improve line management, attention to security matters, before
they become further security problems?
Mr. Brooks. On the Federal side, I am absolutely convinced.
And I have no reason to doubt it on the contractor side. There
are always going to be problems. I want to make it clear. There
are always going to be problems. This is a huge complex
enterprise. The point is, are the Federal officials responsible
for providing the supervision finding those problems in time to
make sure that they are corrected? And that is what I am--that
is what we are going to be able to do.
Mr. Burgess. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will yield back my
time.
Mr. Whitfield. Mr. Inslee, you are recognized for 10
minutes.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you.
Mr. Brooks, I wanted to ask you some questions about the
Hanford site. If you can update us on consolidation efforts
there and plutonium transfer efforts, I would be appreciative.
Mr. Brooks. Hanford is not one of my sites, sir. I am going
to have to take a pass.
Glenn, are you in a position to address that? We may need
to answer that for the record, sir. We have the wrong people at
the table.
Mr. Podonsky. The Hanford site falls under the under
secretary for ESE. I believe that nomination is up and has not
been confirmed yet. So I do not have the information on that.
Mr. Inslee. We will talk to some other folks.
What--I was reading an article about a year ago talking
about security in a broad context. It was suggesting reference
to the GAO report that precipitated a lot of our concerns. And
the GAO report, as I recall it, basically suggested that there
needed to be a new bar, a new standard, if you will, for
security, that an original sort of standard was to prevent an
intruder from seizing a weapon or plutonium and leaving the
site and using it for nefarious purposes somewhere else, and
that we really needed a system that would prevent intrusion and
the ability to detonate and utilize in some way onsite.
How would you characterize efforts to meet that standard?
Met? Unmet? Are there dates you can discuss with us in that
regard?
Mr. Brooks. Yes, sir. I will be able to say a little bit
more about this in closed session. But we operationalize that
through the so-called design basis threat. And you are
absolutelycorrect. Before September 11, all of us assumed that
the threat was somebody coming to steal highly enriched uranium
or plutonium to take it some place else and use it. And
therefore, we could afford to let them get to the vault as long
as we could kill them on the way out. And so if we could
contain them, and that was the term we used, containment, that
was an adequate security standard.
After 9/11 we realized that there were people who were
willing to die in order to cause harm to the United States, and
it is hard to think of something that would have a greater
effect than some kind of nuclear detonation. So we needed to
move to a situation where we prevented people from ever
reaching the material.
That turns out to be a much more demanding problem. And it
depends very much on how many people you think you are
defending against and what kind of equipment they--we have made
two judgments, one in May 2003 and then another in October of
last year, about how many people.
And that is associated, May 2003, we made a determination,
and we will be fully compliant with that standard by the end of
next year.
The new, more demanding standard that we implemented in
October 2004, the Department has established, it is an
extremely conservative standard. I will talk about that in the
closed session. Well, the Department has established the end of
2008.
The site assistance visits that Mr. Podonsky talked about
are partly an attempt to figure out how we tailor to each site
the best way to meet that threat. That may depend on money in
the 2007 budget; that, I cannot quite know where it is yet. So
we are on schedule and fully funded to meet the threat
established in 2003. We have a schedule and a plan, but we
still do not have enough fidelity to know exactly what it will
cost for the more robust threat established in October of last
year.
Mr. Inslee. Now, maybe this is an unanswerable question,
but that just seems to be a time period that just is something
I cannot accept just sitting here. I do not have to do the hard
work like you do, but if someone said I wanted to prevent
terrorists from coming into this hearing room and eliminating
some Members of Congress, they said we are going to finish the
job at the end of 2008, I would not find that acceptable.
I think, look, there has got to be some mechanical ability
to achieve this goal at an earlier period. Are budgetary
problems a problem, really, getting this job done before----
Mr. Brooks. Not all.
Mr. Inslee. Let me finish my question. If you can try to
characterize to us, if we said that is just not acceptable, to
the demands of the public, and I do not think it is, what does
it take to accelerate completion of that project?
Mr. Brooks. A couple of things. First, we have, in some
cases, put compensatory measures, which are manpower intensive,
so that you have some confidence, but not enough confidence,
before.
The answer, I think the honest answer, is, I do not know
what it takes to accelerate 2008, because I do not know what it
takes to do 2008. We established this standard, and we are now
trying to gather the information through the site assistance
visits. We will have inputs from each site this summer, and
then we will see, as we prepare the 2007 budget, what has to be
done.
At some sites, I believe it will actually be relatively
easily. The highly enriched uranium material facility at Y-12,
for example, was designed so that it was less sensitive to the
size of the attacking force.
Nevada test site, the assembly facility, was designed so it
is less sensitive to the size of the attacking force. And so we
will be there probably relatively easy.
Other places, I think, are going to prove more complex. So
I do not know. In some cases, I do not think it is money,
because, in some cases, it takes a certain amount of time to
build things. Let's take the Y-12 facility. If you went to Y-12
now, you would see a bunch of buildings, and in there are quote
vaults.
But when you dug into it, you would find those vaults are
just rooms, because they were built in a different era. And
they are not located where you would locate them if you were
going to have a quote vault; they are located where it was
convenient to build. So they are on the outside of buildings
closest to the fence.
Well, you have obviously got to fix that. And the way to
fix it is to consolidate it into a very highly secure building.
We are building that building, but it is going to take some
years to build it. And to a certain limit, you cannot build a
building faster by throwing more money at it. It takes what it
takes.
Mr. Inslee. So if somehow you got a Congressional White
House mandate to accelerate that by 12 months, what would you
do?
Mr. Brooks. I would buy more guards, and I would do it with
compensatory measures. It would be inefficient. But, that is
sort of what we are doing now. We have established a regime
where we do certain things with very heavy additional
protective force, because we do not yet have the material in
this secure building. In the short term, the only thing you can
do is throw people at it.
In the longer term, you throw design and technology at it,
and that is the solution we are working toward. And I would
welcome the chance to explore this in closed session. I do want
to stress, the design basis threat that we decided to impose on
ourselves in October 2004 is an extremely conservative threat,
more conservative than is being used elsewhere in the
Government.
So I do want to assure you that we have set ourselves a
real stretch goal in being able to defend against this threat,
and it is a threat that I believe is unlikely to be mounted,
but it is--the consequences are so severe that we have chosen
to establish that as our standard.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you.
Mr. Podonsky. Congressman, if I might.
You should not leave the hearing thinking that the
Department is not aggressively moving out to the denial
strategy. The previous design basis threat of 2003, some sites
are actually very close to completion in a lot of their
efforts, and that is a continuation on to 2004. As Ambassador
Brooks said, the next one is, in fact, a stretch.
But we all share the same concerns. And that is why we have
these SAVs taking place, so that we can help the sites find the
strategies, find the technology, and we can get it implemented
as rapidly as possible. The 2008 date is when everybody has to
be compliant. That does not mean they wait until September
2008.
Mr. Inslee. Got you. Thank you.
Mr. Whitfield. The gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Walden, who
is vice chairman of this subcommittee, is recognized for 10
minutes.
Mr. Walden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, I
think you have heard pretty clearly from my colleagues a great
frustration at the cost of the standdown, the delay in
implementing some of these requirements and security efforts. I
know you have been working on it.
But it just seems to me that, if the University of
California was hired to do the job and they did not do it and
it resulted in a standdown that now costs taxpayers maybe
upwards of $360 or $20 or $160 million and, I think I am
hearing today, there is no penalty that can probably be
extracted against them in the existing contract, something is
broken.
And I know--I am sure--I know Chairman Barton feels this
way, I know I do, that the University of California should have
to pay something in this process. It is outrageous, when you
look at the costs that we are absorbing to improve homeland
security. And we have got a contractor that is supposed to be
providing all of this, and you all have to step in and shut
everything down.
What do the people do during this multi-month period of the
standdown?
Mr. Brooks. What--first, I do need to correct one thing.
While it is almost certain that I would have stepped in and
shut it down, the laboratory director who was the University of
California employee is the one who imposed the standdown. And
it to his credit that he recognized the problem.
Mr. Walden. I understand it was such a mess they had to
shut it down. The duration, though, is the issue. Why does it
take this long to figure out the problem?
Mr. Brooks. It took the duration, which I believe surprised
both the laboratory director and me--we thought it would be
much closer to half that--was because, as you dig in to trying
to do a very, very thorough job, we found that the problems
within the organization were deeper and wider spread.
And so we made a decision, which I made, that, having gone
this way, we were going to do it right, that is, we were going
to find and fix the problems, because we did not want to go
through this pain and this cost and not be able to say, we are
going to make the lab better at the end.
Mr. Walden. I understand that. That is where you identify
the 350 issues, followed by 3,000 issues. But that tells me, as
a manager, and I own my own business and have for 19 years,
that someone was not watching the store.
Mr. Brooks. No question of that, sir.
Mr. Walden. That somebody--okay, so a few people maybe were
let go or penalized, but the big somebody, the University of
California, is not suffering, are they?
Mr. Brooks. The university is suffering, I would submit to
you, in three areas. One is the monetary penalty that I imposed
as part of----
Mr. Walden. The reduction in fees?
Mr. Brooks. The reduction in fees.
Mr. Walden. But you testified those come right back to the
lab?
Mr. Brooks. The university has traditionally taken its fee
and used it for its own supervisory actions, and then anything
that was left over has been poured back to the lab. So the
university has never, in the 60 years that it has run the lab,
used the fees for any purpose other than the lab.
Mr. Walden. How much was that reduction?
Mr. Brooks. The reduction was $5 million, sir. There was a
$3 million penalty. The full----
Mr. Walden. How much of that was related to the standdown?
Mr. Brooks. $3 million was directly related to the
standdown and was imposed punitively. An additional $2 million
was the result of the grade of unsatisfactory in operations.
Mr. Walden. So like 1 percent, 1.5 percent on the loss.
What is the total fee?
Mr. Brooks. The total fee that they would have been
eligible for was $8.8 million. They ended up at $3 million.
Mr. Walden. Okay.
Mr. Brooks. So that is the first area.
Second, I believe that the university, which takes great
pride in its reputation, has suffered an intangible but very
real punishment. And, third, we are doing a competition. And
the record, if the university chooses to compete, their record
in this, their successes in areas and their failures will be
part of the competition.
Mr. Walden. Is there not still lacking a final
determination on the reasonableness of the duration of the
standdown in relation to its impact on the overall allowability
of the costs?
Mr. Brooks. Yes, sir. That is what I was trying to make
clear in response to an earlier question; that is a
determination that is made by the contracting officer. I have
been urged by the chairman to be personally involved in that.
And I intend to. So there is a determination yet to be made.
But I do not want to mislead the committee; you are holding
a report from probably our most knowledgeable individual in the
field, who has offered an opinion that that determination will
find that these are allowable costs. And so I did not----
Mr. Walden. You do not want to prejudice that?
Mr. Brooks. I do not want to prejudice it, but I do not
want to mislead the committee.
Mr. Walden. That is--I have a list of DOE security
initiatives that was presented at a hearing before this
subcommittee last May. I would like to ask unanimous consent
that this list be entered into the record, Mr. Chairman. I
believe the staff has a copy of that.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T9905.029
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T9905.030
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T9905.031
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T9905.032
Mr. Walden. The list, last 14 security initiatives, and I
understand that Mr. Podonsky has the responsibility to track
the progress of these initiatives for the Department. And I
understand from your testimony, sir, that the Department has
fallen behind on several of these initiatives. Could you just
apprise the committee, go through this list and identify for us
these initiatives that have not been implemented and why?
Mr. Podonsky. Yes, sir.
Mr. Walden. The key ones, at least.
Mr. Podonsky. My office was given the responsibility to
track the progress. And that is done monthly. Each of the
initiatives were assigned to a program office by separate
memorandum, either from the former Deputy Secretary, Kyle
McSlarrow, or from Ambassador Brooks to his organizations.
And they report that progress--the program offices report
the progress to us. Specifically, if we divided them up into
four categories: information security, new technologies,
consolidation of material and then strengthening human capital.
To answer your question specifically, the cyber enhancement
is lagging.
Mr. Walden. That is No. 2 on this last?
Mr. Podonsky. That is No. 2. The diskless desktop computing
was lagging up until last month. That has been moving out quite
nicely now. The keyless technology, that is in progress.
The Blue Sky Commission, that deserves a special note. This
is something that both Ambassador Brooks and I have a
responsibility for. But we both agreed, setting up a
commission, while it is something that we would like to do long
term, it has been difficult to find the people to serve on the
commission.
But that did not stop us from looking at existing
technologies and getting some of theme deployed to the field as
we speak right now in pilot programs. The other lagging ones--
--
Mr. Brooks. The weapons complex review?
Mr. Podonsky. The weapons complex review is one that just
recently got underway, but it still has a due date or report to
the Congress of April 2005.
Mr. Walden. Are you going to meet that?
Mr. Brooks. Yes, sir, we are going to meet it with a verbal
report, with a final written report. We had more trouble than I
expected to get the right people on that committee. It is an
external review.
Mr. Walden. I see.
Mr. Podonsky. The other one is the long-term storage. That
is a complex matter.
Mr. Walden. Which number is that, sir?
Mr. Brooks. Eight.
Mr. Walden. Okay.
Mr. Podonsky. The problem with that is finding the material
at different sites that no longer need to use the material at
that site, and where do you send that material?
As I said in my opening remarks and in my written
testimony, that involves more than just the Department of
Energy.
Mr. Walden. Would this involve, for example, the
universities elsewhere around the country that may have little
amounts?
Mr. Brooks. No, sir. There is a program to deal with that.
That is moving fairly well.
No, here is the problem here. It is primarily a plutonium
problem. We have plutonium that we do not need and we need to
get rid of. And we do not have a fully identified path to
eliminate it.
Some of it we are going turn into mixed oxide fuel under a
separate program. But some of it is not suitable for that. We
are barred from bringing that plutonium into the State of South
Carolina for a complex reason that I can get into if you need
to.
So now you are in a situation--without having a technically
adequate path out, which we are still developing. So you have a
situation where you would like to move material out of where it
is to consolidate it in a separate place, but you do not have a
separate place to consolidate it to.
So we are looking, for example, now, at a facility in Idaho
built for another purpose. We are looking at whether that could
be a place to consolidate material pending disposition.
For highly enriched uranium, it is much easier. You have a
place to put that at Y-12. There the problem is that the highly
enriched uranium that is around the complex we are largely
using, and it is a question of when we can stop.
But, on plutonium, the issue is finding a place to put this
stuff until we can figure out its long-term disposition, which
is a technically difficult and somewhat emotional issue.
Mr. Walden. Thank you very much, gentlemen. I appreciate
the work you are doing and your candor today.
Mr. Whitfield. Mrs. Blackburn, you are recognized for 10
minutes.
Mrs. Blackburn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to
our panel for being here. We appreciate this today.
We talked a lot about Los Alamos. But I have got a
question. I want to ask you about Crystal River and about the
Crystal River complex. And I think that probably many of my
colleagues were really stunned to learn about the problems that
occurred there and are curious to know whether or not, despite
officials saying that they followed all of the proper
regulations, if the worker verification program, which has been
used in Florida, was followed with this, because the problem
there was those who had gained unlawful entry to our country
were working in that facility. And I am pulling this from a
March 12 article that was in the Washington Times.
And what I would like to know is, do the current Department
of Energy or NRC regulations require that contractors use the
worker verification program? Because you all talk--have talked
extensively this morning about increasing training, about the
need for human capital security, the need to secure materials.
But if you do not know who it is, if they are using false
documentation, if they are using a false identity, how do you
know who it is that you are allowing access?
So do you require them to use the worker verification
program?
Mr. Brooks. I cannot answer with respect to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commissionsites, which I believe is the subject of
that story. For us, because we generally require security
clearances, we are in a much different world, because we
therefore have to--first, we have to have U.S. Citizens, and
second, we have the investigative requirements that are
associated with a Q clearance.
So for most of the people at our sites, this does not
become an issue because of the requirement for U.S.
Citizenship. With regard to what the NRC does, I will be happy
to try to get you an answer for the record, ma'am.
Mrs. Blackburn. That is okay. That is fine. So what you are
saying is that the NNSA has safeguards?
Mr. Brooks. Yes.
Mrs. Blackburn. That would prevent anything from occurring
like it did at the NRC site?
Mr. Brooks. I believe so. I will--but I have not studied
the particular occurrence. I will look at that. If that is not
right, I will get you a corrected answer for the record. But
certainly, we have safeguards that ensure that we only have
U.S. Citizens who have been investigated and granted the proper
clearance. That is an extremely important part of our security
approach.
Mrs. Blackburn. Wonderful. Thank you, sir.
I have another question for you. You have mentioned, when
we talk about the security initiatives in the new DBT--and this
kind of goes in with what Mr. Walden was just speaking to you
about--you have talked about having a tracking progress and
having routine interactions. But do you have a time line that
would implement the security initiatives and the new DBT? I am
not seeing a document or have not been able to find a document
that says this is our time line, these are our benchmarks. You
alluded to, possibly, that there may be something.
Mr. Brooks. We have, for the May 2003 DBT, the end of
fiscal year 2006, we monitor progress. A couple of my sites are
essentially there. For the October 2004 further enhancements,
we have set ourselves a goal of the end of 2008. We do not have
a detailed schedule yet, that is what we will be developing
this summer as a result of the site assistance visit process
that Mr. Podonsky was describing.
Mrs. Blackburn. Okay. And GAO has said that you all lack a
formal program management structure and need to implement
guidance for directing the work of its contractors. What
specific actions are you taking to address that situation?
Mr. Brooks. The former deputy secretary required, in
response partly to that and partly to just general concern, we
establish a formal program management structure. It is in its
early stages. And I think the jury is still out on whether what
we have done so far is adequate. We are very good at project
management. I mean, we can point to you some examples where we
have not been, but, basically, we have the structure and the
procedures and the training and the qualification to be good at
project management.
But to manage overall programs, we have in NNSA I think
that we have about 54 programs, and to look at each of those,
we do annual reviews by me, we have--the Department has a
series of milestones under a system called the jewel. But we
were also looking at a quarterly snapshot of each program for
the deputy secretary to make sure that we are starting to
manage programs as overall entities and not just focusing on
individual projects?
Mrs. Blackburn. Are you using the PMA or the PART, the
rating tools there?
Mr. Brooks. I use PART. The President's Management Agenda
was very important to the previous Secretary and the deputy.
And there is every evidence they will be even more important to
the current Secretary, who has a very strong management
background.
I use PART. The Department uses PART as required by the
Office of Management and Budget. In addition, I have
established PART as the internal NNSA review tool. So when I go
through my annual reviews, we do a PART assessment for every
program every year, even though the Office of Management and
Budget will only have us assess two or three of them.
Our initial experience with that was that our internal
assessments were rosier than OMB. More recently, we have been
coming much closer. And what you do is you look at what you
said, and then when OMB gives you their grade, you look at the
comparison and what you want to make sure is that your self
assessment is honest.
If it is honest, you will come out pretty close to the OMB
grade. For the last cycle, I came out very close on the four
projects.
Mrs. Blackburn. Well, if you are going through 54 programs
a year; you are a busy man.
Mr. Brooks. Yes, ma'am.
Mrs. Blackburn. Mr. Podonsky, a couple of questions. The Y-
12 plant in Oak Ridge, which is in Tennessee, my State, the
initial plans there were for an underground storage facility.
And this was changed to an above-ground facility.
So if you will please address why that was changed to an
above-ground facility, why DOE approved it and--even though the
inspector general said it was going to cost more and be less
secure.
Mr. Podonsky. I would like to answer that. But since the
facility is actually owned by Master Brooks, I would suggest
that he would give you those answers as to why those decisions
were made. I can only give you a view of how robust we think
the plans are.
Mrs. Blackburn. Okay.
Mr. Brooks. There were two competing designs, neither of
them were actually underground. The water table at Y-12 makes
it difficult to do a true underground facility. So there were
two competing designs, one which has been referred to as the
berm design, essentially had an earth cover, and one that did
not.
Those were not the only differences between the designs. I
can get into a little more detail in closed session. But the
design had--the designs had a number of features that differed.
We concluded that the so-called bermed design was not likely.
First, it was subject to single-point failure. That is, there
is a particular vulnerability that if people were able to
penetrate, we did not have a good back-up.
And, second, we were concerned that it was very sensitive
to assumptions about the size of the attacking force. That is a
big deal. Because, as we can talk about more in closed session,
when I talk about changes in the design basis threat, one of
those changes is how large the attacking force we assume is. So
what you would like is a facility that does not depend on the
intelligence judgment of the day about how big the force was.
We, therefore, shifted to the second design. We could have
added to that a berm. We chose not to. We chose not to because
our assessment was that it was adequate, that it would cost
another--I think the estimate is $35 million in design costs
and delay construction 2 years to redesign it.
And it sounds easy to just put dirt over it, but when you
put 22 feet of dirt on top of a building, it turns out that you
have to build a different building. And that the improvements
in security did not outweigh the importance of moving forward.
You know, there are alternate views. The inspector general
report, and I can--we had an assessment done, I want to be very
precise on what was done, by Sandia, which convinced me that
the design we have was adequate. Sandia was not asked to say in
a perfect world what they would do.
And my guess is, they would have wanted some kind of
combined design. But we concluded that the design we had was
adequate--it was superior to the alternate design for reasons
unrelated to the amount of earth--and that it was more
important to get on with building it. That is the judgment we
made.
Mrs. Blackburn. Thank you.
Mr. Whitfield. Thank you.
Thank you very much for participating in this panel this
morning. We appreciate the testimony of both of you. I would
make one other comment.
Ambassador Brooks, when do you anticipate that you will
make this final determination on the reasonableness of the
duration of the standdown in relation to its impact on the
overall allowability of the cost of the contract?
Mr. Brooks. I am sorry, sir. I actually do not know the
answer to that. I will let your staff know and provide it
formally for the record. But I am not sure of the schedule on
which the contracting officer is slated to make it. I just
suddenly realized on the way over here that I did not know the
answer to that. I did not have time to check.
Mr. Whitfield. We look forward to hearing from you on that.
I would also ask you unanimous consent to enter into the record
a letter that we sent to Secretary Bodman just recently on
these 14 initiatives that were initiated by Secretary Abraham
in which we asked the Secretary to give us an update on all 14
of those initiatives.
And so I expect that the two of you may be involved in that
as well. We look forward to your response to that letter as
well.
We are going to reconvene after our next two panels. We
have two more panels. We have an individual on each panel, but
we will be reconvening in room 2218 as soon as we finish the
other two panels. So thank you all. We look forward to seeing
you upstairs.
At this time, I would like to call our next witness Mr.
Nanos, Peter Nanos, who is the director of the Los Alamos
National Laboratory.
And Mr. Nanos, we appreciate your being with us here today.
As you know, it is the custom of the Oversight and
Investigations Subcommittee to have witnesses testify under
oath.
And I would ask you, do you have any difficulty doing that
this morning?
Mr. Nanos. No, sir.
Mr. Whitfield. Do you wish to have legal counsel with you
when you testify?
Mr. Nanos. No, sir.
Mr. Whitfield. Then if you will stand, I will swear you in.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. Whitfield. Mr. Nanos, thank you very much. And you are
now under oath. And with that, we would welcome you to give
your opening statement.
TESTIMONY OF G. PETE NANOS, DIRECTOR, LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL
LABORATORY
Mr. Nanos. Thank you, sir. Chairman Whitfield, ranking
member Stupak, and distinguished members of the committee,
thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this morning
to update you on the status of security at Los Alamos.
My name is Dr. Pete Nanos, and I have served as director of
the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory since
2003. I came to the laboratory from the Navy where I retired as
a vice admiral.
Before I begin, I wanted to thank Chairman Barton and the
committee for your support of the improvements that we have
made at the laboratory.
Congressman Stupak, I would be happy to respond to any
questions you have today regarding audits conducted by one of
our contract employees, Dan Brown. We have thoroughly supported
his investigation and drafting of his white paper, and have
gone through a lot of detailed analysis of all of the elements
of that white paper.
Some of the ones, like welding and QA of plutonium
fabrication and all, I have been personally involved in. And of
course, some--we can even talk about the boundaries in the
closed session of some of the aspects. Because of his clearance
level, he was not in some cases able to see the whole
operation. But we can go into that in detail later.
I want to emphatically state that the employees of Los
Alamos National Laboratory are dedicated to the national
security mission of this great Nation, and they take very
seriously their responsibilities to personally safeguard
America's secrets.
The laboratory conducts important work for the Nation, most
notably ensuring the safety and reliability of the Nation's
strategic deterrent. Clearly, a component of that mission is
the need to safeguard the national security information
entrusted to our care. I am here today to tell you that I
believe we are doing a good job in security, and I want to
reaffirm to you our commitment to do even better.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a safer, stronger, more
secure laboratory than when I last addressed this committee.
The first point I would like to make is that the suspension of
lab operations in July 2004 was necessary, and the employees
who were at fault in the security and safety incidents that led
to the suspension have been held accountable by the laboratory
and the University of California.
My decision to suspend laboratory operations was not easy,
and I would like to spend some time here explaining what led to
the suspension. At the outset, it is important to note that,
during the suspension, the laboratory was open and employees
were required to come to work throughout. No new funds were
required during this time. We used existing funds.
I would also like to clarify a little bit on the cost
issue. I think Ambassador Brooks is entirely right, that the
estimate that you referred to him, the higher estimate, was an
upper bound, a very conservative upper bound. Our method of
bidding costs for our number was based on mutual agreement
between us and the site manager, in other words the NNSA
contracting officer.
And we decided to use an accepted accounting practice of
determining those costs based on the manager's estimates of
where people were working, and did not go to the higher cost
option of introducing thousands of new accounts and a great
amount of administrative cost. And that was a decision we
mutually made.
Also, we, as people started to work on programmatic work
again, we put their charges on that programmatic work. For
example, after about a month, approximately two-thirds of our
labor costs were back on their normal programmatic work. That
was recognized under our procedure, was not recognized under
the Albuquerque procedure. So there, clearly, is an opportunity
to go into great detail on this and satisfy you in that regard.
During this period, employees did productive work, either
program work or work related to safety and security in support
of our mission. Additionally, at no time did we suspend
activities that were immediately critical to national security
and/or the continuity of operations, security, and
environmental compliance and protection.
Many of you have heard that two major incidents led to my
decision to suspend operations. The July classified removable
electronic media or CREM incident, which I will describe
further below, as well as a safety incident just days later
where a student's retina was burned by a laser.
What many people do not know is that these two incidents
took place against a background of a recent rise in safety and
security incidents as well as growing correlations showing that
our employees who were poor safety performers were also--proved
to be poor in security and compliance.
Further, I was concerned that the July CREM incident showed
clear signs of a behavior problem versus any sort of honest
mistake. Confronted in July with back-to-back cases of seeming
disregard for basic safety and security rules, I did not have a
good feel for the safety and security of lab operations, and
therefore, I had no choice but to suspend all operations at the
lab.
During the suspension of operations and the subsequent
restart, we learned that there were many good reasons to have
taken the action we did. In partnership with UC, the DOE and
NNSA, we followed a rigorous restart process. As a matter of
fact, it was codified in great excruciating detail, and
conducting that--and the most important thing is that we
conducted management self-assessments of all of our
organizations, that identified more than 3,000 issues, ranging
from safety compliance issues to permitting violations that
needed to be addressed, including 340 prestart issues that we
felt had to be addressed before the activities could restart.
We fixed the 350 prestarts and have created a project to
implement and track the remaining fixes and changes. We resumed
operations as quickly as possible with 100 percent of our
lowest-risk operations, which, by the way, represent 89 percent
of all lab activities, and as I have previously stated, roughly
two-thirds of our labor costs were resumed by August 18 and the
majority of operations up and running by late September, early
October. Some of our highest-hazard operations did not resume
until February 2005.
I want to go back now and focus on the July CREM incident
for a moment. This incident began when employees were unable to
locate two barcoded pieces of accountable CREM. As the result
of independent investigations conducted by the DOE, the FBI and
a joint scab lab UC investigation, we now know with high
confidence that the disk never existed and that the incident
was the result of an unauthorized practice, barcode numbers
that were entered into our accountability system but never
affixed to actual media.
We had no way of knowing this initially, and we were
further led astray by two employees who falsified an inventory
sheet incorrectly indicating that the disk had actually existed
at one point in time.
We concluded that, although human error and improper action
were the direct cause of the incident, there were additional
systemic contributing weaknesses, among them are the sheer size
and geographic spread of our CREM operations, which included an
inventory of accountable CREM that exceeded 80,000 pieces at
its high point. More than 4,500 employees had daily direct
access to CREM, and classified operations spread over roughly
40 square miles.
Upon thorough review of the investigation, I made the
decision to terminate three employees as a result of their
involvement in the incident. Additionally, four employees
received written reprimands and suspension without pay, and I
removed the division leader from that position and had the
individual reassigned to nonsupervisory duties.
My second point is that Los Alamos has made real lasting
changes in the way we handle CREM that significantly reduce the
likelihood of future problems. After meting out discipline, I
turned our attention to completely revamping the classified
control system to help prevent a recurrence of this incident.
With concurrence of the University of California, we acted to
remove all media, to move all media into secure, centralized
libraries, to establish full-time CREM custodians, and to fund
expanded classified media lists or diskless computing.
The major elements of our efforts include the following:
All accountable CREM has been moved from the hundreds of
previous locations into one of 20 centralized base libraries.
Additionally, we established 14 satellite libraries to provide
secure storage of media, in close proximity to operational work
areas. All CREM is under the direct ownership of approximately
40 custodians, a 99 percent reduction compared to the previous
4,500 employees who had direct access to CREM.
Trained and certified classified library custodians are
assigned to each library. They are responsible for checking
items out and conducting daily transactional inventories to
ensure classified media is positively accounted for at all
times. The library custodians are deployed security
professionals reporting directly to the security division.
To ensure the libraries maintain a high level of
performance, we began no-notice inventory inspections. The
laboratory is pushing hard on line organizations to destroy
unneeded accountable CREM. We have destroyed over 7,000 items
in the past 2 months, with many more entering the destruction
pipeline.
As of March 4, the lab has 20,074 pieces of CREM and
expects to further reduce this to less than 2,000 by the end of
fiscal year 2006, a 97 percent decrease from our earlier high
point.
With significant funding support from Congress, we are also
moving to a diskless environment through the expansion of our
classified computing network.
My third and final point this morning is that, thanks to
significant investments in physical security, the laboratory's
physical site remains secure from threats.
As you know, DOE has recently revised their Design Basis
Threat, which articulates the adversary force size and
capabilities that we must be able to defend against. We have
been working literally from September 11, 2001, to
fundamentally change the security posture for our site.
An amazing array of upgrades and improvements has been
made, all for the singular goal of safeguarding the people and
security interests under our control. I am particularly proud
to point out that the most recent DOE inspection of the
protective force performance at TA-18 clearly shows that the
facility is well defended and the nuclear materials housed
there are secure.
The Department has made the decision to relocate the TA-18
mission and the nuclear materials to Nevada, and we are fully
committed to making this happen as quickly as possible.
Nonetheless, I am confident in our ability to defend the site,
and that confidence is reinforced by DOE assessments that tell
me we are good and getting better. I personally attended, as an
observer, the force-on-force exercises last year in this
regard.
In conclusion, I want to emphasize that the investments
made at Los Alamos during the suspension have created a Los
Alamos that is stronger, safer and more secure. I cannot sit
here today and tell you that we will never have another safety
or security incident at Los Alamos, but what I can guarantee is
that the management at Los Alamos and the University of
California is doing everything possible to continue the
improvements to both safety and security.
We will continue to deliver on our commitment to the safety
and security of this Nation. I promise you that. Again, thank
you for allowing me the opportunity to address you. And I would
be glad to answer any questions you may have for me.
[The prepared statement of G. Pete Nanos follows:]
Prepared Statement of G. Pete Nanos, Director, Los Alamos National
Laboratory, U.S. Deartment of Energy
introduction
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to discuss the security program at Los Alamos National
Laboratory. My name is Dr. Pete Nanos and I have served as Director of
the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory since 2003. I
came to the Laboratory from the Navy where I retired as a Vice Admiral.
To begin, I want to emphatically state that the employees of Los
Alamos National Laboratory are dedicated to the national security
mission of this great nation and they take very seriously their
responsibilities to personally safeguard America's secrets. Our
contributions to the safety and security of the American people are
significant, and we continue to serve on the front lines of the effort
to build and sustain our collective defense. Clearly a component of
that mission is the need to safeguard the national security information
entrusted to our care. I am here today to tell you that I believe we
are a better Laboratory today as it relates to security, and I want to
reaffirm to you our commitment to be even better.
I have spent considerable time since assuming leadership of the
Laboratory evaluating our strengths and weaknesses and working with the
University of California to improve the overall direction of the
Laboratory. As you know, I suspended Laboratory operations last summer.
This was not an easy decision. I would like to spend some time here
explaining what led to the suspension of operations. At the outset, it
is important to note that during the suspension of operations, the
Laboratory was open and employees were required to come to work
throughout the entire suspension. During this period, employees did
productive work related to safety and security, in support of our
mission. I will get into additional detail on this later in my
testimony.
Let me emphasize that at no time did we suspend activities that
were immediately critical to national security and or the continuity of
operations, security and environmental compliance and protection.
Many of you are familiar with the two major incidents that led to
my decision to suspend operations: the July Classified Removable
Electronic Media (CREM) incident, which I will describe further below,
as well as a safety incident just days later where a Lab student's
retina was burned by a laser due to faulty safety practices. What many
people do not know is that these two incidents alone did not lead to my
decision. I would like to provide some additional context, and start by
noting that my decision was made in close consultation with the
University of California, the Department of Energy and the National
Nuclear Security Administration. Prior to these incidents, my
management team and I were tracking a recent rise in safety and
security incidents. In addition, we were noting correlations in
performance in the areas of safety, security, and compliance. Those
employees who performed poorly appeared to do so in all of these areas.
The other major factor that concerned me with the July CREM incident is
that it showed clear signs of a behavior problem. This was in sharp
contrast to earlier incidents where it was clear that for the most part
good people who were trying to do the right thing had made honest
mistakes. Given this backdrop, when I was confronted with back-to-back
examples of seeming disregard for basic safety and security rules, I
had serious concerns regarding the security and safety of Laboratory
operations and therefore, in good conscience, had no choice but to
suspend all operations at the Laboratory.
During the suspension of Laboratory operations, and the subsequent
restart, we learned that there were many good reasons to take the
actions we did. In partnership with DOE and NNSA, we followed a
rigorous and strategic process, dividing the entire Laboratory into
risk levels:
Risk Level 1, the lowest level, which is general office work;
Risk Level 2, medium risk, which represents moderate-hazard work such
as construction; and
Risk Level 3, high risk, which includes our high-hazard programmatic
work involving CREM and special nuclear materials (SNM).
We conducted Management Self Assessments of all of our operations,
and all of our Level 2 and 3 operations had to present their findings
to a Resumption Review Board (RRB), which was made up of personnel from
the Laboratory, the National Nuclear Security Administration's Los
Alamos Site Office, as well as the DOE Office of Assessment who
observed and assisted in all aspects of the review. For Level 3 work,
an additional internal review was conducted by a Laboratory Readiness
Review (LRR) panel, prior to approval by myself, and ultimately
resumption. The LRR consisted of Laboratory personnel who were from
outside of the organization being reviewed. The NNSA site office in Los
Alamos worked very closely with us on all aspects of the restart. We
resumed operations as quickly as possible, with 100% of our Level 1
work up and running on August 18, 2004, one month after the suspension
of operations began, and the majority of operations up and running by
late September/early October. Some of our highest-hazard operations did
not resume until February 2005. It is important to note that 89% of the
Laboratory's activities were classified as Risk Level 1.
What we found in our assessments validated our decision to suspend
Laboratory operations. We identified more than 3,000 issues (ranging
from safety compliance issues to permitting violations) that need to be
addressed, including 350 ``pre-start'' issues that we felt had to be
addressed before an activity could restart. We fixed the 350 pre-starts
and have created an Operational Efficiency Project to implement the
remaining fixes and changes over the coming years.
Below, I'd like to spend a few minutes covering the July 2004
incident, and more importantly, what we have done to correct the
shortcomings that allowed the incident to occur.
the accountable crem incident
First, and perhaps most importantly, we know with high confidence
that the disks never existed. Rather, what we had was an issue of
barcode labels entered into our accountability system but never affixed
to actual media, which was compounded by the falsification of an
inventory sheet by two employees indicating that the disks did exist.
This conclusion is supported by independent investigations completed by
the DOE and the FBI. Given the identification of the most likely cause,
we are left with the questions--why did it happen and how did we get
ourselves into this situation?
Our analysis of the incident led us to the following conclusions
regarding the direct causes:
The direct cause of this incident was placing unattached barcodes
into accountability (an unauthorized practice) without
confirming their actual use. Simply put, the classified matter
custodian issued the barcodes and entered them immediately into
the accountability database. Unfortunately, the employee who
received the barcodes failed to realize that the barcodes were
accountable and should be tracked. The employees subsequently
destroyed them without reconciling the discrepancy with the
custodian.
We also missed the opportunity to discover and reconcile the problem
in an annual inventory of accountable classified matter
conducted in April 2004. This inventory failed to identify the
``missing'' barcodes because the custodians did not properly
complete the inventory and subsequently falsified the inventory
records. In addition, line managers responsible for the
operation failed to ensure the inventory was properly conducted
and subsequently verified that the inventory was complete and
accurate, and that all items were accounted for. That was
clearly not the case.
In the process of conducting the root cause analysis of the
incident we reached the conclusion that while human error and improper
action were the direct causes, there were additional systemic
weaknesses that contributed to this incident, and that would allow
similar incidents to occur again:
The sheer size and geographic spread of accountable CREM operations
increased the likelihood of an incident.
The inventory of accountable CREM exceeded 80,000 pieces at its
high point.
There were over 4,500 employees with daily direct access to the
media.
Our classified operations are widely dispersed, spread over 40
square miles.
The transaction volume is large, with daily movement of
classified items between organizations within LANL and
throughout the DOE Complex.
The lack of detailed supporting documents (e.g. checklists and plans)
to serve as job aids for employees engaged in classified work
activities hindered effective performance.
Custodians responsible for safeguarding and controlling classified
items suffered from a variety of organizational ailments,
including:
Lower job status
Lack of authority
Part-time job for many
Lack of training specific to CREM handling and control
Lack of support/conflict of interest within their parent
organizations
The absence of a DOE or LANL standard accountability system increased
the potential for classified items to ``drop through the
cracks'' as they moved between organizations. In March 2004
this problem was recognized, and with the concurrence of the
University of California, the Laboratory is implementing a
single site-wide accountability system.
the response to the accountable crem incident--holding people
accountable
In light of what we learned during our inquiry it was necessary to
take very drastic steps, both in terms of holding people accountable
for their actions and in changing the classified control program to
help prevent a recurrence of the incident.
In terms of personnel actions, three employees had their employment
terminated as a result of their involvement in this incident. Four
employees received written reprimands and suspension without pay,
including the Division leader who was also removed and reassigned to
non-supervisory duties. All seven employees received administrative
sanctions in the form of security infractions, which are permanently
filed in their personnel security records and factor into the DOE's
decision process for granting continued access to classified
information. The infractions were issued for causes including:
Failure to properly conduct classified media inventories and
falsification of records;
Failure to reconcile accountable CREM with inventory records; and
Management failure to provide adequate oversight.
The NNSA also exercised its right to hold the University
accountable for the incident. LANL received an ``unsatisfactory''
performance rating in the ``operations'' area of the annual performance
assessment. As a result, in January, 2005, NNSA withheld 67% of UC
management fee, with a penalty assessment of $5.8M out of a possible
$8.7M performance fee pool. This represents the largest DOE-directed
management fee cut in history.
the response to the accountable crem incident--changing the classified
control system
It is safe to say that we have learned a great deal from this
recent incident. After holding people accountable for their actions, we
turned our attention to completely revamping the classified control
system to help prevent a recurrence of this incident. With the
concurrence of the University of California, LANL acted to move all
media into secure centralized libraries, to establish full-time
custodians and fund expanded classified media-less computing. The major
elements of our efforts include the following:
All accountable CREM has been moved into one of 20 centralized
``base'' libraries. Fourteen ``satellite'' libraries have also
been established to provide as-needed secure storage of media
in close proximity to operational work areas. These
``satellites'' are each associated with a ``base'' library and
are under the strict control of the ``base'' library
custodians. The new configuration represents a significant
reduction in the number of CREM storage locations across the
Laboratory. Where previously CREM was stored in 89 buildings
with 733 rooms, the new CREM libraries are housed in 29
buildings with 37 rooms. This represents a 95% reduction in the
number of rooms.
Each library was put through a rigorous inspection and certification
process prior to commencing operations.
Trained and certified Classified Library Custodians are assigned to
each library--they are responsible for checking items out and
conducting daily transactional inventories to ensure classified
media is positively accounted for at all times.
The library custodians are deployed security professionals reporting
directly to the Security Division.
To ensure the libraries maintain a high level of performance we began
no-notice inventory inspections.
To solve the issue of fragmented accounting systems we have begun the
procurement of a Lab-wide inventory/accountability system.
We are pushing hard on line organizations to destroy unneeded
accountable CREM, we have destroyed over 7,000 items in the
past two months, with many more entering the destruction
pipeline. As of March 4, 2005, the Laboratory has 20,074 pieces
of CREM.
To help further reduce the accountable CREM holdings we are
continuing our effort to replace stand-alone classified
computers with ``media-less'' computer networks.
LANL is rapidly driving towards the goal of having less than 2,000
pieces of accountable CREM. We believe this number reflects the
long-term static inventory and once achieved will represent
more than a 97% reduction in accountable CREM holdings. With
continued investments in ``media-less'' networks, we hope to
hit this goal by the end of FY06.
I believe it also very important to point out that many of the
problems we have had in the past regarding difficulties with
safeguarding classified information can be tied to two over-arching
issues. The first is the failure to invest in what I would term
``engineered'' solutions. In many cases we have had good employees
trying to do a difficult job without the benefit of the right tools.
The best example is the shortage of classified networks that do not
rely on high-risk portable CREM--simply put, the more we invest in
classified networks the more we reduce the likelihood of losing control
of classified information. It is important to note that technology
enhancements alone will not solve the entire problem. Along with
engineered solutions we are ensuring that strong management oversight
is in place to detect problems and solve them before they become a
crisis. Thanks to funding support from Congress, we are moving to
finish our expansion of media-less computing systems. This support is
paving the way for continued improvements in our security
infrastructure and will position us to more effectively meet our
security challenges.
The second over-arching issue is that we have not done as much as
we could to provide our scientists and engineers with the necessary
security resources. As with any large operation involving highly
classified information, the rules and requirements for security can be
difficult to understand and implement. We are deploying security
experts to our line organizations for the sole purpose of helping them
to continue to build solid security programs. Our security experts are
focusing on building better security plans, providing real-time
training, and wading through the security rules to find the right
solutions to adapt to our operations. The feedback I'm receiving is
that this model is a resounding success--we will continue to put a
great deal of effort into building this partnership and we have high
hopes for its ability to substantially improve security performance
across the Laboratory.
how these changes are improving our operations
While we are continuing to make enhancements to the new model for
controlling accountable classified media, initial indications reveal
that the system is working well, with tangible benefits for both
improved security control as well as operational efficiencies resulting
from the economies of scale we are seeing in the library approach. The
major benefits include:
Substantial improvement in daily control and accountability for
CREM--it is under the direct ownership of approximately 40
custodians. This represents a more than 99% reduction from the
approximately 4,500 employees who previously had direct access.
Clear requirements and training for handling accountable CREM when it
is checked-out of the library--a rigorous training process is
required before you can be assigned as a ``borrower'' of the
media.
Line organization managers and staff are now able to concentrate on
their mission--they are still responsible for protecting the
media when it is checked out, but they do not have to spend
countless hours maintaining individual accountability and
control systems.
Apart from the very tangible benefits we are seeing from our
efforts to change the security model, we are also starting to see the
intangible benefits tied to attitudes and perceptions of the workforce.
As a result of the incidents we have had over the past several years
there was a real concern among our employees that the task of doing
their job safely and securely was getting increasingly difficult, with
the addition of more and more policies and procedures to follow. With
each new set of policies and procedures came the perception of
increased risk in inadvertently violating the rules. I am particularly
proud of the fact that instead of making the job even more difficult to
do, our response to this most recent incident has actually simplified
the work and clarified the responsibilities our workers have in
protecting classified information. As a result of this simplification
our workforce is becoming increasingly confident in taking personal
responsibility for safety and security--as with any human endeavor,
personal responsibility is the linchpin of performance. I'm confident
that we are rebuilding the sense of trust and mutual support that is
absolutely essential to sustaining our operations and delivering on our
national security mission.
physical security initiatives
Finally, I want to take this opportunity to tell you what we are
doing on upgrading the physical security of the Laboratory to deal with
the post-9/11 world. As you know DOE has recently revised their Design
Basis Threat (DBT), which articulates the adversary force size and
capabilities that we must be able to defend against. I will tell you
quite honestly that this new DBT represents a significant challenge to
nuclear sites, but it is a challenge we must meet. We have been working
literally from September 11, 2001, to fundamentally change the security
posture for our site. An amazing array of upgrades and improvements has
been made--all for the singular goal of safeguarding the people and
security interests under our control. I am particularly proud to point
out that the most recent DOE inspection of the protective force
performance at TA-18 clearly shows that the facility is well defended
and the nuclear materials housed there are secured. The Department has
made the decision to relocate the TA-18 mission and the nuclear
materials to Nevada and we are fully committed to making this happen as
quickly as possible.
To address the recently revised DBT we are developing a
comprehensive project plan designed to guide our long-term strategy for
meeting the new challenges. The project plan, which is due to NNSA in
July of this year, includes new initiatives to control access to the
site, upgrades in the size and lethality of our protective force,
consolidation of nuclear operations to achieve economies of scale for
our protection operations, and new construction of barriers and alarms
at key facilities. I am confident in our ability to defend the site,
and that confidence is anchored by DOE assessments that tell us we are
good and getting better. We will continue to spare no effort in our
quest to ensure the security of Los Alamos and the national security
mission with which we are charged.
summary
As I mentioned in my opening comments, the decision to suspend
Laboratory operations was not an easy one. The decision has caused
great turmoil within the Laboratory and generated a fair amount of
second guessing. From my vantage point the suspension of Laboratory
operations was absolutely the right thing to do--the pain we have
experienced is more than offset by the long-term gain we will see from
this investment. Today we have a solid grasp on safety and security
risk areas within the Laboratory based on comprehensive risk analyses.
As a result, we are better situated to understand the safety and
security implications of the work we do. The suspension of operations
has introduced a formality of operations to an institution that
desperately needed it. I cannot sit here today and tell you that we
will never have another safety or security incident at Los Alamos; our
operations are too large and too complex to ever be able to give you a
100% guarantee. But what I can guarantee is that the management at the
Laboratory and the University of California is committed to continuing
its improvements to both safety and security. We will take an
outstanding operation and make it even better, and we will continue to
deliver on our commitment to the safety and security of this nation, I
promise you that.
Again, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to address you and
I would be glad to answer any questions you may have for me.
Mr. Whitfield. Thank you very much, Dr. Nanos. We
appreciate your testimony.
And I have with me here some transcripts from three
oversight and investigative hearings that the Congress--this
subcommittee--conducted back in 2003 regarding procurement and
property mismanagement failures at Los Alamos.
And you can see from the size of these transcripts that
this committee spent a lot of time on mismanagement at Los
Alamos. And I know that you were not hired to be responsible
for this program by the University of California until 2003,
which was sometime right after these hearings were conducted.
But, then, in September 2004, we received a copy of an
audit that was performed by the equivalent of the inspector
general for the University of California, regarding lack of
procurement and property controls at an area called Technical
Area Number 16. And, specifically, they were talking about the
fact that 21 unauthorized sheds were built at Los Alamos and
filled with unauthorized materials, supplies and equipment.
And it went on to say that the University of California
overpaid on these sheds. These sheds cost the University of
California $8,255 per shed. The base price was $5,570. So the
unauthorized sheds were built and overpaid by the University of
California, $56,000.
Now, I know that these sheds were, my understanding, built
prior to your arrival. But this became public knowledge only in
September. And I guess I would have two points to my question
here. One, there continues to be, seems to be this problem of
mismanagement at Los Alamos regarding the University of
California.
Two, this audit performed by your inspector general that
found these sheds 3 years after they were built, that were
unauthorized, inflated prices were paid for them, unauthorized
materials being kept in them, why would it take so long for you
all to recognize that these were unauthorized and containing
unauthorized materials?
Mr. Nanos. Sir, you were correct, I believe, in pointing
out that those were sheds that had been previously looked at.
When they were raised in the audit, in--last year, we went back
and immediately looked at the material. And we found out that
the material was in fact proper material to be used at the site
and in the laboratory.
That--in distinction from previous things that you were
made aware of, there was no unauthorized material there in the
sense that that was all legitimate material for use at the
laboratory.
Mr. Whitfield. When you say--are we talking about what was
stored in the sheds?
Mr. Nanos. In the sheds. Yes, sir. And some of it had been
procured at the time of the sheds and some of it had been
procured subsequently and the sheds were used for storage.
Mr. Whitfield. But you would agree that the sheds
themselves, at least that process, was not properly conducted?
Mr. Nanos. Well, the--it was clear that that contract was
one that had been previously looked at, had a fairly
substantial increase in scope, growth and scope over the years.
And that was one that our current procedures and process
preclude from happening again.
No one is authorized to increase the scope or the ceiling
on contracts to the extent that that one had in the past. Also,
we are reviewing the costs and the close-out process on that
contract. We are reviewing the charges and deciding to what
level we are going to dispute it.
I am almost positive that we will end up disputing these
charges and putting in a claim against the contractor for
overcharges. In the normal closeout process of the contract,
we, of course, go through and audit all of the costs to make
sure that they are right and proper and we are not being
overcharged.
Mr. Whitfield. So you do intend to go back against the
contractor for the overcharges on these?
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir. We have not yet finished the close-out
audit on that contract. So that is still an open issue that we
will deal with.
Mr. Whitfield. You do agree with this audit report, though,
that shows the irregularities as it pertains to the building of
these buildings outside of the scope and so forth?
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir. Let me just take a minute and tell you
what we are doing now. You can increase--we had a problem with
noncontract people, nonbuyers making commitments for the
laboratory with contractors, and making constructive changes to
contracts.
In my first year, I changed our instruction to make it very
clear that you had to have contract authority in order to make
scope changes to contracts, formal contract mods, and that
could not be done casually in the laboratory.
We also have made it clear that all purchases under these
contracts now have to go through authorized buyers and that
even an authorized buyer cannot bump up the ceiling more than
$200,000 on any large contract without going through a contract
official.
In other words, we did not set that at zero because we did
not want to be administratively adding burden to everything.
Often, when we buy things, it is important to get it in a
timely manner, because we do not want to be building up
personnel costs for want of a nail.
But, on the other hand, we do not want people increasing
the ceiling on contracts without going through our proper
contracting channels. So we have established a policy that that
has to be formally done now. And that will preclude this type
of activity from occurring in the future.
Mr. Whitfield. Now, there are allegations that there are
other types of structures out there that may have been built
under the same circumstances. Do you expect that we will have
some other revelations as we move along?
Mr. Nanos. Sir, we have a tremendous number of temporary
structures and transportables at the laboratory. It is one of
the big difficulties that I have to face is that I have an
awful lot of substandard space that we are trying to move out
of.
And each one of those, though, is cataloged, has a building
number, even if it is a trailer. So we are not--and many of our
structures go back to the 1950's. So it is not--I would not say
it is a modern well-ordered site in general. And we are trying
to manage our way through that, coalesce, consolidate, get rid
of unneeded space and reduce the cost of our footprint, our
facility footprint.
And so there are--it is hard to go to Los Alamos and view
the site and not come away with the feeling that there are a
lot of temporary-looking structures.
Mr. Whitfield. Chairman Barton recently sent a letter to
Ambassador Brooks saying that he thought the University of
California should pay a portion of the cost of the standdown.
And you heard our discussion earlier about the cost figure.
But, from your perspective with the University of
California, do you feel like the Department of Energy can
legally charge the University of California with a portion of
those costs, pursuant to the terms of your contract?
Mr. Nanos. Sir, I do not want to get--I am not qualified to
talk about the legal issues. I spent 8 years running major
contracting activities in the DOD. So I do have some
experience.
I feel that all of the work that we did during the period
of the standdown was work that was authorized under the
statement of work. And I know there is some parts of the
charges that--or the costs that we have exposed to our
contracting officer that are still being looked at in the
normal course.
In other words, they have not finished their review. But,
to my knowledge, everything that we did, which was management
self-assessments, which is called for under contractor
assurance, and, you know, identification of deficiencies. And,
frankly, correcting deficiencies is all work that we are called
upon to do in the normal course.
We just normally do not do it in such a concentrated way.
Also, other than that work, which was, I think, the main heavy
lifting of the management self-assessment, the assessment of
risks and correction of deficiencies, the rest of the work that
was going on at that time was all our normal programmatic work.
I am happy to say that the laboratory, I expect that within
the next month, the laboratory to be back on schedule with
their major programs. In other words, we have been able to
immediately reapply ourselves back to our mainline DOE programs
and get back on schedule.
Mr. Whitfield. As a result of the standdown, how far was
your programmatic work delayed or how long?
Mr. Nanos. The programmatic--I would have to go back and
look at the exact change in milestones. But if you look at
the--where these milestones--in other words, there were some
deliverables at the end of the fiscal year that we did not
meet, and that got continued into the next fiscal year.
But, we are catching up on those particular areas of
production, and tests that are required to support major life-
extension programs for our systems. The most critical part of
the work, which was safety, security and assessment of the
stockpile for the country, we kept on schedule despite the
standdown.
So we did slip some milestones, and I will give you an
example. The tests in support of the major life-extension
program that were delayed are--the experimental set up has been
completed. And we expect, by the end of the month, to be back
on schedule with that testing. And that was in an area, that
was with a division that had--that was the one that had the
security problems, and many of the compliance problems, and
took us the longest to rebuild. So I am very proud of their
intense effort to get back on schedule and meet the national
need.
Mr. Whitfield. Mr. Stupak.
Mr. Stupak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Nanos, it is good to see you again. I think we met when
you just started at Los Alamos, when we were out there that
time for the visit.
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir.
Mr. Stupak. Let me see if I can get this right. You are an
employee of UC, University of California?
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir, I am.
Mr. Stupak. We would hope that when we see you again, it is
not in a situation where we are talking about another slip up
at Los Alamos. So we would really like to, I am sure I speak
for everybody on the committee, have better dialog with the
lab. I know you have an office here and things like that. So
you have got the University of California. You have got your
law firm and DOE, and we should really have more interaction
and dialog so we can work together more on some of these
things.
I know your lab just come up in an announcement the other
day on that muon--am I saying that right, sir?
Mr. Nanos. Muon radiography. Yes, sir.
Mr. Stupak. That is stuff that--let us know so we can help
work together on some of these things. That is what we would
like to do instead of always being here when things are not
going too well for you.
Let me ask you this. Mr. Brown, and I know we mentioned the
white paper. He has been at Los Alamos for over 18 months and
had observed the practices and drawn some comparisons based
upon his 30 years of experience in assessing adequacy of
nuclear industry practices at various organizations that are
under the oversight of DOE and the NRC. So was Mr. Brown a
qualified auditor?
Mr. Nanos. As far as I know, within his experience, he was
qualified to do the job that we gave him. He was obviously
working for my Performance Surety Division, and had been
assigned to that work by the--by the division leader, who I
have great confidence in by the way.
So I have--I am confident that, you know, it is the point I
am making here is that I do not have any issue with Mr. Brown
and what he did, and we have taken his comments seriously.
Mr. Stupak. Have you discussed them with Mr. Brown?
Mr. Nanos. I have not personally, but I have been involved
in some of the issues. I can give you an example of one for
example.
Mr. Stupak. No.
Mr. Nanos. But the work--in other words, I have not talked
to him. But his reports have come to me.
Mr. Stupak. I guess what I am looking at is, if he wrote
his letter on October 22, 2004, has anyone gotten back with Mr.
Brown and said, hey, you might be mistaken on this weld point?
That was an issue that you brought up.
Mr. Nanos. We would--the weld point is a good one. Because
that one I know a lot about. He was not mistaken.
Mr. Stupak. The point I am trying to say, has anyone even
gotten back with Mr. Brown?
Mr. Nanos. That is good. I do not know. I have not
personally.
Mr. Stupak. See what I mean about the mix up in the dialog.
I wish someone would have sat down, because when we go into
closed session, we are going to ask you a little more specific
stuff in here. But you see, no one gets back with the guy. And
then there is back and forth with us. And now that is why we
need to work together on these things, because if he is
qualified, obviously, he has some concerns, and he still is not
satisfied, and no one has gotten back with him. So can you see
how the things gets sort of out of control?
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir. The only part I am short on, is since
I did not talk to him personally, and nobody reported to me
that they had talked to him personally, I cannot tell you the
degree to which he has been gotten back to. But I will get that
answer.
Mr. Stupak. Okay. He goes on and he says: The University of
California faces precarious times. Management's lack of
emphasis on nuclear quality assurances increases the risk of a
clear and present danger to employees and to public health.
Ineffectual management practices, an air of superiority,
complacency to normal nuclear industry practices/procedures
combined with serious cultural biases equate to an environment
fraught with potential for dangerous consequences similar to
the Challenger or Chernobyl disasters.
And, you know, like I say, I have been on this committee
for 10 years. And just looking at Los Alamos' track record, it
is--without further dialog between us, it is hard to say who is
correct here, Los Alamos or Mr. Brown.
Mr. Nanos. Well, let me make the following comment. I
think--I would probably have a discussion with him about the
issue of something akin to Challenger or Chernobyl. But, it is
clear from my observations at the laboratory, that we had to do
something about our safety and compliance culture. Because of
our record in Price Anderson violations, because of our record
in safety, and because the correlation--and what the security
brought to it, was that there was a behavorial aspect of people
not wanting to go along with the rules that we had to deal
with.
So the shutdown was necessary to do that. We are also
continuing--to follow the shutdown with something we call
operational efficiency, which is to take what we learned during
the shutdown and institutionalize it. And also, I have
introduced the Dupont STOP program, Safety, Training,
Observation Program, which is a behavioral-based safety program
because of our belief that we have to drive this--these kinds
of concerns into the culture.
But, if he says that there is work to be done at the
laboratory to improve the culture for safety and compliance, I
agree with him. That is why I said shut the laboratory down.
Mr. Stupak. It is that culture, I used the same word
earlier about the culture there, that we have these repeated
problems related to security, trustworthiness and safety that
we are very, very concerned about.
You indicate in your opening that you would get back to us.
I had asked for a detailed point-by-point accounting of Mr.
Brown's allegations. And we would really like someone to get
that to us and bring it back to this committee. Are you
committed to do that?
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir.
Mr. Stupak. As soon as you can?
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir.
Mr. Stupak. At the same time, why not stick one in the mail
to Mr. Brown, if that would be appropriate there, or if you
want the committee will? I just think that he needs to see that
there is a culture of change.
I was a little concerned, Mr. Burgess asked about the other
plant there, nuclear plant, similar size, I think Ambassador
Brooks said, which seems to run well, better than Los Alamos
obviously.
And Los Alamos has been a lab for a long, long time,
probably one of the first ones that we had. So I would think
the expertise in security and all of this would be at Los
Alamos, not at a relatively new lab in Texas.
So it is that culture I think that we are trying to break.
And it sounds like--I know you have only been there 2 years.
You are starting to get to it. I was surprised but pleased to
see that when you started your shutdown, there were 350
prestart issues that you identified, and then, once you got in
there, you saw about 3,000, I think it was, issues that have to
be addressed. So you have got a big job ahead of you.
Let me ask you this. When you do this standdown, does
anyone from the outside come in to assist, or is this just an
internal standdown, and these 3,000 things you have identified
internally? How does that work? Do you bring in outside
experts?
Mr. Nanos. What we did, first, and I have got a copy of it
here, our restart instructions, in great detail on what we want
people to look for. We covered everything in terms of safety,
security, personnel, leadership, everything.
Then we convened something we called a Restart Review
Board, which incorporated some outside consultants, my people,
people sitting on it from the NNSA site office. In other words,
the other thing I want to emphasize, that this was not the lab
and UC standing alone, standing up our laboratory, it was a
cooperative effort with NNSA. So we got all eyes. Then they
reviewed all of the documentation for restart for the entire
laboratory, for the two highest levels, level two and level
three.
And I reviewed all of the documentation on their work, and
personally approved the restart in every area. I saw that they
had done a very good job of bringing, in other words, of
striking a balance of risk across the laboratory. In other
words, they were very----
Mr. Stupak. You said they did a good job.
Mr. Nanos. The RRB, the Restart Review Board. They did an
extremely good job of assessing risk and striking a balance. In
other words, I was not taking extreme risks in one part of the
lab and no risk in another. It was very well done and well
documented across the laboratory.
Mr. Stupak. So if I understand your answer, in this
shutdown, you bring in people from NNSA?
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir.
Mr. Stupak. And then outside consultants?
Mr. Nanos. They were members of this review board. I had
some outside consultants that I had known in my previous life
that I had confidence in and were able to----
Mr. Stupak. As a result of the shutdown and bringing in
these consultants, let me ask, do you think that would be a
fair cost for the taxpayers to pay, or is that one that you
guys should eat that cost of the outside consultants and NNSA?
Mr. Nanos. It was--the outside consultant in particular is
one I had brought in to help with the formality of operations
in the laboratory before the shutdown. So what I did is I just
had him sit on this panel as part of his duties.
Mr. Stupak. What--what are the challenges you face now
specifically as the lab director? You have been there for 2
years. You have been through a shutdown. What are your
challenges to get it so we do not have you come back here in a
year or 2 years for another shutdown for some reason?
Mr. Nanos. Well, I think--it is hard for me. I am not
asking for any mercy or anything. But the--I think if you look
at the examples of similar turnarounds and culture changes in
industry in other areas, I remember the model I was looking to
when I was doing change in my last job in the Navy was the IBM
model, where it took them seven areas to reform their corporate
culture and organization and change the fundamental focus.
It is hard to know how long this is going to be. I estimate
that a change of this magnitude in an organization this size
could take maybe 5 to 7 years. So I am counting that I am about
2 years into at least a 5-year process. So we are hopefully
approaching the tipping point and coming down the back side of
the mountain. But it is--with the variety of operations and
having to drive a corporate focus, and not a--in other words,
the laboratory people used to joke that Los Alamos was 19
laboratories combined by a common janitorial service.
But now, I think the laboratory is working cooperatively as
an entire institution to work its problems. And I think we have
gotten to that point of unity and are now, as an organization,
as a cohesive organization, starting to work our way through
this. And it will take a number of years, I think, to get it
out to every part of the laboratory.
But I think the change, the pace of change has been very
aggressive. And I have to tell you, I am very pleased with
where we have come in a relatively short time during my tenure.
I am very proud of what the people have been able to
accomplish.
So I have confidence we are going to get there.
Unfortunately, I think the record of other organizations and
industries say that culture change of this magnitude is a long
process.
Mr. Stupak. One of the entities we deal with a little bit,
and we have dealt with in dealing with Los Alamos, is the firm
of Covington and Burling, if I said that right. Does the
University of California pay them, or is it part of the budget?
Mr. Nanos. I do not pay them.
Mr. Stupak. It does not come out of the lab budget?
Mr. Nanos. No, sir. I do not. I assume that that is the
University of California. I have no knowledge of that.
Mr. Stupak. Very good.
Mr. Nanos. They talk to me occasionally, but as far as I
know, I am not paying for them.
Mr. Whitfield. Dr. Burgess, you are recognized for 10
minutes.
Mr. Burgess. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Doctor, many of the
instances of security mismanagement at Los Alamos over the
years, including the recent incidents that we are talking about
this morning last year, occurred within one specific program,
the DX division. Can you explain why this division has had so
many ongoing security problems?
Mr. Nanos. Well, it is hard for me to go back before my
tenure. I can tell you, in the current situation, I made the
determination, once I found that something had happened, first
of all, I want to separate the security problems into two bins.
We had a number of security problems that I take
personally--personal responsibility for as management at the
laboratory, because, you know, when you have got somebody in
bad lighting conditions doing a destruction, trying to read the
small numbers off a barcode and transposes a number and gets it
wrong, makes a human error, I feel that management has failed
that individual, that we have given them a system to work with
that they cannot deal with.
What was unique about this case was that it involved
behaviors, people who knew the rules, who did not follow the
rules or who falsified documents and signed off improperly. And
I think the key point that we made in this particular incident,
as I went into it, compared to previous ones, is I said,
remember I put 19 people on administrative leave or
investigatory leave at the beginning of this.
And the statement I made was that, unless I find the answer
of who did what with this material, these 19 people will never
touch another piece of classified information at this
laboratory again. I will never take the risk until I find out
what was done and how it was done properly.
I think that would--and we did find people who actually did
things improperly. We terminated those people. And then we
actually took action. I think that that established clearly the
laboratory's standard of personal accountability.
And, frankly, I think where, the university, it has not
been as strong about personal accountability for classified
information and safety and compliance and the environment. And
we made that clear at this time.
So I cannot go back and talk about before my term and how
that was done. But I can tell you that I was dealing with those
two types of things. And I was trying to do what I needed to do
as the manager of the laboratory to protect people from simple
administrative errors while at the same time hold people that
were accountable for malfeasance, accountable for their
actions.
And I think we drew that line successfully in this last
incident, and hopefully that will drive the culture.
Mr. Burgess. Well, of course, the whole purpose of a bar
code is so that you will not transpose a digit.
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir.
Mr. Burgess. But I will accept that. I guess I am disturbed
about the comment, human error versus a behavioral problem. I
mean, a behavioral problem at that level of security clearance,
I mean, it seems to me it goes beyond just being put on
administrative leave or having the security clearance removed.
Was there ever any thought given to prosecuting the individuals
involved?
Mr. Nanos. We did exercise the full authority that we had
in that regard, and we, in fact, terminated the employees that
were involved, not just put them on leave. Once we found the
facts and the people who actually--in other words, we had a
graded approach. Basically people were held accountable for it
and disciplined for what they, in fact, did. And those who
operated falsely were terminated, and those who took shortcuts
with the administrative procedures, in other words, accepted a
bar code when they knew they shouldn't, were, in fact,
suspended without pay. So there was discipline and there was--
for each infraction based on the level of involvement.
Mr. Burgess. So you believe it was--that there wasn't
criminal intent when you say ``adverse behavior'' or
``unacceptable behavior.''
Mr. Nanos. Well, when two people say, hey, we're supposed
to do the inventory; let's not do the inventory, let's sign the
document and say we did it.
Mr. Burgess. I am new here, but that is bothersome to me.
We are talking about a big deal here, aren't we? Los Alamos.
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir; yes, sir.
Mr. Burgess. That is where they built the bomb.
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir. We, in fact, terminated those people.
Mr. Burgess. Mr. Chairman, I would just ask the question is
termination enough when you have someone whose behavior is that
aberrant in that type of facility?
Mr. Nanos. Well, I don't have--I don't have police powers.
The people who were--in other words, the FBI was there with us
doing the investigation. They are the ones that generally in
this case would take that to the attorneys.
Mr. Burgess. I will accept that. And I thank you for your
candor.
I just have to ask how in the world do you have a laser
injury of that magnitude in a laboratory?
Mr. Nanos. It was terrible, frankly, and the person who had
that laboratory and was operating with that student was
terminated because it was egregious. I had--I had docked the
pay, or I had adjusted--we had--this was in a division where
they had had previous safety difficulties in the previous year
because of other safety incidents. Both the associate director
and the division leader had had their pay adjusted downward to
send a clear message that I expected better performance. And in
this particular incident, I fired the individual who had
control of the laboratory. His immediate supervisor was put on
leave without pay. The division leader was removed from that
position. I didn't terminate him because I felt he was trying
to do the right thing, but he was ineffective. But because of
his lack of effectiveness, I removed him from this position.
And the associate director, who I felt did not spend the proper
amount of attention on operational matters, I removed.
Mr. Burgess. What has been the outcome of that injury? Has
that person lost his sight?
Mr. Nanos. That person has--has lost a large percentage--
basically it destroyed the center part of her retina, and she
has lost the center part of her vision and some of her depth
perception as a result of that. And that's a permanent injury.
Mr. Burgess. Yes, sir. As far as the--obviously the
laboratory bore the cost of the medical treatment?
Mr. Nanos. Yes. And we have continued to follow up with her
and her family.
Mr. Burgess. And presumably some type of compensatory
offer?
Mr. Nanos. I don't have the detail. I can get the--I don't
know the detail information. I just got a recent report on her
condition from my head physician who had just been up to visit
her and the family, but I don't know the final result of
compensation that she was given. I think we provided basically
all the--I believe we provided all the medical care, but I
don't want to get too far into that without getting the data
for you.
Mr. Burgess. Was the expense of the medical care and
whatever compensation was going to be offered, is that borne by
the university or by the taxpayer?
Mr. Nanos. That is costs under the contract, you know, for
the care that we provide in that case. Those services that we
provide under the contract we provide for all injuries. And we
had--by the way, that is another indicator that we had that
things were not going well. We had a fairly substantial number
of injuries last year that we had to deal with. But they are
treated like all the rest of the industrial injuries.
Mr. Burgess. I thank you for your candor.
I yield back my time, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Whitfield. Mr. Walden.
Mr. Walden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I assume you have workers' comp coverage.
Mr. Nanos. Yes, we have workers' comp.
Mr. Walden. Does this fall under that, then? Workplace
injury?
Mr. Nanos. I don't know--I think we responded immediately.
So I would have to go back. I don't want--as I said, I don't
have the data sheet in front of me, but I can get that for the
record.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T9905.033
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T9905.034
Mr. Walden. I don't envy your task.
You have how many employees.
Mr. Nanos. We have about a little over 8,000 University of
California employees and probably between 12,000 and 13,000
employees on the Hill.
Mr. Walden. Twenty-one thousand.
Mr. Nanos. I total of 12,500 to 13,000, including our
support contractors.
Mr. Walden. How many management staff out of that?
Mr. Nanos. Let's see.
Mr. Walden. Ballpark.
Mr. Nanos. I would say down to the division level it is
probably like a number like 60 or 70.
Mr. Walden. Managing 12,000 or 13,000?
Mr. Nanos. Yes, but we have a lower level of group leader
which is below that division level. So, actually part of the
issue that we are addressing is that we have a very--in some
areas a very broad span of control, which is probably part of
the issue that we're facing.
Mr. Walden. It is the balance between how much middle
management do you have and need and the costs of all of that.
Mr. Nanos. We tend to be on the low side, I believe.
Mr. Walden. I think that is what we are seeing perhaps as a
problem, in the sense that it strikes me on this issue of
accountability on the bar codes, mismatched numbers, or the
decision that they were just going to falsify the data--given
the importance of what they deal with, that there is no check
and balance. I spent 5 years on a community bank board, and a
teller making 14,000 a year moving money has got a check and
balance. Has to balance their till every night, and if you are
going in and out of the vault, there are certain checks and
balances.
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, if you look at
the business process, one of the immediate actions I took when
I took over the laboratory was to go down to the group level
and add administrative people that had been taken out--that
were the ones that were doing some of this administrative
checking. There had been no much burden put on at least at the
group level, the managers, that they were unable to manage the
science and manage the administrative part at the same time.
So we have, in fact--and you will see that a lot in my
testimony--a lot of what we are doing now is by going to
diskless computing, improving the classified network, and,
frankly, by shrinking the number of locations for classified
material now from hundreds to tens, we are in the process--we
are able--we have much more resources in terms of being able to
conduct inventories and do checks and balance.
Mr. Walden. You have less to inventory.
Mr. Nanos. Less to inventory, and fewer people doing it,
and much tighter control. In other words, we do transactional
inventories on the safe. You are the custodian responsible for
the safe. I come and draw my electronic media in the morning; I
bring it back by the end of the day. You know what was in the
safe, what was withdrawn, what was put back, and so you keep
track on a transactional basis and at periodic intervals do a
complete inventory.
Instead of having hundreds of locations, you now have 20
with a staff that is concentrated, that is professional, that
has a career path doing that.
Mr. Walden. And isn't that where people would take off from
lunch and leave it unattended and--or asleep or whatever? I
mean, wasn't that where that problem was in the process?
Mr. Nanos. That wasn't our lab. We didn't have guards, for
example, that were asleep. But what we did have, we did have
people who were custodians. In the old system, if you were a
scientist, you had your own safe with your own classified media
in it, and that was spread all over the laboratory, and there
was a collateral duty classified material custodian that would
come by every once in a while and inventory your safe to make
sure that everything was okay.
What we have done now, that has been done away with. You do
not keep your own classified material anymore. It is in the
library. When you come to work, you stop by the library, you
withdraw it if you need to use it that day. And if you do not
need to use it, it stays in the library, it is not distributed,
it is concentrated.
Mr. Walden. Is there--do they have to turn in their media
before they are allowed out the door?
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, in some areas you
will find people walking around with chains around their neck
with a big orange card on it. It's called the M-card, or the
moron card. It is to remind you that you have withdrawn
classified material, and until that is off, you can't go home.
We are taking very direct measures to make sure that people
are reminded of their responsibilities, and, frankly, if you
try to go home, and the custodian--the custodian can't go home
until it is all back, and if they see you heading for the door,
they will say, wait a minute. Somebody will go back that night
and look for the material.
Mr. Walden. Do you feel like you have the buy-in of the
rank and file, of those 12,000?
Mr. Nanos. I think that there has been a great deal of
consternation at the laboratory. There are people who have felt
that what we have gone through has not been necessary. It has
fallen to me to take the message, the collective message of you
all and others, to the laboratory. They have not been happy.
And some, I believe a minority in the laboratory, have not been
happy with that and have been very vocal.
Mr. Walden. What do they say?
Mr. Nanos. There are people who think that the safety was
doing just find, and we didn't need have a shut-down for
safety, and that, in fact, you know, that this is a burden on
science, and that our science will suffer. And I don't believe
that, and I think the majority of the workers and the
scientists at Los Alamos don't believe that.
But--and I think that moralewise we took the laboratory
down to a very low level in terms of employee morale. And I
think the combination of the shut-down and the suspension of
operations, and the one-two punch of that and the contract
competition has caused a great deal of personal unease on the
part of many, many employees.
Mr. Walden. So is that resulting in them buying into the
improved security?
Mr. Nanos. I think that the pressure that the laboratory
has been under with the impending competition and the issues
associated with first business and now safety and security has
caused the kind of disquiet that has allowed me to implement a
lot of change, probably more rapidly than would otherwise be
the case.
Mr. Walden. During the shut-down were you able to identify
kind of the groups or individuals who just seem really
reluctant to adopt these increased safety and security
improvements?
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, as part of the
restart process, I asked every supervisor to interview their
employees at the next level down and to make judgments about
the capability of the employee, the level of training, and
their willingness to supervise or--if they were supervisors--or
to conduct operations in that way. And if it looked like there
was a disconnect, in many cases we got employees additional
training; in some cases we actually moved employees, changed
them to more suitable roles if it appeared that they were not
able to conduct business in the way that it needed to be done.
Mr. Walden. Of the people that you dismissed, have you kept
track of what happened to them? Do they reappear somewhere in
the government?
Mr. Nanos. I have not personally tracked them. There were a
mix. There were some very high-level employees and some very
low-level employees. I do not know--I don't personally know
where they have reappeared. They certainly are not working on
our staff.
Mr. Walden. Okay. I don't believe I have any more
questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, sir.
Mr. Whitfield. Thank you Mr. Walden.
That concludes the testimony of Dr. Nanos. We appreciate--
--
Mr. Stupak. Could I interrupt for a minute? Could I ask a
question or two, if I may? I finished my statement by saying
that you should at least get ahold of Mr. Brown and mail him a
copy, but the more I sit here and listen to the testimony here
today, I would hope that you would call him in and sit down or
find a half-hour or an hour to go through this. You are telling
us that you want to make the lab safe. Mr. Brown in his paper
is saying he wants to make the lab safe. I think the goal is
the same. I hope you guys can work together and work it out.
You said you had a dispute or two with one of the things he
said, but I think it would be in everyone's best interest.
There is no doubt in our minds you are trying to do the best
you can. So with Mr. Brown. And I would hope you would do that.
The other thing that bothers me a little bit, Mr. Brown is
now sort of considered a whistleblower, so he comes under the
Government Accountability Project protections of
whistleblowers. Why would Mr. Brown have to turn into a
whistleblower if he is your auditor and he is trying to bring
out deficiencies? It seems to me you would not want him to go
under whistleblower, but rather work with you to help you out.
Mr. Nanos. Sir, I don't consider him a whistleblower. He
has selected himself as a whistleblower. We don't consider them
a whistleblower. He is still employed and still doing audits.
We have taken what he said seriously. We haven't retaliated
against him in any way, and he is still a valued employee.
So he is being cast--I am puzzled by why he is being cast
in this position of being a whistleblower. Usually when you are
a whistleblower, you are a whistleblower because you are either
being retaliated against, or people are not taking you
seriously. And I don't think that is true--either of those
things are true in this case.
Mr. Stupak. The Brown letter, the letter at least is on the
GAP Web site, the Government Accountability Project. That is
why I called him a whistleblower. Why would his letter be on an
act that protects whistleblowers if he is not a whistleblower?
That is why I used the word.
Mr. Nanos. Maybe he had a fear of that eventually being the
case. But it is certainly--there is no action on our part that
I know of. One of the things I did when I took over at the
laboratory, if you remember, 2 years ago, there were lots of
claims of retribution. So I have been screening all these
things that have come up, anonymous or otherwise, that indicate
there is something wrong or there is retribution going on, and
I run down and investigate every last one of those. So we are
making sure that the communications are as open as possible in
the laboratory.
Mr. Stupak. I believe in your previous testimony you
indicated you have an open-door policy if someone wants to go
in, a whistleblower or whatever, who has some concerns.
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir.
Mr. Stupak. So I take it from your testimony you will sit
down with Mr. Brown?
Mr. Nanos. Yes, sir.
Mr. Whitfield. Dr. Nanos, thank you.
Mr. Whitfield. At this time we will have our third panel,
which consists of one witness, who is Ms. Danielle Brian, who
is Executive Director with the Project on Government Oversight.
Ms. Brian, we welcome you and look forward to your
testimony. As you know, it is the custom of the oversight
investigation subcommittee that you are able to have an
attorney if you want one; if you don't, if you will stand, I
would like to swear you in at this time.
Ms. Brian. Yes, sir.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. Whitfield. Thank you, Ms. Brian. You are now sworn in,
and if you would give us your opening statement.
TESTIMONY OF DANIELLE BRIAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ON NUCLEAR
SECURITY, THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT
Ms. Brian. Thank you very much for having me to testify,
Mr. Chairman. Last year we testified that we were cautiously
optimistic that then-Secretary Abraham's initiatives would be
implemented. As it turns out, our caution was well placed. The
major problem is that the former Secretary failed to establish
timely deadlines for their implementation, and, as a result,
many of these initiatives have now stalled.
To get back on track, we believe Secretary Bodman needs to
set strict deadlines and needs to assign trusted staff to
constantly follow up on their progress. Security experts'
greatest fear is very distinct. A terrorist could successfully
reach its target at one of these facilities and, within an
extraordinarily short timeframe, use the highly enriched
uranium to create an improvised nuclear bomb onsite, known as
an improvised nuclear device, or an IND. It only takes a
critical mass of HEU, which is about 100 pounds, to create an
IND. To put this in perspective, one site alone stores about
400 metric tons of HEU.
Why should we care about this? According to the Department
of Homeland Security, this is exactly what worries them. The
detonation of a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb would destroy
everything within half a mile and contaminate 3,000 square
miles of land. The nuclear weapons complex creates these
homeland security vulnerabilities right here at home.
By far the most successful Abraham initiative was the
reexamination of the Design Basis Threat. Under the new DBT,
security forces will be required to repel more than three times
the number of attackers than they were required to protect
against prior to 9/11. But they will not be fully implemented
until 2008, which I want to remind you is 7 years after 9/11.
I would just focus comments on the initiatives that we
believe require the committee's immediate intervention for the
sake of brevity. With regards to TA 18. As we know, TA 18 is
scheduled to be deinventoried of weapons-grade nuclear material
by the end of September 2005. But currently, LANL is actually
pushing to further activities at TA 18. And I understand
Ambassador Brooks didn't have the opportunity to get briefed
yet from the lab because he was in England, but these
additional experiments are going to postpone the move for at
least another 6 months. So POGO has been told that despite
promises from the lab that they will meet the schedule, a
choice is going to have to be made. Either these experiments
will continue and they will not meet the deadline even by the
end of the year, or they will have to pause in conducting these
experiments and be able to move the materials to the Nevada
test site on schedule.
With regard to the initiative to review the necessity of
retaining Lawrence Livermore special nuclear materials, this
has really stalled completely. I think I know why. Just 1 month
prior to Secretary Abraham's speech, NNSA Director Brooks
testified before another House committee that he opposed
suggestions of deinventorying Livermore; and, in fact, the NNSA
has proposed doubling Livermore's plutonium.
I understand from the testimony this morning that this
particular initiative was combined with a larger initiative of
looking in general at consolidation in the complex. But
Secretary Abraham, in his speech, singled out Livermore as
worthy of particular notice, and I think it was with very good
reason. Roughly 7 million people live within a 50-mile radius
of the Livermore lab. Many residential homes now exist across
the street from the lab's fence line. And new townhouses with
minivineyards are being built along the edge of the fence line.
These homes sit only 800 yards from the superblock which houses
the lab's plutonium.
If I could direct the Congressmen to the photograph, the
first photograph at the end of my testimony, which is from
Livermore's Web site, you will see that Livermore lab is
actually a mile across, and so you get a sense then of the
distance. These are all houses now.
Many of you live in areas which are getting overdeveloped.
I live in Loudoun County, which is the fastest-growing area.
This is the kind of thing that happens. But this is really
unique in the complex, what is happening at Livermore, and
these are $600,000 houses within 800 yards of the plutonium. So
we are recommending that a particular focus be placed on
Livermore and that special nuclear materials be removed from
there.
With regards to the highly enriched uranium materials
facility at Y-12, the Department is currently breaking ground
for an above-ground building, as we heard earlier, to store Y-
12's hundreds of tons of HEU. But the Department of Energy's
inspector general has criticized the design and cost of this
new building, concluding it will cost more and be less secure
than the original plan for the bermed, partially underground
facility.
I direct you to my the other two photos that I have
provided to the Congressmen. The first photo is of the Nevada
test site's device assembly facility. This is a bermed design
where you see that there is only one side that has to be
protected; everything else is underground. In comparison, the
current design for the facility at Y-12 has all these sides.
You have the roof and the four sides. And actually, with the
design, there is more than four sides.
Now, it was ultimately Sandia's approval of this design
that persuaded the Department of Energy headquarters to give
the green light for this designed above-ground building, but
POGO has learned that Sandia never compared this design to an
underground design. And I understand from the testimony to the
Congresswoman from Tennessee, who was asking the questions,
there is no reason for a 2-year delay if there is a changed
decision that maybe it should be underground. The government
already has the design.
Originally there was already a design for an underground
facility at Y-12. It already exists. So we would recommend the
committee suggest to DOE that they stop, because they have
actually broken ground for the above-ground facility, and at
least have Sandia compare that design to the security of an
underground facility.
Former Secretary Abraham also proposed the down-blending of
100 additional metric tons of Y-12 surplus HEU. We believe this
move is essential so that these materials no longer create an
unnecessary homeland security vulnerability, and will, very
importantly, significantly help in reducing the enormous costs
associated with protecting these materials at the new Design
Basis Threat.
It appears, though, that DOE does not have the stomach to
live up to its promises. The U.S. Has only currently down-
blended 34 of the 174 metric tons that have already been
declared excess. The remaining down-blending is not scheduled
for completion until 2016 or beyond. So we believe that DOE
should both dramatically speed up the current down-blending
schedule and affirm former Secretary Abraham's initiative of
increasing the amount of HEU declared excess by another 100
metric tons.
With regard to Secretary Abraham's encouragement of
consolidating nuclear materials, I understand that this study
is just beginning to get under way 9 months after the
initiative was assigned to NNSA. My organization, POGO, is in
its final stages of preparing a report with recommendations of
how to shrink the numbers of facilities across the country that
house special nuclear materials from 13 sites to 7 at a cost
savings of nearly $3 billion over 3 years.
In conclusion, I would be remiss if I did not report to the
committee that while not a part of former Secretary Abraham's
initiatives, the treatment of whistleblowers throughout the
complex remains abysmal, and I have to particularly make the
point, given Dr. Nanos' comments, that retaliation really
remains the norm and not the exception.
In addition to Dr. Brown, another case in point is that of
Tommy Hook and Chuck Montano, who have both worked at Los
Alamos for decades. After the committee's three hearings on
financial fraud at Los Alamos, the University of California was
telling the public that all of those issues were resolved,
while at the same time retaliating against these two men who
knew otherwise.
Hook and Montano were responsible for providing audit
support for UC and uncovering ongoing irregularities and
outright misconduct amounting to millions of taxpayer dollars.
Their audit reports were withheld from the Department of
Energy. Their treatment? Their work was taken away from them,
they were given no work for 9 months, and are now being handed
menial assignments. Even the head of the Los Alamos site office
tried to intervene on behalf of Tommy Hook, only to be rebuffed
by an arrogant University of California.
Under the current system, DOE contractors have no incentive
to treat whistleblowers well, as all their legal fees are
reimbursed by the Federal Government.
In conclusion, the Department of Energy does not need new
offices, does not need new commissions, does not need new
studies. The DOE needs to follow through on its existing
commitments. I believe the committee should remain apprised of
SSA Director Podonsky's important ongoing work, but even with
the strongest leadership from the Secretary's office, the only
way these initiatives will be enacted is with your continued
vigilance. DOE's history has shown that without pressure from
Congress, and in particular this subcommittee, these
initiatives will fail.
And I would just like to draw your attention to one more
thing. One of my staff people was doing research and found a
front page New York Times story from 1984 about a hearing in
this subcommittee. And if you could indulge me, the first two
sentences of this article were: ``the government has put into
effect a sweeping new program to improve the security of
Federal facilities where nuclear warheads are designed and
made. The program has come about because of a new perception of
the threat of terrorism and because congressional
investigations have disclosed serious lapses of nuclear
security.''
So I don't think your work is going to end any time soon.
[The prepared statement of Danielle Brian follows:]
Prepared Statement of Danielle Brian, Executive Director, Project On
Government Oversight
Thank you for asking me to testify today. The Project On Government
Oversight (POGO) is an independent government watchdog group. We have
been investigating and working to improve security at the Department of
Energy's Nuclear Weapons Complex for over five years.
In May 2004, then-Secretary Abraham announced some bold initiatives
for improving the security of the entire nuclear weapons complex. Last
year we testified that former Secretary Abraham's initiatives were an
important step toward addressing the key weaknesses in security in the
nuclear weapons complex, and we were cautiously optimistic that they
would be implemented. As it turns out, our caution was well placed. The
major problem with the initiatives: The former Secretary failed to
establish timely deadlines for their implementation and, as a result,
many of these initiatives have now stalled. To get back on track, DOE
Secretary Samuel Bodman has several issues he needs to address. First,
he needs to set strict deadlines and, because officials throughout the
nuclear weapons complex have strongly resisted any change, he needs to
assign trusted staff to constantly follow up on the progress.
Adding to the current bureaucratic inertia is the belief by those
inside the complex that they can just wait out any new directives until
the current Secretary has moved on, and the status quo can be
maintained. The revolving door between the Department of Energy and the
privately-run weapons labs creates a lack of incentive to change. There
is an insular environment in which people coming into the DOE, and
particularly the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), bring
with them their biases in favor of the status quo: No one likes to
criticize their own actions.
An array of concerns arises when it comes to securing America's
nuclear material. But security experts' greatest fear is very distinct:
a terrorist group successfully reaches its target at one of the
facilities, and within an extraordinarily short time, uses the highly-
enriched uranium (HEU) to create an improvised nuclear bomb on site
(known as an Improvised Nuclear Device, or IND). It only takes a
critical mass of HEU (about one hundred pounds) to create an IND. To
put this in perspective, one site alone stores about 400 metric tons of
HEU. According to Princeton University's Frank von Hippel, ``a 100-
pound mass of uranium dropped on a second 100-pound mass, from a height
of about 6 feet, could produce a blast of 5 to10 kilotons.''
<SUP>1</SUP> The blast from the Hiroshima atomic bomb was about 12
kilotons, killing over 200,000 people.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Wald, Matthew L. ``Suicidal Nuclear Threat Is Seen at Weapon's
Plants,'' New York Times, January 22, 2002.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why should we care about this? According to the Department of
Homeland Security, this is exactly what worries them--the detonation of
a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb would destroy everything within half a mile
and contaminate 3,000 square miles of land. The nuclear weapons complex
creates these homeland security vulnerabilities right here at home.
By far, the most successful Abraham initiative was the re-
examination of the Design Basis Threat (DBT), or security standards.
Under the new DBT, security forces will be required to repel more than
three times the number of attackers than they were required to protect
against prior to 9/11. Furthermore, it will be assumed that adversaries
will be using far more lethal weapons and much larger truck bombs than
had previously been considered. Yet the new standards will not be fully
implemented until 2008--seven years after 9/11.
While there were very significant improvements to the Design Basis
Threat, the follow-through on the other initiatives, for the most part,
is tepid at best. For the sake of brevity, the rest of my testimony
will only focus on what we consider the most urgent initiatives that
need your immediate intervention.
Some key weapons facilities, including Los Alamos' TA-18 and
Lawrence Livermore National Lab, will not be able to protect against
the new threat level no matter how much money is spent. Removing all
Special Nuclear Materials from those facilities eliminates security
vulnerabilities at those facilities while dramatically decreasing
security costs.
los alamos national lab's (lanl) ta-18
Widely recognized as the most vulnerable site in the nuclear
weapons complex, TA-18 is scheduled to be de-inventoried of weapons-
grade nuclear materials by the end of September 2005. It is worth
noting that in 2000 then-Secretary Bill Richardson had ordered the
facility to be de-inventoried by the end of 2004, but somehow Los
Alamos was able to ignore him. Currently, LANL is pushing to continue
activities at TA-18, further postponing the move at least six months.
POGO has been told that despite promises from the Lab that they will
meet the schedule--this can not happen as long as these activities
continue to be performed there. In addition, much of the material will
be stored at the Los Alamos' Technical Area 55 for an unknown period of
time. Security costs are beginning to mount, as the delays continue.
POGO recommends that NNSA honor the former Secretary's initiative,
and halt these experiments so that the material can be moved to the
Device Assembly Facility at the Nevada Test Site on schedule.
lawrence livermore national lab
Another of former Secretary Abraham's May 2004 initiatives was to
review the necessity of maintaining Livermore's Special Nuclear
Materials. This initiative has stalled completely. I think I know why.
Just one month prior to Abraham's speech, NNSA Director Linton Brooks
testified before the House Government Reform Committee that he opposed
suggestions of de-inventorying Livermore, and in fact, the NNSA has
proposed doubling Livermore's plutonium to 1,500 kilograms.
Roughly seven million people live within a 50 mile radius of the
Livermore Lab. Many residential homes now exist across the street from
the Lab's fence line, and new townhouses with mini-vineyards are being
built along the edge of the fence line. These homes sit only 800 yards
from the Superblock, which houses the Lab's plutonium.
Surprisingly, the protective forces at Livermore are issued less
lethal weapons than protective forces at other sites that store Special
Nuclear Material.
POGO recommends removing all weapons-grade plutonium and highly-
enriched uranium from Livermore. If Livermore continues to need some
amount of this material for its mission, the required material should
be stored at the Device Assembly Facility in Nevada, only an hour's
plane ride away. Livermore scientists who need to work with the
material can travel there to conduct research, something they did for
years during the nuclear testing program.
highly-enriched uranium materials facility (heumf) at y-12
Until four years ago, while Lockheed Martin still managed Y-12 near
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, there were plans to build an underground or
bermed storage facility. Virtually all modern storage facilities are
underground, including the Device Assembly Facility (DAF) and KUMSEC at
Kirtland Air Force Base. An underground facility would be much harder
to penetrate and would serve as a greater deterrent to terrorists. U.S.
Special Operations Command personnel have told POGO that an above-
ground facility is a substantially more vulnerable design and that the
underground option is the only credible one. Yet the current
contractor, BWXT, changed the plan to build an underground or bermed
facility to that of an above-ground facility.
The Department is currently breaking ground for the above-ground
building known as the Highly-Enriched Uranium Materials Facility
(HEUMF) to store the plant's hundreds of tons of HEU. The DOE Inspector
General has criticized the design and cost of this new building,
concluding that it will cost more and be less secure than the original
plan for a bermed (partially underground) facility.
In 2004, Sandia National Lab was asked by NNSA to evaluate the
HEUMF plans. It was ultimately Sandia's approval of this design that
persuaded DOE Headquarters to give the green light for the above-ground
building. POGO has learned, however, that the Sandia study never made a
comparison of the HEUMF design to an underground or bermed design,
explaining in the small print they did not want to have to consider an
entire redesign for the building. Ironically, it was an earlier Sandia
study that had recommended using existing designs from two other
government-owned underground facilities to solve the Y-12 storage
problem.
There are also plans to build a second building identical to the
HEUMF to house the manufacturing of weapons parts from HEU. It is a
poor security practice to create two targets, and inefficient at best
to have two separate buildings between which the materials must be
transported regularly, creating further risk as well as dramatically
increasing security costs.
DOE should immediate stop work on the above-ground HEUMF storage
facility. NNSA should quickly move to construct an underground or
bermed facility to store both the non-surplus HEU as well as the new
modern manufacturing facility. This would result in only one double
fence line, known as a Perimeter Intrusion Detection Assessment System
(PIDAS), for both operations, as well as provide substantially better
security against terrorist attack. A modified DAF design could
accommodate both functions.
downblend additional highly-enriched uranium
In his May 2004 speech, then-Secretary Abraham proposed the
downblending of 100 additional metric tons (beyond the surplus 174
metric tons) of Y-12's surplus highly-enriched uranium. The disposal of
excess HEU is essential so that these materials no longer create an
unnecessary homeland security vulnerability. In addition, downblending
the HEU will significantly help in reducing the enormous costs
associated with protecting these materials.
However, according to DOE officials, the initial program review of
HEU stockpiles across the complex initiated by former Secretary Abraham
was stymied by complaints from the Office of Naval Reactors, a nearly-
autonomous arm of the DOE, claiming they may need it some day for their
reactors. The long-held territorialism by Naval Reactors dates back to
its origins under Admiral Hyman Rickover, and presents a formidable
bureaucratic hurdle to the downblending of HEU. Currently Y-12 alone
stores over 400 metric tons of HEU.
DOE does not seem to have the stomach to live up to its promises.
The United States has only downblended 34 of the 174 metric tons
already declared excess. The remaining downblending it is not scheduled
for completion until 2016 or beyond.
POGO recommends dramatically speeding up the current downblending
schedule, and affirming former Secretary Abraham's initiative of
increasing the amount of HEU declared excess by another 100 metric
tons.
review complex for consolidation opportunities
Former Secretary Abraham also encouraged consolidating nuclear
materials: ``Ultimately, I believe we need to both reduce the number of
sites with Special Nuclear Material to the absolute minimum, consistent
with carrying out our missions, and to consolidate the material in each
of those sites to better safeguard that material.'' He asked NNSA
Director Brooks to head up a study of consolidation options. I
understand that this study is just beginning to get underway--nine
months after the initiative was assigned to NNSA. POGO decided not to
wait for them. We are in the final stages of preparing a report with
recommendations of shrinking the number of facilities across the
country that house Special Nuclear Materials from thirteen sites to
seven, at a cost savings of nearly $3 billion over three years.
conclusion
I would be remiss if I did not report to the Committee that, while
not a part of former Secretary Abraham's initiatives, the treatment of
whistleblowers throughout the complex remains abysmal. Retaliation
remains the norm, not the exception, as can be seen in the case of
Tommy Hook and Chuck Montano, who have both worked at Los Alamos for
decades. After the Committee's three hearings on financial fraud at Los
Alamos, the University of California was telling the public that all
was resolved, while at the same time retaliating against these two men
who knew otherwise. Hook and Montano were responsible for providing
audit support for UC and uncovered ongoing irregularities and outright
misconduct amounting to millions of taxpayer dollars. Their audit
reports were withheld from DOE. Their treatment? Their work was taken
away from them, they were given no work for nine months, and now they
are only being handed menial assignments. Even the head of the Los
Alamos Site Office tried to intervene on Tommy Hook's behalf, only to
be rebuffed by an arrogant University of California. Under the current
system, DOE contractors have NO incentive to treat whistleblowers
well--as all their legal fees are reimbursed by the federal government.
The Department of Energy does not need new offices such as the
NNSA's new Office of Performance Assurance, new commissions, or new
studies. The DOE needs to follow through on its existing commitments.
Safety and Security Performance Assurance Director Glenn Podonsky is
keeping tabs on the progress of these initiatives, and is noting where
there is no progress at all. His office's Site Assistance Visits are
providing new insights into important consolidation opportunities. The
Committee should remain apprised of this ongoing work. But even with
the strongest leadership from the Secretary's office, the only way
these initiatives will be enacted is with your continued vigilance.
DOE's history has shown that without pressure from Congress and
specifically from this subcommittee, these initiatives will likely
fail.
Mr. Whitfield. Well, thank you, Ms. Brian, for reminding us
of that. Would you please explain to me the Project on
Government Oversight? How old is the Project on Government
Oversight, and how is it funded and so forth?
Ms. Brian. We were created in 1981. At the time we were
actually the Project on Military Procurement, working with
people inside the Pentagon who were concerned about wasted
money as well as weapons that were not working adequately.
We expanded our focus and changed our name in 1990 to the
Project of Government Oversight. We work with whistleblowers
and other people inside the system who work with us on an
unclassified basis to get us information that needs to get out
to improve the way the Federal Government operates.
We take no money from the government, no money from
corporations, and no money from unions.
Mr. Whitfield. And you have an expertise in nuclear
security, I take it?
Ms. Brian. No. Actually, I am a good government person who,
at this point, has been working on this issue for 5 years, so I
feel I have developed it over time.
Mr. Whitfield. Absolutely. Now, in your testimony you made
a reference to Mr. Brown. Do you feel like Mr. Brown was
retaliated against by the University of California?
Ms. Brian. I know my colleagues at the Government
Accountability Project, who are working on his case, very
strongly feel that way. I must say I am not as familiar with
the details of his case.
Mr. Whitfield. You also made the comment in here that there
is an insular environment in which people coming into the DOE
and particularly the NNSA bring with them their biases in favor
of the status quo. Now, why do you make a statement like that?
Ms. Brian. Well, if you look at the people who will leave
the NNSA, you see them showing up at the lab; and then you see
the people leaving the labs and showing up at NNSA. It is not
unique, of course. It happens around the government. But I have
really never seen it as regularly as I have seen it with this
particular universe.
Mr. Whitfield. You made the comment also that it is the
normal practice that the government will pay legal fees for the
contractor in the event of a whistleblower lawsuit; is that
correct?
Ms. Brian. It is in the case of the Department of Energy
contractors. That is not the case across the government. It is
unique to the Department of Energy. And there have been some
legislative initiatives to change that, which I would encourage
further consideration and passage. It just creates a terrible
incentive.
Mr. Whitfield. Right. It is my understanding that in the
energy bill, which this committee will be taking up soon, that
we are going to try to change that.
Ms. Brian. I think that would just really change the
dynamics for whistleblowers.
Mr. Whitfield. Right.
Well, I genuinely appreciate your being with us this
morning, and we certainly have read your testimony.
At this time I will recognize Mr. Stupak for any questions
he might have.
Ms. Brian. Thank you.
Mr. Stupak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you for testifying.
Have you seen Mr. Brown's paper, the 22 pages?
Ms. Brian. I have not, I'm sorry.
Mr. Stupak. Do you know him at all, from his work at the
labs?
Ms. Brian. I do know we had brief conversation with him. He
was already working with the Government Accountability Project,
and I felt he was in good hands.
All of our organizations are short-staffed. I know he has
good people working with him, and we have other people we need
to help.
Mr. Stupak. I understand. I have asked the other witnesses,
and it is fair to ask you, what do you feel are the most
important issues that we really need to address right now? You
mentioned TA 18, and that was supposed to be done in 2004, now
in 2008, but is that the most pressing thing you see?
Ms. Brian. Clearly that was the site we had focused most
attention on over the past few years. I think that we are
coming to closure on that one. It has taken, as I think someone
mentioned, perhaps it was you--it was actually Secretary
Abraham that began this--I'm sorry, Secretary Richardson,
trying to get that place closed.
I think, honestly, the most important thing now is for
there to be two things. One is the consolidation review. There
needs to really be consideration of why there are still 13
sites. Even assuming TA 18 closing, and Sandia, and far too
long, in our opinion, from closing, you still have a number of
sites out there that should not continue to house these nuclear
materials. So shrinking the complex will help to address the
extraordinary cost that is being caused by the increase in the
Design Basis Threat.
The other part of that that I think is critical is really a
move to down-blend the HEU. It is stalled, that initiative,
again, and that will help to reduce the cost to store this.
Mr. Stupak. From your testimony, I get the impression that
whether it is Secretary Richardson or Abraham, they both had
some good suggestions, but those suggestions went out to the
labs and just sort of never went anywhere. Is that a fair way
of saying it?
Ms. Brian. And part of that is what you asked, actually the
other Congressman asked earlier, which is this revolving door,
because you have the people at headquarters who are all coming
from the labs who don't want this change. Every lab wants to
keep all the materials there. Livermore does not want to give
up their materials.
Mr. Stupak. Sure.
Ms. Brian. So unless you have some new ideas and people who
aren't beholden to the old system, that is why we are going to
keep seeing this push back.
Mr. Stupak. You said this Congress, this committee, this
subcommittee in particular, should keep on this to make sure
that reforms take place, whether it is consolidation or TA 18.
But more than this committee, doesn't that really lie with the
Department of Energy? Isn't it their responsibility?
Ms. Brian. Of course it's their responsibility to provide
the leadership. As you see, however, Secretary Abraham laid
out, this is what I want to have done. I have learned over time
that a secretary--it seems extraordinary to say this, but a
secretary of a department doesn't necessarily have the power to
make his department do what they do not want to do, and they
typically have a shorter time in office than Members of
Congress. So I think the bureaucracies just wait out the
political appointees.
Mr. Stupak. We feel that way, too, at times, believe me.
TA 18. Do you believe that that move could be expedited
before 2008? Do you think that could be done by the end of
2006, at the most?
Ms. Brian. Well, the schedule is actually currently for the
end of fiscal year 2005, and my understanding----
Mr. Stupak. They are just moving to another building.
Ms. Brian. To TA 55; correct.
Mr. Stupak. Then they are to go to Nevada with it. And they
are shipping things, and you have to handle it. I would think
if you are shipping from TA 18 to building number 55, and then
to Nevada, you are shipping it, packaging it and shipping it
twice, so you could really--I'm just trying to figure out this
delay.
As I said earlier in my statements, it has been 10 years
when we talk about TA 18. I have been on this committee 10
years.
Ms. Brian. Exactly. I am worried about the plans to keep it
at building 55 because its feels like it is Los Alamos' efforts
to keep it onsite and then hope people will forget about TA 18
and the plans to move it, as tends to happen, and then they
will be able to maintain it there.
I still don't understand why all the facilities feel almost
an emotional attachment to keeping the materials; that they
just can't say, let's go, let's move it somewhere where it is
more secure.
Mr. Stupak. Thank you. I have no further questions. Mr.
Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Whitfield. Dr. Burgess.
Mr. Burgess. I will pass on the questions, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Whitfield. Mr. Walden.
Mr. Walden. I yield, Mr. Chairman, on the questions.
Mr. Whitfield. Well, I'm shocked, no more questions.
Ms. Brian, thank you so much for your testimony and for
taking the time to be with us. As I stated earlier, we are
going to go in a recess now and reconvene in room 2218 for a
closed session.
It is now 1 o'clock, so I think we will reconvene in room
2218 at 1:15. That will give people about 9 or 10 minutes. With
that, we stand in recess.
[Whereupon, at 1:05 p.m., the subcommittee recessed to
proceed in closed session.]
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