Memo says lab missing $1.3 million in materials
SANTA FE (AP) – A memo released by whistleblowers at Los Alamos National Laboratory says nearly $1.3 million worth of computers, phones and other property was unaccounted for in the budget year 2001. Pete Stockton, senior investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group that received the memo, said missing computers pose “one hell of a potential security problem.”
“There’s no way they can assure us those computers didn’t have classified information on them,” said Stockton, who was a special assistant to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson – now New Mexico’s governor-elect – in the Clinton administration.
The inventory of missing items also included two printers whose custodian was listed as Wen Lee. There was no immediate confirmation as to whether that person was Wen Ho Lee, a former scientist who was fired and accused of lab security violations in downloading nuclear codes.
No other employee by that name appears on a lab telephone list.
Lab spokeswoman Linn Tytler did not respond on Wednesday to repeated requests for comment on the Lee notation and the memo overall.
“I haven’t heard anything from the lab about that, and I’m sure if they thought he had two of their printers, I would have heard from them,” said John Cline, one of Wen Ho Lee’s lawyers.
Lee was charged with 59 counts of mishandling data and spent nine months in solitary confinement before pleading guilty in September 2000 to a single count of using an unsecured computer to download a defense document. A federal judge freed him with an apology.
The memo from the nuclear weapons laboratory’s chief financial officer, dated April 10 of this year, was distributed anonymously. Stockton said he believed it was from the same lab employees who released another memo earlier.
The whistleblowers claim that lab leaders have been covering up criminal activity including credit card, purchasing and voucher fraud. The Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General was at the lab this week investigating allegations of wrongdoing.
The Albuquerque Journal reported Sunday that internal lab documents indicated nearly $3 million worth of lab-owned items disappeared or were reported missing between 1999 and 2001. The newspaper cited a March report from the lab’s Office of Security Inquiries.
The April 10 memo from Thomas M. Palmieri, the lab’s chief financial officer, cited “disturbing negative trends regarding Laboratory management of Government property.”
It said missing property from the budget year 2001 inventory totaled $723,000 – nearly triple that of the previous year – and lost or stolen property totaled $533,000.
“We are still trying to account for these items,” the memo said.
“Neither the Lab or DOE, can accept $1.3M in unaccounted property. We must do a better job protecting and accounting for the Government property that we manage for DOE,” Palmieri wrote.
The memo said corrective action plans were to be developed.
“Our intent is that property management at this institution be a non-issue a year from now,” the memo said.
Inventories attached to the two memos listed missing property including computers, cellular telephones, cameras and copiers, as well as more technical equipment.
Steve Aftergood, who coordinates the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists said any information left on those computers would be so specialized that it would be “useless or even incomprehensible” to the average user.
But it’s a different matter if the computers fell into the hands of foreign intelligence personnel, Aftergood said.
If nothing else, Aftergood said, the situation “illustrates a serious flaw in the security procedures at the lab – and if this particular incident did not pose a threat, it suggests that a future incident could well do so, unless the defects are corrected.”