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Top U.S. Energy Department Security Official Questions Basis for Nuclear Site Protection Level By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — The security manager for five U.S. Energy Department sites housing weapon-grade nuclear material yesterday questioned the hypothetical threat used to determine the level and nature of security needed at the facilities (see GSN, Jan. 20). The agency’s design-basis threat — a classified security guideline that was made more stringent in October 2004 for the second time since the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks — may not be appropriate to the actual threat environment, Energy, Science and Environment Security Manager Robert Walsh said at a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing. “I’m not 100 percent certain at this time that the fundamental intelligence that supports … the design-basis threat … supports the level that we currently have as what I consider to be the most representative threat,” Walsh told the Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations. Energy’s Office of the Undersecretary for Energy, Science and Environment oversees five sites with weapon-grade nuclear materials: the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory-West in Idaho and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The National Nuclear Security Administration manages the department’s six other sites housing special nuclear materials. The Government Accountability Office said yesterday in a report on security at the Energy, Science and Environment sites that the design-basis threat is “the key component of DOE’s approach to security.” “The DBT has been traditionally based on a classified, multiagency intelligence-community assessment of potential terrorist threats known as the postulated threat. The threat from terrorist groups is generally the most demanding threat contained in the DBT,” the report says. Questioned by subcommittee Chairman Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) about the new design-basis threat, Walsh would not say whether actual threats that face the five Energy, Science and Environment facilities demand a higher or lower level of security than that called for by the current postulated threat. A “more complete” review of intelligence is needed, Walsh said. The security manager’s comments follow scattered calls for more attention to the costs that would be incurred in seeking compliance with the new, more stringent design-basis threat. Members of Congress called in a Defense Department authorization bill this year for a cost-benefit review of implementing the new security standard. “There’s some movement to claim that DOE’s going too far,” Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear-materials specialist Edwin Lyman said yesterday in an interview. “I haven’t heard too many people inside the government say the new design-basis threat isn’t adequate.” On the other hand, Lyman said, “It’s hard to argue that it would be too stringent for [the Energy, Science and Environment sites]. There are enormous amounts of plutonium and highly enriched uranium at Savannah River and Oak Ridge.” The GAO report indicates that protection forces at the Energy, Science and Environment sites “generally meet” current department requirements in such areas as firearms proficiency and equipment standardization but that changes are needed to meet the new design-basis threat. GAO officials reviewed documents and interviewed protection officers to determine what actions would be needed to defend against the threat identified in the October 2004 design-basis threat in time for the October 2008 deadline for complying with the new standard. The auditors concluded that Energy, Science and Environment should convert the existing protection force into an “‘elite force’ — modeled on U.S. Special Forces,” deploy new security technology, consolidate and eliminate nuclear materials and improve security coordination across the five sites. “Because these initiatives, particularly an elite force, are in early stages of development and will require significant commitment of resources and coordination across DOE and ESE, their completion by the 2008 October DBT implementation deadline is uncertain,” the office said. The auditors’ caution about prospects for the “elite force” effort follows a flurry of criticism of security contractor Wackenhut in recent years over its performance at Energy Department sites. In one incident, the department’s inspector general found last year that Wackenhut had improperly obtained advance notice of a surprise security drill at Oak Ridge. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) yesterday questioned Energy Department officials about what he called their “tolerance” for Wackenhut’s deficiencies. Walsh replied that the company’s performance was improving: During recent departmental tests and reviews at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, he said, the Wackenhut force “far exceeded” its performance at any time in the past six years. Despite the auditors’ view that meeting the 2008 deadline could prove difficult to meet, Shays pressed department officials on why the Energy Department could not comply earlier with the new standard. “Why does it have to take three years to protect ourselves?” Shays asked. Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman said that although “the ideal is to have a virtually instantaneous defense for the threat that has been postulated,” care must be taken to ensure limited resources are expended wisely. He added that some required steps unavoidably take a long time, particularly the consolidation of nuclear materials. Energy Security and Safety Performance Assurance Director Glenn Podonsky concurred. “The nuclear material-consolidation piece is, in fact, probably the most daunting challenge,” Podonsky said. Lyman said it is difficult to know whether the Energy Department could be proceeding faster in efforts to comply with the new standard, especially given the opacity of the design-basis threat. “It’s easy to criticize,” he said, “and just knowing how long it takes DOE to do anything, even things they want to do, it probably could be expedited, but I’m just not in a position to say whether or not [Shays’ criticism is] justified.” “The fact is everyone was caught with their pants down Sept. 11,” he said, “and it’s unrealistic to expect that you can just change your design-basis threat twice and be able to upgrade security overnight — but it has been three years already.”
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