NNSA Chief Linton Brooks Dismissed

U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman yesterday announced the firing of Linton Brooks, head of the department’s National Nuclear Security Administration.  Bodman said unresolved security issues at U.S. nuclear laboratories have forced him to shake up the agency’s top management (see GSN, Nov. 29, 2006).

“These management and security issues can have serious implications for the security of the United States,” Bodman said in a release.  “While I believe that the current NNSA management has done its best to address these concerns, I do not believe that progress in correcting these issues has been adequate” (U.S. Energy Department release, Jan. 4).

Most recently, a former contract worker at Los Alamos National Laboratory was discovered to have copied and removed classified nuclear weapons documents from the facility (see GSN, Nov. 6, 2006).

In November the department’s inspector general issued a scathing report on security conditions on the laboratory, calling many planned security measures “nonexistent, applied inconsistently or not followed” (Matthew Wald, New York Times, Jan. 5).

Calling his dismissal “not a decision that I would have preferred,” Brooks told NNSA workers yesterday that he would depart within two to three weeks.

“One reason for forming NNSA was to prevent such management problems from occurring,” Brooks said in statement.  “We have not yet done so in over five years.  For much of that time I was in charge of NNSA.  Therefore the secretary believes that new leadership is needed” (National Nuclear Security Administration release, Jan. 4).

An watchdog group praised Brooks’ dismissal.

“We applaud Secretary Bodman’s decision to force accountability at NNSA, especially since it has been failing in its mission for years,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, in a press release (Project on Government Oversight release, Jan. 4).

A former Brooks associate, however, said the move was unfortunate.

“I thought he was trying to what he could to keep a declining operation functioning as well as he could,” said physicist Gerald Marsh, who recently retired from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

Prior to his NNSA job, Brooks had a long career in U.S. nuclear foreign policy, including leading the U.S. delegation that completed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Wald, New York Times).

Back to top
About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines © Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.