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United States II: Observers Question Los Alamos Security After Computer Theft Rampant theft of computers, radios and other equipment from Los Alamos National Laboratory in fiscal 2001 might have compromised the safety of the laboratory and the country’s nuclear weapons program, a watchdog organization announced recently (see GSN, Sept. 23). More than $3 million in equipment has been reported lost in the past three years, Energy Daily reported today. Nevertheless, there has been no clear breach in security, Los Alamos officials said. “There is no record of any classified Los Alamos computer system, laptop, desktop or server reported stolen, lost or unaccounted for,” said Jim Danneskiold, a laboratory spokesman (George Lobsenz, Energy Daily, Nov. 22). Certain documents, however, indicate extensive uninvestigated theft, according to the Project on Government Oversight, which received the documents from anonymous laboratory officials. “Our sources believe there was sensitive and classified data on most of these computers. How [the laboratory] is going to assure us that there wasn’t, is beyond me,” said Project on Government Oversight analyst Pete Stockton, former special assistant to Clinton administration Energy Secretary Bill Richardson (Peter Eisler, USA Today, Nov. 22). Reports from Los Alamos to the FBI and local law enforcement authorities are apparently so vague that further investigation has been impossible. “All reports lack sufficient detail to identify potential suspects or to determine criminal patterns,” says a March 26 memorandum from the Los Alamos Office of Security Inquiries. “Reports did not answer basic questions like how, what, when, where or why,” it adds. Classifying the desktop computers as lost is dubious, according to the memo-writing official, whose name has been blacked out. “As I view it, reporting a desktop computer as lost, as in the case of the 2001 report where 33 were reported lost, is parallel to my spouse telling me she has lost the refrigerator,” the official wrote. The memo also questions whether the missing equipment contains classified information. “The reports indicate that no questions were asked pertaining to the type of data that may have been on stolen computers, laptops, personal digital assistants and digital cameras. It is possible that they may have had sensitive or proprietary materials on those systems, but inquiry personnel failed to explore that potential; at least one can assume this view based on the data contained in the inquiry reports,” the memo says. The memo also highlights the disappearance of radios from security offices. Because it has not been revealed whether the radios provide access to secure communications frequencies, it is possible that security measures are currently compromised, according to the memo (Lobsenz, Energy Daily).
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