Global Security Newswire

A security officer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee quit on Thursday after admitting he fell asleep while standing guard at a secured structure and had made calls on a cellular telephone in breach of company policy, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported (see GSN, Jan. 24).

The guard in question was a security supervisor who admitted to the rule breaking when photographs of him using a cell phone and "dozing off" came to light from an unknown purveyor. He was employed by Energy Department security contractor WSI-Oak Ridge.

The photographs were accompanied by a statement that said they had been shot within Building 3019, a top-security area at Oak Ridge that stores large quantities of weapon-usable uranium 233.

WSI-Oak Ridge General Manager Lee Brooks would not answer questions on whether the photos were in fact taken inside Building 3019 though he did assert that whereever they had been taken was an nonclassified space. The Energy Department has arrived at the same determination, he said.

The security company's regulations forbid employees from making calls on phones or employing other handheld electronics while on duty, Brooks said.

WSI-Oak Ridge is continuing its probe into the incident and will look into who took the pictures of the guard. If it was a WSI worker then the photographs would have been taken in breach of company rules, Brooks said (Frank Munger, Knoxville News Sentinel, Jan. 27).