Breach at atomic bomb HQ

2004-07-16 07:38

San Francisco - All secret work at a top US nuclear weapons facility, Los Alamos National Laboratory, was halted on Thursday after classified data went missing in a fresh security breach, officials said.

The unprecedented step was taken at the top-secret birthplace of the atomic bomb after two classified computer storage discs possibly containing nuclear secrets were reported missing from the plant in the western state of New Mexico on July 7.

The suspension of secret work will allow for staff retraining and other measures aimed at boosting crucial security measures at the facility, where several high-profile security breaches have occurred in recent years.

The crackdown was announced after Los Alamos director Peter Nanos appeared before the board of regents of the University of California, which has run the laboratory since it was founded during World War II.

"These types of incidents are unacceptable and must come to an end immediately," University of California President Bob Dynes said after the meeting in San Francisco.

He demanded the full cooperation of laboratory staff - 20 of whom have been denied access to the facility - as investigators search for the discs and overhaul security.

While this is the third instance in which classified data has gone missing from Los Alamos in the last year, Thursday's suspension of secret operations indicated this incident is far more serious.

The discs reportedly went missing from the part of the facility where weapons in the US nuclear arsenal are tested and designed, but it remains unclear who removed them and what happened to them.

Nanos on Thursday outlined to the university board of regents what steps were being taken to tighten security at the plant in the New Mexico desert, said the university's spokesperson for the laboratory, Chris Harrington.

Harrington said that US national and nuclear security would not be affected by the halt of secret work, as key staff would remain on the premises in the New Mexico desert during the review in case they are needed.

"This will not jeopardise the security of the nuclear stockpile," he added.

Los Alamos, where the world's first atomic bomb was designed and tested in 1945, has long been dogged by security breaches and allegations of spying, theft and fraud at the installation.

The lab came under intense scrutiny and criticism after Taiwan-born nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee was accused of stealing nuclear secrets for China after he was arrested and fired in 1999.

Lee, a US national who worked more than 20 years at Los Alamos, was arrested and held for nine months on suspicion of spying, although the government never succeeded in gathering sufficient evidence to prosecute him.

The last head of the laboratory, John Browne, and his deputy quit their posts in January 2003 amid charges of rampant theft, fraud and security lapses at the facility.

- AFP