by Nick Schwellenbach
Originally in The Shorthorn, March 26, 2004

On February 4th, the UT System Board of Regents approved plans to bid for management of Los Alamos National Laboratories. At a following press conference, regents deflected questions regarding nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos by responding that its work goes far beyond nukes.

They are partially right, but they cut out the larger picture - about 75 percent of Los Alamos' budget is dedicated to nuclear weapons research and development. This budget is skyrocketing due to the Bush administration's desire for "mini-nukes," which actually aren't that "mini" and are intended for use, not deterrence. And when coupled with serious management issues at the labs, it's questionable whether the UT System even knows what it might be getting into.

The University of California System has been the administrator of Los Alamos for 60 years and in the last few has seen its blue and gold luster tarnished by scandals. A cursory glance at media coverage of Los Alamos points to serious, endemic management problems at the labs and with the Department of Energy (DOE).

In the wake of a damning General Accounting Office report last year, "60 Minutes," Vanity Fair and National Public Radio have all recently reported on the apparently inadequate security at Los Alamos. According to Richard Levernier, a DOE nuclear security specialist, there was a "50 percent failure rate" when the security at Los Alamos was tested. Since nuclear materials could be acquired easily due to lax security, Levernier warned, "if you understand the consequences associated with the loss of that kind of material, it would make the World Trade Center event of Sept. 11 pale in comparison."

Levernier's attempts to bring these problems to the management at Los Alamos and the DOE were in vain. When he took his information to the press, he lost his security clearance and was fired. An investigation into Levernier's case led the Office of Special Counsel, the federal investigative agency, to conclude that not only was there "a substantial likelihood" that Levernier's charges were correct but also that he had been gagged by the DOE.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. An institutional culture at both the labs and at the DOE has inhibited reforms for years. A 1999 report from the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board called the DOE "a large organization saturated with cynicism, an arrogant disregard for authority and a staggering pattern of denial," concluding that the DOE was "incapable of reforming itself."

Additional memos were uncovered last June stating that DOE officials instructed employees not to "spill your guts" to investigators, and Los Alamos' management has admitted to the DOE that it has misrepresented facts to them.

Even congressional attempts to probe the depths of these problems have been stonewalled. Representative Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) has faced "substantial and continued difficulty" in getting information from the DOE to determine the adequacy of nuclear weapon facilities for defending against terrorist attacks.

On the other hand, efforts by Senator Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) have allegedly blocked an FBI investigation into missing hard drives containing classified material at the labs, according to Chris Mechels, a former employee at Los Alamos and founder of Citizens For LANL Employee Rights. Mechels said that Domenici told the FBI to "get off the [lab's] back" since their investigation was "bad for morale."

The UC System, as manager of Los Alamos, clearly has a hand, or lack thereof, in the scandals that have plagued "the birthplace of the atomic bomb." And offering up the management of the labs to bidding is part of the solution to making the lab management accountable. Yet serious doubts over the potential of real reform remain due to the embedded culture at both the DOE and the labs themselves.

Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, comments on the security lapses at the labs, saying that if the UT System were to manage Los Alamos and a terrorist attack such as those simulated were to occur, "UT would be in a world of pain, and any prestige would quickly evaporate." Maybe universities shouldn't be in the nuclear weapons business in the first place.

- Nick Schwellenbach is a UT-Austin history senior and a member of UT Watch, a student-based watchdog organization.

For More on Security at Los Alamos see: "From National Defense to Security Threat: an interview with Greg Mello on Los Alamos"