Lawmaker warns about security lapses at Los Alamos lab

Republican lawmakers are offering contrasting signals this week over the state of security at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory.

House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman David Hobson, R-Ohio, said at a National Academy of Science symposium today there are "more serious problems than you've been reading about" regarding security at the nuclear laboratory.

Hobson declined to elaborate other than to say his information is "based upon things that have been repeated" to him. Hobson called for "outside experts" to assist in reviewing security at Los Alamos. His bleak outlook of Los Alamos comes amid reports this week that two computer disks thought to contain classified information and missing from the lab may not exist.

But Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said the reports of missing disks -- which nearly has shut down classified work at Los Alamos since they were reported missing July 14 -- may be the result of a faulty inventory system and not a security breach.

Domenici raised this possibility following a tour Tuesday with lab director Pete Nanos, during which the senator said they "reviewed step by step what probably happened to the disks in question," the Associated Press reported. Two anonymous sources told AP that confusion apparently resulted from two extra bar-code stickers being left on a sheet of 20 that were used to label 18 disks.