Energy Secretary Richardson Wednesday said he will announce within days disciplinary action against individuals stemming from the mishandling of the espionage investigation at the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, according to the Associated Press.
While he has said in the past some individuals will be fired, he was less clear on that Wednesday.
"Right now we're looking at very serious disciplinary action," he said.
Richardson also repeated his threat to recommend a veto of the $289 billion FY2000 Defense authorization bill because of the way it would reorganize the nuclear weapons programs in his department.
Richardson said that while he favors creating a largely autonomous nuclear weapons agency at the DOE, the authorization bill in Congress "clearly goes too far."