Shakeup of management at Los Alamos continues

Top auditor Katherine Brittin was reassigned to a nonmanagement position and the auditing duties will be handled from the University of California's laboratory system headquarters in Oakland until a replacement is found, according to the Times.

The Los Alamos laboratory's director, deputy director and two top security officials have all resigned in the wake of mismanagement allegations including employee credit card misuse, property theft and a subsequent cover-up of investigators' findings.

Congressional interest in the situation is rising and the House Energy and Commerce Committee asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the Energy Department's other laboratories run by the University of California.

In a Jan. 10 letter, Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-La., and Rep. James Greenwood, R-Pa., asked GAO to investigate the Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley laboratories in the San Francisco Bay Area.

"In conjunction with the committee's continuing review of contract management at DOE, we request that GAO undertake a review of procurement practices at LBNL and LLNL for fiscal years 2001 and 2002," the letter said.

The legislators specifically asked the GAO to look at internal controls on procurement and high-risk procurement methods, according to a report in Energy Daily.