More allegations of mismanagement surface at Los Alamos

A former computer analyst at Los Alamos National Laboratory claims managers at the New Mexico facility purposely thwarted an e-mail monitoring program designed to prevent security leaks.

Jack Harris, who worked in the lab's Office of Internal Security, is one of at least three employees to speak out against Los Alamos management in the past year. The University of California runs the nuclear weapons lab for the Energy Department.

In an April 4 letter to George Nanos, interim director of the nuclear laboratory, Harris alleged that some managers had purposely caused the security program's demise. Harris, who resigned from his job April 8, said he has not received any official response to his letter. Nanos is reviewing Harris' claims and deciding on an appropriate response, said Jim Danneskiold, a Los Alamos spokesman.

In January 2001, the Energy Department launched a pilot version of its Electronic Mail Analysis Capability (EMAC) program. EMAC monitored outgoing and incoming e-mail for security breaches from the National Nuclear Security Administration, an agency within the Energy Department, and other Energy laboratories where nuclear weapons are designed.

The Energy Department developed EMAC in response to a 1998 presidential directive that ordered Energy to reorganize counterintelligence measures and complete a comprehensive study of security practices at labs.

Energy planned to run the EMAC pilot program from January to June 2001 at Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos, both in New Mexico; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington. But the program never got off the ground at Los Alamos, according to Danneskiold.

The Energy Department canceled the e-mail filtering program because of "serious flaws" and "questions about its quality," Danneskiold said. He added that the Los Alamos lab has used other technologies to screen all computer network traffic for many years, but declined to elaborate.

Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman at the National Nuclear Security Administration was unable to confirm Danneskiold's account of EMAC's demise, but said he is looking into the issue.

Under pressure from the University of California, some managers at Los Alamos attempted to delay and eventually stop the EMAC project, according to Harris, who began working for Los Alamos in September 1999 as plans for the e-mail monitoring system were taking shape. After attending Energy Department counterintelligence training sessions, Harris accepted the responsibility of briefing Los Alamos managers on EMAC.

Harris claimed that he was told by a manager to do "whatever [he] could to delay and defer the implementation of this program-project," according to his letter. The manager allegedly told him that the University of California did not want the Energy Department analyzing e-mails. The university was worried that scientists at Los Alamos would object to the practice and would "revolt," causing a "greater problem than the possible loss of data."

At meetings, managers reminded Harris that his paycheck came from the University of California and not from the Energy Department, he claimed.

Harris said he decided he needed to speak out after his supervisors told him they were assigning him to a different job because he had failed at his counterintelligence position. "I realized that for two years, in my personal desire not to lose my job, damage my career and expose Los Alamos to additional embarrassment, I feared coming forward," he wrote. "I have always held myself to the highest ethical standards, and I have violated those standards to simply not lose my income."

Los Alamos made a series of high-level staff changes in January, after two whistleblowers voiced concerns about mismanagement. In the fall, lab investigators Glenn Walp and Steven Doran accused lab managers of covering up widespread government purchase card abuse and obstructing investigations.

A report released by the Energy Department's inspector general in late January substantiated their claims. The report (DOE/IG-0584) said lab officials had created "an atmosphere where Los Alamos employees were discouraged from, or had reason to believe, that they were discouraged from raising concerns about property loss or theft, or other concerns, to appropriate authorities." In addition, the inspector general included a list of suspected stolen goods totaling $1.5 million.

A recent independent report by former Energy Department Inspector General John Layton and accounting experts at PricewaterhouseCoopers identified similar management weaknesses but did not find evidence of fraud.