Panel shifts weapons lab security to new agency

The House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday approved and sent to the House a bill designed to protect nuclear secrets at government laboratories.

The bill (H.R. 3906), which passed by voice vote, codifies some of the security changes for federal nuclear facilities already put in place by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. In addition, the bill calls for reports to Congress on progress in improving security. The Commerce Committee gave its blessing to the legislation, approving it on May 17.

But the Armed Services committee approved, also by voice vote, an amendment in the nature of a substitute offered by Chairman Floyd Spence, R-S.C., who faulted the original bill for relying on the Office of Independent Oversight and Performance Assurance for security reviews, the same office that he said fell "considerably off the mark," given recent security lapses involving missing computer hard drives, disks and files.

Spence's amendment would place the security oversight process firmly within the control of the National Nuclear Security Administration instead of under the Energy Secretary, as in the original bill.

"This approach does nothing to disturb or preclude the current organization that reports to Secretary Richardson," Spence said. "Instead, it creates a new management tool that would be available for ... the new NNSA administrator to better manage and oversee the vast security challenges facing the nuclear weapons complex."

The NNSA was created last year (P.L. 106-65) as a quasi-independent agency within the Energy Department that would oversee the weapons labs but not fall directly within the department's chain of command. Congressional outrage over suspected Chinese spying at Los Alamos and reports of improvements in its long-range missile technology had fueled demands, mostly among Republicans, that the department be stripped of direct control of the labs.