DOE launches plan to combat racial profiling

DOE launches plan to combat racial profiling

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson Tuesday announced a plan to eliminate racial profiling by the Energy Department and its contractors.

Richardson ordered revisions of DOE's contracts to include provisions banning racial profiling, according to an Associated Press report.

Richardson also said the department would begin considering how a contractor deals with racial profiling when determining contract fees and said he would ask the DOE inspector general to investigate charges of racial profiling at the agency, particularly among the security workforce.

The case of former nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee prompted Richardson's actions. Lee, a Chinese-American, was accused of stealing nuclear secrets last year. Since then, fellow Chinese workers at Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Laboratory have reported being singled out for security investigations because of their ethnic background.

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