Classified work at US nuke lab halted after data loss

The top-secret US nuclear weapons research facility Los Alamos National Laboratory has halted all classified work after two data storage devices were reportedly missing, lab officials said Thursday.

The University of California (UC), which has operated Los Alamos from its beginning during the World War II race to build the bomb, ordered the halt after its leaders being briefed in San Francisco by lab chief Peter Nanos about the latest incident. The stand-down started from noon Thursday and lab officials have begun a wall-to-wall inventory of sensitive data, which is expected to be completed within days, a lab spokesman said.

"Until such time as we are confident that we are addressing this issue, then all activities with respect to classified materials have been put on hold," said Gerald Parsky, chairman of the Regents of the UC.

"These breaches of national security will not be tolerated."

"These types of incidents are unacceptable and they really do have to come to an end," said UC President Robert Dynes.

About 20 lab staffers who had access to the missing data can only enter the unit involved, the Weapons Physics Directorate, with security escort.

Meanwhile, the National Nuclear Security Agency, the federal agency overseeing the labs, sent a review team to Los Alamos this week to investigate the loss.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' project on government secrecy, applauded the stand-down order. "It's what they have to do to confront this recurring problem," he said.

The incident is the latest in a series of security lapses at the New Mexico lab. Los Alamos has been under fire since 2002 after allegations about purchasing fraud, equipment theft and mismanagement.

Just last month a set of keys to a sensitive nuclear area went missing for most of a day. Similarly classified material was reported missing in May, but lab officials later said they believed the material was destroyed intentionally.

Four years ago, Asian-American scientist Wen Ho Lee, was falsely accused of stealing secrets at Los Alamos. He later pleaded guilty to only one count of downloading nuclear weapons design secrets to a non-secure computer after the government's case against him collapsed.

Federal officials have decided to put the management contract up for bids for the first time in the facility's 61-year history, before the UC contract expires next year. The UC has not decided whether to join the bidding.

Source: Xinhua