Posted on 10/25/2006 3:53:33 PM PDT by MadIvan
A DRUGS BUST at a trailer park in New Mexico has turned up what appear to be classified documents from the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory, the latest in a series of embarrassing security leaks from the home of the atom bomb.
Los Alamos police arrived at the trailer park after receiving a domestic violence call and discovered drug paraphernalia that suggested the home was being used as a factory for the production of methamphetamine, or crystal meth.
While searching the records of the occupant for evidence of a drug-dealing business, officers stumbled across the documents stored on a computer file. When the FBI was alerted, they traced the contents back to a woman working as a maintenance subcontractor at the top-secret laboratory who was linked to the drug suspect.
Los Alamos National Laboratory continued to develop America’s nuclear arsenal during the Cold War, after being secretly founded during the Second World War to house the Manhattan Project, the drive to develop the world’s first atomic bomb. It remains an important player in nuclear and other scientific research, and is one of only two laboratories in the country where classified work towards the design of nuclear weapons takes place.
But the New Mexico lab has also had a recent history of high-profile security breaches, the most infamous being that of Wen Ho Lee, the Taiwanese-American scientist accused of stealing American nuclear secrets for China.
Investigators dropped the original accusations but Lee finally pleaded guilty to improper handling of classified data as part of a plea bargain. He was found to have illegally copied national secrets but stopped short of selling on the black market.
In 2004 the lab had to shut when an inventory indicated that two computer disks containing nuclear secrets had gone missing. After a year of frenzied investigation, the lab concluded that their absence was just a mistake and that the disks had never existed. But the incident exposed the sloppy inventory control and security lapses at Los Alamos, and a programme was begun to create a “diskless” environment to prevent classified materials being carried off base.
Now that programme, too, appears to have failed. Authorities at the lab and federal officials have refused to comment on the latest disclosure. Critics say that despite new management at the lab, not enough has been done to plug its leaks.
“Los Alamos has always seemed to be rewarded for its screw-ups,” Danielle Brian, the executive director of Project on Government Oversight, said. “We’re waiting with bated breath to see if anything has changed.”
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Sigh, my home state is in the news again.
You gotta be kidding me....Who the hell is running this "top secret laboratory"? "Top secret"?....hahahaha!!!!
I'm starting to think that the LosAlamos "TOP SECRET LABORATORY" doesn't have any secrets at all.............it's just an offshoot of Roswell and the UFO/Alien storage unit.
FMCDH(BITS)
Six years of the administration & what have they done about it? They have played their normal nothing. Yea, let's leave all of the Klintoon crime group entrenched in every facet. What else from a corrupt "Two-Party Cartel". BTW any news on Bush & Spenctor going to Pennsylvania to help Santorium? I don't know - just assume not.
Meth for docs. Makes sense.
OOPPPS <----- a big one.
Let's face it. Americans can keep secrets.
Make that, CAN'T.
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