Richardson’s Purge

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, the House Government Reform Committee held a critically
important hearing featuring testimony from Energy and Defense Department employees who
have been punished for warning about Clinton Administration policies that threaten U.S.
security.¹ No sooner had Republican and Democratic
Representatives received this evidence of
efforts by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and other senior Clinton Administration officials to
punish people for the incompetent or malfeasant behavior they opposed than rumors began
circulating in Washington about Mr. Richardson’s next victim: Vic Reis, the
Assistant Secretary
of Energy for Defense Programs.

Vic Reis — The Next Fall Guy?

In today’s Washington Post, Walter Pincus — the Administration’s preferred
outlet for its heavily
spun damage-control efforts on the China/nuclear scandal — reports that: “The top Energy
Department official in charge of the Nation’s nuclear weapons complex, Victor H. Reis, may quit
or be fired in a dispute with Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, sources said yesterday.”

One of Pincus’ unidentified sources at DoE is quoted as saying: “It is no secret that Secretary
Richardson has not been satisfied with the emphasis given counterintelligence and security at the
labs, and Vic Reis has been the person in charge for the last six years.” (Emphasis
added.) In
other words, as Wonderland‘s Duchess might have put it, “Off with his head.”

If this statement were not so pernicious, it would be hysterical. In fact, for at least
the past two
years, responsibility for “counterintelligence and security at the labs” — and elsewhere in
the nuclear weapons complex — has actually been vested in somebody else, Rose
Gottemoeller. Ms. Gottemoeller is a proponent of radical anti-nuclear proposals ²
who, thanks to Secretary Richardson’s machinations, was stealthily elevated earlier this year to
the status of Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nonproliferation and National Security.

It has been Ms. Gottemoeller, not Vic Reis, who has had responsibility for such
scandals as:

• the declassification of Restricted Data and Formerly Restricted Data in violation of
  the
  Atomic Energy Act and job action against a senior DoE bureaucrat who had the
  temerity to
  alert Congress to this breach of security and the law. ³

• the demotion of Notra Trulock — the former Director of DoE’s
  Intelligence Office, who was
  a prime-mover behind the effort to uncover and comprehend the magnitude of Chinese
  penetration of U.S. nuclear weapons secrets.

• the effective firing of Lieutenant Colonel Ed McCallum, one of those
  who testified
  yesterday before Rep. Dan Burton’s Government Reform Committee, in transparent
  retaliation for his years of warnings about DoE’s appalling security situation — warnings that
  had been ignored until very recently by Secretaries Richardson and Gottemoeller and
  their
  predecessors.

What Richardson is Wreaking

Evidently, in this case as in that of lower level officials, Secretary Richardson intends to try
to
make lemonade out of the bitter lemons arising out of his Department’s burgeoning scandal.
Instead of holding accountable those actually responsible for the various aspects of this
travesty, he appears determined to use the demands for “heads to roll” to purge those who
have opposed past and present Clinton political appointees’ efforts to destroy the nuclear
weapons program and complex.

One of those has been Vic Reis. The Center for Security Policy has had occasion in the past
to
disagree with Dr. Reis’ efforts to defend indefensible Clinton Administration positions —
notably, concerning the compatibility of a permanent ban on nuclear testing with the need to
maintain, for the foreseeable future, a credible, safe and reliable nuclear deterrent. ⁴ Still, there
is little doubt but that, had it not been for his efforts, the damage done to date by the
Clinton-O’Leary policy of “denuclearization” would have been even worse than has
actually transpired.

The Last Straw — Supporting the Kyl-Domenici-Murkowski
Amendment

If Walter Pincus’ leakers are to believed, the coup de grâce for Vic Reis
came over his refusal to
back Secretary Richardson’s opposition to Senate efforts to save the U.S. nuclear weapons
program by making it the responsibility exclusively of a semi-autonomous agency within the
Department of Energy. (If anything, this initiative, sponsored by Republican Senators
Jon Kyl
of Arizona, Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Frank
Murkowski of Alaska actually does not
go as far as it should. As the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board recently reported,
[DoE cannot reform itself]; consequently, the new [Agency for Nuclear Stewardship] should
actually be made completely autonomous along the lines of the Atomic Energy Commission.)

Apparently, Mr. Richardson is running into a similar problem elsewhere in his “fiefdom.”
Reports reaching the Center suggest that the nuclear lab directors and other senior
professionals in the weapons complex are also unwilling to tow the Administration’s line on
DoE reorganization. They understand full well that, at a minimum, the
sort of streamlining and
clarification of lines of authority and responsibility contemplated by the Kyl et.al. initiative is
sorely needed. Perhaps the Secretary will have to fire all of them as well in
order to find
toadies who will support his position, seemingly born of nothing more than personal
egotism
and the reflexive, if petty, turf-protectionism of any bureaucrat, i.e, that no further improvement
to the Department of Energy is necessary.

The Bottom Line

To this point, Bill Richardson has largely been given the benefit of the doubt by his former
colleagues on Capitol Hill (with whom, as he recently colorfully put it, he “plays basketball.”)
He has been excessively credited for having taken steps — under duress and very
belatedly — to
enhance security at DoE. He has been spared to a greater extent than he deserves the worst of the
criticism about the mess over which he has presided for nine months.

The Secretary should be on notice, however: Should he continue to pursue a
vindictive policy
of punishing those who have tried to protect national security against the effects of
misguided and/or subversive Clinton policies, while protecting those who promulgated
those policies, he may put his own tenure at the Department in jeopardy.

¹The witnesses were Lt. Col. Edward McCallum, Director of the
Office of Safeguards and
Security, Department of Energy; Dr. Peter Leitner, Senior Strategic Trade Adviser, Defense
Threat Reduction Agency; Michael Maloof, Chief of Technology Security Operations, Defense
Threat Reduction Agency; Jonathan Fox, Esq., Arms Control Specialist, Defense Special
Weapons Agency; Robert Henson, Physicist, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos,
New Mexico. For more on these individuals’ contribution to the national security in the face of
Administration recriminations and job actions, see the Center’s Decision
Briefs entitled Profile
In Courage: Peter Leitner Blows The Whistle On Clinton’s Dangerous Export Decontrol
Policies (No. 97-P 82, 19 June 1997),
Everybody Didn’t Do It: Clinton Administration is in a
Class by Itself on Damaging Security Practices (No.
99-D 68, 11 June 1999), and Saving
Lieutenant Colonel McCallum (No. 99-D 64, 1
June 1999).

² Ms. Gottemoeller’s substantive views were considered sufficiently
extreme as to deny her an
expected appointment as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. See
Clinton’s Reckless Nuclear Agenda Revealed? Study Co-Authored By Candidate
For Top
Pentagon Job Is Alarming (No. 97-D 96, 12
July 1997).

³ See After Years of Wantonly Declassifying
Nuclear Secrets, D.O.E. Is Suddenly Seized with
the Need to Protect Them — from Us (No. 99-D 46,
20 April 1999).

⁴ See Warning to the Nuclear Labs: Don’t Count on
‘Stockpile Stewardship’ to Maintain
Either Overhead Or Confidence (No. 97-D
183, 1 December 1997).