Richardson Just Doesn’t Get It: Nuclear Weapons are Too Important to Entrust to His Department of Energy

(Washington, D.C.): Wednesday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times provided
fresh evidence that
Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson is not up to his job, any more than his department is up to
that of maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal and safeguarding its secrets. Despite a critical report
from a bipartisan House Select Committee, chaired by Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) ¹and an even-more-scathing study by the President’s Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board, chaired by former
Senator Warren Rudman (R-NH) ², the Times
reported that Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson
said, “I want to see evidence of [ongoing] nuclear security problems.”

Secretary Richardson’s comments were so outlandish that Sen. Rudman undiplomatically
declared that the Secretary’s views “boggle my mind.” The fact is that there has not only been an
historical, wholesale penetration of the American nuclear establishment by Communist China,
but both the Cox and Rudman reports make clear that the problem continues to this
day.
Indeed, both panels were concerned that the Department of Energy is so dysfunctional that it is
incapable of taking the most elementary steps to protect U.S. secrets and has been slow — if not
utterly unwilling — to launch the sort of serious and sustained counterintelligence effort needed
to weed out and apprehend spies who may still be working in the Nation’s nuclear labs.

What is At Stake

Sen. Rudman is correct in contending, according to the Times, that Secretary
Richardson “‘has
no idea’ if a spy remains in the Nation’s vast nuclear weapons complex.” Rudman added that,
Richardson “‘still doesn’t have a handle’ on the thousands of foreign visitors to the nuclear
weapon labs each year.”

A further testament to Secretary Richardson’s myopia on this point was brought home by his
response to Sen. Rudman’s frank description of his problem: In remarks the Los Angeles
Times
characterized as “combative,” Richardson said that he “want[s] to see evidence from the
malcontents [Rudman] has been talking to….I want to see evidence of where we are weak,
where we have shortcomings. It seems there are a lot of anonymous sources here. I want to
see the evidence of where we’re not up to par.”

If Secretary Richardson and many of his senior political appointees (e.g., Under Secretary
Ernie
Moniz, Assistant Secretary Rose Gottemoeller and Senior Policy Advisor for Nonproliferation
and National Security Joan Rohfling) were not so busy taking job actions against personnel who
are in a position to provide such information — and otherwise creating an environment unfriendly
to coming forward with unwelcome facts — he would not have to look far for help. He could
usefully start, for example, with Ed McCallum.

McCallum is a retired Army special operations lieutenant colonel who was, until relieved of
his
duties over what ten Members of Congress believe are “trumped up charges,” ³ responsible for
DoE’s Office of Security and Safeguards. In that capacity, he provided abundant evidence of just
the sort of ongoing, serious security problems Mr. Richardson claims to want to know about.

Apparently concerned about the sort of retribution Col. McCallum and others have
experienced
at DoE’s hands, PFIAB had to promise anonymity to over 100 witnesses in order to secure their
help in understanding the magnitude of the problem. If Secretary Richardson actually is
interested in getting to the truth, and not solely concerned with obscuring it, he can
establish policies and practices that would protect and reward those prepared to permit
accountability and fixes to be achieved in the Department of Energy, at long last.
Congress
should play its part by insisting on nothing less from Secretary Richardson and by holding its
own hearings, ideally in a new select committee charged with bringing real adult
supervision to
the DoE for the first time in years.

A Select Cmmittee and a New, Independent Agency for It to
Oversee

On Wednesday, Rep. Cox added his influential voice to the calls for just such improved
congressional supervision of the nuclear weapons portfolio. In an interview with the
Washington
Post, Mr. Cox “questioned the oversight of nuclear weapons programs by congressional
subcommittees ‘that do not have national security as their chief mission.'” He added, “‘It is a
misfit over at’ the Department of Energy…referring to nuclear weapons being lodged in a
department mainly concerned with civilian energy matters, ‘and it’s a mifit in the way [DoE]
plugs in to Capitol Hill.'”

To fix the “misfit” in the executive branch, Chairman Cox urged that the job of
managing the
U.S. nuclear arsenal be taken away from the DoE. Interestingly, according to Rep.
Cox, “If
[the Cox Committee] had been forced to make a recommendation, that probably would have
been our recommendation — to recreate the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).”

The Bottom Line

As it happens, the AEC model was one of two approaches to dealing with the catastrophic
situation at the Department of Energy that was recommended in the PFIAB report.
Unfortunately, for reasons that appear to have much more to do with bureaucratic turf
than
the national interest, Secretary Richardson has adamantly opposed to either the
creation of
a new AEC or a wholesale reorganization of the DoE in order to give the nuclear weapons
program greater visibility and discipline.

Thanks to the Secretary’s recalcitrance, Democratic Senators have filibustered legislation
introduced by three Republican Senators Jon Kyl (AZ), Pete
Domenici (NM) and Frank
Murkowski which would create the latter in the form of a semi-autonomous agency
within the
Department of Energy. It remains to be seen whether these Senators, now armed with the
PFIAB’s findings, will succeed when they offer their bill as an amendment to the intelligence
authorization bill, perhaps as early as next week. If so, it will be further proof of Sen. Kyl’s
contention that “the Administration does not yet fully grasp the magnitude and understand the
cause of the Nation’s most serious breach in recent history.”

¹See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Cox Report Underscores Abiding Nuclear Dangers,
Should Caution Against Efforts that Would Exacerbate Them ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=99-D_62″>No. 99-D 62, 25 May 1999).

²See Clinton Intel Panel Confirms that D.O.E.
Security Melt-down, Begat by Hazel O’Leary,
Continues Under Bill Richardson (No. 99-D 70, 15
June 1999).

³See Everybody Didn’t Do It: Clinton
Administration is in a Class by Itself on Damaging
Security Practices (No. 99-D 68, 11 June 1999),
Saving Lieutenant Colonel McCallum (No.
99-D 64, 1 June 1999) and Clinton Legacy Watch # 41: Security Meltdown
at D.O.E. (No. 99-D 48, 26 April 1999).