Lawmakers seek update on FBI probe of Los Alamos breach
Energy and Commerce Committee members also ask for views on aspects of the security clearance process at the Energy Department.
Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee want details on an FBI investigation of security lapses at the Energy Department's Los Alamos nuclear laboratory.
"While we understand there is an ongoing criminal investigation, the committee requests a briefing on the scope," wrote Reps. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., in a Feb. 15 letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller. The lawmakers criticized continued "security failures, safety breaches and dysfunctional management" at the Los Alamos facility in New Mexico.
They asked Mueller for a briefing on the FBI's views on the process for granting security clearances at the Energy Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency within Energy responsible for overseeing the security of laboratories including Los Alamos.
The lawmakers also asked for information on the FBI's involvement in helping run background investigations and name and fingerprint checks on Energy Department employees seeking clearances. Energy annually pays the FBI about $1 million for the work, they said.
"The FBI has received the letter and will respond directly to the subcommittee," said Richard Kolko, a spokesman for the bureau. He declined to offer further comment.
Last month, the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, of which Stupak is the chairman and Whitfield the ranking member, ripped lax security at Los Alamos following an incident in which a contract worker allegedly downloaded classified data onto a keychain hard drive illegally.
The Los Alamos County Police discovered the hard drive, which contained 1,588 pages of both classified and unclassified data, last October while responding to an unrelated domestic disturbance. The employee allegedly downloaded the information by accessing a classified computer that was not properly locked. Lawmakers since have demanded that the Energy Department make technological and physical security upgrades.
Subcommittee members last month said they are considering the elimination of NNSA, which was created in the wake of another security breach, this one by Taiwanese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee, who mishandled restricted data in an incident that garnered worldwide headlines seven years ago.