President's panel blasts DOE 'insolence' on security

While commending Energy Secretary Richardson for his "resolve" in seeking to address security problems at the Energy Department's nuclear laboratories, a report issued today by the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board seriously questions the administration's attempts to portray the problem as under control.

The report details the failure of the Clinton administration to continue a reform effort launched under the Bush regime. Charging the DOE bureaucracy has waited out sporadic reform drives, the report notes that a special task force in December 1990 "carefully crafted" a list of reform recommendations.

"Two years later, the new administration rolled in, redefined priorities, and the initiatives all but evaporated," the report states.

In addition, a reform effort designed in late 1996 by then-Deputy Energy Secretary Charles Curtis was abandoned after he left office, according to the report. And a February 1998 Clinton directive addressing security concerns has encountered bureaucratic inertia.

"Never before has the panel found an agency with the bureaucratic insolence to dispute, delay and resist implementation of a presidential directive on security," the panel writes.