Los Alamos contractor may finally face competition

Not that long ago, Los Alamos-the sprawling desert research center in New Mexico that became the birthplace of the atomic bomb-evoked reverence and dread. Now the place is a laugh line for late-night comics mocking the facility's missing and then oddly not missing highly classified hard drives.

Much has changed since the lab's glory days during World War II and the Cold War-but one key thing has not. Since 1942, when physicist Robert Oppenheimer of the University of California (Berkeley) selected the New Mexico site for the lab, the university has administered Los Alamos and its California counterpart, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Is it time for a change?

"That's almost six decades," grumbled Rep. John D. Dingell, D-Mich., a congressional power and a longtime critic of the government's routinely renewing UC's $25 million-a-year contract without open competition. "To do anything other than fire the University of California is quite frankly to evade addressing the fundamental problem."

But the labs' high-powered scientists love the prestige, not to mention the generous benefits package, that comes with working for UC; California's congressional delegation, naturally enough, stands by the university. When Dingell and five Democratic colleagues on June 15 asked Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, whose departmental turf includes the labs, to terminate UC's contract immediately, 47 members of the California delegation quickly urged him "not to act precipitously in this matter."

"It's very clear that there were a lot of people who were looking for someone else to blame [for the security lapses]," said Rep. Jerry Lewis, the chairman of the California Republican delegation.

The Californians are a tough bunch to get around. Even President Bush's Energy Secretary, the hard-charging reformer Adm. James Watkins, had to back off plans to force UC to compete for the lab contract: "I made the discrete inquiry into it, and I was told, forget it," he recalled.

After the latest scandals, though, almost everyone-even some stalwarts of the California delegation-says changes are overdue. "You don't want to knee-jerk," said Rep. Sam Farr, the chairman of the California Democrats, but "we agree there should be increased security at Los Alamos."

One Californian put it far more bluntly: "I have told the University of California for a very long time that they should be prepared to compete," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, the top Democrat on a House Armed Services panel overseeing Energy Department reform, whose district includes Lawrence Livermore.

But a full-scale competition looks unlikely for now. Said UC spokesman Rick Malaspina, "We've made it clear that the university would not be interested in competing." And if UC did say, "You can't fire me, I quit," it would be hard to find another institution with the skills, the infrastructure, or the interest in running a troubled nuclear weapons laboratory.

So the Energy Department wants to split the difference between firing UC and maintaining the status quo by dividing the lab contract. The university would still run the science programs, its strong suit, while new management would come in specifically to upgrade and monitor security-probably either as a joint partner with the university or as a subcontractor. Discussions between the university and Energy's new undersecretary for nuclear security, Gen. John Gordon, are under way, with Gordon's recommendations due Sept. 5. Secretary Richardson told National Journal that "we like the relationship our scientists have with UC, [but we need to bring in] new players in security.... I want to take them out of areas that they have not performed well, but keep their strengths."

But there's a practical pitfall to dividing up the responsibility. "Security" is not some discrete, easily outsourced function, such as computing payrolls or disposing of trash. The challenge is safeguarding secrets that weapons scientists must access daily for work. "You have to make security an integral part of what happens every day, by every employee in the lab," said Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, who chairs the House's Energy reform panel. "You can't bring in an outside organization and say, `We'll do the security, you'll do the science.' "

That's not the plan, a senior Energy official said: "We do want to make sure that every scientist there recognizes they have an obligation.... When they handle secure, classified information, they're still responsible for handling it properly." A security subcontractor's role, he explained, would be to establish detailed procedures, in the context of department regulations and Gordon's directives, and then monitor their implementation.

But Energy has a troubling record of unilaterally imposing new security measures on the labs and then backing off them when the safeguards proved impracticable, as with Richardson's plan to have thousands of scientists take lie-detector tests, since scaled down to 800. So some parts of the Energy Department, including Los Alamos, are already implementing an "Integrated Safeguards and Security Management System" that has scientists taking personal responsibility for developing and implementing ways to protect their own work. In this context, subcontracted security specialists would still play a key role as advisers and watchdogs.

In the end, though, revising the terms of UC's contract, reducing its scope, or canceling it altogether is just a step toward the broader goal of reformers: Changing the too easygoing attitudes about safeguarding secrets at the labs and at the Energy Department. And that, it's generally agreed, will be a long, hard haul.