Los Alamos, NM – Another Nuclear Lab Security Breach

Los Alamos, NM – The U.S. government’s failure to adequately protect a major nuclear weapons laboratory with a long history of serious security breaches has led to yet another major violation in which highly classified information was compromised.

The latest incident in the Los Alamos National Laboratory involves lab officials sending classified nuclear weapons information over the Internet.
The e-mails resulted in “the loss of control of top-secret restricted data,” Reps. John Dingell and Bart Stupak, both Michigan Democrats, wrote to U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. The highly classified information included details of the actual characteristics of nuclear material used in weapons.

When the e-mails were discovered, a security team from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was sent to recover laptop computers used to send the e-mail.
Dingell and Stupak said Congress was not informed about the incident, despite ongoing investigations into security lapses at Los Alamos, which designs, builds and maintains U.S. nuclear weapons.

Los Alamos officials declined to comment, citing issues of national security. [UPI – VIN]