Report: Energy Dept. can't reform itself

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Report: Energy Dept. can't reform itself

But Richardson wants to try

June 15, 1999
Web posted at: 2:10 p.m. EDT (1810 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, June 15) -- A scathing report released Tuesday says the Department of Energy is incapable of reforming itself and revealed that even the discovery of listening devices in its nuclear weapons labs failed to prompt urgently needed security reforms.

In this story:

Security reform thwarted
Illegal wiretap
Clinton 'taken aback' by findings
'Prosecution would be difficult'

"The Department of Energy is incapable of reforming itself -- bureaucratically and culturally," declared the bluntly worded 57-page report by a presidentially appointed panel.

The report, entitled "Science at its Best, Security at its Worst," calls for placing all nuclear weapons programs either under a semiautonomous agency within the department or creating an independent agency.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who took over as secretary last September, said he agreed with the report's assessment that the department needs more accountability. But more bureaucracy is not the answer, he said.

"What I worry about is a new fiefdom within an already big fiefdom," Richardson said in a telephone interview with CNN from Jackson Hole, Wyoming.


The report calls for a dramatic overhaul of the Energy Department

Richardson is resisting congressional calls for a new agency but says he will listen to the panel's recommendations. Richardson already has begun work on changes aimed at streamlining counterintelligence and security directly under the energy secretary, including the formation of a "security czar" who would report directly to the energy secretary.

"What I want is accountability. but I don't want scapegoating," he told CNN. "Eventually, all this criticism and all this concern about the Department of Energy is healthy and good but I need some time to do my job, to really make the improvements that are needed. "I need support, not continued carping and criticism of a problem we know exists."

But Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), who has proposed a largely self-contained Nuclear Security Agency within the DOE, said Richardson needs to listen to Congress. "As long as he continues to oppose our efforts to reform the department, I can't say they get it," he said.

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), who has proposed similar changes at DOE in the House, said improved security will be impossible "without major organizational reform" as recommended by the intelligence panel.

Security overhaul thwarted

The special panel of President Clinton's intelligence advisory board, chaired by former GOP Sen. Warren Rudman, concluded the Energy Department repeatedly had thwarted efforts to overhaul the agency and improve security despite alarming lapses.

"The panel found a department saturated with cynicism, an arrogant disregard for authority and a staggering pattern of denial," the report said.

Rudman gave an equally blunt assessment about the staff attitude at the department, including people who were "appallingly naive" about national security.

The panel found "people who essentially did things their way instead of the way they were instructed to do them" under a structure "so bureaucratic that it could very easily drop important matters through the cracks," Rudman said.

The report cited a classified Energy Department document that revealed an undisclosed number of listening devices were discovered in weapons-related facilities.

"It certainly should have set off alarm bells," said an intelligence board official who requested anonymity. He said the listening devices were found in "the '80s and early '90s" but said the investigation into the incident remains classified.

Senior Energy and Justice Department officials told CNN they are unaware of the reported listening devices.

Illegal wiretap

The report also disclosed an illegal telephone wiretap was discovered in a weapons lab. Although the employee who installed it later confessed, the case was not prosecuted, the report said. An official familiar with the case says the incident occurred "post-1995."

The chronology of serious security lapses is politically potent because of Republican charges the Clinton administration is to blame for failures to protect sensitive nuclear weapons secrets from Chinese spies.

Democrats counter that security lapses began during the Reagan and Bush administrations.

The report focuses blame on entrenched Energy Department officials. "No president, energy secretary, or Congress has been able to stem the recurrence of fundamental problems," the report concluded.


The report says the Energy Department is "a dysfunctional bureaucracy that has proven incapable of reforming itself."

The report praises Richardson for his recent attempts to shake up the department's management and institute improved security procedures.

But the report said there is no assurance that the reforms "will gain more than a toehold" once Richardson departs as secretary.

Clinton 'taken aback' by findings

To underline the largely independent nature of the Intelligence Board, an official involved in preparing the report insisted President Clinton had no knowledge of the panel's findings until he was briefed Monday morning by Rudman.

The president had ordered the investigation nearly three months ago after news reports and mounting congressional allegations of Chinese spying at the weapons laboratories.

An official familiar with the White House briefing said the president was "taken aback" by the finding that his Presidential Decision Directive ordering the Energy Department to make fundamental changes in security procedures was "grudging and belated."

The White House Monday night issued a brief statement, saying the report "made a number of proposals which we will carefully review. We remain committed to taking the necessary steps to safeguard our nation's secrets."

'Prosecution would be difficult'

The report did not focus on the controversial handling of former Los Alamos laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee. The Taiwanese-born Lee, who became a U.S. citizen, has been fired but so far has not been charged with attempting to spy for the Chinese government.

"I believe prosecution of Lee would be difficult," said a high-level official involved in the panel's investigation. "I don't know if Wen Ho Lee is guilty, or just stupid."

A congressional report indicated Lee was responsible for transferring secret computer files to unclassified publicly accessible files.

However the same official said security at the Energy Department's labs was so bad there may have been many sources of leaked government secrets.

The report praises the laboratories as "crown jewels of the world's government sponsored scientific research and development organizations."

The scientists are credited with "helping win the Cold War."

The senior intelligence official said the scientists are currently developing new highly secret non-nuclear weapon systems designed to protect U.S. national security.

CNN's Pierre Thomas and Terry Frieden and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Department of Energy Web site

Report: Energy Dept. can't reform itself

But Richardson wants to try

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Tuesday, June 15, 1999