Few satisfied with changes to nuclear weapons program oversight

WASHINGTON - Congress created the National Nuclear Security Administration last year to help streamline an inefficient Energy Department bureaucracy blamed for security lapses and other problems with the government's nuclear weapons programs.

But two weeks after the semi-autonomous agency got going, it came under fire from both congressional critics and department officials for contributing to the problems it was supposed to help solve.

Lawmakers said the department had interfered with the agency's autonomy and had perpetuated unclear lines of authority. Department officials said the law creating the NNSA gave some program managers the idea they would be insulated from Energy Department oversight.

"This (NNSA) legislation was not ideal, in our opinion," Deputy Energy Secretary T.J. Glauthier told a House Commerce subcommittee Tuesday. "We want to make the best of what we have."

Congress created the agency late last year in response to allegations that lax security at the Energy Department and nuclear weapons laboratories may have led to the theft of nuclear secrets by China.

The controversy came to a head last year when Wen Ho Lee, a former scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, was fired after being investigated for possible espionage.

He was indicted later on charges he transferred top-secret computer files to portable data tapes. Although Lee had been named as a suspect in Chinese espionage, he has not been charged with giving secrets to China or any other foreign country.

Lee, a Taiwanese-born U.S. citizen, has pleaded innocent and has sued the federal government over news leaks about his case.

The Energy Department resisted creating the semiautonomous agency and drew fire from critics by giving several of its security and safety managers the same jobs within the new agency.

Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., and several other Republicans said Tuesday that "dual hatting" violated the law creating the NNSA.

"The department appears to be violating the semi-autonomous intent of the law in order to comply with its implementation," said Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla.

Stearns later asked Glauthier, "You're not breaking the law, are you?"

"We believe this is well within the statute," Glauthier replied.

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