Security czar sees Nevada DOE sites

Monday, Aug. 2, 1999 | 10:36 a.m.

Eugene Habiger has been transformed from the top general in charge of the U.S. Strategic Command to a content retiree to nuclear weapons security czar for the Department of Energy in less than a year.

He has far less time than that to restore a sense of security into the day-to-day activities of the 3,500 federal and contract workers who run the Nevada Test Site, the North Las Vegas Operations Office and the Remote Sensing Laboratory at Nellis Air Force Base, Habiger said Friday.

In four months the retired general, who made his first visit as the DOE's security chief to Nevada last week, wants to transform the DOE's national complex into a security-conscious operation instead of 100 sites going their separate ways.

"This is on a very fast track," Habiger said.

In less than two days Habiger went on a whirlwind tour of DOE's Nevada locations, ordering on-the-spot fixes in some cases.

"I did not find any significant problems," he said, at the Test Site, the North Las Vegas complex or the Remote Sensing Lab, where DOE monitors are ready at a moment's notice to respond to a nuclear accident.

Habiger said he discovered one minor problem at the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where the U.S. experimented with nuclear weapons from 1951 to 1992. A clock on a security monitor was off 1 hour and 18 minutes. Habiger ordered it fixed.

The Nevada DOE employees met with Habiger on Thursday and appreciated his straightforward style.

"He wants it done right -- the first time," one worker said.

Allegations surfaced this year that China stole secrets for building neutron bombs from the U.S. starting in the 1980s through holes in security at Los Alamos and Livermore national laboratories in New Mexico and Northern California, respectively.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson tapped Habiger to head the DOE's security efforts on June 16. The general had spent 30 years in the military, retiring last August.

"We've had a wake-up call this spring," Habiger said.

Habiger praised Richardson for his response before two congressional reports that criticized the department's security.

"There's no question it's a challenge, and we have to regain the trust of the public and Congress," he said.

The first step will take Habiger until September, when he completes his nationwide tour of DOE facilities. Then he plans to review security policy and how it works at field sites. Next he plans to return to places such as the Test Site to see for himself how security practices work "and tweak them a bit."

By September 2000 the DOE will have computer security installed to prevent an insider from stealing secrets from a classified disk, he said. The department has already stopped an inadvertent download of secret information by a DOE employee.

"I cannot conceive of any information being passed unsecured from here," he said, referring to Nevada operations.

To accomplish a security overhaul that mirrors the approach used in the Defense Department, Habiger needs money. Richardson put him in charge of the $6 million security budget for the DOE.

"That's unprecedented," Habiger said. "I don't know anyone who has been given a blank check on security."

Days after Richardson hired Habiger, the general suggested actions beyond a stand down that had already been ordered at the two labs in California and New Mexico to tackle the problem of unsecured computers. A third stand down comes Tuesday when Nevada's DOE operation grinds to a halt for security training.

Habiger marveled that only one or two employees had breached the security net surrounding nuclear weapons in 50 years.

Habiger noted that "a cadre of world-class scientists and technicians" work at projects ranging from nuclear weapons to energy resources. "And 99.99999 percent of the loyal patriots who work in our labs would not steal secrets."