Test site, other DOE facilities set for special security training

Thursday, July 29, 1999 | 11 a.m.

Work will stop at the Nevada Test Site and other Department of Energy research and weapons sites one day next week to train employees in preventing espionage and tightening national security.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on Wednesday ordered the work stand-down for next Tuesday.

"I'm ordering this action to ensure that DOE is doing everything possible to protect America's secrets and sensitive technologies," Richardson said in the announcement. "Without exception, participation is required."

The DOE Nevada Operations Office expects to provide 2,800 federal and contractor employees with an entire day of training on information and security issues, DOE spokesman Darwin Morgan said.

Workers affected include those at the DOE's management contractor Bechtel Nevada, security guards, computer operators, environmental managers and building and maintenance personnel, Morgan said.

The department's attention to espionage and national security comes after reports that China stole nuclear weapons designs from DOE laboratories.

Richardson said he accepted the advice of his newly installed security chief Gen. Eugene E. Habiger, who had scheduled a visit to the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, before the secretary's announcement.

"Security must remain an inherent part of our day-to-day work ethic and culture," Habiger said. "The stand-down is a vital next step to ensure that all of our facilities, regardless of their missions, are living up to that special trust."

Habiger said his Southern Nevada visit had been arranged as part of a whirlwind nationwide tour of DOE facilities.

Tuesday's stand-down is the third ordered by the DOE. The first covered employees at department nuclear weapons labs such as Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. and Northern California, respectively.

The second lasted for two weeks and covered secure computer systems at the weapons labs after reports surfaced that a Los Alamos scientist had shifted sensitive weapons files from a secure computer to one accessible to anyone.

The Tuesday stand-down will not affect the weapons labs, Richardson said.

Other sites under the order besides the Test Site are the Savannah River site near Augusta, Ga., the Y-12 Plant at Oak Ridge, Tenn., a plant in Kansas City, Kan., Pantex in Amarillo, Texas, Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab near Idaho Falls and the Rocky Flats plutonium production plant near Denver.

Additional sites that deal with research, academic exchanges and other nonclassified work, many of them at universities, will be shut down for security training before the end of August.

The DOE will offer employees seminars and conferences on terrorism, cyber-security, export regulations, computer hacking, problems connected with disgruntled employees and unintentional errors.