Guarded DOE chief visits LV

Friday, June 16, 2000 | 11:26 a.m.

With the FBI and CIA investigating the loss of two highly secret Department of Energy computer hard drives, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson appeared in Las Vegas at a senior citizens' conference to talk gas prices, not security breaches.

This was clear as Richardson arrived to give his speech. DOE Nevada Operations spokesman Darwin Morgan along with a Sun reporter were shoved in a chain reaction by guards out the door of a room where the secretary was waiting before his speech.

Richardson had better protection than the missing hard drives as he strode through the Riviera hotel-casino Thursday afternoon surrounded by government and hotel security guards.

He headed to the National Council of Senior Citizens, whose 1,100 delegates from across the country listened to the secretary talk about possible summer power blackouts, skyrocketing gas prices and the latest medical advances under research in DOE labs.

Richardson refused to take media questions before or after his Las Vegas speech, which lasted roughly 20 minutes.

The national electricity grid is under threat from a long, hot summer and not enough capacity, he said.

"We are especially concerned because the National Weather Service has said it is going to be an especially hot summer," Richardson said. "You just have to step outside here to see that."

The DOE's efforts to reduce the price of a gallon of gasoline drew a round of jeers from the seniors.

Seniors groaned when Richardson said federal officials could not figure out why gasoline prices were higher in Chicago and Milwaukee -- $1.54 per gallon -- than the rest of the country.

Richardson wasn't heading back to Washington before next week. He said he will visit Arizona today, then head to Richmond, Va., and Tallahassee, Fla., next week.

He was in hot water on Capitol Hill after missing a joint Senate intelligence and energy committee hearing on Wednesday. Angry senators from both sides of the aisle demanded to know how the latest security slip could happen at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the secretary's home state.

Senior DOE officials were not told for three weeks that two computer hard drives containing materials as sensitive as nuclear weapons designs were missing from a vault where they were kept at the Los Alamos lab.

DOE security and counterespionage experts explained that 26 out of 83 people who work in the lab had free access to the equipment. They did not have to log in or out of the vault or note when the hard drives were moved.

Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., called the security breach "inexcusable" and said it could compromise an emergency response to nuclear terrorism. Volunteers on the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST) split quarters at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and at Los Alamos and rely on the computer equipment for information on how to defuse nuclear weapons in an emergency.

"You've got better security for a book checked out of the public library," Bryan, who co-chaired the hearing, told the Sun.

Bryan has invited Richardson to attend a closed-door briefing for senators tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, Bryan's spokesman David Lemmon said.

"We think it would have served him better to appear at the open hearing, although he probably could not say much," Lemmon said. "It gave the Republicans more ammunition."

Richardson's name has surfaced as a possible vice presidential candidate on Al Gore's presidential ticket.