Editorial: Keeping the nation secure

Monday, Jan. 8, 2007 | 7:22 a.m.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman says he fired Linton Brooks as head of the nation's nuclear weapons program last week because of security breaches at weapons facilities last year.

There is little doubt that such a move was warranted. The security failures included the discovery back in October that a government contractor had been keeping drug paraphernalia and computer flash drives containing highly classified government information inside his Los Alamos, N.M., trailer home. Los Alamos is home to Los Alamos National Laboratory, the nation's premier nuclear weapons research center. An Energy Department inspector general's report also noted in November that security safeguards were "nonexistent, applied inconsistently or not followed" in key areas of the Los Alamos facility.

Democrats, who took control of Congress last week, have vowed to conduct a thorough investigation to uncover security problems in a nuclear program that Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., has described as "dysfunctional." Markey, a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Brooks' firing is a start but is not enough to prevent the congressional probe from moving forward.

We agree. Brooks should be held accountable for the missteps that happened on his watch. But the types of breaches reported inside the nation's nuclear program strongly suggest the presence of broad, systemwide failures.

It should be noted that Bodman and other federal officials have known of these problems for two months or more, yet Bodman waited until just last week to tell Brooks that he is to leave by the end of this month. It almost seems as though the Bush administration's energy secretary thought that once Democrats took control of Congress, Brooks' firing would help fend off a deeper investigation.

Congress should move forward with its investigation of the nation's nuclear weapons program aggressively and make sure that policies and procedures are in place - and are followed - to prevent breaches of national security.