One for the road

Saturday, Nov. 27, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

Federal agents who transport nuclear weapons and components across the country sometimes get drunk on the job, according to the Energy Department’s inspector general. In a memo issued this month, the inspector general’s office said that from 2007 to 2009, 16 “alcohol-related incidents” involved agents, trainees and other employees of the Energy Department’s Office of Secure Transportation.

The inspector general highlighted two incidents it said happened on transport missions: An agent was arrested for public intoxication on one 2007 trip, and two agents were handcuffed and detained after “an incident” at a bar in 2009. Both incidents allegedly happened during planned stops on extended missions, in which the armed federal agents escort nuclear materials across the country. The inspector general said that during the stops, vehicles carrying the nuclear material were secured at “safe harbor” locations and the agents were sent to hotels to rest.

A spokesman for the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the office, downplayed the report, arguing that there had been no drunken driving nor any problems with transporting the nuclear cargo. With nearly 600 agents on staff, the incidents were rare, the spokesman said, adding there were no systemic problems.

However, without going into much detail, the inspector general said the alcohol-related incidents create a “potential vulnerability in OST’s critical national security mission.”

The inspector general found that there have been “concerns” about alcohol use at the office’s 20-week training academy at Fort Chaffee, Ark. The memo says the Office of Secure Transportation tried to address those concerns by, among other things, prohibiting trainees from keeping “kegs of beer or quantities of alcohol in excess of what is reasonable for personal use” in the academy’s dormitory. The office also has “an informal designated driver program” for trainees at the academy.

No keggers and designated drivers? That’s hardly dealing with the problem.

This is a serious issue. The agents are armed and have the power to use deadly force and make warrantless arrests as they transport incredibly dangerous materials across the country. Yet according to the inspector general, the agents are allowed to work with a blood-alcohol level up to 0.02.

What’s next? Will the office send designated drivers out on the nuclear convoys as well just in case an agent needs to sleep off a night of partying on the road?

Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, pressed the inspector general for more information, saying a “potential vulnerability in the secure transportation of nuclear materials is entirely unacceptable.”

Indeed. There is no margin for error dealing with nuclear materials. There should be no tolerance for any level of impairment because the risks are too great.