Whistling In The Dark

 

Danielle Brian is the executive director of the Project On Government Oversight.

The November issue of Vanity Fair that hits the newsstands this week features a fascinating article about two whistleblowers from inside the nuclear weapons complex. But as these two step forward into the spotlight, the nation’s number one defender of the nuclear weapons complex, Senator Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), is actively seeking to undermine legislation that would strengthen protections for nuclear whistleblowers. And it’s no wonder.

Weapons lab whistleblowers have been Senator Domenici’s worst nightmare this year, uncovering scandal after scandal happening on his watch as Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. These kind of scandals make bringing home the bacon much tougher for the Chairman. In the past year, hundreds of major national news stories have drawn attention to national security breaches, corruption, fraud, missing keys, open doors and much more mischief at Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia nuclear weapons laboratories. At Los Alamos alone, whistleblowers revealed that more than 200 computers were missing, some of which may have had classified information, according to the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Inspector General.

An internal memo from DOE’s head of security woefully admitted that because House budgeters had lost confidence in the management of the DOE, they had stripped $300 million in funding for such projects as the controversial Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator and other nuclear weapons research.

The scandals also sparked lawmakers to seek further sunlight on the weapons complex. After a series of searing hearings on the DOE’s security failings, the House approved legislation sponsored by Representatives Billy Tauzin and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) that would create real protections for nuclear weapons facility workers. The legislation was included in the pending Energy bill making its way through Congress. Under the current system, nuclear workers are lambs to the slaughter, facing the loss of their security clearance or their job if they blow the whistle on terrorist threats and vulnerabilities to the American public.

That is the case with Rich Levernier, one of the courageous whistleblowers featured in Vanity Fair and an anonymous contributor to the Project On Government Oversight report "U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Security at Risk." Mr. Levernier’s security clearance was yanked three years ago because he cared too much about trying to close down our nation’s most vulnerable nuclear weapons facility, Los Alamos’ Technical Area 18 (TA-18). Intent on defending agency budgets and their reason for existence, DOE bureaucrats have thwarted the TA-18 shutdown at every turn. Mr. Levernier used to run security tests that repeatedly showed that defending TA-18 from a terrorist attack was virtually impossible, since the facility was located in the bottom of a canyon. In describing the situation at TA-18, a National Public Radio story put it this way: "It was a bitter lesson in the Old West, and it's a bitter lesson now: Don't get caught in the bottom of a canyon. That's where the cavalry and wagon trains were easy pickings for outlaws and Native warriors on canyon rims above." Without a security clearance, Levernier has been cast out from his job and his chosen career path.

Proposed whistleblower protections are being dismantled behind closed doors in Congress.

But the legislation in the Energy bill that would repair the nation’s broken system for protecting nuclear whistleblowers is currently on the skids, thanks to Senator Domenici. Last month, Domenici’s legislative staff stripped the legislation of its teeth, then added injury to insult by extending the length of time whistleblowers have to wait before they can take their case to court if the federal government fails to act. Those of us who work with whistleblowers know that agencies like the Department of Labor and the Office of Special Counsel are running months behind schedule in fulfilling their duty to process whistleblower cases. A nuclear whistleblower out of a job does not have a year and a half to wait, as Domenici has proposed. Domenici’s proposal also weakened the attempts by Tauzin and Markey to put all workers throughout the nuclear weapons complex on an equal footing. Currently, workers at publicly traded companies enjoy much stronger protections than their counterparts in the federal government or at smaller contractors that are not publicly traded, yet these workers are just as likely to know about the DOE’s national security failings and foibles.

It’s a tremendous irony that after Time Magazine named three whistleblowers as their person of the year, proposed whistleblower protections are being dismantled behind closed doors in Congress.


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Published: Oct 09 2003