Vernon Ehlers: “I suspect I am one of the few individuals in this House who has worked at a nuclear weapons laboratory. I did this for…”

“I suspect I am one of the few individuals in this House who has worked at a nuclear weapons laboratory. I did this for one summer while I was a graduate student at Berkeley at the University of California. And I found it to be a very good experience to work at a nuclear weapons laboratory, even though my work was primarily on unclassified science. What impressed me is that the individuals that worked at that laboratory were extremely security conscious and they were very concerned about any leaks of information about nuclear weapons. We seem to have lost that. We have lost that culture ever since the Berlin Wall fell. But what is dismaying to me is the reaction of the White House to the discovery that the Chinese have managed to obtain information about our nuclear weapons. The spin doctors have gone to work full-time. The President's men seem to be more concerned with blaming the Bush and Reagan administration than with taking responsibility and trying to correct the problem as they should be doing. It is the mark of strong individuals to take responsibility for the mistakes that they have made and to correct them, and I expect no less of the President and his aides. We do have leaks, we have to cure them, and it is absolutely essential that those individuals who are responsible take responsibility, correct the problem, and solve it.”