Floyd Spence: “Mr. Speaker, 5 weeks ago the Department of Energy informed Congress that two computer hard drives containing a large…”

“Mr. Speaker, 5 weeks ago the Department of Energy informed Congress that two computer hard drives containing a large quantity of classified nuclear weapons data were missing from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and had been missing for at least 6 weeks. This breach of security was just the last in a long and sorry history of lax security at our nuclear weapons laboratories. In direct response, Congress last year created a semi-autonomous agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and charged it with the responsibility to better manage the Nation's nuclear weapons complex. Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson opposed this new organization from the beginning and has sought to undermine the implementation of NNSA at every step. Contrary to congressional direction, he declared himself as the administrator for nuclear security and he dual hatted his own chiefs of security and counterintelligence to serve in these positions for both the DOE and NNSA. While this arrangement is directly counter to the law, it leaves no doubt as to who was running the new administration and who was responsible for security at the labs in June.”