$2.8M Settlement In Los Alamos Breach

The Department of Energy has accepted a $2.8 million settlement offer from the University of California over a security breakdown at Los Alamos National Laboratory last year.

Under the settlement, the university will not seek a judicial review of the penalty and has accepted responsibility for the violations, the National Nuclear Security Administration said Monday in a news release.

The amount of the settlement is slightly less than the $3 million civil penalty the NNSA had imposed in September on the university, which was the sole manager of the northern New Mexico nuclear weapons laboratory for the Department of Energy until June 2006.

The penalty stems from an October 2006 incident in which Los Alamos police discovered more than 1,000 pages of classified documents and several computer storage devices during a drug bust at the trailer of a former worker for a lab subcontractor.

While striving to provide the strongest security for classified matter at Los Alamos lab, the university "recognizes that further protections could and should have been provided to reduce the opportunity for the cited unauthorized removal," the university said in a statement.

The university said it "regrets these omissions."

The fine will be paid from fees earned under the university's contract, the statement said. No California state funds are being used.

In August, the university had denied violating the DOE security requirements. UC had disclaimed responsibility because the employee who took the information home to the trailer and committed the security breach worked for a lab subcontractor, not the university.

The employee later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, saying she took the information home to catch up on scanning documents. The drug raid was aimed at another person living in the trailer.

UC also had said it was not the lab manager at the time, but the NNSA countered that the university was responsible for "structural management deficiencies."

The NNSA had maintained the UC violated requirements to prevent, detect or deter unauthorized access to classified information; did not adequately provide escorts or assure physical checks for the scanning project to prevent information from being removed; did not establish adequate security and oversight for the scanning project; and was deficient in overseeing the subcontractor.

The amount of the fine considered the gravity of the security breach and UC's failure to correct security deficiencies and its prior history of security management problems.

Los Alamos laboratory has been plagued by security problems in recent years, which led the DOE to put the lab's management contract out for bid for the first time since the lab was formed in 1943 as a top-secret project to develop the atomic bomb.

The lab is now run by a limited liability corporation called Los Alamos National Security, which is made up of Bechtel National Inc., BWX Technologies Inc., the Washington Group International Inc. and UC.
By Heather Clark