Energy Department to Revert To Stricter Security Practices.

• Author: Kutner, Joshua A.

Following a string of security breaches that have placed it under intense scrutiny, the Department of Energy, which handles more than 400 metric tons of weapons-grade special nuclear material, plans to revert to some of its old ways of protecting classified nuclear secrets.

One of the most recent incidents surfaced in June, when it was reported that two hard drives containing secrets of U.S., Russian, Chinese and French nuclear systems had disappeared mysteriously from Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico. The hard drives have since been found. But such security lapses have caused embarrassment to Energy Department officials.

The case of the missing hard drives resulted in a FBI investigation. There are three facets of the investigation, according to retired Air Force Gen. Eugene E. Habiger, director of the Energy Department's Office of Security and Emergency Operations:

* "What happened to the hard drives? And how did whatever happened to the hard drives happen? What was at risk?"

* "Who was responsible?"

* "What in the process broke down that we need to fix?"

Meanwhile, "the Department of Energy is going back to the way [it handled] classified documents pre-1992: accounting for every secret document with nuclear-weapon information on it," said Habiger. "That was a government-wide initiative. It began with the Bush administration. It was carried over by the Clinton administration. It is not political. It is not partisan. But we are going back to the old way of doing business. We can't afford otherwise."

Under this system, documents are given control numbers and are inventoried each year. When a top secret document is read, said Habiger, the reader is required to write his or her name on a cover sheet.

The reason for having to re-structure security procedures also has to do with the growing consolidation of small files into large databases, which are harder to monitor.

"Everybody in government, except the legislative branch, went to [a] new, easier system [of filing data]," Habiger told NDIA's 16th Annual Security Technology Symposium & Exhibition, in Williamsburg, Va. But since the Energy Department and its national laboratories handle the country's most sensitive weapons secrets, stricter security methods are a necessity.

"If you look at 100 classified documents, or if you look individually at 100 sensitive documents with the technology we have today, and you put all of those in one encyclopedic database--one hard drive, one zip...