Ex-Los Alamos archivist sentenced.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: UP FRONT: News, Trends & Analysis

A former archivist at Los Alamos National Laboratory has been sentenced to two years' probation for taking home classified records from the New Mexico nuclear weapons facility.

Jessica Quintana, 23, pleaded guilty in May 2007 to a misdemeanor charge of negligent handling of classified documents. According to an Associated Press report, police conducting an October 2006 drug bust in her home aimed at her roommate found the sensitive data on a portable computer storage drive and in about 200 pages of paper documents.

Quintana had been working for a lab contractor converting documents to electronic format and, in June 2006, took the data home to catch up. In her plea agreement, she admitted to taking classified documents and computer files from a lab vault, putting them in her backpack, and bringing them home. She had been laid off by the contractor before police found the documents.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) had requested that Quintana pay a $384,150 fine, but the judge...