Managers jeopardize security at national labs.

• Author: Fein, Geoff S.
• Position: Security Beat - Brief Article

Some low- and mid-level managers at the U.S. national laboratories fail to realize the importance of reporting a security breach to the upper management, said Ambassador Linton Brooks, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The administration is looking at changes in organization and training to address this concern, Brooks told reporters at a breakfast meeting. "In at least two of the labs, we have had problems with lower level managers failing to realize the seriousness of the kind of events that happen."

At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a set of security keys went missing and their disappearance had not been reported to senior lab management for more than a month. LLNL holds the country's most sensitive nuclear secrets, as well as material used to make thermonuclear weapons. A security officer's access badge also vanished, and that went unreported for six weeks.

"If you have keys, sooner or later someone will misplace them. That is simply true," he said. "We...