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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 June - 5 July 2000 Issue No. 488 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 June - 5 July 2000 Issue No. 488
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Still crazy after all these years
By Marc Munro
With the United Nations approval of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, it appeared Los Alamos, the birthplace of the bomb, was finally set to lose its cultural gravity within our collective consciousness. Unfortunately, we cannot seem to shake this place from our minds. The forces unleashed by J Robert Oppenheimer's gadget in this corner of New Mexico still haunt our psyche. As with Pandora's box, the detonation of the first atomic blast at Los Alamos has generated a power we are incapable of containing.
Looking out from his observation bunker at 5.29.45am on 16 July 1945, a mortified Oppenheimer muttered a citation from the Bhagavadgita: "I have become death, destroyer of worlds." Thereafter, one bomb begot another until MAD -- Mutually Assured Destruction -- became a rational military strategy. In 1998, as Cold War nuclear arsenals began to stand down, enmity between Islamabad and New Delhi again resurrected the wisdom of MAD.
Ironically, in this age of triumphant liberal capitalism, old Karl remains a philosophical authority on the problems that plague the powers that be. In history, Marx observed, events have a habit of repeating themselves; first as tragedy, then as farce. The shock of the new creates poignancy, but the second time around the stage is set for a pantomime. On the Subcontinent, two impoverished, prestige-starved nations take resources from hungry mouths in order to turn themselves into nuclear powers. But the true farce is being played out in the epicentre of the Atomic Age. In the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a Cold War satire is now in high dudgeon.
Cast in the role of both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg -- executed in 1953 for delivering the atomic secrets of Los Alamos to the Soviets -- researcher Wen Ho Lee is accused of being a mole for Red China. However, rather than claiming to represent the forces of the internationalist struggle, Lee merely claims to be very confused. This specialist in the field of fluid dynamics had been living the American dream. A naturalised immigrant from Taiwan, he worked in the top secret LANL X-Division weapons design facility safeguarding American freedom. Lee became a suspected turncoat in 1996, after the CIA obtained a Chinese document detailing a weapon design suspiciously similar to the W-88 warhead, the most advanced weapon in the US nuclear toy-box. Fingers began pointing at Lee in light of a trip he made to Beijing in 1988 -- the same year the offending document was authored. The fact that the LANL had actually funded his trip did not lessen the suspicion. Yet despite three years of the best FBI fieldwork money can buy, the accusation of espionage still has no evidence to support it.
At the end of last year, Lee was arrested for merely being careless. The government contends he transferred the 50 years of nuclear secrets contained in its computer "Legacy Codes" onto an unsecured network. Against him are 59 felony counts of mishandling classified information. As of yet, he still has not been charged explicitly with espionage. Nevertheless he sits in solitary confinement awaiting his 6 November trial. In his defence, Lee has stated that he simply transferred the codes onto his desktop computer because it has a better editing programme. As incredulous as this explanation would seem, recent events add a modicum of credence to it.
Over the past few weeks it has become obvious that lax security is more the casual norm than the criminal exception. On 4 May, near the laboratory, a controlled burn ignited by the National Park Service broke past fire barriers. The blaze consumed a 44,000-hectare swath of territory that included parts of the LANL complex. Realising the situation was out of control, an evacuation order was issued and personnel in the X-Division were authorised to remove the Nuclear Emergency Security Team (NEST) "kits," which contain the technical information needed to disarm any potential terrorist nuclear bomb. At the time of the evacuation, it was noticed that two hard drives containing information on the inner mechanisms of Russian, Chinese and French warheads were missing. In the panic, nothing was done and no one was informed. The fire raged across the whole area for over two weeks.
On 24 May, as the NEST team began to pick up the pieces, the hard drives were nowhere to be found. For an additional week NEST officials looked behind cabinets and under carpets, but on 31 May they admitted defeat and phoned their superiors. After over 200 interviews with the 86 people who potentially could have taken the deck-of-card-sized hard drives, management threw up its hands. On 5 June the FBI was brought in and declared the area a crime scene.
With this twist in the drama, the long-buried spirit of Brigadier General Leslie Groves, the original spit and polish commanding officer at Los Alamos has returned to his old haunting grounds. In his heyday Brigadier General Groves was obsessed with curtailing academic freedom. He regarded talkative scientists as security risks. In order to instil military discipline, the general attempted to place Manhattan Project scientists in uniform. The dishevelled band of physicists, however, would have none of it. Oppenheimer, a faculty member of the University of California made sure his university was granted full administrative responsibility. In Washington, politicians, ever wary of generals, created the Atomic Energy Commission in order to insure that the nuclear arsenal would be under civilian, not military, control. In 1977, this task was given to the Department of Energy. The loss of the NEST-kit hard drives, however, has meant a deep loss of civilian credibility.
News of yet another security breach immediately elicited calls from Congress to take the LANL out of University of California hands. Then on 14 June, the Senate voted unanimously to confirm the long-stalled nomination of General John Gordon as head of the new National Nuclear Security Administration. Originally, Democrats opposed this new agency, which was created in the panic that surrounded Lee's indictment, but in light of further security breaches there is now a political consensus that the dishevelled professors need to be whipped into military shape.
Outraged at the lack of security, Senator Richard Shelby, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told Fox News Sunday the failure to guard national secrets constituted a "malignancy" and wryly noted that public libraries have "better security on their books." Within X-Division, 26 people had enjoyed unfettered access to the vault where the drives are kept. There was neither video surveillance, nor a simple vault log and the hard drives themselves were not properly catalogued -- using computer barcodes, the Dewy Decimal system or otherwise.
With suspicions of another mole permeating the air, the missing hard-drives were found behind, of all things, a photocopier. Since that area had been searched twice before, it looked very suspicious indeed. On CBS' Face the Nation , Department of Energy counter-intelligence head Edward Curran said that "several contradictory statements" have been made by NEST personnel. Asked if he could rule out espionage, Curran said "absolutely not." In an effort to explain this fiasco Curran said, "There is no question in my mind this is a cultural question." Sloppy scientists at the facility resist or resent security procedures. In a Fox News Sunday interview, Deputy Energy Secretary T J Glauthier stated greater efforts were needed to "change the culture at these laboratories" in order to avoid harbouring "a few bad apples."
In the midst of a farce come ominous words. We have returned from whence we came. As it turns out, the security problem at Los Alamos has always been driven more by fear than any real threat. Even the information passed on to the Rosenbergs was from a lowly LANL machinist. Its value to the Soviet programme was trivial. Yet, in the ensuing paranoia Oppenheimer himself was notified that his past political associations and his vocal opposition to the hydrogen bomb made his loyalties suspect. Today, unfounded suspicions are still running wild. Despite the hysteria, there is no evidence of espionage whatsoever among the scientists at Los Alamos.
After a detailed technical analysis, highly-trained FBI forensic specialists have determined that the heavy dust coating the hard drive covers indicate that they had been behind the photocopier for quite sometime. On 21 June Richardson told the Senate Armed Services Committee that investigators still are uncertain about the precise date, but the FBI now puts the loss "at the tail end of March." Furthermore, he said, "based upon the investigation by the FBI so far ... there is no evidence of espionage." Richardson speculated that "this could simply be a case of an individual who made a mistake and was terrified to come forward because they knew how seriously the department now takes security."
At Los Alamos, job security and national security are now at odds. Fifty years ago, Oppenheimer fell from grace due to politically charged paranoia. Today, three X-Division weapons scientists are set to fall due to their own professional trepidation. The FBI is investigating them for "collusion" in a cover-up. In his jail cell, Wen Ho Lee must be laughing himself silly. Yet despite the comedy, the old intelligence drama continues its run. On 22 June, Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott announced the establishment of a new national security advisory group. Its cast of characters will include a host of Cold Warriors, such as former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz. Nostalgia has also recently breathed new life into Reagan's "Star Wars" fantasy. In order to deter attacks from "rogue" nuclear states, the Clinton administration is actively backing a missile defence system that is in clear violation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Needless to say, the Russians are not happy that MAD is no longer the logic of international relations. Yet, hopefully one day this farce will end, so that we can finally relax and laugh at our lunacy.
