June 13, 2000

Data on Weapons Reported Missing From Los Alamos
By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, June 12 -- Investigators at Los Alamos National Laboratory have discovered that computer hard drives containing nuclear weapons data and other highly sensitive material stored in a vault at the laboratory have disappeared, government officials said today.

The hard drives were stored inside a vault in locked containers in the X Division of the national laboratory, where nuclear weapons are designed. They were reported missing on May 31 by officials who were inspecting the facilities after the forest fire in the Los Alamos, N.M., area, Energy Department officials said. While the containers were still in the vault, the hard drives were gone.

The hard drives contained what officials described as data used by the government's Nuclear Emergency Search Team, or NEST, a unit that responds to nuclear accidents and nuclear-related threats from terrorists. The data on the hard drives includes all the information on American nuclear weapons that the team needs to render the nuclear devices safe in emergencies, officials said.

Among the missing material was intelligence information concerning the Russian nuclear weapons program, law enforcement officials said.

[...]

They said disruptions at the laboratory caused by last month's forest fire had impeded their investigation.

Edward Curran, the director of the Energy Department's office of counterintelligence, said in a statement today that "at this point there is no evidence that suggests espionage is involved in this incident."

Mr. Habiger, the director of the Energy Department's office of security and emergency operations, added that "our inquiry has been conducted during a period in which employees are still recovering from the effects of a major emergency disaster, the fire."

APRIL 5, 2001—Breaking an eleven-month silence, the former superintendent of New Mexico’s Bandelier National Monument said the prescribed burn that got out of control and destroyed more than 200 homes in Los Alamos, New Mexico, last year was not the result of poor judgment and errors by National Park Service personnel.

[...]

In his first detailed public statements since the fire, Weaver said that he and the Bandelier crew that planned and carried out the blaze had been unfairly scapegoated for the disaster. He said that neither he nor his people were warned ahead of time to not light the fire, as has been widely reported. He also said that other federal agencies bore a measure of responsibility. He cited the Santa Fe National Forest, which took nine hours to provide backup in the critical early stages of the fire. He also pointed to the National Weather Service, which did not provide a timely forecast of the high winds that hit the Los Alamos area at noon on Sunday, May 7, and transformed the fire into a raging inferno.

Weaver also criticized a government investigation that blamed the catastrophe on poor planning, preparation and execution by the park service. Weaver said the investigation—conducted in a matter of days while the Cerro Grande fire was still burning—was overly hasty and did not adequately explore what went wrong. He said the investigative report that was produced—and released to the media by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt at a jam-packed press conference in Santa Fe—was distorted by the political need for Babbitt to take responsibility for the disaster.

An Evening With Charlie Wilson and George Crile

Note: There are a limited number of seats that may be available to those who are not members of the Friends of the LBJ Library. Admission is $10. If seats are still available, tickets will go on sale at 5:50 p.m. in the lobby of the LBJ Auditorium. For more information, or if you would like to become a member of the Friends of the LBJ Library, call Larry Reed at (512) 478-7829, ext. 296.

When: 6 p.m., Tuesday, October 7, 2003
Where: LBJ Auditorium, 2313 Red River St.

The Scoop: It’s been called the “other war” the United States fought in Afghanistan, the one waged by proxy against the Soviet Union in the 1980s…a war that was never even on the radar for most Americans.

60 Minutes producer and author George Crile tells the unlikely tale of a Texas congressman who uses his political wiles to arm tribes of Afghan holy warriors…which ultimately led to the fall of the Soviet Union…in the best-seller Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History.

Crile and the subject of the book, former Texas congressman Charlie Wilson, will speak to the Friends of the LBJ Library on October 7, 2003.
According to the book’s publisher, The Atlantic Monthly Press, “George Crile tells how Charlie Wilson, a maverick congressman from east Texas, conspired with a rogue CIA operative to launch the biggest, meanest, and most successful covert operation in the Agency's history. At a time when Ronald Reagan faced a total cutoff of funding for the Contra war, Wilson, who sat on the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee, managed to procure hundreds of millions of dollars to support the mujadiheen.”

The Houston Post writes, “In Charlie Wilson’s War, Crile reveals in extraordinary detail the over-the-top, under-the-table machinations of Wilson, one of Capitol Hill’s ablest political bulldozers, as he spearheaded what eventually became known as the Soviets’ Vietnam.”

In July 2003, Tom Hanks’ company, Playtone, bought the rights to Charlie Wilson’s War and Hanks plans to play the lead role.

Mr. Wilson and Mr. Crile will be signing copies of Charlie Wilson's War from 5:15 to 5:45 p.m. in the lobby of the LBJ Auditorium