Aug 20, 2004
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
U.S. intelligence officials say the missing classified data at Los Alamos National Laboratory is related to secret nuclear tests conducted by computer simulation.
The data is considered extremely sensitive because it is used in the maintenance and development of nuclear weapons.
It is contained on several computer disks that were stored in a top-secret facility at Los Alamos, N.M. The disks were last used in April. When lab researchers went to use them in July, they were gone from a secure vault within the X Division.
Los Alamos is currently studying the possibility of a nuclear warhead that can burrow through rock before detonating.
Sen. Pete V. Domenici, New Mexico Republican, came to the embattled lab's defense last week when he said the missing data may have been misplaced — not stolen.
"It may be that what we have here is a false positive — the system says something is missing when it is not," Mr. Domenici said. "Just as if it were a medical test, it is better to find out the inventory was wrong than that the disks were actually missing. But this entire situation only reinforces that we need to improve the inventory system."
Other officials said there are fears that a foreign intelligence service may have been behind the theft.
Los Alamos spokesman Kevin Roarke declined to comment on the nature of the information on the missile disks. "It's an ongoing investigation," he said.
U.S. nuclear weapons labs have been targeted for years for secrets, the intelligence officials said.
In the 1990s, the U.S. intelligence community determined that China obtained secret information through espionage on about every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal.
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