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“RELEASE OF RUDMAN REPORT” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H4668-H4669 on June 22, 1999.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
RELEASE OF RUDMAN REPORT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 19, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns) is recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
Mr. STEARNS. Madam Speaker, the report of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board that criticized the state of security at the Department of Energy nuclear weapons laboratories and recommending certain structural reforms was released last week. This advisory board was chaired by former Senator Warren Rudman and includes detailees from the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Defense. The report was titled, quote, Science at Its Best, Security at Its Worst.
Even though the Clinton administration has tried time and time again to pass the buck on taking responsibility for the security failures and has attempted to place the blame on previous administrations, a current administration spokesman at the White House who was intimately involved in the preparation of the report said the current administration is more culpable than any since the Department of Energy was created in 1977. The Rudman report denounces the administration for ignoring the Republican-proposed reforms at the Energy Department when it took office in 1993.
Here are some of the findings from the Rudman report: One, an Energy Department employee was dead 11 months before officials realized four documents with classified and restricted data were still assigned to him.
It took 45 months to fix a broken doorknob that was stuck in an open position, allowing access to sensitive nuclear information.
Energy Department officials took 35 months to write a work order to replace a lock at a weapons lab facility containing sensitive nuclear information.
Ordering security for mislabeled software took 24 months.
No one knows how many months passed before a security audit team discovered that the main telephone frame door at a weapons lab had been forced open and the lock destroyed.
And lastly, correcting a mistake that allowed secure telephone cryptographic materials to go improperly safeguarded for 51 months.
But most damaging of all is the following section of the Rudman report, and let me read it: ``Never have the members of the special investigative panel witnessed a bureaucratic culture so thoroughly saturated with cynicism and disregard for authority. Never before has this panel found such a cavalier attitude towards one of the most serious responsibilities in the Federal Government, control of the design information relating to nuclear weapons. Never before has the panel found an agency with a bureaucratic insolence to dispute, delay and resist implementation of a Presidential directive on security as DOE's bureaucracy tried to do on the President's Decision Directive No. 61 that was issued in February of 1998.''
This directive mandated new counterintelligence measures at the labs, but the Advisory Board found that implementation of this directive suffered from ``bureaucratic foot-dragging and even,'' Madam Speaker, recalcitrance'' by DOE and lab officials. The report further notes that, quote, ``DOE and the weapons laboratories have a deeply rooted culture of low regard for and at times hostility to security issues, which has continually frustrated the efforts of its internal and external critics,'' end quote.
The Rudman report makes two specific recommendations. The first is that the DOE's ``weapon research and stockpile management function should be placed wholly within a new semiautonomous agency within the Department of Energy that has a clear mission, streamlined bureaucracy, drastically simplified lines of authority and accountability'' and the agency's Director would report directly to the Energy Secretary.
The second alternative recommendation was to create a wholly independent agency to handle the previously mentioned functions, and its Director would report directly to the President.
Unfortunately, I personally do not believe that a reorganization or a shake-up of the Department of Energy and how it handles nuclear secrets will be sufficient in destroying the pervasive antiestablishment culture that exists in the Department and at the weapons lab as detailed by the Rudman report. Instead, I agree with the conclusion of the Rudman report which states that the Department of Energy is, quote,
``incapable of reforming itself, bureaucratically and culturally, in a lasting way even under an activist Secretary,'' end quote.
Therefore, Madam Speaker, the only way to protect our Nation's nuclear weapons is through the abolishment of the Department of Energy itself and placing all of its offices in other Federal agencies. I believe the management of our Nation's nuclear weapons and all classified related functions of the Department of Energy should be transferred to the Department of Defense. All other nonclassified functions should be transferred to a semi-independent agency within the Department of Commerce.
The bureaucratic stranglehold that has become the Department of Energy has placed our Nation's security at risk, and the only way out of effectively ending this ineptitude is through the ending of the Department of Energy.
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