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21.6.2000 Security: Security breach at Los Alamos still looking for an explanation
The unexplained disappearance, and then suspicious reappearance last week, of two computer hard drives thought to contain nuclear secrets amounted to a potential legal "bombshell".

En français: Toujours à la recherche d'une explication après la brèche de sécurité de Los Alamos
La disparition inexpliquée, et la réapparition suspecte de la semaine dernière, de deux disques durs contenant de l'information sur les armes nucléaires fait effet d'une "bombe" dans le milieu de la défense et de la sécurité americain.

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The two hard drives, each about the size of a deck of cards, were used by the Nuclear Emergency Security Team, or NEST, which is trained to respond to nuclear accidents or nuclear terrorists acts. They were found missing when two members of the team wanted to make certain they were safe as a wildfire threatened to engulf the laboratory on May 7. The next day the lab was shut down and evacuated, and did not return to normal operations for 17 days.

The government has called the information "the crown jewels" of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, a vast data trove on how to design more sophisticated weapons.

Two computer hard drives containing nuclear secrets from the Los Alamos weapons lab have been found behind a copying machine within the lab's top-secret secure area and are being evaluated, the Energy Department and government sources said Friday.

The two hard drives, which contain an array of nuclear secrets including highly technical information on the dismantling of U.S. and foreign nuclear bombs, were used by a nuclear emergency response team of scientists who worked at the New Mexico lab

Résumé en français

Chacun de ces disques durs est utilisé par le "Nuclear Emergency Security Team" qui est entrainé à répondre aux accidents nucléaires et aux actes terroristes nucléaires. Ils avaient tout simplement disparu depuis le 7 mai dernier. Le laboratoire a été fermé le jour suivant et n'a pas été normalement operationnel pour 17 jours.

L'information contenue dans ces disques est appelée par le gouvernement "les joyaux de la couronne" de l'arsenal nucléaire americain.

Ils ont finalement été retrouvé derrière un photocopieur.

Six responsables ont été remerciés avec effet immédiat à la suite de cet incident. Car plusieurs étaient au courant de lasituation mais n'ont pas jugés nécessaire d'en faire état.

Les enquêteurs du FBI cherchent à savoir si les disques retrouvés sont les originaux et si ils n'ont pas été copiés.

En décembre il y avait déjà eu une arrestation du Dr. Wen Ho Lee pour utilisation inappropriée d'information classifiée. Dr.Lee est en prison en attendant son jugement, mais clame son innoncence.

Six Los Alamos managers, including the head of the emergency response team that used the devices and the head of the lab's nuclear programs have been put on leave with pay, pending the completion of the investigations. Several of these managers -- though not the most senior ones -- were aware of the missing drives on May 7, but did not report it.

Although investigators believe that the two recovered drives are probably the same ones missing since at least May 7, officials said the FBI was planning to examine them more thoroughly to make sure, and to determine that they contained the missing data.

Investigators will be checking for fingerprints and other evidence that might pinpoint who removed them, and the FBI's computer experts plan to determine whether the data was copied before it was returned.

In December, a former scientist at Los Alamos, Wen Ho Lee, was arrested on charges of mishandling classified material. It was discovered that he had downloaded and copied vast amounts of nuclear data from the classified computer network at Los Alamos into an unsecure network and onto portable computer tapes.

Dr. Lee is in jail awaiting trial and has said that he is innocent.

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Revised: juin 26, 2000 .

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