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NUCLEAR SECURITY: CAN DOE MEET PHYSICAL

FACILITY SECURITY REQUIREMENT

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,

EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

APRIL 27, 2004

Serial No. 108–207

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

——— ———

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DAN BURTON, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

TOM LANTOS, California

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

DIANE E. WATSON, California

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

LAWRENCE J. HALLORAN, Staff Director and Counsel

J. VINCENT CHASE, Chief Investigator

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Clerk

ANDREW SU, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on April 27, 2004 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Brooks, Linton F., Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Energy; and Glenn S. Podonsky, Director, Office

of Security and Safety Performance Assurance, Department of Energy .. 46

Nazzaro, Robin M., Director, Natural Resources and Environment, U.S.

General Accounting Office, accompanied by James Noel, Assistant Director, National Resources and Environment, U.S. General Accounting

Office; and Danielle Brian, executive director, Project on Government

Oversight ....................................................................................................... 5

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Brian, Danielle, executive director, Project on Government Oversight:

Memo dated April 9, 2004 ........................................................................ 30

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 32

Brooks, Linton F., Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Energy:

Information concerning current designs .................................................. 94

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 50

Nazzaro, Robin M., Director, Natural Resources and Environment, U.S.

General Accounting Office, prepared statement of .................................... 8

Podonsky, Glenn S., Director, Office of Security and Safety Performance

Assurance, Department of Energy, prepared statement of ....................... 66

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 3

(1)

NUCLEAR SECURITY: CAN DOE MEET PHYSICAL FACILITY SECURITY REQUIREMENT

TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 2004

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, EMERGING

THREATS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher Shays

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Shays and Watson.

Staff present: Lawrence Halloran, staff director and counsel; J.

Vincent Chase, chief investigator; Thomas Costa, professional staff

member; Robert Briggs, clerk; Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk;

and Andrew Su, minority professional staff member.

Mr. SHAYS. I call this hearing of the Subcommittee on National

Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations to order.

Today, we continue our oversight of physical security at the Nation’s nuclear weapons facilities. Last June, we learned the Department of Energy [DOE], was not aggressively confronting the many

challenges posed by the need to secure a sprawling, aging infrastructure against post-September 11th threats.

So we asked the GAO to evaluate the development and implementation of the new security standard called the design basis

threat [DBT].

The GAO report released today finds some progress, but concludes the new DBT may not be as realistic, rigorous, or real-time

as needed to protect nuclear materials from determined terrorists.

Without question, DOE nuclear warhead production plants, testing facilities, research labs, storage locations, and decommissioned

sites are attractive targets for terrorists determined to turn our

technology against us and willing to die while doing so. The highly

enriched uranium and plutonium held at various locations could be

used as the core of an improvised nuclear device or dispersed as

a radiological weapon.

Yet, it took almost 2 years and an inexplicably and inexcusably

long time to update the DBT after September 11th.

Faced with a new security imperative to deny access, not just

contain or catch intruders, it should have been immediately obvious DOE has too many facilities housing nuclear materials. And

those facilities are old, above ground, scattered around cluttered

World War II era plant configurations and not buffered by adequate setback space.

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It may not be enough just to harden existing sites with more

gates, guns, and guards. Consolidation of nuclear material storage,

long advocated, but little pursued at DOE, would improve security

by reducing the number of sites and the cost of protecting them.

New security technologies will have to be evaluated and deployed

to meet emerging threats. But as we will hear in testimony today,

a serious question remains whether the DBT adequately reflects

the true nature of the threat. Some believe the design basis threat

might be more accurately called the dollar-based threat, reflecting

only a watered down measure of how much security the Department can afford. Additionally, GAO doubts DOE will be able to

fully implement even that standard before 2009. We know that terrorists will not wait that long to try to exploit lingering

vulnerabilities in our nuclear complex defenses.

Last month, DOE announced a plan to move some nuclear material from Technical Area 18 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory

to a more secure facility in Nevada. Implementation of that plan

will demonstrate a sharper focus and renewed sense of urgency at

DOE and the National Nuclear Security Administration [NNSA],

but we need to be sure that consolidation is just the most visible

part of a broad strategic effort to implement a realistic DBT.

Charged by law to sustain the Nation’s nuclear deterrent capabilities, DOE and NNSA have the unenviable task of balancing the

demands of that mission against the risks and costs of meeting security threats in a new and dangerous era. Our oversight seeks to

ensure that balance is struck as openly and as effectively as possible so that nuclear security, Homeland Security, and national security will be enhanced. Those are goals shared by all our witnesses, and we are grateful for their participation in this hearing.

We welcome them, and we look forward to their testimony.

[NOTE.—The GAO report entitled, ‘‘Nuclear Security, DOE Needs

to Resolve Significant Issues Before It Fully Meets the New Design

Basis Threat,’’ may be found in subcommittee files.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. At this time, I will recognize and then swear in Robin

M. Nazzaro, Director, National Resources and Environment, U.S.

General Accounting Office, accompanied by James Noel, Assistant

Director, National Resources and Environment, U.S. General Accounting Office. And Danielle Brian, executive director, Project On

Government Oversight. At this time, if you would stand.

Is there anyone else that possibly would be responding? If so, I

would like for them to stand to be sworn in just in case.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Note for the record our witnesses have responded in

the affirmative.

We will basically have a statement by Director Nazzaro, and

then we will invite Mr. Noel and Ms. Brian to respond to questions

as well.

Excuse me. We do have testimony? I’m sorry, I apologize.

So Mr. Noel, you are the only one who does not have testimony

but will respond to questions. Is that correct?

Mr. NOEL. Correct.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Thank you. I will get it together here.

Welcome.

STATEMENTS OF ROBIN M. NAZZARO, DIRECTOR, NATURAL

RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, ACCOMPANIED BY JAMES NOEL, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, NATIONAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, U.S.

GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; AND DANIELLE BRIAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT

Ms. NAZZARO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am pleased to be here today to discuss our report that you are

issuing entitled, ‘‘Nuclear Security: DOE Needs to Resolve Significant Issues Before It Fully Meets the New Design Basis Threat.’’

A successful terrorist attack on a site containing nuclear weapons or the material used in nuclear weapons could have devastating consequences. Because of these risks, DOE needs an effective

safeguards and security program. A key component of such a program is the design basis threat [DBT], which is a classified document that identifies the potential size and capabilities of terrorist

forces and is based on the postulated threat and intelligence community assessment of potential terrorist threats to nuclear weapons facilities.

Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, you asked

us to review physical security at DOE sites that have Category I

special nuclear material. These material include specified quantities of plutonium and highly enriched uranium.

Last year, I testified before this subcommittee that while DOE

took immediate steps to improve security in the aftermath of the

September 11th terrorist attacks, DOE’s effort to develop and issue

a new DBT took almost 2 years.

Today, I would like to focus on the implementation of the new

DBT that was issued in May 2003. Specifically, my testimony focuses on our analysis of the higher threat contained in the new

DBT and the remaining issues that we feel need to be resolved in

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order for DOE to fully defend against the threat contained in the

DBT.

With respect to our analysis of the 2003 DBT, we have two areas

of concern. First, while we found that the new DBT is substantially

more demanding than the previous one, the threat contained in the

2003 DBT is less than the threat identified in the postulated

threat. Or, in other words, DOE is preparing to defend against a

significantly smaller group of terrorists. Only for its sites and operations that handle nuclear weapons is DOE currently preparing to

defend against an attacking force that approximates the lower

range of the threat identified in the postulated threat.

For its other Category I special nuclear material sites, which

may have improvised nuclear device concerns that, if successfully

exploited by terrorists, could result in a nuclear detonation, DOE

is only preparing to defend against a terrorist force that is significantly smaller than was identified in the postulated threat.

Our second concern with the DBT is that the Department’s criteria for determining the severity of radiological, chemical, or biological sabotage may be insufficient. For example, the criterion

used for protection against radiological sabotage is based on acute

radiation doses received by individuals. This may not fully capture

or characterize the damage that a major radiological disposal might

cause. For example, a worst-case analysis at one DOE site showed

that while radiological dispersal would not pose immediate, acute

health problems for the general public, the public could experience

measurable increases in cancer mortality over a period of decades

after such an event. Moreover, releases at the site could also have

environmental consequences requiring hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to clean up and affect the habitat of people who live

within 10 miles of the sight.

Now, let me highlight the issues that we feel need to be resolved

in order for DOE to fully defend against the threat contained in the

new DBT. To date, DOE has not developed any official estimates

of the overall costs of DBT implementation. More importantly, current DBT implementation cost estimates do not include items such

as closing unneeded facilities, transporting and consolidating materials, completing line-item construction projects and other important activities that are outside the responsibility of the Safeguards

and Security Programs budget. Finally, complicating the issue is

the fact that the Secretary has not yet designated as called for in

the new DBT which, if any, of DOE sites have improvised nuclear

concerns. If a site is designated to have such a concern, it may be

required to shift to a more demanding and costly protection strategy.

Bottom line, DOE is unlikely to meet its own fiscal year 2006

deadline for full implementation of the new DBT. Some sites estimate that it could take as long as 5 years given adequate funding.

In our report, we made seven recommendations to the Secretary

of Energy that are intended to strengthen DOE’s ability to meet

the requirements of the new DBT, improve the Department’s ability to deal with future terrorist threats, and to better inform Congress on departmental progress in meeting the threat contained in

the DBT and reducing risks to critical facilities at DOE sites.

7

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement. I would be happy

to respond to any questions you may have.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Nazzaro follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

Ms. Brian, would you just explain what your organization is for

the record?

Ms. BRIAN. Yes. We are an independent nonprofit government

watchdog organization.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

And at this time I would want to just thank the Administrator

Linton Brooks and Glenn Podonsky, because they could have asked

to go first. And I think it’s important that the concern be expressed

and then have them be able to respond to it. So it’s logical to have

them follow.

But I just want, Ms. Brian, for you to know that you are able

to speak first because they have agreed to it. And I thank them for

that.

And it’s very nice to have you here.

Ms. BRIAN. And I thank you for having me here as well, chairman.

If you could please enter my written testimony in the record.

Mr. SHAYS. That will be done.

Ms. BRIAN. POGO is heartened that this committee has remained so active in overseeing the nuclear weapons complex and

its ongoing security challenges.

I must say, at your previous hearing, though, I was relatively

pessimistic that we would ever be successful in gaining any real security improvements from DOE. Since then, however, POGO has

become more guardedly optimistic.

We had the opportunity to meet with Secretary Abraham, Deputy Secretary McSlarrow, and SSA Director Podonsky this January.

We began in that meeting ongoing communication with the Secretary regarding our concerns and recommendations. We have reason to believe he is taking these issues seriously. Our best evidence

of that is the recent announcement that Los Alamos’ TA–18 is finally going to be deinventoried of its special nuclear materials.

Mr. SHAYS. You can slow down just a little bit. You can run over

5 minutes.

Ms. BRIAN. I can? OK. Thank you.

Furthermore, the new design basis threat and requirement that

all Category I sites be able to prevent terrorists from even entering

the facility will require major changes in defensive strategies and

upgraded infrastructure.

In the face of these requirements, these sites can no longer apply

Band-Aids to the security problems. DOE simply no longer has the

luxury of having SNM, special nuclear materials, at sites that can’t

be adequately protected or where the costs of protection are prohibitive. This is a critical turning point in the direction of the nuclear

weapons complex.

The Department has to immediately begin to deinventory certain

sites, transferring the SNM to more secure sites; build underground storage facilities at Savannah River and Y–12; and blend

down the excess highly enriched uranium and immobilize the excess plutonium. These steps would make the nuclear materials far

less attractive to terrorists.

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In addition to highlighting the urgent need to move the SNM

from TA–18, we raised several other priorities for the Secretary’s

consideration. This winter, POGO began focusing on security at

two additional NNSA sites, Lawrence Livermore National Lab just

east of San Francisco, and the Y–12 plant in Oak Ridge, TN. Both

face serious physical security challenges, perhaps insurmountable

challenges.

We don’t feel comfortable discussing publicly the specific concerns we have regarding Livermore security. However, we can say

that the encroaching residential community surrounding Livermore

has made it nearly impossible to properly protect the SNM stored

there. Clearly, they will not be able to comply with the new directives.

In light of this facility’s vulnerabilities, POGO recommends that

all SNMs be deinventoried from Livermore immediately and sent

to the Nevada test site. This move would dramatically increase security while saving about $30 million in annual security costs.

Some in DOE and the Congress have identified Y–12 as the most

serious security concern in the complex. Y–12 stores hundreds of

tons of highly enriched uranium and is a prime target for terrorists

who would want to create an improvised nuclear devise within

minutes. Given the obsolete infrastructure currently housing the

highly enriched uranium, it should come as no surprise that the Y–

12 guard force has been systemically cheating in order to pass security performance tests. They simply cannot protect the material

in the six material access areas given the multiple targets, dilapidated infrastructure, and very short timelines for the terrorists to

reach their target.

The current contractor operating Y–12, BWXT, inexplicably

changed a plan to build a bermed facility that would be covered by

earth on three sides and its roof and is now planning to build an

above-ground facility. However, the IG has concluded that the new

design for the storage facility will actually decrease security and increase costs significantly.

Immediate funding for underground storage at Y–12 and the

blending down of the over 100 tons of excess highly enriched uranium should be the top priorities of the NNSA budget.

There have also been significant security problems at Sandia National Lab in Albuquerque, NM. The only weapons quantities of

SNM stored at Sandia are the highly enriched uranium fuel plates

for the SPR-III burst reactor. This reactor is rarely used. Moving

this reactor and its fuel to the Nevada test site again would dramatically reduce security requirements and save about $30 million

annually in security costs.

In addition, the Idaho facilities store tons of SNM, the second

largest repository of highly enriched uranium in the complex.

These nuclear materials are left over from the cold war and abandoned research projects. They have no current national defense

mission. These facilities should also be deinventoried of weapons

quantities SNM.

POGO sources have suggested that the DBT at most sites remains inadequate as, of course, the GAO is testifying today, far

below the level of security recommended by the intelligence comVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:57 Nov 15, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96313.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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munity, particularly at sites with improvised nuclear device

vulnerabilities.

As the GAO pointed out in its report presented at your last hearing, the DBT was, of course, cost-driven. The GAO wrote, ‘‘Some officials called the DBT the funding basis threat, or the maximum

threat the Department could afford.’’ As you said in your testimony, this is not an acceptable method for determining security

standards. The DBT should be reevaluated to bring it more in line

with the realistic threat contained in the intelligence community’s

postulated threat, particularly for IND vulnerable sites.

A final note regarding the TA–18 move. POGO is concerned that

there are people in the complex who are still trying to sabotage this

move. While POGO was heartened by the original announcement

regarding the move, our hopes were dampened after meeting with

the head of the nuclear weapons complex, Dr. Everet Beckner. Despite Secretary Abraham’s intentions that all Category I special nuclear materials should be out of TA–18 by 2005, Dr. Beckner informed us that NNSA only intends to move 50 percent of it. I have

provided to your staff a memo that confirms this is his intention.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Ms. BRIAN. In a separate meeting, Ambassador Brooks told us

that moving only part of the material would not improve security

at all. This is, of course, because enough material would remain behind to still create an improvised nuclear device.

Dr. Beckner went on to inform us that the ballooning cost for this move from $100 million to $300 million was in large part, a

result of the requirement to produce authorization basis documents

to move the burst reactors from Los Alamos and to operate them

at the Nevada test site. He told us this paperwork requirement

alone would cost $150 million. We checked with the person in the

Los Alamos area office who is responsible for signing off on such

documents. He estimated the cost to be between $1 and $2 million

if done correctly, and as much as $6 million on the outside if it

needs to be reworked.

I am raising this to illustrate how the bureaucracy knowingly

provides baseless information to headquarters as a way of protecting the status quo. It is essential that the committee straighten out

this confusion today during this hearing.

POGO is guardedly optimistic that Secretary Abraham and Deputy Secretary McSlarrow are sincerely concerned about the state of

security at the nuclear weapons complex. However, these officials

have a limited time in office.

The Office of Security and Safety Performance Assurance will be

the entity left behind to oversee any improvements. This office is

doing extremely important work, but their limitation is that they

do not have either the necessary independence or power to see this

difficult job done correctly.

Congress needs to formalize its communications with this office

as it has with the Inspector General. Your ongoing hearings are

critically important, and I fully believe that this committee’s vigilance has played a vital role in moving the ball forward. Don’t go

anywhere, though, because the country is not more secure yet.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Brian follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

We will start out by having the counsel ask some questions.

Mr. HALLORAN. Thank you.

To GAO, I would like to talk about the DBT development process

a little bit. In your statement, in the report, you say one of the reasons it took almost 2 years to reiterate the DBT after September

11 was due to sharp debates within DOE and other Government

organizations over the size and capabilities of future terrorist

threats and the availability of resources to meet those threats.

Could you talk some more about that? What other organizations,

Government organizations, were involved? And what were the kind

of parameters of the debate?

Mr. NOEL. Well, there were two debates that we are talking

about in the report. One is the——

Mr. SHAYS. Bring the mic a little closer to you, please.

Mr. NOEL. There we go. My apologies.

Two debates. One is within the intelligence community that was

developing the postulated threats. So when we reviewed the documents there and interviewed the participants, they all said that it

was a lot of concern within the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy about how big a threat should we postulate

and what can we afford. And when you look at the postulated

threat there is in fact a range of adversaries that is postulated

there.

Paralleling that, mirroring that, was a similar debate within the

Department of Energy, and we looked at that a lot more closely because that was basically the charge of our report. And in that case,

we interviewed officials at all the different sites, both DOE and

contractor officials. We reviewed documents that were sent in by

the contractors and site officials, and we talked to headquarters

people. And here again we found a broad consensus that underlying the debate was, ‘‘Geez, can we really afford what we are talking

about?’’

Our concern is that the threat needs to be the threat, and then

the issue of budget comes in as a secondary issue to say, ‘‘If we

can’t afford this, are we willing to accept a certain amount of risk?’’

And the Department’s processes do allow for that.

Mr. HALLORAN. But is it your finding that the differential between the level of threat postulated by the intelligence community

and the level of threat reflected in DBT was artificially discounted?

Or are there other legitimate reasons to say that, in terms of our

design basis threat and the facilities and the shape and the configuration of the complex, this is realistically what we need to be

able to fend off?

Mr. NOEL. Well, we never found that, in fact, somebody said,

‘‘Let’s make it smaller, specifically because of a dollar amount.’’

What we did find, though, was that the postulated threat does say

that each implementing agency—so that would be the Department

of Energy, the Department of Defense—is allowed to use its own

judgment in how it implements it.

The key here, though, is if you look at history, if you look at the

past postulated threats back through time, and this process has

been around quite a while, there was always a one-to-one relationship between the postulated threat and the design basis threat. In

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this case, the Department decided to depart from that, and that’s

what we are taking issue with them on in our report as to why.

Mr. HALLORAN. All of you. In a matter of implementation of the

DBT, you found a report that the time lines seem unrealistic.

Could you tell us, explain more why that might be the case? And

what are the disconnects that would make them not meet their target even at the end of fiscal 2006, I think, is the projection right

now?

Ms. NAZZARO. Well, I think our concern overall is that it took

them so long to develop. I mean, adversaries move very quickly,

and they adapt very quickly. The 1999 DBT was to be for 5 years,

and that was obsolete within 2 years because of the September

11th attacks. You know, then it takes us 2 years to develop a new

DBT, and we are still years away from full implementation of that.

A faster process is definitely needed. We found the process that

DOE used as far as consensus to formulate policy was very cumbersome and time-consuming.

Mr. HALLORAN. The implementation plans for the DBT, they’d

come out in May 2003. Is that the right, the DBT? And the implementation plans were submitted or received in January of this

year?

Mr. NOEL. Correct.

Mr. HALLORAN. And what can you tell us about those?

Mr. NOEL. Well, we reviewed the plans for the Office of Environmental Management and the National Nuclear Security Administration. I think—and Mr. Podonsky can talk to this—I think his office had some concerns about the quality of the material in the

plans and some of the assumptions that were being made in the

plans.

Beyond that, depending on what happens with the Secretary’s

special annex team, some of those plans may need to be revisited.

And that’s going to stretch out that time line even longer.

Mr. HALLORAN. Because of the improvised device kind of overlay

they are putting out?

Mr. NOEL. That is what the special team is addressing, yes.

When we were at the sites and one of the things we asked fairly

early on is, how long does it typically take you to come up with a

new plan and implement it? And this would be not in the environment that we are in now. And they said 2 to 5 years. And that was

a broad consensus across the complex. So that’s why we said we

are not optimistic that they could make the 2006 date.

Ms. BRIAN. I would just like to add to that, first of all, I mean,

obviously, 2006 is ridiculous to be waiting that long when we had

2001. That’s 5 years of actually implementing improvements.

But perhaps more realistically, what we are finding is if we are

talking about the complex as it currently exists, it is simply impossible for these facilities to actually implement the requirements

necessary between the DBT and this move toward a denial strategy, which we think is incredibly important. They can’t do it. So

something is going to have to significantly change.

Mr. HALLORAN. Let’s stay with that, because in your testimony,

you talked a great deal about the Y–12 storage facility and the IG

report. What, in your view, drove the decision to change from the

berm facility to a strictly above-ground one?

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Ms. BRIAN. We have asked the contractor. They didn’t have an

answer. I can’t speculate as to their motivation, but the conclusion

is that what we are faced with now is a facility that is going to be

more expensive and less secure. And I think the Congress has to

step in and do something to stop this before they start actually

moving earth in the wrong direction, because as we know, it’s very

hard to stop something once it’s started.

Mr. HALLORAN. Does GAO have a view on that?

Mr. NOEL. Yes, just to add to what Ms. Brian is saying. The key

here is that the DBT says any new facilities must meet all the requirements of the DBT. If it’s an existing facility, certain requirements don’t necessarily have to be met. So I think the IG’s finding

is very significant because it suggests, and we can’t talk about all

of this here, that this new facility isn’t going to meet the standard

that was just put out last May.

Mr. HALLORAN. OK. What’s the significance of the TA–18 move?

Ms. BRIAN. It’s the first step toward actually increasing security,

an actual physical move to take materials out of a part of Los Alamos that is at the bottom of the canyon, which has been time and

again proven to be an absolutely ridiculous place to be storing nuclear materials. And so by finally moving it, we are getting somewhere and actually making the space more secure.

Now, the problem is the people in charge of implementing it

seem to have a different agenda from the Secretary. And I am hoping that this committee will be able to get a commitment from

NNSA today that they actually intend to move all of it.

Mr. HALLORAN. Is it your sense, any of you can answer, that one

of the kind of political dynamics here is that possession of special

nuclear material is a budget credential, an institutional credential,

it is something you want to keep and makes you less BRAC-able,

as it were? What drives the need to keep the stuff when it’s not

being used?

Ms. BRIAN. There does seem to be sort of an emotional attachment by these facilities to these materials that I think they—honestly, I think it comes down to feeling less important if you don’t

have them.

Ms. NAZZARO. And one other issue that we have heard is that it

does make it more difficult for the scientists. If you have the materials onsite, it is certainly easier for them to conduct their research.

Ms. BRIAN. Many of these facilities aren’t actually using the materials for experiments at all, though.

Ms. NAZZARO. But our conclusion also, as far as a short-term action, was that DOE needs to consolidate some of these special nuclear materials.

Mr. HALLORAN. Could you go down your recommendations, and

explain, flesh them out a little more for us, and give us a sense of

priority in which you think would be the most urgent and which

could be a longer-term goal?

Ms. NAZZARO. We certainly would like to see DOE address outstanding issues that we have raised with the current DBT, particularly as it relates to the improvised nuclear devices.

But I think, in a longer term, what you really need is a Department-wide implementation plan. This, you know, activity involves

39

more than NNSA. You need EM to be involved as well as Transportation Security Agency.

Mr. HALLORAN. And construction is a separate pot of money, too,

right? And it has to be integrated?

Mr. NOEL. Correct.

Ms. NAZZARO. And that’s what’s missing right now. I mean, you

have budget numbers in the current budget. But without a plan,

I mean, this is only a down payment. We have no idea what its

going to take to have full implementation of the DBT and what it’s

going to cost.

The other thing is we feel it is very important for them to inform

you all, Congress, on what they are doing as far as the status and

their strategies for implementation. I mean, this is going to take

a lot of resources. It is going to be a costly venture.

Ms. BRIAN. Well, it’s actually, obviously, we agree that it is going

to be tremendously costly to implement the DBT given the complex

as it exists. And that’s one of the arguments for consolidating is

that, in the long run, it would save money tremendously, because

you could reduce the security requirements. Besides if you move

the SNM, you don’t have to have that level of security anymore.

Mr. HALLORAN. Your first recommendation talks about evaluating the cost effectiveness of existing SECON, security conditions.

And what’s your concern there?

Ms. NAZZARO. Well, last year, if you recall, DOE did take some

immediate actions to respond to the September 11th attacks. And

one of the primary methods was when the SECON level increased

to put additional protective forces in place. That’s a very costly exercise, and they did not have adequate resources to do that immediately, so there was a lot of overtime, which not only took a toll

as far as financial constraints but also in the protective forces

themselves. You know, they didn’t get the training they needed.

The fatigue set in, you know. There were a lot of downsides to that

strategy.

Mr. HALLORAN. Well, that’s the point that Ms. Brian raised in

terms of the personnel force. Did you get a sense in terms of the

DBT implementation plans that the first reaction was to throw

bodies at the problem, and bodies that we may not have or we may

wear out?

Ms. NAZZARO. Well, that was certainly one of their first strategies, and we do still think that protective force is a key element.

But we also suggested the increased use of technologies as alternatives to just the protective force that can help in this exercise?

Mr. NOEL. I think you need to recognize, though, that at least

in the short run, and short run is probably during the timeframe

that we are talking about here, putting more guards on these materials is really the only solution. And if you try to do it with too

much overtime, you really lose the effectiveness of your guard

force. For these people, standing there, watching the material is

what they do pretty much all day long, and where you ensure that

they are effective and that they are well trained is through the

training exercises. If you have too much overtime, those exercises

just don’t occur.

Ms. BRIAN. And I would like to add to that point. I think Mr.

Podonsky would be able to speak to a review he has done of the

40

guard force across the complex. But in our investigations, we found

that, at Livermore, you have the guards who are working extraordinary hours, terrible morale problems. At Oak Ridge, you have

guards who are working 70-hour workweeks for weeks on end.

Most of them don’t have time for training. So I think you have a

tremendous problem with the guard force.

Mr. HALLORAN. Let’s talk about the EM sites for a minute, if we

could. It strikes me that as we succeed—and I think progress has

been made, as you noted in your report. In kind of hardening the

weapons facilities, the EM sites might become more attractive, and

yet they don’t seem to be a priority. It’s a tough call. I mean, you

don’t want to spend all kinds of time and money hardening your

places that you hope to make go away sooner or later. That’s the

more difficult balance overall, I think. What are the unique challenges posed by the EM sites at this point?

Mr. NOEL. The EM sites have the same kinds of materials that

the NNSA sites do, so they have to be treated, in the end, in the

same way.

But you are correct in observing that if you are trying to close

something down, you don’t want to hire a lot of guards that you

are going to lay off 2 years later, especially since it takes a very

long time to clear the personnel and to adequately train them.

So at some point in time, there is a tradeoff that is going to have

to be made between cost and risk. And this is why we think it is

really important, as we made in our last recommendation, for the

Department to inform the Congress of these kinds of decisions so

that the decision is made carefully and is well considered. And

that’s, basically, the sooner you can get these things closed, the

sooner you can get that material moved, the better off you are

going to be, the more secure those sites are going to be.

Ms. NAZZARO. And we are not saying that there will never be any

risks. You know, risk is probably going to be a fact of life. But you

need to have a measured risk, and you need to know what those

risks are and what efforts we need to take to mitigate them to the

best we can.

Mr. HALLORAN. My final question. Both testimonies talked about

the need to kind of reassess or reevaluate the DBT. And I have to

hope and assume you are not talking about launching another 2-

year process to reiterate this thing. So could you be more specific

in terms of what reevaluation might entail and what we could be

doing in the meantime?

Ms. NAZZARO. Well, I think our primary point is one that Mr.

Noel made just a few minutes ago, was that we are really concerned that DOE is not treating nuclear materials in the same way

they are treating nuclear weapons. So that would be something

that we would want immediate attention given to.

Also, the new DBT has identified additional threats in radioactive, chemical, and biological agents. In that area, there is no criteria as to their standards to defend to. In the area of chemical facilities they have said they are going to develop strategies to defend

to industry standards. At this time there are no industry standards.

Mr. HALLORAN. So on what basis do they say that? I mean, how

do they say that then? What do they think they are referring to?

41

Mr. NOEL. Well that’s not really clear to us, and that’s why we

kind of put it back on them. This is their design basis threat. But

I think there are standards. They have done a lot of research.

For example, I think, probably in the radiological area, they are

furthest along. There is a lot of knowledge, about a lot of modeling,

that is done at these sites of if there was an accidental release

what the consequences would be. So you could use that information

to basically better inform the standards that you are applying,

rather than just simply say, ‘‘If anybody gets killed right on the

site, we have a problem,’’ because the problem is obviously much

bigger than that.

Ms. BRIAN. We would also obviously—if DOE is willing to recognize that this DBT isn’t adequate, which they haven’t done yet, and

they move up the implementation of the current DBT to being

much sooner than 2006, with the recognition that the facilities are

expected to have an either—a greater DBT in the near future. I

think waiting until 2006 is one of the biggest problems we have,

because we are not seeing a lot of activity. I think they are hoping

that people will forget, administrations will change, and they can

get back to the way things always were.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I may ask the same question a different

way, but it will help me understand it. We have production plants,

test facilities, research labs, storage locations, and decommissioned

sites. Have I left anything out? Production plants, testing facilities,

research labs, storage locations, and decommissioned sites.

Ms. NAZZARO. And the Office of Secure Transportation.

Mr. SHAYS. Right. Which gets the plutonium and enriched uranium and the other materials of the weapons from one site to another site.

Mr. NOEL. As well as the weapons themselves.

Ms. NAZZARO. And transports the weapons from DOD to DOE.

Mr. SHAYS. It’s a transportation issue—and that office—you all

were only weighing in on the design basis threat. Correct? In your

report?

Ms. NAZZARO. Yes.

Mr. SHAYS. So you were not looking at the logic—well, let me ask

it this way. I happen to believe we have too many sites, and I believe we have too many sites for political reasons. And we have too

much, too many structures on each site, and that’s a cost issue. Do

you disagree with either of my conclusions?

Ms. NAZZARO. I would say, no, we do not disagree as far as nuclear materials.

Now, we did not assess whether DOE has too many sites. But

as far as nuclear materials, we feel that a first step is for DOE to

consolidate some of those materials, that would help it in reducing

the cost of the implementation.

Ms. BRIAN. We have taken the same position, that we are really

just looking at the cost of having the materials in so many sites.

Mr. NOEL. And I think what Robin is saying is, you can consolidate materials within sites and then visit the broader issue of consolidating the sites themselves.

Mr. SHAYS. Have you done any research that shows that we need

so many sites?

Mr. NOEL. No.

42

Ms. NAZZARO. No.

Mr. SHAYS. Is there any logic for why we need so many sites?

Ms. NAZZARO. You could look at history. I mean, that’s what dictates where the current sites are. You know, is there a historic role

in nuclear weapon production for the most part? But we have not

done any current studies that would reassess post-cold war environment.

Mr. SHAYS. The concept of design basis threat, for my simple

mind, I feel like a few people could get in a room, and in a week,

they could do a fairly logical design basis threat. I mean, I want

you to tell me why it would take months or years to figure out

what is a logical design basis threat. Walk me through why it

would take so long.

Ms. NAZZARO. I don’t know that I could say it should take 2

years. And we have certainly said that 2 years was a long time to

do this.

But we have to also realize that we had a different environment

after September 11th. The United States had a different sense of

a terrorist threat capability within the continental United States

versus any places overseas.

Mr. SHAYS. Right.

Ms. NAZZARO. So this was a whole new paradigm, if you will.

Mr. SHAYS. That would speak to speeding up the process, not

slowing it down. What’s your point?

Ms. NAZZARO. Well, as far as that you are looking at a new paradigm, it’s not just updating, but I mean, we had a significant

change in factors, as to a terrorist threat. We can talk a little bit

more specifically as far as numbers this afternoon.

Mr. SHAYS. We don’t need to talk numbers right now. We need

to just talk logically. I mean, we don’t have to talk numbers to say

that, in the past, we basically determined someone needed to get

in and out, and now we have determined all they have to do is get

in. And we are not telling anything that’s top secret. The terrorists

know that.

I mean, if they are willing to get on an airplane and blow themselves up in this missile that they have devised, we can instantly

determine that a design basis threat that says what will it take to

get them in and out is going to be a lot more difficult for the terrorists. And now, if all they have to do is get in, it’s going to be a lot

easier for the terrorists. I mean, that’s pretty simple stuff. You

wouldn’t disagree with that?

Mr. NOEL. Let me see if I can give you a couple examples of

things that came up as we were doing our work.

Mr. SHAYS. Sure.

Mr. NOEL. One was there seemed to be a fairly large debate

among the intelligence community about September 11, and was

this one group of 19 or 20 people, or four groups of 4 or 5 people?

And that does sort of drive which way you are looking at the world

in terms of how big the threat should be postulated at. In the case

of——

Mr. SHAYS. Well——

Mr. NOEL. Now, I’m not going to defend either one.

43

Mr. SHAYS. No. But just walk me through that. I think I know

what you mean, but I think I could come to some real different conclusions. So tell me what 19 means versus four groups of 5.

Mr. NOEL. Well, we really can’t talk about that until this afternoon, I don’t think, to be fair, because it gets to what number you

would set for your postulated threat.

Mr. SHAYS. Let’s not talk about what you would set. Just tell me

what a large group versus what a number of collective small

groups means. Walk me through that.

Ms. NAZZARO. Well, I think the issue was there was no agreement as to what we should be trying to defend against.

Mr. SHAYS. We won’t even agree. I will just give you, if you have

20 people during an attack versus four groups of 5, tell me what

the significant tradeoffs would be.

Mr. NOEL. Well, the significance was, were the four groups of five

operating together, or were they independently just happening to

arrive at the same place at the same time?

Mr. SHAYS. Or I could logically say to you that you could have

20 people getting in a plant, or you could have four different groups

working together in groups of 5.

If we were in a Cabinet meeting with the President, you would

have to take that phone that just went off and put it in a glass of

water, if you don’t know how to turn it off. That’s basically what

I figured I would do if I found myself in that circumstance.

No. I just want to understand that. You know, we don’t need to

talk secret stuff. I mean, is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that

these attacks weren’t coordinated?

Mr. NOEL. Well, that was a matter of debate that drove a significant amount of the time involved here. And I will defer to the Department to let them explain that a little bit better.

Mr. SHAYS. It will be fascinating to understand that one.

Mr. NOEL. The other point I was going to make was when the

Department did its own internal thing, what it would do is it would

develop a design basis threat, send it out to all the sites and contractors. They would prepare written comments and concerns, and

send them in. Those comments would get analyzed and put into a

matrix, that would get circulated for review.

And as we point out in our report that went through about four

or five iterations of this. So every time you did that, you had a lot

of paper flowing back and forth, a lot of commenting and analysis

of the comments. And it’s just that whole process tends to be very

laborious.

Our point being, that might be all right for some more general

policy. But for this kind of a situation where the adversaries can

move very quickly, maybe you need to relook at that and not go

through that same process in the future.

Ms. BRIAN. Mr. Chairman, if I could add.

This is also relevant for your work in overseeing the commercial

nuclear power plants, that the NRC, when they were looking at

their design basis threat, were weighing in on this question of,

‘‘Well, we only need to protect, you know, a smaller group because

this wasn’t a coordinated effort of a larger group.’’

But something that I think might be missing in this conversation

is what was raised earlier. After the postulated threat was estabVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:57 Nov 15, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00047 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96313.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
44

lished, you then had the DOE separately making decisions about—

and this is a big part of the time problem—well, are we going to

accept the postulated threat at all?

And they sort of concluded, as GAO mentioned, for the first time,

‘‘Well, we’ve decided we are going to have DBT, which is actually

less than the postulated threat.’’

Mr. SHAYS. Well, I will just react first to this whole debate of 19,

20 versus four groups of 5. It was a coordinated effort. No one

doubts it. So, if anything, it speaks to the fact that they can take

19 people and use them in a coordinated way, and they can focus

on one or two targets. So, I mean, it seems to me that that is a

debate that should have lasted about 2 minutes. But we will get

into the numbers later.

Well, I think I’m just going to state for the record that I have

gotten nothing but cooperation from NNSA and Admiral Brooks,

and I have appreciated the amount of work they have done to help

us understand this issue. And so I want to put that on the record.

It just strikes me, as I went to three of these sites, that the task

is quite difficult—they are very, very old sites—and that I would

think that terrorists would design their attack based on what they

think it would take to succeed. And so the irony is, then we would

respond by saying what would it take to succeed, and then what

do we have to do to prevent that from happening, not based on

even historically what has been done, because I think that they

demonstrated on September 11th that they can take small cells,

have them work in a coordinated way against, at a precise period

of time. And it just seems to me that they have—that the design

basis for that would have to take that into consideration.

When we saw these sites and we looked at the design basis

threat back last year, it was very clear to me that if they could

meet the design basis threat, the design basis threat that they had

devised was simply not adequate. It just simply wasn’t adequate.

And I could think in more than one way how they could overcome

simply by two people inside instead of one or zero. I was astounded

at seeing the encroachment of the public to these facilities. I was

amazed at how many buildings I saw onsite and how easy it would

be for someone onsite to have some protection and get very close

to their target. And I mean, I could go on and on and on. And I’m

not saying anything that anyone just looking at a picture wouldn’t

conclude.

You have answered to me why it would take so long, but what

you basically have done is you have, Ms. Nazzaro, you have basically done in your report is you have basically said the design basis

threat isn’t adequate and you are basically saying it’s vulnerable

and you are basically saying that it’s going to take too long to resolve.

Ms. NAZZARO. Correct.

Mr. SHAYS. Are you saying anything more than that?

Ms. NAZZARO. I think you have captured the three main points.

Mr. SHAYS. And because it’s so straightforward, I don’t believe I

have much more to add. Is there anything else?

I think what we will do—excuse me. Ms. Brian, what I would do

is invite any of the three of you to make any closing comment, and

then we will get on to our next panel.

45

Ms. NAZZARO. I think I would just like to reiterate our recommendations to try to move——

Mr. SHAYS. Why don’t you run through them?

Ms. NAZZARO. I will summarize, but what we are trying to do is

to expedite full compliance of the DBT. And first is to address the

outstanding issues, particularly as they relate to the improvised

nuclear devices; second, to develop that Department-wide implementation plan; and third, to inform Congress of that implementation status and any facility vulnerabilities that may affect either

the surrounding communities or the Nation at large.

Ms. BRIAN. I would just like to affirm what the GAO has said.

I think those are the most important steps. And I think that perhaps today, by the committee getting to the bottom of the first step

toward that, which is the TA–18 move and establishing whether

this place is actually getting deinventoried or not will start the ball

rolling finally.

Mr. SHAYS. Very good. Thank you for your very important work.

And we will now get on to the next panel. That would be Linton

Brooks, Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration,

Department of Energy; Glenn Podonsky, Director, Office of Security

and Safety Performance Assurance, Department of Energy.

And I will invite you to come forward and remain standing, and

I will swear you in.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. I should have asked, is there anyone else who may

join you in testifying? If there is, I probably should ask them to

stand.

Mr. PODONSKY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the Director

of Security and the Director of Independent Oversight to stand.

Mr. SHAYS. If they will just stand, I will just swear them in. You

two gentlemen can sit down. Is there anyone else, Ambassador, you

would ask to be joining you?

Mr. BROOKS. I think I am flying solo.

Mr. SHAYS. You may not be asked to speak. And if you are, we

will make sure your name is on the record.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just read a statement, but first, let me again

thank you Ambassador Brooks and you Mr. Podonsky, you have

both been extraordinarily helpful to this committee. You have not

been reluctant to tell us whatever we need to know. We couldn’t

have asked for greater cooperation.

We may have some disagreements. We don’t face some of the

challenges you face, but you are—we appreciate the good work you

do, and we will look forward to getting into details in our closed

hearing but also to talk about some important general concepts.

I would like to just make this statement—in response to our invitation letter of March 23rd, DOE informed us just yesterday that

no witness was available to testify specifically on DBT implementation and decommissioned environmental management sites.

Those facilities possess unique vulnerabilities and possess difficult questions about the extent, pace, and cost of security enhancements. Unable to address those issues today, we will convene

a separate hearing on DBT implementation at DOE environmental

management sites. We have the Department’s commitment to

46

make a high level witness available at that time. We would have

liked to have done it today, but it just means it will get a special

focus, which is I guess, what they wanted.

So, Mr. Brooks, welcome. What we do is we do a 5-minute statement, but we roll over 5 minutes, so you have up to 10. We hope

you will stop somewhere between 5 and 10.

And may I also say that I understand you have some personal

challenges at home, and we do appreciate that you take this job so

seriously that you would meet your commitment here as well. And

we thank you for that.

STATEMENTS OF LINTON F. BROOKS, ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY; AND GLENN S. PODONSKY, DIRECTOR,

OFFICE OF SECURITY AND SAFETY PERFORMANCE ASSURANCE, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

Mr. BROOKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I get into my prepared remarks, I would like to make a couple of points about the panel you

have just heard. And we can go into these at whatever length you

want.

From my perspective, while I’m sure there was somebody who

was worried about the cost of the design basis threat, I don’t believe it’s correct that cost was a driver in the decisions the Secretary made. I don’t believe it’s correct that the challenges at Lawrence Livermore will preclude adequate security or meeting of the

design basis threat. I don’t believe it’s correct that the Inspector

General found systematic cheating at Y–12. The Inspector General

specifically said he could not document the allegations he had

heard.

Nonetheless, both Mr. Podonsky and I think that any compromised performance testing is unacceptable, and whatever was

true in the past, there won’t be any in the future.

I don’t believe it is correct that the HEU materials facility at Y–

12 is an inferior design to the so-called berm design. In fact, it is

a superior design. And I don’t believe it’s correct that only 50 percent of the material from TA–18 will be moved to Nevada. It’s our

intention to move all of that material. And I appreciate the committee’s indulgence, and I will be happy to expand on those. And

with your permission now, I appreciate the opportunity to appear

before you. I have submitted a prepared statement which I would

like to summarize.

Tightening the security that began with the establishment of

NNSA in the year 2000 and accelerated after September 11th has

resulted, in my view, in a strong, effective security posture at all

nuclear weapons research and production facilities. Today, no nuclear weapons, no special nuclear material, and no classified materials are at risk within the nuclear weapons complex.

That does not mean that we don’t have a great deal of work to

do yet. Secretary Abraham has made it clear that we can’t fulfill

our mission unless we can guarantee security. That priority is reflected in our 2005 budget request as well as in the reprogramming

request to be submitted this week. Our safeguards and security

budget has grown from $400 million in fiscal year 2001 to $707

47

million in the current budget request. That’s a 75 percent increase.

The number of protective force officers guarding our facilities has

increased from 2,100 to over 2,400 during the same timeframe.

Overall, security performance as measured by independent review has continued to improve. In the past year, no force-on-force

performance testing by the Office of Security and Safety Performance Assurance has found security forces unable to protect special

nuclear material on their site.

Now, while I am pleased with the progress we have made, our

long-term security has to be based on more than guns, gates, and

guards. Therefore, Mr. Podonsky and I will jointly commission an

examination of how we can harness the power of technology to improve security.

We’re already doing a great deal of that, which I will be happy

to talk about in the question period. But we will explicitly look at

what else might be done, and we will do so in time to affect the

2007 budget.

We will also look at accelerating the fielding of the technology we

already have in hand. We believe that we must reduce our reliance

on an old and aging physical security system and replace it with

state-of-the-art technology.

But while we prepare for the future, we have to deal with today’s

threats. All NNSA sites have completed and I have approved plans

to meet the design basis threat by the end of fiscal year 2006. We’ll

use formal vulnerability analysis to validate the security upgrades

that I’ve improved. These efforts are under way.

Because we have not fully formulated our plans at the time of submitting the fiscal year 2004 budget, we’re also submitting a $55

million reprogramming request this week to keep our design basis

threat implementation on track. That will bring our budget for this

year to $638 million. We’ve asked for another $90 million specifically for design basis threat in the 2005 budget request.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just interrupt you. Are you saying you’re asking for a supplemental——

Mr. BROOKS. I’m asking for reprogramming in this fiscal year.

Mr. SHAYS. Within your budget or within DOE?

Mr. BROOKS. Within mine.

Our most significant site, which is the Pantex site, and the Office

of Secure Transportation, which moves both material and weapons,

are already prepared to meet the design basis threat; and I’m confident that all sites will be in compliance by the end of fiscal 2006.

Let me now briefly turn to the GAO report issued today.

GAO spoke of the effectiveness of elevated security conditions. As

the report states, we raised from SECON level 4, which we used

to think of as normal, to SECON level 2 within hours of the attacks

on September 11. The idea of these measures, which are tailored

to each site, is to put up the best available defense against a broad

spectrum of threats. We’ve validated these measures somewhat

through tabletop analysis and through oversight, and we have

modified the procedures over the last 21⁄2 years to improve the effectiveness of SECON levels. Today, as a routine basis, we maintain SECON 3.

Seven times we’ve elevated our security condition, in each case

in response to the Department of Homeland Security elevating the

48

overall threat level. As GAO quite correctly states, a heightened

state of readiness impacts training, effectiveness, and the protective force. It also costs money. We estimate it costs about $560,000

a day for every day that we are in a heightened alert status. So

we need to improve our ability to guard our facilities without

throwing people at them, and we need to reduce the amount of

overtime security force personnel are required to work.

We’re aggressively hiring more security forces. Last year, the

Congress approved a recommendation by the Secretary to give us

additional flexibility in conducting background investigations to

speed up the clearance of our new hires. We are, as I said earlier,

trying to accelerate the use of technology—and we can talk about

some of this in the question period—as a way to increase the effectiveness of security forces.

Secondary in the GAO report is improvised nuclear devices, and

there’s very little I’d like to say in the open session on this. However, we disagree with the GAO conclusion that an improvised nuclear device should be thought of as the equivalent of a nuclear

weapon. Our reasoning was based on analysis of physics and weapons design, and we believe that nuclear weapons deserve the highest priority protection. That’s because to detonate and improvise a

nuclear device an adversary has to make that device into a condition where a nuclear weapon already is, and we believe that is a

greater challenge and therefore we believe that the highest security

should be reserved for nuclear weapons.

I’d like any further discussion of this, for fairly obvious reasons,

to be in closed session.

I know that the security of Y–12 is of particular concern to this

committee. It’s certainly got some of the most difficult security

problems anywhere in the complex. It’s old. Facilities were builtin the early days of the cold war with no thought of the kind of

threat we have now.

I am, however, still convinced that Y–12 will meet the deadline

for implementation. Much of the funding for security upgrades that

I referred to earlier has been used for improvements at Y–12, and

much of the—about half of the $55 million reprogramming—will be

in Y–12 and about $25 million of the design basis threat money in

the 2005 budget will be for Y–12.

Now that level has led a number of people, including I believe

you, Mr. Chairman, to question the long-term viability of Y–12 as

a site for this mission. Secretary Abraham has committed to another committee of the House of Representatives to conduct a zerobased review of the entire weapons complex, based on a revised

stockpile plan which is in the final stages of approval and a look

at the design basis threat. He is committed, and we are committed

to looking at all options.

It’s clear, however, that if one of those options led you to conclude that you had to move Y–12 it would be a lengthy and expensive endeavor. It would take at least a decade, cost probably billions of dollars, and during that time Y–12 security would have to

meet the same standard we are trying to achieve by the end of fiscal year 2006. So whatever the long-term merits, I do not believe

moving Y–12 or any other site is a solution to our near-term problems.

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I do, however, agree with the testimony you’ve heard that consolidating and securing special nuclear material is an important

part of our security strategy. We are well under way in our plan

to begin moving material from TA–18 to Nevada this calendar year.

We are also looking at other material consolidation candidates.

I believe consolidation, as referred to in the last panel, is important within sites. For that reason, the highly enriched uranium

material facility in Y–12 is particularly important because it will

allow us to consolidate within the site and reduce the defended

footprint.

At the same time, sir, consolidation is not a panacea. We have

to have materials at some locations to carry out our mission.

For example, the subcommittee has heard suggestions to eliminate special nuclear material at Lawrence Livermore. In our judgment that would preclude our carrying out our stockpile stewardship assessments; and that’s because, while we can move the material someplace else, we can’t move the research capabilities and

processes that exist at Livermore.

In conclusion, sir, we are fully committed—the Secretary is committed and I am committed to maintaining security at our facilities. Implementing the new design basis threat is a major part of

that effort, and I am confident that we will continue to ensure the

security of the complex.

I thank you for your attention, sir; and I’m looking forward to

your questions after you’ve heard from Mr. Podonsky.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Ambassador.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Brooks follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. What I’m going to do is I’m going to have Mr.

Podonsky speak, but just to tell you what my question will be, I

will want you to run down each of the points that you agree and

disagree with GAO on.

Mr. BROOKS. Sure. Now, sir?

Mr. SHAYS. No, just after he’s done. I’m just giving you a warning of what I want to ask.

Mr. Podonsky.

Mr. PODONSKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you for inviting me to testify today.

You requested that we address the issues as they relate to the

GAO report dealing with DOE’s implementation of its revised design basis threat. I have addressed those issues in detail in my

written statement which I request be submitted for the record.

I would first like to commend the GAO for their thorough and

professional job in preparing their report. We agree that the issues

they raised are legitimate and valid and must be addressed. As acknowledged in the report, we had previously identified and we’re

dealing with some of those issues. We conclude, as I believe that

GAO has also concluded, that while the issues raised in the report

are important many of them describe past events and of more importance are DOE’s current actions to improve protection programs

and to implement the revised DBT. Therefore, I will only briefly

mention the issues raised in the GAO report and will devote the

bulk of my allotted time in discussing what we are doing to advance security and fully implement our revised DBT.

The issues raised in the GAO report essentially deal with the

time it took to develop and issue the revised DBT and the differences to the threats described in the postulated threat and the

DBT. Additionally, two issues deal with the effects of the manpower and intensive measures implemented on and after September 11, 2001, and the fact that effectiveness of these measures were

not evaluated using our formal vulnerability assessment methodology. The final issues involve DOE’s need to provide additional implementation guidance, implementation plans, and supporting

budgets associated with revised DBT.

We accept these issues as valid. The Department’s senior leadership is committed to fully meeting the agency’s security responsibilities, including the timely implementation of the revised DBT. That

commitment is reflected in Secretary Abraham’s recent creation of

my organization, the Office of Security and Safety Performance Assurance.

While the Secretary holds line managers accountable for effectively implementing security programs, he recognizes that the Department’s effort to improve protection programs could be accelerated and more effective if relationships and interactions between

headquarter’s elements and the fields were improved.

His direction to me when he created the office, resulted in four

major priorities: improve communications and cooperation between

my two organizations and the field, improve the quality and security policy and policy guidance, evaluate and develop security-related technologies and make them quickly available to the field, and

overall security training to ensure that national level training resources are responsive to the needs of field organizations. I believe

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improvements in these four areas are key not only to our current

efforts to upgrade security and fully implement the revised DBT

but also to the future vitality of our protection programs.

We are improving the communication between my two offices and

other headquarter’s offices and security professionals in the field.

We’re working hard to ensure that organizational relationships are

mutually beneficial and supportive of protection program needs. We

have removed some institutional barriers that have hampered communications and have been successful in opening additional lines

of dialog between my office and other organizations and agencies.

Our security policies and implementation guidance are the foundation of our protection programs. We believe that security policies

should be practical, based on real needs and unambiguous.

Some of our policies have fallen short of this mark. A major contributing factor to past difficulties in resolving policy issues was a

prohibition against policy developers communicating directly with

field sites. The Deputy Secretary recently directed a change to this

ill-conceived practice, and we have established necessary dialogs to

facilitate policy development and revision. Our policy staff is currently at work reformulating and improving many of our security

policies.

The Secretary sees our ability to implement new security technologies as a crucial element in our effort to fully implement the

revised DBT. We are convinced that improved technologies will be

a long-term key in our efforts to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our protection programs. Whenever possible we have to

move away from the very costly and often inefficient manpower-intensive responses to security concerns. The tendency to add more

guards must change. The introduction of new technologies, such as

active and passive barrier systems, can act as force multipliers that

reduce our dependence on manpower.

The Department has the scientific and technology resources to

address our technology needs. We are beginning to focus and improve our internal efforts in this area in cooperation with the

NNSA and provide the field with technological options that can be

used to reduce manpower and improve protection systems’ effectiveness.

Security training is our final focus area. Through our National

Training Center, we establish security training standards and provide safeguard security related professionals training for the Department. We intend to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of

those efforts by ensuring that the training resources are more responsive to the specific needs of DOE and NNSA field organization.

We are focusing considerable effort in these four areas; and we

firmly believe that Secretary’s instincts will prove to be correct,

that these initiatives will have a profound effect on our efforts to

strengthen our protection programs. The Department’s leadership

has declared and demonstrated its willingness and determination

to take the actions necessary to improve our security performance

and to fully implement the revised DBT on schedule. We fully intend to pursue our efforts until we have achieved a Departmentwide level of performance that meets our expectations, the expectations of Congress and of the American people.

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I’d like to close by saying in my 20 years of working as the Department’s overseer and now as the Department’s overseer and policy promulgator, I have never seen an administration that was so

committed to improving security as this administration under Secretary Abraham, Deputy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow and Administrator Ambassador Brooks.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Podonsky follows:]

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Mr. SHAYS. Would you do me the favor, Mr. Podonsky, of describing what you are versus what Mr. Brooks is.

Mr. PODONSKY. I pause—you mean my function? For the Department of Energy, I report to the Secretary of Energy.

I have two offices. One office is the Independent Oversight and

Performance Assurance Office headed up by Director Michael Kilpatrick, who is responsible for independently assessing the performance of the Department of Energy in environment, safety,

health, safeguard security, cybersecurity, and emergency management.

Independence means that it’s——

Mr. SHAYS. And environment as well?

Mr. PODONSKY. Environment as well. It’s independent of the program offices. Their independence comes from how the work is conducted. They are not implementers of any of the policies that are

promulgated by the Department.

My other office, the Office of Security, headed up by the Director

of Security, Marshall Combs, is responsible for promulgating policy

as well as providing technical assistance to help the field in its implementation of DBT and other policies.

Ambassador Brooks is an implementer. He is many things, but

in that regard he’s an implementer. We are the policy promulgators

and the overseers.

Mr. SHAYS. Wait. He is not policy?

Mr. PODONSKY. According to the NNSA act, he generates policy

for his agency, but the Department policy, being from a Cabinet official and according to the act as I understand it, the Secretary has

overall policy of the Department, which would include NNSA.

Mr. SHAYS. Ambassador, in your words, how do you define yourself versus Mr. Podonsky?

Mr. BROOKS. He helps the Secretary set policy. I implement. He

comes and checks to make sure I’ve done it right.

Mr. SHAYS. Would the design basis threat—you both—tell me

your roles in establishing the design basis threat.

Mr. PODONSKY. I’ve been in this job for 4 months. So my job previously I was a critic of the design basis threat as the overseer.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s one reason why I was getting confused here.

Mr. PODONSKY. I’m schizophrenic, too, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. I didn’t say that.

Mr. PODONSKY. The Office of Security promulgated the design

basis threat for the Department in coordination with other agencies

and then coordinated, as you’ve heard in testimony by GAO, with

the other elements of the Department.

Mr. SHAYS. Who initiates the design? Do you initiate the design

basis threat?

Mr. PODONSKY. My Office of Security initiates the design basis

threat.

Mr. SHAYS. So it’s not Ambassador Brooks that does that?

Mr. PODONSKY. No.

Mr. SHAYS. What roll does he have, in your words, with design

basis threat?

Mr. PODONSKY. I believe Ambassador Brooks as well as the

Under Secretary for ESE has the responsibility to implement the

Secretary’s policy, and the design basis threat is the Secretary’s

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policy on what the posture of protection should be in the Department.

Mr. SHAYS. The design basis threat basically determines what

the threat is. Do you also determine what the antidote to that

threat is or is that Ambassador Brooks that does that?

Mr. PODONSKY. I need to clarify. The design basis threat is quite

a misnomer, the word ‘‘threat.’’ Design basis threat is really a DOE

performance standard. The threat is developed by the postulated

threat document that is created by the Defense Intelligence Agency. So what the Department is—they take the postulated threat,

and they evaluate what’s contained in the postulated threat, and

they specifically are applying it to the DOE sites and the protection

of those sites.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s a little different than I basically had always

viewed it, and so I’m just exposing my ignorance, which happens

quite often. But I do want to understand it.

My view was the design basis threat was we would say that it

was likely that at, say, Y–12 you might have up to so many people,

you might have so many people in-house, out of it, and we would

give the worst-case scenario, and then you would have to design a

way to prevent that threat from succeeding. Now you’re telling me

that the postulate—that you don’t determine that at all. That’s

someone else outside your organization that does that?

Mr. PODONSKY. No, sir. Let me clarify, and I think in the last

panel there was also a question as well as the GAO question why

the numbers in the postulated threat differ from the DOE design

basis threat. And it might be helpful if I described the postulated

threat as the document that characterizes what the threat is expected to look like, and it’s intended to portray a range of adversary capabilities.

Mr. SHAYS. And you would agree that’s a key assumption?

Mr. PODONSKY. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. Because you could design a threat to just be almost

meaningless and easy to come back or you could have a threat that

would be almost beyond absurd that you could never defend

against.

Mr. PODONSKY. And I think that’s probably part and parcel why

it took such a long time for the Department of Energy to publish

its design basis threat, and there’s some other factors that I could

go into later.

Mr. SHAYS. I don’t think it should take so long sir. I mean, that’s

one thing I could never accept, not in this day and age with the

threat existing. But, anyway——

Mr. PODONSKY. But getting back to your original question, sir, if

I might, the design basis threat for the Department gives the specific adversary group’s size, equipment and capability; and then the

DOE analyst established that design basis threat at a level that

considers all the terrorist events worldwide. And then they apply

it to the different sites with specific——

Mr. SHAYS. Wouldn’t it be logical, though, without talking numbers, that terrorists are going to—they did what they needed to do

to accomplish their mission? For instance, you only need two people

on the boat evidently with a bomb to go up to the Cole. You don’t

need 1,000. That doesn’t mean they won’t use 1,000 but they didn’t

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need to use 1,000 to do that. Or you only needed five people per

plane—in one case only four—but five people per plane and you

could take a plane. So they determined what they needed to overcome any—to accomplish their mission.

Wouldn’t it be logical that terrorists would look at a facility and

say, well, my gosh, we may need 50 people in order to succeed here;

and am I to interpret because they never used 50 somewhere else

that we make an assumption that they won’t?

Mr. PODONSKY. No, sir. I think what has to happen is you have

a point in time that you can put so much security in place that you

end up not being able to do your mission. And somewhere the decision has to be made, is what is the Department—what agencies—

what risks are you willing to accept, and there has to be a tradeoff.

I’m not here to defend the current DBT as much as I would also

like to say that the DBT, the current DBT, was published in May

2003, is now almost reaching a year. And I would tell you that

when the authors of the original DBT put it forward to the Secretary, the Secretary of Energy actually increased numbers, without getting into specifics, which was quite a surprise to the safeguard security community that he actually increased it.

I’ve also been told as of this morning that I would like to share

with you that, as a result of your work and the GAO’s report, I am

directed in my new capacity to take 30 to 60 days to reexamine

where we are with the DBT and to see whether or not the numbers

need to change now that we’ve had a year of experience and what

does it mean.

Mr. SHAYS. Again, I’m getting a little confused, because the issue

of the size and equipment and capabilities is not determined by

you; correct?

Mr. PODONSKY. It’s determined by the intelligence community.

Mr. SHAYS. Right. So the intelligence community—I think somehow having the intelligence community determine this makes me

less comfortable, and I don’t mean to be cute. You are then supposed to find the antidote to that; correct?

Mr. PODONSKY. My staff, yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s your staff, not Ambassador Brooks.

Mr. PODONSKY. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. So now what is ironic is you’re being asked to look

at the design basis threat and not the intelligence, and that’s why

I’m getting confused. If it’s their job, why are you being asked——

Mr. PODONSKY. I think because of the commitment of this administration to security and the reality of the word today, they recognize that we need to reexamine where we are. As I said in my

opening statement, we agree with the points made in the GAO report.

Mr. SHAYS. I would think when setting design basis threat, you

would look at your capabilities and then you would say, my gosh,

how could someone beat our capabilities? That’s the way I would

think that a terrorist would do. They would want to get information about how you secure a facility and then they want to say, OK,

what do we do to beat your preventative measures? Then, what I

would think they would do is they would say, well, we would have

to do these things. Then they would have to determine whether it

is feasible or not, and you would have to determine the same thing.

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You would have to be trying to anticipate what the terrorists would

be doing.

For instance, in a site where there is not much of a buffer, and

where you can get to the perimeter very easily, I would think the

terrorists would say, well, it would take—I’m just going to just take

something that that has no intelligence behind it—it’s going to take

50 people. They’re then going to go and say, well, can we then logically amass 50 people? And you’re going to do the same thing, and

you’re going to know at what point they have no capability. I would

think that’s ultimately how you would determine the threat.

But what I’m hearing you say is that we’re seeing what they

have done in the past; and if they didn’t, for instance, amass 50

people, then we may make an assumption they are not going to use

50 people, which strikes me as a hope and a prayer.

Mr. PODONSKY. No, sir. That’s not what I’m implying. If that’s

what you’re interpreting from my statement, then—then let me try

to clarify that.

Historically, as we all know, on September 11 we were all surprised and shocked at what transpired. When we talk about the design basis threat, it’s more than just adding numbers. It’s exactly

what you’re saying. There’s a lot of analysis that goes into targeted

attractiveness, the potential paths that would take place; and if I

might, if you’ll allow me, I will give you one vignette.

In 1996, wearing my oversight hat, we went out to test the performance at one of our sites; and we brought with us the Navy

SEALs. And the Commander of the Navy SEALs—we were testing

against the previous design basis threat; and the Commander of

the Navy SEALs said, Mr. Podonsky, if I was going to take this facility, I would bring in whatever number I needed to take the facility, which supports your statement. But we still have to balance

what is the likelihood of an event and what’s the amount of people

that they are likely to amass and what do we want to protect

against and there is a degree that has to come; and while I do not

know anything to prove that there was money driving the numbers

for design basis threat, it would be inconceivable to me that money

could not be a consideration at some point.

Mr. SHAYS. Money has to be, ultimately. Otherwise, we could do

an absurdity and say we’ll have 10,000 people guard each site.

Well, obviously, they would get in each other’s way and probably

be a danger, but money is a factor, and if we don’t admit that,

we’re not being honest.

Ambassador Brooks, help me out in this conversation. When I

traveled with you and we talked about design basis threat, I felt

that you had a say in the design basis threat. And, by the way,

help me out in this postulated threat or design basis threat. Walk

me through that.

Mr. BROOKS. Certainly, sir.

First, let me talk about the internal organization of the Department. You have to distinguish between formal responsibility and

where the Secretary turns for advice.

The formal responsibility for preparing the design basis threat

document was with the Office of Security at the time, prior to Mr.

Podonsky’s arrival, a separate stand-alone office reporting to the

Secretary. The Secretary, however, as is his practice, turns to his

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senior subordinates for advice. So when the Office of Security prepared the draft of the design basis threat, the Secretary asked for

the views of the then Under Secretary Card, he asked for my views

and, he asked for the views of the Deputy Secretary. So I did have

an opportunity, as I do on most policy things, to make my views

known, even though I might not be formally responsible for developing that particular policy; and that’s fairly common within government.

Further, since I am responsible for making sure that we are implementing the Secretary’s policy, I need to understand it well and

so, when we traveled, I attempted to articulate it to you.

Now let’s talk about postulated threat and design basis threat.

A group from the intelligence community—and Mr. Podonsky

and I have met with the analysts who actually did this and walked

through exactly what they did to make sure that we understood at

a classified level where there was data and adversaries where

there was judgment. We were advised of their views on what might

do and might not do. And we were told that in some places there’s

just no data, you’re not on your own, and there’s a little of all of

that in the postulated threat.

A group of analysts from the intelligence community with community support looked at what is the plausible threat worldwide

over the next 10 years—and those two words are very important:

the design basis threat—then looked and said, what is the problem

we have to deal within the United States? For example, they said

one wouldn’t expect to see no cooperation from the government for

terrorists, as might be true overseas; no meaningful support for

terrorists within the population, as might be true overseas; no

nearby logistics facilities, as might be true overseas.

So, after analyzing it, the Office of Security came to some conclusions about what would be an appropriate threat that the Secretary

should promulgate to govern security at our sites. The Secretary,

who is not a captive of his staff, took that, talked to a bunch of people, listened to a bunch of people and made, as Mr. Podonsky said,

some judgments; and then that became his policy, and our task is

to implement it.

So the postulated threat was the basis from which the design

basis threat evolved, but the design basis threat is the Secretary’s

formal guidance to us about how to allocate resources.

Mr. SHAYS. As you both are responding to these questions, I

think I’m having a sense of why I feel uneasy; and so maybe you

can respond. It strikes me that the postulated threat is based on

what we have seen terrorists do. If we followed that logic, it would

explain why we would never have been prepared for September 11.

Because we basically said, terrorists as a general rule, don’t know

how to fly planes, and as a general rule we haven’t seen five of

them take a plane and use it as a missile. But, in fact, they did

that. So if the postulated threat is based on historic practice—I

would be very uneasy.

Mr. BROOKS. Yes, sir. I want to choose my words very carefully,

remembering this is an open session; and we may want to go into

this more later. The word postulated is important, and it is not limited to what has been seen in the past.

Mr. SHAYS. Fair enough.

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Mr. BROOKS. It uses what has been seen in the past to inform,

to make some postulations about what might happen in the future

and provide some nonquantitative estimates of probability. But I

think if the analysts who were working it were here they would

want to distinguish between documents traditionally done by the

Intel general community, which are based on, as much as possible,

evidence and a document which says, based on the evidence, what

is plausible and is therefore a postulated threat. The word in this

particular case actually means something.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m going to get to your going through the response

to GAO. But let me ask you, again, is it your job to defend these

sites or is it Mr. Podonsky’s job?

Mr. BROOKS. My job.

Mr. SHAYS. So, basically, the design basis threat ultimately goes

through his office. It’s your job ultimately to defend against the

threat. And then, Mr. Podonsky, is it your job to see if they can

do that?

Mr. PODONSKY. Yes, sir, to independently test Ambassador

Brooks’ facilities as well as the rest of the Department’s facilities.

Mr. SHAYS. So now I’m getting a sense that the two of you disagree a little bit on the GAO’s findings, is that fair?

Mr. BROOKS. I don’t think that is true.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. I heard basically agreement with GAO from you,

Mr. Podonsky, and I heard Ambassador Brooks’ disagreement with

GAO.

Mr. BROOKS. That may have been inelegant phrasing on my part,

because I didn’t hear Mr. Podonsky say anything I disagreed with.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. So tell me what you agree with within the report—and I’m looking at page 27 where it’s first, second, and third.

Would you go through each of those and tell me what you agree

with; and, finally—there’s four points—and the conclusions.

Mr. BROOKS. I have seven recommendations listed. I may not actually have the exact same version of the document you have.

Mr. SHAYS. Let’s just go through it. So, ‘‘First, DOE needs to

know the effectiveness of its most immediate response to September 11, 2001, the move to higher SECON levels. The higher

SECON levels, while increasing the level of visible deterrence, have

come at a significant cost in budget dollars and protective force

readiness. We believe that DOE needs to follow its own policies and

use its well-established vulnerability assessment methodology to

evaluate the effectiveness of these additional security measures.’’

Do you disagree with that?

Mr. BROOKS. I think that’s a good recommendation, and we ought

to do it.

But I also agree with the comment that you heard from the previous panel that in the near term, as a practical matter, the only

way you can increase security protection in the short term in response to threats is more people, and that’s essentially what we get

with SECONs, but I think that we are spending a lot of time and

energy on it and formally understanding how effective that is is a

perfectly reasonable thing. I think—would you like me to just go

down the——

Mr. SHAYS. Just go down. So the second——

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Mr. BROOKS. I have no objection to looking at how the DBT was

developed.

Mr. SHAYS. This is a second——

Mr. BROOKS. The second bullet that says, ‘‘Review how the DBT

is developed to see if this policymaking approach is appropriate.’’

I think that, whatever may or may not have been appropriate for

a radical change that was represented by September 11, we’re

probably going to be looking at incremental changes. So I think

that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I’m not sure it will make

a huge deal of difference.

The most important recommendation and the one in which—and

I’m speaking personally, because the Department hasn’t taken a

formal position on these. I believe that the graded threat approach

is appropriately applied, for reasons I said in my statement, to improvised nuclear devices.

Mr. SHAYS. It says, ‘‘Reexamine the current application of the

graded threat approach to sites that may have improvised nuclear

device concerns.’’ And you agree or disagree with that?

Mr. BROOKS. I have no objection to reexamining anything. I believe that when we reexamine it we will find that we were correct.

Mr. SHAYS. You’re not going on like Allen Greenspan on me and

talking in tongues, are you?

Mr. BROOKS. No, sir. I think we’re right.

Mr. SHAYS. So the bottom line is you accept that they need to reexamine, but you don’t think they need to?

Mr. BROOKS. You always ought to look at everything, because

otherwise you fall into complacency. I do not share the underlying

assumption of the GAO that we’re applying this methodology imprecisely.

I’m going to defer to Mr. Podonsky on chemical and biological.

Mr. SHAYS. Here’s what I’m going to do. Let me do this. We have

one, two, three, four, five, six, seven recommendations. Do you

agree with all of these recommendations; and, if not, which ones do

you not agree with?

Mr. BROOKS. Yes, sir. I agree that we should examine the graded

threat approach as it applies to improvised nuclear devices, because serious people have suggested we ought to look again. But

from what I know so far, I remain convinced that we are correct.

The rest of the recommendations, I don’t disagree with any of

them, although I defer to Mr. Podonsky on the comment on biological and chemical.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you, on all of the seven, where do you

come down?

Mr. PODONSKY. Well, maybe this is from all of the years of my

oversight, so we are partially the internal GAO, but I agree with

all the recommendations that we need to be—that we need to look

at these carefully.

Mr. SHAYS. Are you as confident as Ambassador Brooks is that

reexamining the current application of the graded approach to sites

that may have improvised nuclear device concerns, that’s not—

we’re not going to find much?

Mr. PODONSKY. I don’t share the same convictions that we may

not find much. I’m a strong believer that we need to evaluate it in

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the light of the year experience that we’ve had since we published

the DBT.

Mr. BROOKS. I don’t disagree with that.

Mr. SHAYS. So, basically, all of these recommendations you concur with but maybe not with the same level of enthusiasm.

When Ambassador Watson heard there was an ambassador

Brooks, she decided to come down quickly. Why I am grateful is it

enables me to have her presence here but also to note for the

record a quorum is present and then be able to take care of some

business before I recognize Ambassador Watson and—Congresswoman Watson.

I ask unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee

be permitted to place an opening statement in the record and the

record remain open for that purpose. Without objection, so ordered.

I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be permitted

include their written statements in the record. Without objection,

so ordered.

You have the floor. I thank you for coming.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.

I just wanted to underscore what the chairman said. I think it’s

essential that we reexamine all of our systems, methodology and so

on in light of the newer warnings that have occurred in the last

48 hours that the target will be the United States. They’re looking

for soft spots.

I just returned from Vegas, a wedding, and I asked about the

power outage, and the taxi driver said that wires were cut, and it

was an inside job.

So we need to go back over—and I know that procedures were

probably acceptable, but we cannot be too cautious, and I would encourage you—and I think you are all in agreement that the recommendations need to be reviewed, and I would encourage all different departments and units to just go back over and look at their

security systems.

I thank you gentlemen very much. I’m sorry I wasn’t here for the

opening of the hearing, but I want to encourage you to support

these recommendations sincerely.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentlelady very much for, one, coming

and making that point, and being here.

Ambassador, both my staff and I had a question on your opening

statement; and I’m just going to have counsel just ask you a question. It was kind of curious.

Mr. HALLORAN. Thank you.

There’s a sentence in the second paragraph of your submitted

statement which you read. It says, ‘‘Today no nuclear weapons,

Special Nuclear Material, or classified materials are at risk anywhere within the nuclear weapons complex.’’ I think I understand

what you’re saying, but you’re not saying there’s no risk. Could you

decode that for us?

Mr. BROOKS. I am not saying that there is no risk. There’s always risk. What I am——

Mr. SHAYS. He’s trying to be like Allen Greenspan.

Mr. BROOKS. Well, what I’m trying to convey is that there is no

material that is not adequately protected, that the people who protect it are well trained and confident, that people looking, as ConVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:57 Nov 15, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00095 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96313.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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gresswoman Watson said, for soft spots would be ill-advised to

come to the sites for which I am responsible, because they aren’t

soft spots. But I am also trying not to pretend that there isn’t work

left to be done because there is. That’s what I was trying to convey

with that.

Mr. SHAYS. Because the bottom line is, the design basis threat,

we’re not going to even come close to reaching the requirements

there for a few more years——

Mr. BROOKS. At all of the sites. A couple of them are close now.

Mr. SHAYS. And you have agreed with GAO that we need to reexamine the design basis threat?

Mr. BROOKS. That’s correct.

Mr. SHAYS. So you’re saying we need to reexamine it, and you

acknowledge with GAO that we’re not even going to reach that—

living up to the existing design basis threat in the timeframe we

had hoped to; correct?

Mr. BROOKS. I want to be very precise, Mr. Chairman—we are

going to be prepared to meet our obligations under the Secretary’s

policy about the end of fiscal year 2006. We’re going to, in some

sites, do it sooner. We’re going to put compensatory measures in

where we can’t meet it until 2006.

I do not share the skepticism that I discern in the GAO report

that we’re not going to meet the 2006 date. But that’s 2006. This

is 2004. So, obviously, we’re going to make improvements over the

next 2 years. I’m not suggesting and did not mean to imply that

we have done everything yet.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me have Ms. Watson ask a question.

Ms. WATSON. Mr. Ambassador, in the light of the new threats,

is there a possibility that we would review people who are responsible for the various security systems and do an in-depth review of

who they are? You know, I just am very sensitive since I was told

it was an inside job. So do you check those responsible and check

them out, too, the new hires as well?

Mr. BROOKS. Yes, ma’am. We do that in three ways.

One is, of course, all the people in positions where they could influence this hold ‘‘Q’’ clearances, which involves a background investigation; and we update that periodically.

Second, those people who have direct access are in the Human

Reliability Program, which provides a constant monitoring.

And then, third, as a matter really of nuclear weapons safety, in

addition to security we use a concept where no single individual—

call it the two-person rule—where no single individual can have an

unimpeded access to a weapon in a way that would allow causing

a detonation.

So we have a kind of a constant procedure to guard against the

danger from insiders; and we do look at people, as you suggest.

Ms. WATSON. Thank you.

Let me just ask this: Is the 2006 goal based on the cost of reviewing the security? Why 2006?

Mr. BROOKS. Because that appeared to the Secretary to be when

you could plausibly get there. I mean, there are some things that

you can speed up by throwing money at them; and there are other

things that you simply can’t. If you want to improve physical systems, it takes time. If you want to look at protective forces and say

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they need different equipment and need to be trained on it, it takes

time. So 2006 was intended to recognize that we were trying to

make a fairly significant improvement in security and that anything that can implement overnight isn’t hugely significant, so the

idea was to give us time to get there.

Ms. WATSON. I don’t think 2 years is overnight. I just feel that

in this era where we’re being threatened, internationally and nationally, too, we might want to speed up.

I’m from California, and we have earthquakes all the time. The

former Governor said, well, we’re going to have phase one, phase

two, phase three of resupporting the freeways. Well, wouldn’t you

know, there was an earthquake, and the freeway went down, and

we were No. 3. It was an earthquake, and it went down in the center of my district. So I am saying everyone needs to have a No. 1

States, all of the various freeway sensitive spots.

So I’m thinking the same thing during this time when we have

been threatened and we know these threats are very real. Maybe

we want to speed that up. And you don’t even need to respond. I

just wanted to throw that out.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just tell you how we’re going to conclude. The

counsel is going to ask two more questions. I’m going to invite the

other panel up if they want to make a comment before we go behind closed doors, because they may want to put something on the

record that we can ask behind closed doors.

Mr. HALLORAN. Ambassador Brooks, in your initial list of things

you wanted to comment on the first panel, you said that the

nonbermfacility at Y–12 was still adequate. So I would ask if you

could supply for the record a little more thorough explication of

that in terms of what you’re doing to respond to the IG’s report and

to rebut my simple assumption that underground is better than

aboveground in terms of what’s more secure.

Mr. BROOKS. Certainly. That’s—I’d be happy to provide that for

the record.

Mr. HALLORAN. Thank you.

And also a clarification of the——

Mr. BROOKS. Excuse me. May I make a point?

The assumption that underground is better than above ground is

perfectly valid. Unfortunately, the difference between the two competing designs aren’t limited to that, and that’s the reason why I

believe that the design we’re now pursuing is superior, and we’ll

lay that out in some technical detail for you on the record, sir.

Mr. HALLORAN. Thank you.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. HALLORAN. The other matter would be in terms of the schedule to remove all the material from the TA–18. There was a question in the first panel about whether it’s just 50 percent and the

intention is to keep 50 percent there past 2010 or whether the plan

is to move it all.

Mr. BROOKS. The plan is to move it all. Where 50 percent comes

from is we’re going to remove 50 percent before we get the capability relocated to do what we’re doing. That will reduce the number

of storage facilities at TA–18 from two to one. That will take away

from the diversion scenario, and so that will be a real improvement

in security. Then we’ll move the rest of it after we have reestablished the capability that’s now at TA–18 to Nevada. That’s where

the 50 percent comes from. But we’re going to move it all.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask, is there anything that either of you

would like to put on the record in this open session before we meet

later?

Mr. PODONSKY. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I would like to say one thing.

It’s an iteration of what I said earlier.

We recognize that under your leadership this committee is taking

a very serious look at national security and security within the Department; and as a career member of DOE, not a political appointee, I want to emphasize the tremendous focus that this Secretary and the Deputy Secretary and Administrator Brooks have

put on security. I think my colleagues from POGO as well as the

GAO can testify to the fact that we have not seen this before. This

is unprecedented within the Department’s leadership.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you very much.

I concur with your statement that there’s a tremendous amount

of hard work. I would just say to you in public that I believe that

we have too many sites, and I believe our sites are so antiquated

that they pose a risk. I realize, Ambassador Brooks, in the process

of consolidating, that takes a tremendous amount of time, but I

don’t want you to wait until my daughter is 20 years older or if—

I want you to at least get it done when she’s 10 years older. I realize those are political decisions as well, but I would hope the Department would—the professionals would weigh in so at least

there’s a record so the politicians will have to respond to it.

I thank you very much, and I’m going to invite the other panel

to come up just to see—and we’ll see both of you a little later.

Thank you.

Ambassador Brooks, I understand you may have to leave fairly

quickly after. Are you going to be there in the beginning of that

open session?

Mr. BROOKS. I was not intending to be there, Mr. Johnson will

be there in my place.

Mr. SHAYS. That’s fine. We understand the reason why, and that

will be fine. Thank you for being here.

I want to make sure that there’s not anything we should put on

the record. Ms. Brian, I will start with you, since you’re sitting

down first.

Ms. BRIAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity.

I just wanted to submit for the record both the Inspector General’s report on systematic cheating of the—by the security guards

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at Y–12 as well as this April 9 memo by Dr. Everet Beckner regarding the relocation of materials at TA–18, that he’s moving 50

percent over 18 months, and the Secretary of Energy, however—is

that he wants all of it moved in 18 months.

[NOTE.—The Department of Energy report entitled, ‘‘Inspection

Report, Protective Force Performance Test Improprieties,’’ may be

found in subcommittee files.]

Mr. SHAYS. When we talk about cheating, we do know that there

has been some cheating. Is the word ‘‘systematic’’ used by——

Ms. BRIAN. They talk about repeated instances.

Mr. SHAYS. Repeated instances is the way we’ll both define it

then, OK?

Ms. BRIAN. That’s fine.

And I just wanted to make two final responses that were made.

One is with regard to the materials at Lawrence Livermore and the

inability of the scientists to perform their work unless it is there.

Those critical—what’s considered by NNSA as critical experiments

are also taking place at Los Alamos; and I’d also like to point out

that if—the materials needed to also be done by Livermore scientists. If the material were moved to the Nevada test site, those

few scientists that are actually working with those materials could

take a 1-hour plane ride to Nevada to do that work.

And the second point I wanted to respond to was in the graded

approach between a nuclear weapon versus nuclear materials, I

just wanted to say that you don’t need to make the materials into

the configuration of a weapon to create an improvised nuclear device. You can do it within minutes.

Mr. SHAYS. Fair enough. I’m not sure Ambassador Brooks would

disagree with that. If he would, he might want to come up.

Ms. Nazzaro.

Ms. NAZZARO. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have two points

I’d like to make.

First, we are very optimistic that—by the fact that DOE is now

not only accepting but agreeing with our recommendations. I think

that goes a long way to starting off on the right foot here.

The second is, regarding the discussion you had earlier on the

postulated threat versus the design basis threat, we do want to

make note that it is recognized that the postulated threat is a

worldwide assessment, and it does apply to the United States, and

in the past DOE has matched one for one, the postulated threat

with the DBT. This is the first time that they had deviated from

that.

Mr. SHAYS. And the significance of that is?

Ms. NAZZARO. Why is DOE making a determination now? When

you have the intelligence community making this postulated

threat, why is it that DOE thinks that they have more information

or better information, that they don’t need to guard against such

a threat?

Mr. SHAYS. One more question—I guess we will get to that in the

closed door, and that is very helpful for you to bring up, Mr. Noel.

Mr. NOEL. Just one other thing, we were talking about risk earlier. I mean, a point that we made in our report is that, basically

by definition now, the Department facilities are at a higher level

of risk because they are defending still at the old DBT. We now

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have a new DBT at this level, and it is going to take them a couple

of years to get there.

Mr. SHAYS. And that may not be high enough. Correct?

Mr. NOEL. Well, we are asking them to reexamine that in the

two specific situations. And so to say that nothing is at risk is just

not true.

Mr. SHAYS. It was; we are giving the Ambassador a little poetic

license. I think I know what he was trying to say. And I don’t usually put words in witnesses’—I think what he was trying to say is,

don’t think our sites are vulnerable and an easy target. But I do

know that the Ambassador knows that we would clearly not be

going to a new design basis threat, and we aren’t there yet.

So, therefore, if we think even that design basis threat is a logical threat and we are not there yet, we are at risk of not being

at that level. But, you know, he is also trying to make sure that

people don’t think that it’s an easy target.

Mr. NOEL. No. And we would certainly—these are very heavily

defended targets by very well-trained people.

Mr. SHAYS. Right. But we are, I believe, at risk. And until we

get these sites exactly to the conditions we want, I think we are

at risk.

Thank you all very much. We are adjourning this hearing, and

we will convene a briefing, not a hearing, behind closed doors at

1:30.

[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene at 1:30 p.m., the same day.]

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