Since its establishment in 1977, DOE has been repeatedly criticized for its security and counterintelligence efforts—viewed as being so seriously deficient that some observers believe DOE, through its actions, has "invited attack by foreign intelligence services." The General Accounting Office, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and the Intelligence Community, as well as DOE's own inspector general and security experts, collectively have issued numerous classified and public reports—according to some estimates, more than 100—in the last 30 years that have highlighted a litany of DOE security and counterintelligence vulnerabilities. Because of these vulnerabilities, many believe that sensitive nuclear weapons information has "certainly" been lost to espionage. In countless other instances such information has been left vulnerable to theft and duplication. Although the damage to national security resulting from such lapses has been difficult to calculate, DOE has been warned on many occasions that its "lackadaisical oversight" could lead to an increase in the nuclear threat to the United States. According to some analysts, given DOE's unwieldy bureaucratic structure, security lapses should not be viewed with surprise. DOE was established in 1977 by combining 40 diverse government organizations. The intention was to harness the Nation's research laboratories as part of a coordinated government effort to confront an energy crisis brought on in part by creation of OPEC. Each agency, however, came with its own bureaucratic structure and culture, and many had different if not conflicting missions. The agencies also differed in the importance they attached to security and CI. Some, such as the Energy Research and Development Administration, home to the Nation's highly sensitive nuclear weapons program, viewed such matters as being relatively more important. Others, such as the as the Interior Department's Power Marketing Administrations, attached a low priority to such matters. These sometimes starkly diverging views, although having moderated over time, arguably contribute to the cross-currents and conflicting pressures that have bedeviled DOE's security program and contributed to its lapses from the outset. These varying views in turn may stem from certain built-in and enduring tensions which to a large degree are inherent in DOE's four principal missions. Three of those missions—fundamental science, energy resources, and environmental quality—thrive, indeed depend on open scientific inquiry. It is DOE's fourth mission, national security, that demands that security be the backdrop for scientific inquiry. The result is an ever-present potential for conflict and an enduring challenge to strike the right balance between open collaboration and partnership, and security. So serious have been the ramifications of this challenge, that one study has concluded DOE has never fully recovered from some of the internal contradictions growing out of its own complicated creation. Although many critics blame DOE's security problems generally on the tension within DOE between open scientific inquiry and security, they tend to focus on what they characterize as, inter alia , three specific issues: a high turn-over of inexperienced top leadership, bloated and dysfunctional management, and an agency culture that views the discipline of counterintelligence with disdain. High leadership turn-over has been an enduring problem, according to Department critics. They point to the eleven secretaries who have led the department over an almost 30-year period. Although some secretaries have pushed aggressive security reforms, they often have left office before having fully implemented their proposals. Following their departures, the proposed reforms may be discarded or forgotten. Another cited problem has been a lack of experience in national security among some of those who have served as Secretary. Although DOE spends almost a third of its budget—roughly 30 percent—on nuclear related functions, many of its top leadership have lacked prior experience in such matters. As a result, security and CI problems may often have been seen as lesser priorities, and decisions on such matters left to lower-ranking officials who often have lacked either the incentive or authority to take quick, decisive action. A second factor cited, related to DOE's security record is the Department's management structure which has been characterized by critics as bloated and dysfunctional. Multiple bureaucratic layers reportedly have so diffused authority and left accountability so erratic that "it [accountability] is now almost impossible to find." Consequently, security and CI shortcomings appear to have gone unaddressed. Finally, critics blame DOE's culture for contributing to an environment in which legitimate CI concerns are viewed with ambivalence, at best, and open hostility, at worse. The environment, it is suggested, is in large measure a natural and somewhat ironic outgrowth of brilliance from DOE scientists, some of whom "bridle under the restraints and regulations imposed by administrators and bureaucrats who do not entirely comprehend the precise nature of the operation being managed." Thus, to some extent the very brilliance of its employees is cited as a significant contributing factor to a bureaucratic culture which they say is thoroughly saturated with cynicism and disregard for authority, and cavalier in its attitude toward security. DOE's CI program received a particular serious jolt in 1998, when intelligence evidence surfaced that indicated the People's Republic of China (PRC) had successfully stolen nuclear weapons secrets from the Department's weapons complex. This information led the Clinton Administration to conclude that the Department's CI program was in serious trouble and that a program overhaul could not be put off. In February 1998, President Clinton issued a decision directive (PDD-61) instructing DOE to implement 13 reforms, the balance of which was geared to strengthening the Department's CI program. Among the most significant of the reforms was one that required DOE to establish its first-ever independent counterintelligence office—known formally as the Office of Counterintelligence (OCI). The mission of the new office was to develop and implement a coherent and comprehensive CI policy. A senior Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executive, with access to the Energy Secretary, was put in charge. The President's directive contained several additional initiatives. One authorized the OCI director to oversee and fund all DOE's CI functions, including all direct CI operations and all of DOE's laboratory-based CI field offices. A second initiative required that DOE laboratories be contractually obligated to meet certain CI goals, objectives, and performance standards. And lastly, senior laboratory CI personnel were given direct access to laboratory directors. Under a 1999 follow-on implementation plan, the OCI director's authority was expanded to include control over all CI programming, funding, and personnel matters at DOE field offices. PDD-61 represented an effort to address long-standing weaknesses in DOE's CI program. DOE's CI program historically had never had a bureaucratic home of its own. Instead, the program, invariably characterized as a "junior partner," was a component of a larger office – in the 1980s, the Office of Security, which was tasked with physically protecting DOE facilities, and in the 1990s, the Office of Intelligence, whose principal mission was to assess foreign weapons of mass destruction programs. In each instance, the offices' principal respective missions did not include the development of an aggressive, unified, and comprehensive CI program aimed at preventing espionage. And the development of such a program is generally considered not to have begun until President Clinton issued PDD-61. PDD-61 addressed other perceived weaknesses as well. Among them: insufficient CI funding; inadequate Headquarters control and authority over its CI field offices; uneven and irregular access by the Department's CI officials to senior-level DOE management; inadequately trained DOE CI employees; and a strained relationship with the FBI, the agency DOE relied on for much of its counterintelligence investigative expertise and resources. Concerns about DOE's CI program came to a boil in 1999, a year in which Congress became more fully aware of DOE's espionage vulnerabilities. In March of that year, allegations surfaced that a scientist employed by the Los Alamos National Security Laboratory had failed to notify DOE officials of his contacts officials of the People's Republic of China (PRC). It also was alleged that the scientist, a Taiwanese-born American named Wen Ho Lee, had failed to properly safeguard classified material and had refused to cooperate with authorities with regard to certain security matters. Lee was fired from his research position at Los Alamos National Laboratory after allegedly failing a polygraph examination. He later pleaded guilty to one felony count of unlawful retention of national defense information. In May 1999, a bipartisan House Select Commission charged that the PRC had stolen design information on the United States' most advanced thermonuclear weapons and was using the information to speed the building of its next generation of thermonuclear weapons. The Commission concluded that the PRC had been penetrating U.S. national weapons laboratories for years, and continued to do so. In June 1999, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) issued an extraordinarily harsh assessment of DOE's security practices. The Board criticized DOE for the "worst" security record on secrecy that members said they had ever encountered. It also reported that its examination had revealed a department in denial over its security and counterintelligence vulnerabilities and failures, and blamed DOE's decades-long record of security failures on poor organization and a failure of accountability. The Board concluded that with regard to security matters, DOE was dysfunctional and incapable of reform. Despite its harsh criticism, the PFIAB dismissed assertions that DOE had suffered wholesale losses of nuclear weapons technology as a result of espionage. The Board, concurred, however, with an earlier U.S. Intelligence Community assessment that had concluded the PRC had stolen classified U.S. nuclear weapons information that probably enabled it to accelerate its development of nuclear weapons. To fix DOE's security problems, the PFIAB recommended that policymakers consider two options.