Nuke Lab Gives Secrets to Stoners (Updated)

I can't tell you how many times, after listening to some lame explanation about why security at the Los Alamos nuclear lab *still *wasn't fixed, I though to myself, "What are they, stoned?"

The answer, it turns out, is yes. At least some of 'em are. An Energy Department investigation, unearthed by Time, has turned up "35 cases involv[ing] drug use within the year prior to requesting a security clearance."

• Following its internal investigation, the DOE is proposing sweeping changes in security procedures and the issuance of clearances
  — and not just at Los Alamos. The report indicates that for the first time after years of security snafus, "Any proven or admitted drug involvement within the past 12 months" will be cause for "termination"
  of a security-clearance application. *

By the way, those 35 do not include Jessica Quintana, the former Los Alamos archivist who brought classified weapons designsto a local methamphetamine lab -- and was subsequently busted. Turns out she was getting high and drinking during the security screening process.

After promising to stop taking drugs (although not alcohol), and signing a written pledge to submit to drug-testing, she received a clearance to handle some of America's most sensitive secrets. Despite the pledge, follow-up drug-tests were "never performed," a government document says, even as Quintana proceeded to commit multiple security violations with little supervision from the lab's security administrators.

So let me get this straight: You can't trade music online and then go work for the NSA. But you can get stoned during the Los Alamos screening process, and still get to work with nuclear weapons designs?

UPDATE: A security expert with strong ties to the Energy Department calls the story "indicati[ve] of a larger cultural problem at LANL," using the abbreviation for Los Alamos.

"That is also why even as I type this the Secretary of Energy is on the
Hot Seat before Congress about LANL and what they are doing to fix the problem," he tells DANGER ROOM.

Believe it or not, a tremendous amount of work has been done, and is currently being done, at LANL to solve this issue. The Security
Team at LANL has finally been given the unfettered attention they need to solve the problems and they are now being listened to at the very top of the food chain.

As to drug tests, that is an age old saga in DOE. The National Labs attract some of the best and brightest minds our nation has to offer. Unfortunately, most of them also come from strong collegiate and academic backgrounds where the utilization of drugs is rampant. This is an age old problem and one that is not new to DOE. It was an issue all the way back to the inception of the weapons complex: two cultures colliding (academia and military) to resolve national defense problems. The requirements for drug screenings is nothing new in DOE and has been a condition of employment for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, some of these very bright minds that work at the labs from academia are also very bright at figuring ways to defeat the drug tests so that they avoid being picked up on a screen. There are ways to fool drug screens and mask the results and I have no doubt that this could have happened here.

No smoking gun on this issue with LANL. Just a dishonest person, who intentionally deceived the system and lied to gain employment. That is why we have multiple checks and balances in place that include:
compartmentalization of information, polygraphs, drug screens, financial checks, Human Reliability Programs, psychological interviews, etc. set in place to ferret out this type of individual.