Federal News Servic: Hearing of the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee

Federal News Service July 13, 2004 Tuesday

Copyright 2004 The Federal News Service, Inc.
Federal News Service

July 13, 2004 Tuesday

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE ENERGY AND AIR QUALITY SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE COMMITTEE

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

REP. MIKE ROGERS (R-MI): Thank you. You know, I'm confounded as well. And although I'm not surprised and I was an FBI agent before I did this, in the late '80s, as a new agent, one of my first cases was an illegal technology transfer through one of these labs, and upon a pretty short time in the investigation realized that some of these scientists were being actively recruited on overseas trips and there was no back check or backdraft on any of this. And this was in the late '80s. I was flabbergasted then and --

MR. BROOKS: We're better than that now.

REP. ROGERS: It doesn't sound like much.

MR. BROOKS: Different problem. I didn't say we're good; different problem. That problem we pay a lot more attention to.

REP. ROGERS: Well, I also heard Ms. Van Cleave state that maybe there's some idea that these groups may be penetrated. I hope every day there's somebody dedicated, getting up in the morning thinking, "How am I going to stop somebody from penetrating this organization?" And if they're not doing that and we're not doing that, we are dead wrong. And I heard you say that your physical security portion works just fine. Apparently it doesn't work just fine. And the culture has to change on both sides.

MR. BROOKS: Yes, sir.

REP. ROGERS: It has to change on the scientists' and the researchers' idea that-and believe me, the (various?) individuals going through all this said, "Well, I'm a scientist; my duty is to share information," who clearly didn't have an understanding he was being pretty actively recruited.

But it's also on the side of the investigations. What I found then-and granted, this information is 14 years old, I suppose-but the investigators, both on the CIA side and the other, were very passive. They were not held in high regard within the organization, in and of itself, which tells me you're going to have a problem from the word go.

If these folks are not given the credibility that they need, quite frankly, I want a scientist afraid of these people. If they come wandering by, I want them worried that they're not going to be working there on something that they've dedicated their lives to. And if that doesn't happen on that side of the culture, we'll never get the scientists' culture fixed, never.

And I'm having a hard time understanding how we make that bridge. If we don't empower your physical security and your CIA folks to have the ability to put a little fear in the hearts of some of these folks who are doing this research, we will never-I mean, we'll be talking about this 14 years from now.

So you say you're better, but I haven't seen the cultural change. I mean, maybe your system is better. Maybe your forms are better. You know, maybe your guards are of better intellectual talent. That may be wonderful things. But the cultural change quite obviously has not changed in 14 years.

MR. BROOKS: Yes, sir. When I said better, I was responding to a very narrow comment you made about our past failures to understand the risk of foreign travel. And we are better than we were a decade ago in terms of counterintelligence training, in terms of pre-briefs, in terms of debriefs for travelers.

I mean, the facts of the last week are very clear that in terms of the problem of scientists understanding that they have to follow security rules in order to continue to be able to do the kind of science they want to do, we clearly still have a problem at least in this division, probably to a somewhat lesser extent in other parts of the culture.

I did not mean to suggest that there's anything to take-the only thing to take heart about in what has happened in this most recent thing in Los Alamos is the extremely strong actions the laboratory director has taken, where every time my site manager thought of something else that ought to be done, the laboratory director had already started doing it. That's-that's about the only silver lining I've got in this cloud so far.

REP. ROGERS: Tell me, Ms. Van Cleave, there are-there's somebody right now dreaming about some way to prevent foreign penetration, and if there is a relationship with outside intelligence agencies and these agencies on foreign penetration. I hope somebody is assuming right now, I would hope, that that information has fallen into foreign hands. I mean, that ought to be at least a part of the investigation.

MS. VAN CLEAVE: Philosophically, I see that that is in fact is the approach that the NNSA counterintelligence office has taken to its mission, and that is the strategic way of looking at CI. So yes, what I have heard from them, I believe that in fact they are-they do approach their job in that fashion. That's the kind of approach that we need to take more broadly within the government at-large at a strategic level.

So, I very much appreciate the points that you make, particularly with your Bureau experience behind you, Congressman.

REP. ROGERS: I appreciate it. I don't want to take any more time either. I think that the merger of this thing has to happen, even for the psychological change of these laboratories to understand we're serious. My initial understanding was that the bill creation was on the thought of penetration, if they penetrated one of the-one of the-either a physical security or CI, that there was a check in the system. I'm not so sure you can-well, I am sure you can accomplish that through other means, by having internal investigations of your CI, which a lot of organizations have already gone to in years past but have proven to be very effective about catching folks in the security section, let alone sending the very clear message to, which is the most important part in this, to your scientist community, how serious and important this is. I hope we get on with this. I hope we're not talking about this year.

MR. BROOKS: One of the reasons, to go back to a question one of your colleagues asked about why the secretary believes this organization should report directly to him is exactly that point of sending messages, that it probably shouldn't be true but it is true in the executive branch, that things that report directly to cabinet officers are seen as more important than things that report directly to sub-cabinet officers. And so that's not the only reason, it is an important reason why, if you accept the notion of consolidation, the secretary believes that it's appropriate to have the consolidated office report to him.

REP. ROGERS: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman for the-