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More nuke data missing in N.M.
H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press
Aug. 20, 2004 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - An inventory has found another case of missing data involving nuclear weapons, this time at the Energy Department's regional office in Albuquerque, the department disclosed Thursday.
The Energy Department said that an "accounting discrepancy" involving three copies of a "controlled removable electronic media," or CREM, was found at the regional office as part of the nationwide inventory of such devices.
The inventory was ordered a month ago after two CREM data devices were reported missing at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, also in New Mexico.
The Albuquerque facility, part of the department's National Nuclear Security Administration, coordinates activities with the Los Alamos weapons lab.
Bryan Wilkes, a security agency spokesman, said the inventory discovered three copies of a single unaccounted-for CREM. He declined to elaborate further except to say the device contained information involving nuclear weapons.
Agency Administrator Linton Brooks said that all classified work involving the computer data storage devices has been halted at the Albuquerque office, pending completion of the investigation.
"I am disappointed that we have found another case of lax procedures in protecting classified information," Brooks said in a statement.
No one was suggesting that the classified information had been stolen or that the disappearances involved espionage.
