BY MARK HERTSGAARD

I nsiders like to call it ..the four mostclosely guarded acres on earth." Cer-tainly the contents of Technical Area

55 deserve that level of protection. Thiscluster of metal, warehouse-like build-ings inside the Los Alamos National Lab-oratory is the United States government'smain facility for processing plutonium, adecisive ingredient in the approximate-ly 70,000 nuclear weapons built in theUnited States since World War II. Nowthat the Cold War is over, many of theseweapons and their plutonium are beingsto~ ~k where they were produced-making the nation's nuclear-weapons fa-cilities some of the most tempting terroristtargets in existence.

J. Robert Oppenheimerand his Manhattan Proj-ect colleagues chose Los Alamos as their headquarters during

World War n because its remote location,a ban-en mesa in the mountains of NewMexico, seemed ideal for deterring in-filtrators. But nowadays Los Alamos,which is managed by the University ofCalifornia, is about as hard to get to asthe Grand Canyon. I ~tly found my-self cruising around the 40-square-Olllefacility less than two hours after my ar.rival at the Albuquerque airport. I drovepast streets named after early nuclear-weapons test sites: Trinity, Bikini, andEniwetok. I saw the lodge where Edward

PHOTOG RAP" IT JONAS KARLSSOI

~

OYfMlel2003

Even as the president pushes for new anti-terrorism powers, Washington continues to ignorewarnings that its nuclear-weapons facilities-high on any terrorist target list-

are frighteningly vulnerable. So Rich Levernier, who spent six years war-gaming defenses atLos Alamos and other sites, and veteran safety official Chris Steele are blowing the whistle

Teller played piano oni Saturday nights to anluse) his entertainment-starved

colleagues while they raced to beat NaziGermany to the bomb.

Approaching sensitive sites such asTechnical Area 55 was not so simple, how-ever. A pre-visit security check was re-quired, and on the day in question I hadto be accompanied by Los Alamos offi-cials. Jim DanneskioId, a press officer, andEric Ernst, the facility manager of Techni-cal Area 55, escorted me to the site inDanneskiold's S.U.V. When we got withina quarter-mile ofTA. 55, ~ ~ stoppedat a checkpoint, where armed guards ex-amined our identification to make sure ~

~ VANITY FAIR I

and in some cases didn't fife a shot, be-cause we didn't encounter any guards."

This, despite the fact the security forceswere told months in advance exactly whatday the "terrorists" were coming.

R ich Levernier has never spoken to thepress or to Congress about his find-ings. He is going public now only be-

cause he believes the Bush administrationhas left him no choice. Working throughnormal bureaucratic channels, Leverniersays, he tried for years to get his superiorsat the Department of Energy (D.O. E.},which manages the nation's nuclear-weapons complex, to address these short-

comings. But the problems: did not get fiXed; indeed,

Levernier says, most of hissuperiors declined to ac-knowledge that the problemseven existed. Finally, when

were approved for entry. Danneskiold hadcalled ahead, so we were waved forward,the high mesa offering a fine view of theRio Grande valley below.

We soon pulled to a stop in a dusty lotin front of a tall fence topped by swirls ofrazor wire. Ten yards beyond stood a sec-ond, identical fence. Together, they stretchin parallel around the entire LA. 55 area.

My escorts and I got out and walked tothe fence so I could have a closer look.We had been standing there barely 20 sec-onds when an armed guard approachedand demanded to know what we were do-ing. Though our visit had been cleared inadvance, he politely but finnly told us toleave, and stood therewaiting until we did.To a layman's eyes, itwas an impressive djs-play of vigilance.

But Rich Levernierhas a different perspec-tive. Levernier spentthe six years leading up to September2001 running war games for the U.S.government. It was his job to test thepreparedness of America's nuclear-weapons facilities against terrorist at-tacks. Once a year, his "black hats"-mock-terrorist squads made up of U.S.military commandos-would assault Los

from his duties without just cause. Lever-nier also decided to speak out publicly inhopes of saving his country from a cata-strophic, and preventable, terrorist attack.

Security problems at the nation's nuclear-weapons facilities have made news before.Beginning with the Wen Ho Lee case in1999, Los Alamos in particular has beenplagued by a steady flow of scandals. Theimplications of Levernier's revelations, how-ever, dwarf all that have come before.

The mock attacks Levernier conductedtargeted nuclear-weapons facilities, not nu-clear power stations; the consequences ofa breach at a weapons facility could be or-ders of magnitude worse. According to de--classified D.C.E. reports released in 1994and 1996, the nation's nuclear-weaponsfacilities house more than 60 metric tons ofplutonium and hundreds of metric tonsof highly enriched uranium. Since a mere11 pounds of plutonium or 45 pounds ofuranium is enough to make a crude nu-clear device, the weapons complex as awhole contains the equivalent of tens ofthousands of Hiroshima-strength weapons,all located in the heartland of the UnitedStates. Los Alamos alone holds 2.7 metrictons of plutonium and 3.2 metric tons ofhighIy enriched uranium, according to theD.C.E. reports cited above, the last everreleased on the matter.

"The most dangerous problem exposedby Levernier and his team is that terroristscould infIltrate Los Alamos and get awaywith substantial amounts of plutonium,"

LOS ALAMOS SEEMED IDEALFOR DETERRING INFilTRATORS, BUT NOW IT'S ABOUT

AS HARD TO GET TO AS THE GRAND CANYON.

.J he refused to stop pushing for reform,Levernier was stripped of his security

clearance after a relatively minor infractionand was removed from his job, effectivelyending his career two years before he wasdue to retire with a full pension.

So Levernier has become-involuntari-ly, he stresses-a whistle-blower. The roledoes not come easily. A 22-year veteranof D.C.E., Levernier has devoted virtuallyhis entire adult life to military and nuclearsecurity. When he learned that he wasabout to be drafted in 1972, he instead en-listed in the army, where he was assignedto intelligence. In 1981 he joined D.C.E.and began womng his way up the system.By his own admission, he was never thetype to question authority. But now, in anattempt to salvage his career, he has filedsuit against D.C.E., accusing the agencyof illegally gagging him and removing him

says Arjun Makhijani, president of the In-stitute for Energy and Environmental Re-search in Takoma Park, Maryland, and anexpert on nuclear-weapons issues. "Thestolen plutonium then might show up as anuclear-bomb explosion that would devas-tate an American city, possibly killing hun-dreds of thousands of people. A seconddanger is that a terrorist attack could causedeadly plutonium fires, which could resultin hundreds of cancer deaths and leavehundreds of square miles uninhabitable."

"Any implication that there is a 50percent failure rate on security tests at ::our nuclear-weapons sites cannot be sup- ~ported by the facts and is not true," says ~Anson Franklin, a spokesman for the Na- ~tional Nuclear Security Administration ~(N.N.S.A.), a semi-autonomous agency set ~

up within D.O.E. to oversee the nuclear- :weapons complex. "The impression has ;

Alamos and nine other major facilities, aswell as the system for transporting nu-clear weapons around the country bytruck. Neither side in these engagementsshot real ammunition-harmless laserweapons were used-but in other respectsthe exercises were deadly serious. Lever-nier's black hats were ordered to pene-trate a given weapons facility, capture itsplutonium or highly enriched uranium,and escape; the facility's security forceswere expected to repel the mock attackers.

The results of these tests, which Lever-nier reveals publicly here for the first time,are nothing short of alarming. "Some ofthe facilities would fail year after year," hesays. "In more than 50 percent of ourtests of the Los Alamos facility, we got in,captured the plutonium, got out again,

NOVfMlfl2003

been given that these tests are staged likefootball games, with winners and losers.But the whole idea of these exercises isto test for weaknesses-we want to findthem before any adversaries could-andthen make adjustments. . . . OUT facilitiesare not vulnerable."

bombs onto planes 31 times in 31 at-tempts, according to Dzakovic. In 1998the Red Team breached security at NewYork City airports about 85 percent ofthe time.

"It was easy. You didn't need MISSion:Impossible tactics and black clothes atthree in the morning," says Dzakovic. "Wewould arrive at a given airport, see a planeon the runway, and say, 'Let's try to get in-side that plane.' We'd walk right up to theplane, and usually we could walk right in."

To get from the terminal to the runway,the Red Team had to pass through lockeddoors. "But if you surveilled the door afew minutes and watched authorized per-sonnel go through, you could see what

combination they were punch-ing in to unlock it," says Dza-kovic. "We'd wait until the coastwas clear, punch in the same

L evernier relates his information poker-faced, in an urgent monotone. Warmand fuzzy he is not. His lawyer, Tom

Devine, says it took six months of work-ing together before he got Levernier tocrack a smile. "Rich reminds me of JoeFriday in Dragnet," Devine says. "Actual-ly, he makes Joe seem animated."

But if Levernier's story is true, history

other European airport that had failedinspection." According to Dzakovic, hissuperiors would not authorize the follow-up trips.

Like Levernier, Dzakovic says that he-and other Red Team members-repeated-ly warned superiors that the United Stateswas a sitting duck for terrorist attacks. ButRA.A. officials buried the Red Team's re-ports, because, Dzakovic charges, theFA.A. was concerned more about keep-ing airplanes flying and the airlines prof-itable than about ensuring real security forthe flying public.

"Nothing ever improved in RA.A. se-curity, because this ridiculous concept ofbeing fair to the air carriers took prece-dence over everything RA.A. did," Dza-kovic charges. RA.A. regulations even in-structed field agents trying to smugglefake guns and bombs onto planes that "no

is repeating itself in a most dis-quieting way. The Senate andHouse intelligence committees'joint inquiry on September 11showed that if the Bush admin- '0...,..istration had heeded the warnings of gov-ernment truth-tellers, it might have pre-vented the attacks. Now the administrationappears to be making the same mistakeagain, but with much higher stakes andmuch less excuse.

The most famous of the earlier whistle-blowers is Coleen Rowley, the F.B.I. agentfrom Minnesota who condemned the bu-reau's failure to pursue Zacarias Mous-saoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, who isnow on trial for allegedly planning to takepart in the 9fII attacks.

Bogdan Dzakovic, a former securityspecialist with the Federal Aviation Admin-istration, sounded a less publicized warn-ing. What Rich Levemier was to nuclear-weapons facilities, Dzakovic (pronouncedJah-ko-vich) was to airports. As a memberof the EA.A.'s Red Team, an elite squadof security experts who travel incognitoto many American and foreign airports,Dzakovic spent the years from 1995 to2001 testing how difficult it was to get fakebombs or weapons onto planes. His con-clusion: not very. For example, in 1996 inFrankfurt, a major hub for travel to theUnited States, the Red Team smuggled

.. combination, and slip1- through the door. As: long as you acted like

you belonged, you couldpretty much do what

~ you wanted.", Some of the most,, ,~,._-,.,..,I disturbing failures oc-

curred at Ronald Reagan WashingtonNational Airport, where security wasbreached roughly 85 percent of the timeduring inspections in 1998. One inspec-tion was particularly revealing. "Insteadof sneaking through a door by picking upthe punch code," recalls Dzakovic, "wedecided to push through an alarmeddoor and then wait around to get caughtso we could see how the security systemreacted."

At the agreed hour, the Red Team agentstook their positions. Dzakovic pushed thedoor open, the alarm started ringing, andthe agents checked their watches. Thirtyseconds passed, then a full minute. No air-port security arrived. The alarm kept blar-ing as passengers strolled past. Mter 15minutes, the Red Team agents gave up indisgust. No one from airport security everdid show up.

"You'd think that with all the congress-men who fly out of Reagan Nationalthose kinds of failures would be seen as animportant problem," says Dzakovic. "Butwe never went back there to check onwhether corrective actions were taken, justas we never returned to Frankfurt or any

182 NOVEMBER 2003

SHOW UP AS A NUCLEAR-BOMB EXPLOSION THATWOULD DEVASTATE AN AMERICAN CITY:'

attempt should be made to hide objects.""The only thing that surprised me about

September 11 was that it didn't happensooner, " says Dzakovic, who was removed

from the Red Team and reassigned to a S(}-ries of menial jobs after going public withhis charges. "The civilian-aviation securitysystem was and remains basically an expen-sive f~de. It makes the flying public thinkit's being protected-you know, all the tho,ater of standing in line at airports and tak-ing off your shoes-but it doesn't do muchto deter serious terrorists."

'A ir security in the United States is sig-

nificantly better now than it's ever

been," counters Brian Turmail, aspokesman for the Transportation SecurityAdministmtion, the federal agency createdin November 2001 to replace the EA.A. asoverseer of civilian-aviation security. "OnSeptember 11, there were 33 federal air mar-shals; now we have thousands. Only 5percent of checked baggage was screenedfor explosives; now 100 percent is. . . . We'veworked with airports to increase perimetersecurity to reduce the threat of shoulder-fired rockets. We would never tell youthat each of these layers works perfectly,but overlap among them makes it certainthat security is much better today than onSeptember II." ~

Levemier, however, echoes Dzakovic's ~argument, saying of security at nuclear- ~weapons facilities: "It's all smoke and mir- 2

rors. On paper it looks good, but in reaIi- ~

C hris Steele is another Los Alamosinsider who is speaking out here forthe first time. Like Rich Levemier,

he says he is a reluctant whistle-blower;during his seven years at Los Alamos,Steele has preferred to work throughofficial channels. But that changed lastNovember, when his D.G.E. superiorstook him off the job after he rejectedwhat he considered to be laughably in-

ty, it's not. There are lots of shiny gatesand guards and razor wire out front. Butgo around back and there are gaping holesin the system, the sensors don't work, thecameras don't work, and it just ain't asimpressive as it appears."

Over the past two years, the Bush ad-ministration has talked tough about de-fending the United States against terror-ism, pointing to the September 11 tragedy

- ,cc=~=="c,.-

he took his responsibilities very seriously."I don't particularly love nuclear ~

ons," Steele says, "and 1 don't think weneed tens of thousands of them, but I thinkwe need some of them. And if you ad-mit that, it's important to maintain themsafely."

In October 2002, Steele was presentedwith a safety-analysis report for the Ra-dioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facilityat Los Alamos. Lab officials had analyzedvarious accident scenarios, including thatof an airplane crdShing into the waste facil-ity. The report did not distinguish betweenthe accidental crash of a commercial airlin-er and a deliberate terrorist attack, whichmay explain why it estimated the odds ofsuch an incident at one million to one-rather optimistic, given that al-Qaedahad crashed three planes into targets ona single day barely one year earlier. Thereport projected that an airplane that

crashed into the RadioactiveLiquid Waste Treatment Fa-cility would cause hundredsof thousands of gallons ofnuclear waste to catch fire.

: But the authors of the re-: port saw no cause for alarm.

..,.,..c..,.c,j According to them, the fITewould be extinguished by the waste facil-ity's roof-sprinkler system.

"That must be a magical sprinkler sys-tem," Steele says, "since it's apparentlyable to rise up from the rubble, turn itselfon, and put out the flames. We shouldbuy one of those for every nuclear plantin the country."

Steele had picked the improbablesprinkler-system claim out of a long, densereport written in opaque techno-speak. Atable on page 36 of Chapter 3 listed theaccident scenario as No. 13.8 and cited"Fire Suppression System" and "Actuatein the event of a fire" as the proper stepsto handle the emergency. "Reading thiskind of analysis," Steele recalled at thetime, "you don't know whether to laugh

to justify much of its domestic and inter-national political agenda, from invadingIraq to limiting civil hoerties to relaxingenvironmental regulations. But if Levernierand other nuclear experts and officialdocuments consulted for this story arecorrect, the Bush administration is in factfailing disastrously at the practical job ofkeeping the American homeland safe fromterrorist attacks. In particular, the admin-istration is doing worse than nothing toprotect the nation's nuclear-weapons facil-ities. Not only is it leaving serious flawsin the nuclear-security system unrepaired,it is silencing the very public servantswho are trying to fiX the problem beforeit is too late.

"TH E CIVI LIAN - A VIATI 0 NSECURITY SYSTEM WAS AND REMAINS BASICALLY AN

EXPENSIVE FACADE," SAYS DZAKOVIC.

ept preparations against terrorist attack.As D.O.E.'s senior safety official at Los

Alamos, Steele was responsible for makingsure that the lab's operations did not putworkers, the public, or the environment atundue risk. His signature was requjred be-fore any potentially dangerous procedurecould go forward at Los Alamos. Accord-ing to colleagues both friendly and not,

or cry, but you have an urge to do both."On November 22, 2002, a month after

he rejected the report, Steele was sum-moned to his boss's office and stripped ofhis security clearance, effectively removinghim from his post.

Anson Franklin, a spokesman for theNational Nuclear Security Administrationof D.O.E., confirmed in an interview at the

PHOTOGRAPH IY JONAS KARLSSON NOVEMBER 1003

time that Steele had become the subjectof a D.O.E. security investigation. Franklininsisted, however, that the investigation was"in no way a retaliation" against Steele,and he now praises Steele for "doing hisjob" in the sprinkler episode. Nevertheless,although Franklin described the D.O.E.investigation as ongoing, it sounded as if averdict had already been reached. "Mr.Steele committed a serious security viola-tion," he said.

rected the lab for V.C. at the time, re-sponded by commenting, according toSteele, "We have to work on it." (Browne,who resigned in December 2002, de-clined to be interviewed.) The N.N.S.A.'sFranklin denies that D.O.E. rubber-stampscontractors' reports, noting, "Mr. Steele is asafety analyst, and it's clear he's not a rub-ber stamp."

When lab practices were not changed,&eele says, he ~ over ~ superiors' headsand requested a meeting with the DefenseNuclear Facilities Safety Board, a watchdogagency Congress established in 1988 to re-form D.O.E.'s nuclear program. He am or-dered a study of safety procedures at LosAlamos. The result, the so-called McClureReport, warned of "serious, systemic prob-lems" at Los Alamos and recommendedthat the safety analyses for all of its majornuclear facilities be re-done, a step subse-quently demanded by Congress as wen.

C hris Steele is a confessed nerd andworkaholic with thinning blond hairand a bit of a weight problem. When

asked what he does for fun. the 45-year-oldis stumped. "I'm kind of boring, I guess,"he says with a shrug. He spent his last va-cation recalculating radiation releases froma hypothetical accident at Los Alamos.

Steele grew up working-class in Louisi-ana and New Jersey. Armed with a highI.Q. and fierce determination, he won arm-fuls of math and physics awards, but heviolated the geek stereotype in one respect.Taught by his mother that "the only waysomeone can walk over you is if you liedown," Steele was suspended from highschooll2 times for fighting. "I was a skin-

T his safety overhaul gave rise to themost extraordinary of Steele's crusades:his discovery and closure of a secret

nuclear-waste dump. On July 18, 2001, aseemingly routine memo reached Steele'soffice from managers at the 1:A. 55 facili-

"IN MORE THAN 50 PERCENT OFOUR TESTS OF LOS ALAMOS, WE GOT IN, CAPTURED

THE PLUTONIUM, AND GOT OUT AGAIN."

ty-"the four most closely guarded acreson earth." The memo's turgid bureaucraticlanguage obscured a shocking disclosure:without the knowledge, much less the ap-proval, of the secretary of energy, nuclearwaste was being stored inside LA. 55, in aplain steel building known as P.E 185. Al-though waste had apparently been storedthere since 1996, LA. 55's safety analyst,Derek Gordon. did not know it was there.As a result, P.E 185 had not been subject-ed to a proper nuclear-safety analysis.

According to Gordon. the waste dumpcontained the equivalent of 33 pounds ofplutonium-239, mainly in the form of con-taminated gloves, rags, tools, and similaritems. The danger, according to Steele,was that this waste could be dispersed byfire-such as the wildfires that blackenedcanyons and caused evacuations at LosAlamos during two weeks in May 2000.

Steele shut down the dump as soon ashe found out about it, and the waste wassoon removed from P.F. 185 and storedelsewhere inside the Los Alamos complex.The very existence of a secret nuclear-waste dump was illegal, Steele says: "Theamount of waste inside P.E 185 qualified it

ny kid, but I wouldn't back down whenkids harassed me."

He brought the same fearlessness to hiscareer in the nuclear industry. Since arriv-ing at Los AJamos in 1996, Steele says, hehas vetoed numerous dangerous, illegal, orjust plain wacky ideas. For example, therewas the time in 1998 he overruled a scien-tist who had offered to drive a bulldozerinto a reactor if it overheated during an ex-periment. "I told him that was maybe thebravest thing I'd ever heard," Steele saysdryly, "because he'd certainly be killed bythe radiation. But it wasn't much of aplan." Eventually the experiment was saf~ly redesigned and approved.

It did not take Steele long to concludethat "violation of nuclear-safety rules wassystemic" at Los Alamos. Plans for con-trolling accidents were "window dressing"put forth by the University of Californiaand rubber-stamped by U.C.'s overseers atD.O.E. so that nuclear research and pro-duction "could continue without disrup-tion." Fearing a disaster was waiting tohappen. Steele briefed senior managementon the problem, using the bulldozer storyas Exhibit A. John L. Browne, who di-

NOVEMBER 2003

J ames Ford is retired now, living inwhat he calls "a lovely gated commu-nity" in western Virginia. But during

the late 1990s, Ford was Rich Levernier'sdirect supervisor at D.O.E. Although hepraises Levernier as a man of "enormoustalent," Ford also complains that he wasnot a team player. "No one could work

as a Category 2 nuclear facility, and onlythe secretary of energy can authorize aCategory 2 facility." Worse, he argues, wasthe threat that the unauthorized dumphad been posing to workers, the public,and the environment.

"This was more than a procedural is-sue," says Steele. "The lack of a valid safe-ty analysis meant that P.F. 185 had beenoperated for five years without anynuclear-safety controls-none. Waste wasstored in an ordinary steel building thatwas not designed to withstand strongwinds, earthquakes, or fire. During theMay 2000 wildfires, the flames were sixfeet tall across [the road] from P.E 185. I

D.O.E. regional office in Albuquerque is-sued for P;F: 185 in 1996, Gibbs says, "Ourguys mistakenly said, 'We're good to go.'"Furthermore, says Derek Gordon, thedump never posed a meaningful threat toworker or public health.

Officials at D.O.E. headquarters inWashington took a sterner view, however,

with him. . . . He had a track record of dis-honesty and self-promotion. If he couldmake himself look good at the expense ofothers, he'd do it.

"It's probably true that our securitY wasnot as good as it should have been," Fordadds, "but it's also true that it was betterthan Levernier says it was. Our nuclear fa-cilities are safe. There have been no theftsor sabotage of our nuclear materials, andI'm confident there will be none." Forddoes not dispute that the securitY forces atLos Alamos, Rocky Flats, and other ~OIlS facilities posted high failure ratesagainst Levernier's mock terrorists. But heblames these dismal results more on Le-vernier's strict approach to gmding thanon the security forces' actual performance.

"Rich was a stickler who insisted ontesting the worst-case scenario, which thesecurity forces would have no real chanceof passing," Ford complains. "He's likethe cop who gives you a ticket if your caris stopped at a red light one inch over thewhite line. Never mind if the intersectionis clear and your car stopped safely-youflunk in Rich Levernier's book. That kindof cop is never going to be liked by theother police officers he works with, andhe's never going to make police chief."

"Did he have a pleasing personality?"asks Ronald TImm, who helped design wargames under Levernier's supervision. "I

., didn't have to marry the': guy, so that wasn't my proo.~ lem. But to say he wasn'ti a team player is a bum: rap. What that meant was,: 'Don't bring us any badi news, because we don't

..".."..~."..r. want to deal with the prob-

lems.' . . . I found that Rich's information wasalways accurate, and he was an honest guy;'

By all accounts, Levernier was indeed ademanding, hands-on kind of boss. Oneyear, he gave up his Super Bowl Sundayto run a surprise spot check on the se-curitY force at the Rocky Flats nuclear fa-cility, near Denver. He and a colleague

know, because I drove by on my way tothe Emergency Operations Center. We'relucky the fire didn't jump the road."

"The lab screwed up on handling thesafety-analysis documentation [for thedump]," admits W. Scott Gibbs, the lab'sdeputy associate director. Like other LosAlamos officials, Gibbs portrays the failureas a paperwork error. He specifically de-nies any intent to mislead D.O.E. Pointingto an environmental approval that the

136 ~ ANctrY',fA;..e -,

effectively endorsingSteele's rejoinder that Ienvironmental endorse- ', , , ,..

ment has nothing to do with safety. TheN.N.S.A. ruled in December 2002 that thelab had broken the law. In a letter of re-buke, N.N.S.A. acting administrator LintonBrooks wrote that he was "personally con-cerned about the seriousness of. . . this mat-ter," adding that only U.C.'s nonprofit statushad saved it from paying a $220,000 fine.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JONAS KARLSSON NOVEMBER 2003

SECURITY ISSUE. MANAGEMENT WANTED TO TAKE HIMDOWN, AND THEY HAD MADE IT CLEAR PUBLICLY."

ering that many war games are fought un-der rules of engagement that, according toLevernier, overwhelmingly favor the defense.Although surprise is a terrorist's most im-portant tactical advantage, the date of thewar games is scheduled months in advance,so defenders know, within a window of eighthours, when the black hats are coming. Leovernier concedes that logistical realities makecompletely surprise attacks impractical-panicked civilian employees could get in-jured during such operations-so the rulesof engagement are adjusted to compensate."We may cut the number of defenders al-lowed," he says, "or delay their reactiontime according to what we've timed themdoing on a normal day." But then ~facility managers complain that the blackhats are cheating. The black hats even haveto obey 25-mile-per-hour speed limits.

Conducting war games via computersimulations can help approximate surprise,but the results of such conflicts have beendistressingly similar, according to Timm."We beat them like a drum," he says ofcomputerized battles his black hats fought.

discovered that "patrols that were requiredthree times per hour were not seen for morethan six hours." They went looking for theabsentees and found the entire squad in-side, watching the ball game.

Ford complains that one scenario Le-vernicr "would harp on" concerned theTechnical Area 18 facility at Los Alamos,which, Ford concedes, "is essentially inde-fensible. . . . There are lots of other targetsat Los Alamos, but Levernier would wantto attack LA. 18 every time."

I saw what Ford meant when I drove pastthe 1:A. 18 facility, alone, during my LosAlamos visit Although many of the lab's

sensitive facilities are located on the highmesa of Los Alamos, T.A. 18 sits at thebottom of a canyon on the edge of thecomplex. The canyon is surrounded onthree sides by steep wooded ridges. Attack-ers would therefore have the advantage ofrover as well as the high ground. "Our guyswere licking their chops when they sawthat terrain, first on a romputer simulationand then in real life," says Ronald Timm.

to D.O.E. managers by Peter Stockton, aspecial assistant to Secretary Richardson,but no disciplinary action was taken.

The N.N.SA.'s Franklin said he couldn'tcomment on incidents that occurred dur-ing the ainton administration.

The biggest artificiality in D.O.E.'s wargames, says Levernier, is that they don'ttest for suicide attacks. To win, attackersmust penetrate the facility, capture the plu-tonium, and then escape. In the real world,though, terrorists might choose to bringtheir own explosives and ignite the pluto-nium, and themselves, on-site.

D.O.E.'s nuclear-security planning, notesLevernier, is formulated according to a"design-basis threat" document that speci-fies what kinds of attacks weapons facili-ties must be defended against. Levernier,Timm, and other experts aygue that the at-tacks of September II tragically validatedtheir previous recommendations that thedesign-basis threat be upgraded to incor-porate suicide attacks. But D.O.E. did notissue this upgrade until May 2003, and it isnot scheduled to take full effect until 2009.

TImrn is the president of RETA Securi-ty, Inc., a consulting firm that has Partici-pated in many D.O.E. war games and de-signed the National Park Service's securityplan for Mount Rushmore. He laughs whenasked about James Ford's complaint thatRich Levernier "harped" on LA. 18. "Tosay it's unfair to go after the weak link is sop~e, it's ridiculous," TlInDl says. "Of~ the bad guys are going to go after theweakest link. That's why [D.O.E.] isn't sup-posed to have weak links at those facilities."

During one mock attack against LA. 18,the black hats added insult to injury: aftercapturing weapons-grade nuclear material,they hauled it away in a Home Depot gar-den cart. Lab officials complained that theattack should not count, since the HomeDepot cart was not on D.O.E.'s approvedlist of weapons for war games. Bill Richard-son, the secretary of energy at the time,took a different view. Concluding that LA18 was indeed indefensible, Richardson or-dered in April 2000 that all weapons-gradematerials be removed from LA. 18 and de-livered to the Nevada Test Site by 2003.But none of T.A. 18's weapons-grade ma-terial has yet been moved, and no action isexpected until at least 2006.

The failure rates of D.O.E.'s securityforces are all the more remarkable consid-

"In Qne of the [computerized] tests, wekilled all their guys within 60 seconds."

Another handicap: attackers aren't al-lowed to use certain types of equipmentreadily available to terrorists, includinggrenades, body armor, and armed heli-copters. "You can walk into a Radio Shackand for $400 buy a device that will jam allradio transmissions in a six-block area,"Levernier says. "For $40,000, you can shutdown everything within a mile. But D.O.E.wouldn't let me use that stuff, because itdoesn't have a defense against it."

D espite the lopsided playing field, it isthe defenders who have been caughtcheating. In a 1999 exercise, an anny

Special Forces team was deployed to "at-tack" a truck convoy that was supposed-ly transporting nuclear materials at FortHood, Texas. The stakes were high: politi-callurninaries from Washington, includingthe deputy secretary and undersecretary ofD.O.E., had flown in to observe the exer-cise. The luminaries flew home thinkingthe defenders had won, but it turned outthey had had help. After "shooting" one de-fender, a Special Forces black hat noticedthat the defender was holding a piece ofpaper that looked familiar: it was the blackhats' battle plan. The cheating was proved

C hris Steele and Rich Levernier havenever met, but they have much incommon. Combined, their allegations

suggest that the Los Alamos National Lab-oratory is even less secure than previouslyrealized. What's more, each man empha-sizes that the problems at Los Alamos are,in greater or lesser degrees, found through-out the D.O.E. nuclear system.

"Safety analysis is actually better atLos Alamos than anywhere else withinthe D.O.E. nuclear complex," Steele says."We're the only facility that has a team ofsafety and engineering analysts who canindependently check what the contractorsare telling us. At the other facilities, theD.O.E. oversight guys. . . just rubber-stamp the safety analyses made by the con-tractors. . . with no independent confirm-ing analysis." The resuh, Steele argues, isa regulatory regime in which D.O.E. es-sentially trusts contractors-corporationssuch as Westinghouse and Lockheed Mar-tin-to do the right thing.

For his part, Levernier says that securitypreparedness at Colorado's Rocky Flats nu-clear facility and within the program fortransporting nuclear materials throughoutthe U.S. is as poor as at Los Alamos.D.O.E.'s black hats defeated the RockyFlats security force between 80 and 100 per-cent of the time in the late 1990s, accordingto Edward McCallum, the then directorof safeguards and security for all of D.O.E.McCallum became so worried that, in aMay 1997 phone call, he told another col-league that the people of Colorado faced an"extremely high risk" of "a little mushrootn-shaped cloud over [Denver]." McCallum

NOVEMBER 2003

MANY PEOPLE THE WRONG WAY THAT WHEN HE GAVETHEM THE OPENING THEY THREW THE BOOK AT HIM:'

L evernier and Steele have one morething in common: each lost his securi-ty clearance, and therefore his job, af-

ter coming forward with his claim-andsticking to it in the face of hostility fromhigher-ups.

As the year 2000 unfolded, Leverniersays, he was growing more and more frus-trated by D.O.E.'s failure to address whathe regarded as a catastrophe in the mak-ing. He finally decided he had to go out-side normal channels to effect change. Al-though "99.99 percent of what I handledwas classified," says Levernier, one daythere came across his desk an unclassified

document that hinted at someof the problems worrying him.The document was a reportfrom D.O.Eo's inspector general

required a security clearance, and into anadministrative job.

"Levernier had rubbed so many peo-ple the wrong way over the years," Fordsays, "that when he gave them the open-ing by leaking that information they threwthe book at him and didn't give himthe second chance someone else mighthave gotten."

At age 53, Levernier's career prospectswere dim. "There's not much demand inthe private sector for a nuclear-securityspecialist without a security clearance," henotes, especially one whose professionalreputation had been ruined by a whispercampaign charging that he had leakedclassified information. "When I walk downthe halls now," he says, "people I haveknown for 25 years turn and walk away.

had already shared that assessment withbureaucrats in Washington but gotten noreaction. Only when his colorful turn ofphrase became public knowledge duringan April 1999 court case did Washingtonrespond, and not in the way McCallumhad hoped: Secretary of Energy Bill Rich-ardson placed him on administrative leaveand forbade him to speak further on thematter, explaining, "I won't tolerate. . . im-proper disclosures of any kind." McCallumsoon resigned in disgust.

Fortunately for the people of Colorado,in August 2003, D.O.E. announced thatthe last weapons-grade plutonium had been

The stink they put on me is so strong thatno one with any career aspirations wantsto get close to me."

c that described howD.G.E. officials in thefield had altered securi-

: ty reports on Los Ala-: mas: although visiting

inspectors had judgedit "unsatisfactory,"

,. D.G.E. field managershad changed that to "marginal" before for-warding the document to Washington. Le-vernier faxed the inspector general's docu-ment to The Washington Post, which ran astory shortly after.

It took Levernier's superiors about twoweeks to identify him as the source of theleak. "When he released that infonnationto the media, he didn't put his own nameon the fax," James Ford says. "He usedthe name of a co-worker. He was trying tocover his tracks. . .. A government clear-ance is granted on the basis of a personbeing honest, trustworthy, and depend-able, and that kind of behavior isn't hon-est, trustworthy, and dependable."

"It was stupid and wrong, and I regretdoing it," Levemier says of using a falsename. But he argues that his transgres-sion was trivial compared with the scaleof his punishment. He was not fired out-right, for that would have given him due-process rights and perhaps provoked himto speak out publicly. Instead, his securi-ty clearance was revoked, even thoughfederal law explicitly allows governmentemployees to share such unclassified in-formation with the public and the press.The effect of the disciplinary action wasto remove Levemier from his post, which

removed from Rocky Flats andsent to the Savannah River Site,in South Carolina. But problemspersist at other facilities.

"My concerns about Los A1a-mos . . . pale in comparison to - --the Y-12 [nuclear-weapons] facility at OakRidge, Tennessee," says RepresentativeChristopher Shays (Republican, Connecti-cut), chairman of the House Subcommit-tee on National Security, Emerging Threatsand International Relations. "That is a veryvulnerable site. [It has] too many structuresand not enough buffer zone [around it].By the time the defenders knew that a se-curity threat existed, it would be too late torespond. I know that they're working onit, but it has to be fixed today, not yearsfrom now."

Not all of America's nuclear facilitiesare poorly defended. Three have scoredrelatively well against mock terrorists: theArgonne National Laboratory-West, in Ida-ho, the Pantex Plant, in Texas, and the Sa-vannah River Site.

So why doesn't the Bush administra-tion insist on similar vigilance throughoutthe entire nuclear complex? "(They] justdon't think [a catastrophic attack] will hap.pen," Levernier says. "And nobody wantsto say we can't protect these nuclear weap-ons, because the political fallout would beso great that there would be no chance tokeep the system running." (The WhiteHouse press office declined to reply to re-peated requests for comment.)

I n Steele's case, too, it appears thatwhat triggered D.O.E.'s alleged retalia-tion was a fear that his candor might

encourage informed outside scrutiny ofD.O.E.'s actions-not so much by thepress as by Congress. The specific con-troversy that led to Steele's suspensioncentered on T.A. 18, the "indefensible"facility at Los Alamos. Steele and somecolleagues were developing a safetyanalysis for T.A. 18 when a colleaguewhose calculations Steele had repeatedlyrejected as inadequate sent him an e-mailcontaining certain technical specifications.Steele shared those specifications withothers on the project. "The informationwasn't marked classified when it was sentto me," says Steele. "It was only classi-fied afterwards, when they decided to goafter me;"

It didn't help that Steele had all thediplomatic sensitivity of an Abrams tank."Retarded" and "moron" were but two ofthe words he used for colleagues whosework did not measure up to his exactingstandards. "He's technically outstanding,"admits Eric Ernst, the facility manager ofT.A. 55. "[But] Chris has an extremelystrong personality, and that can lead some.-times to being abrasive."

After Steele was first suspected of pass- ~ing classified information to colleagues, he §passed a polygraph test. However, his of- ~lice was closed for three months while the ;,

190 NOVEMBER 2003

THE BLACK HATS HAULED AWAY WEAPONS-GRADENUCLEAR MATERIAL IN A HOME DEPOT CART.

protection group in America. Since itsfounding in 1977, GAP has worked withthousands of government and corporatewhistle-blowers and, in the process, hasdeveloped a sophisticated strategy forcombining legal advocacy with media andpolitical pressure. It has also helped toformulate the body of laws and adminis-trative procedures that a whistle-blowerhas at his or her disposal once he or shemakes the fateful decision to "commit thetruth," as Pentagon whistle-blower ErnestFitzgerald once put it.

"We expose the secrets that the gov-ernment doesn't want anyone to knowabout," says GAP'S Tom Devine, "and wetrY to make sure that everyone who needsto know about them, from workers on-site to citizen groups-politicians and themedia-is made aware. The whistle-bloweris the first rock in the avalanche we try tocreate of public revulsion against the in-defensible."

investigation continued. He then returnedto work, but the episode would come badcto haunt him.

Steele went on to shut down the secretwaste dump and then reject the "magicalsprinkler" plan, actions which brought himinto conflict with Joseph Salgado, thelab's principal deputy director. It was now2002, and the University of Californiawas facing growing criticism in Wash-ington of its management of Los Alamos;there was talk on Capitol Hill that U.C.'scontract might be revoked. For Steele tobe alleging further questionable conductwas exactly what V.C. management didn'twant.

After the waste dump was shut down,recalls Steele, "there was a meeting whereSalgado complained, while holding upa memo I'd written, that the memo hadbeen c.c.'d to a cast of thousands and nowwe'd have to explain this stuff to the worldinstead of handling it quietly among our-selves." After the sprinkler veto, Steelesays, Salgado accused him in a meetingof once again holding up operations atLos Alamos and airing the lab's dirty laun-dry and angrily complained about hav-ing to spend four hours during testimonybefore Congress explaining single sentences

S teele's avalanche began on February

27, 2003. The Project on Government

Oversight (POGo), a public-interestgroup in Washington whose report "U.S.Nuclear Weapons Complex: Security atRisk" is an indispensible guide to proD-

IN HIS FIRST MONTH BACKON THE JOB, STEELE SAYS, HE DISCOVERED SEVERAL

ADDITIONAL UNLICENSED NUCLEAR SITES.

Levemier has traveled a longer, rockierroad. He filed a Whistleblower ProtectionAct lawsuit against D.O.E. on September26, 2001. Levernier remained in bureau-cratic limbo for the next 17 months whilethe Office of Special Counsel, the federalagency that handles whistle-blower cases,considered the suit. In February 2003, theO.S.C. ruled that there was "a substantiallikelihood" that Levernier's charges werecorrect and ordered Secretary of EnergySpencer Abraham to investigate them.The O.S.C. also held that Levernier hadbeen improperly gagged by D.O.E. TheN.N.S.N.s Franklin says, "These issues arestill under litigation, so we're not in a po-sition to comment."

The O.S.C.'s rulings bode well for Le-vernier's individual fate; a final decision isexpected shortly. But Devine charges thatD.O.E. is still doing nothing to fix thelarger security problems his client identi-fied. "D.O.E. did one 40-minute interviewwith Rich in March 2003, and as far aswe can tell, that's been the extent of theirinvestigation [of his substantive claims],"Devine says. "There has been no follow-up, no requests for additional names orinformation. It's been a completely cover-your-ass approach."

It is unclear whether Levemier's warn-ings reached the White House, or eventhe secretary of energy's office. Leverniersays he informed Joseph Mahaley, thenD.O.E.'s head of security, more than onceabout his findings, but adds that Maha-ley did not share his sense of urgency.Whether Mahaley forwarded Levernier'sinformation to the secretary of energy andthe National Security Council is not known.(Mahaley declined to respond to repeatedrequests for comment.) .

But the ~ complex's security prob-lems were described to Secretary Abra-ham by Ronald TImm in a February 2001letter. Timm outlined the security vulner-abilities at the nuclear-weapons facilitiesand warned Abraham not to expect to hearthe truth from his own bureaucracy, whosehistory of obfuscation about security TlInInrelated in detail. Abraham did not reply toTlInIn, instead delegating the task to GlennPodonsky, the director of D.O.E.'s Officeof Independent Oversight and PerformanceAssurance. "The Department's protectionprogram may not be perfect," Podonskywrote to Timm, "[but] we firmly believe itis effective."

in Steele's memos. After this meeting, alab employee warned Steele that he'dheard Steele had better watch his back.(Through a spokesman, Salgado declinedto comment.)

One month later, Steele was taken offthe job, on the grounds that he was con-sidered a security risk.

"Chris was set up on the security issuebecause he'd gotten some of those guysreassigned," says a source with directknowledge of the situation. "Managementwanted to take him down, and they hadmade it clear publicly I was briefed[on it] by D.G.E. headquarters Theyse.t him up by sending him a classifiedmemo about a black project, but Chriswasn't aware it was classified, and theyused that to take him out."

lems within the complex, had recruitedGAP to represent Steele. In a whistle-blower retaliation complaint, Devinecharged that Steele had been taken offthe job and stripped of his security clear-ance simply for doing his job-for havingmade "legally protected disclosures" ofinformation about dangerous or illegalactivities at Los Alamos. Three weekslater, Steele's case came to the attentionof members of Congress when he was in-vited to Washington to receive an awardfrom the Alliance for Nuclear Account-

ability.In any case, D.O.E. retreated. On Ma1t:h

28, Tyler Przybylek, the N.N.S.A.'s gener-al counsel. ~mmended that Steele's clear-ance be restored and that he return towork. Pl"zybylek's official statement declaredthat Steele had put classified informationat risk but had not done so deliberately.

"I'm glad to be back," says Steele fromhis office at Los Alamos. But his adven-tures aren't over. In his first month back onthe job, he says, he discovered approximate-ly a dozen additional unlicensed nuclearsites, and he's girding for another fight.

teele and Levernier might have disap-peared into the maw of the D.O.E.bureaucracy, never to be heard from

again, had they not found the Govern-ment Accountability Project (GAP). Apublic-interest law firm in Washington,D.C., GAP is the premier whistle-blower-

n June 2003, two vials of plutoniumwere reported lost at Los Alamos.

. Shortly thereafter, Secretary Abrahamannounced that a new security review of thenation's nuclear-weapons facilities wouldbe conducted posthaste. Whether this re-view will lead to real reform seems doubt-

192 ANITY FAIR NOVEM8ER 2003

blower's charges are right would reflectpoorly on the bureaucracy's competence.And fixing the problems that whistle-blowers identify would often mean divert-ing funds that bureaucrats would ratheruse for other purposes, like empire build-ing. But the main reason officials haveno tolerance for dissent is that takingwhistle-blowers' charges seriously wouldrequire them to stand up to the regulatedindustry, and that's not in most bureau-crats' nature, whether the industry is thenuclear-weapons complex or the airlines."

Noting that allthree whistle-blowers'troubles began under

expend the time and energy needed totake these problems seriously. And thenthey go around boasting that they're win-ning the war on terrorism. The hypocrisyis pretty outrageous." (The White Housedeclined to comment.)

CuI; in the past, similar reviews have gonenowhere. In the wake of the Wen Ho Leescandal, for example, the Ointon admin-istration commissioned a report from theaugust President's Foreign IntelligenceAdvisory Board. Released in 1999, "Sci-ence at Its Best, Security at Its Worst"painted "an abysmal picture" of D.G.E.,calling it "a large organization saturatedwith cynicism, an arrogant disregard forauthority, and a staggering pattern of de-nial." Noting that D.G.E. had "been thesubject of a nearly unbroken history ofdire warnings and attempted but abortedreforms," the board concluded that D.GE.was "incapable of reforming itself."

D evine calls whistle-blowers "modem-day Paul Reveres." Just as the Mas-sachusetts silversmith rode through

the night in 1775 to warn of the impendingBritish attack, he says, today's whistle-blowers risk their lives and honor to urge

, action while tragedy can still\ be averted. Especially afteri 9/11, argues Elaine Kaplan,i whose term as lead counsel ofi the a.s.c. expired in June, "if

~ we are truly concerned about: national security, we have to; protect whistle-blower rights. It; have le . seems crazy to peop m

a position to know about potential prob-lems but afraid to speak out."

But Rich Levernier will have none ofthis noble talk. "If I had to do this overagain, I wouldn't," he says. "I would havebeen more aggressive about keeping a rec-ord of the shortcomings I witnessed, andI'd have laid it on my bosses' doorsteps,and then if they didn't do anything, thatfailure would be on their backs. But that'sall. Because now I recognize that the pow-er your superiors have over you is broadand deep, and they don't hesitate to use it.When they took my security clearance, itwas like a scarlet letter was painted onmy forehead. It's ruined my life."

LEVERNIER WILL HAVE NONE OFTHIS NOBLE TALK. "IF I HAD TO DO THIS OVER AGAIN,

I WOULDN'T," HE SAYS. "IT'S RUINED MY LIFE."

Meanwhile, George W. Bush is prepar-ing to run for re-election in November2004 as the September II candidate.That image has helped Bush politically inthe two years since the attacks, but therevelations of whistle-blowers like RichLevernier, Chris Steele, and Bogdan Dza-kovic suggest that the label could cutboth ways. Americans don't seem toblame Bush for the 9/11 attacks' takingplace on his watch, perhaps becausefew of them know how many warningsBush-administration officials ignoredbeforehand from these and other federalwhistle-blowers. But if Bush ignores whistle-blowers again, and their warnings aretragically validated in a second devastat-ing attack, Americans may not be so for-giving. 0

the Clinton administration and then con-tinued under Bush, Devine argues thatbureaucratic antipathy to whistle-blowerstranscends partisan differences. Yet theBush administration is particularly un-sympathetic to whistle-blowers' warnings,Devine adds, because it is ideologicallyopposed to government regulation ingeneral.

"I don't think President Bush or othersenior officials in this administration wantanother September ll," says Devine, "buttheir anti-government ideology gets in theway of fixing the problems. . . . The securi-ty failures in the nuclear-weapons complexand the civil-aviation system are failures ofgovernment regulation. The Bush peopledon't believe in government regulation inthe first place, so they're not inclined to

A case in point, again from June 2003:O.O.E. was caught instructing its employ-ees not to "spill your guts" when ques-tioned in internal investigations. GlennPodonsky seems to have taken this adviceto heart while testifying to the subcom-mittee headed by Congressman Shays.Asked how often security forces at thenation's nuclear-weapons facilities are de-feated in war-game exercises, Podonskyreplied, according to a source who waspresent, "I don't know." The source saysthat Shays shot back, "You do realize,Mr. Podonsky, that you are under oath?"Podonsky then allegedly amended his an-swer to "More often than we would like."(Podonsky referred a request for commentto O.O.E.'s press office, which declinedto respond. "I wouldn't confirm anythingsaid behind closed doors," says Represen-tative Shays.)

"The bureaucracy is more interestedin the appearance of proper oversightthan the reality," explains Tom Devine,who represents Bog~ Ozakovic as wellas Steele and Levernier. "Partly that'sabout saving face. To admit that a whistle-

'~o::rOO'A'H IY JONAS KA.LSSON194 NOVEMBER 2003