In an earlier test at the same location, a U.S. Army Special Forces team was able to "steal" enough weapons-grade uranium for numerous nuclear weapons and was able to carry the extremely heavy material with the use of a Home Depot garden cart - throwing the protective forces into disarray. The DOE argued that this test attack was unfair. (Appendix A)

In another exercise, Navy SEALs were able to make a hole in a chainlink fence surrounding Rocky Flats near Denver, Colorado, undetected and easily "stole" enough plutonium for several nuclear bombs. They were only discovered as they were successfully leaving the facility.

The Department of Energy Transportation Security Division moves nuclear weapons, as well as weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, from site to site across the nation on public highways. Over the last several years, there have been exercises testing the security of this Division where the DOE security force failed to protect nuclear cargo because they had inadequate weapons and insufficient numbers, as well as poorly conceived tactics. Due to these insufficiencies, the protective forces were defeated in six out of seven exercises in December 1998. (Appendix B)

In 1998, the Fall of 1999, and again in the Spring of 2000, two force-on-force exercises were run to test the Rocky Flats protective force. A "criticality alarm" - warning that a nuclear chain reaction is potentially imminent - was set off creating confusion, allowing the "terrorist” access to special nuclear materials. Such an alarm requires everyone to immediately leave the building. Hoping to "kill" the "adversaries" the protective force "indiscriminately shot" employees, controllers and each other as they were exiting the building in response to the alarm." The protective force count these tests as successes because they kill all the adversaries -- although they also killed all the employees and several of the protective forces as well. (Appendix C)

In addition to physical security, there also remain cyber security weaknesses. The major threat to the compromise of critical nuclear weapons information is the "trusted insider" personnel with the highest security clearances. Voluminous amounts of information can be accessed quickly and easily. For example, a device the size of a Gameboy can download the equivalent of 1100 floppy discs off a computer in 3 minutes and 14 seconds. Another device called a memory stick, smaller than a stick of gum, can download the equivalent of 44 floppy disks in a couple of minutes. Incredibly, DOE has done virtually nothing effective to protect against the “insider” working on classified computers despite the many Congressional hearings and increased media scrutiny generated by the Los Alamos controversy." (Appendix D)

S The protective force and mock terrorists are outfitted with Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System (MILES) weapons laser-simulation equipment.

6

Background on DOE Nuclear Weapons Complex

The U.S. nuclear weapons complex managed by DOE is spread across the country. Ten major sites have weapons-grade plutonium (PU) and highly-enriched uranium (HEU) in sufficient quantities for a nuclear device. Several of these sites are located near major metropolitan areas with large populations. (See chart below.) In addition, the DOE's Transportation Safety Division (TSD) moves weapons-grade Special Nuclear Materials (SNM) across the country on interstate highways. Although the total inventory of PU and HEU is classified, according to "DOE Facts" sheets, there are 994 metric tons of HEU and 33.5 metric tons of PU (Appendix F), excluding the PU inventories at Pantex which remain classified. According to the Nuclear Control Institute, it takes less than 50 pounds of HEU or PU to craft a crude nuclear device. In addition, there are significant quantities of completed nuclear weapons, and huge quantities of weapons in various stages of assembly and dismantlement -- including those that have been stored for decades as a "war reserve" - that would be attractive to terrorists. The following DOE map shows the location of weapons-grade plutonium inventories. The eight sites identified with plutonium on the map, as well as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico, also hold highly enriched uranium inventories.

9

Figures compiled from

U.S. Census, Metropolitan Areas Ranked by Population 2000. http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-+3/tabo3.pdf - Downloaded as of September 17, 2001

An issue that exacerbates security problems is the age of these sites and the decay of the infrastructure. Oak Ridge, Savannah River, Hanford and Los Alamos, for example, were all built for the Manhattan Project in the 1940's. The isolated location of these sites made sense at the time for safety and security reasons. Now, population growth and more mobility have made a number of the sites extremely difficult to protect. For example, Technical Area-18 (TA-18) at Los Alamos, New Mexico, with tons of PU and HEU was built in a canyon to absorb the radiation from the reactors. TA-18 also houses several moveable burst nuclear reactors, which are small machines, from the size of a bowling ball to as large as 4 feet by 4 feet by 5 feet tall, containing PU and HEU fuel. The site is extremely vulnerable because terrorists could easily occupy the unprotected high ground around the canyon. A public highway passes within a few feet of the fence line and the facilities that house the PU and HEU. The infrastructure around many of these sites is in decay including storage facilities, fences, and alarm systems.

The Design Basis Threat

There is a classified "Design Basis Threat" (DBT) that describes the level of threat the contractor is required to defend against - the number of outside attackers and inside conspirators, and the kinds of weapons and explosives that would be available to terrorists. (Appendix G) The process that determines this threat was described by Edward McCallum, the former Director of the Office of Safeguards and Security in a letter to the Director of the Office of Security Affairs: "The FBI, CIA, DOE, and the military services as well as the Nuclear Command and Control Staff have developed the existing Design Basis Threat over a number of years. It has been extensively reviewed and supported by studies issued by the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency]. Sandia, as well as the other labs, have been asked to comment and participate in the development process." (Appendix H)

Each site is then required to develop a Site Safeguards and Security Plan (SSSP) annually, which describes in detail how they would counter the most likely and most disastrous attack scenarios based on the DBT. The plan is developed by the contractors, and then analyzed and approved by the DOE field office and various Headquarter's program offices to confirm that the site is at low risk.

Despite the fact that the DBT goes through this studied, interagency process, the bureaucracy often complains that it is too high a standard to meet "defending against that terrorist that is about thirteen feet in height” (Appendix E) or super-terrorists. But in fact, the DBT does not require DOE to defend against exotic weapons, but weapons that are readily available on the open market from private arms dealers. According to DOE's Independent Oversight Office, the opposite is true and in fact the capabilities of terrorists are underestimated in the planned scenarios:

"Capabilities of Available Adversary Weapons Are Not Being Accurately
Represented. In the last year this office has catalogued a long list of readily
available adversary weapons and tools that are not being used appropriately by the
adversaries depicted in current SSSP/VAs. Among these are tactical smoke,
irritant gases, anti-personnel and anti-vehicle explosive devices (“stay-behinds”),
grenades, armor-piercing small arms ammunition, and communications disruption
devices, to name but the most obvious. It has become "customary" in DOE to
limit the use of such weapons and tools, creating the potential for artificially high
calculations of protective force effectiveness." [This is inconsistent with tactics
currently being taught in the Afghanistan training camps and used by terrorist
groups in Columbia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, the Balkans, and the
Middle East.] (Appendix I)

The Design Basis Threat specifies that sites are only expected to protect against:

“A small group (including an insider)” [the actual number is classified]

Capable of lethal and violent action; willing to kill and be killed.

Capable of conducting coordinated paramilitary operations.

Possess a wide range of military equipment, weapons and ordnance.

Access to funds, communications, transportation and safehouses.” (Appendix G)

This Design Basis Threat intends to protect nuclear weapons facilities from:

Theft of nuclear material;

Radiation sabotage-blowing up nuclear material and dispersing radiation into the surrounding areas (this could be achieved by an insider, an outside terrorist getting inside or more likely, with a truck bomb); and

Exploding PU or HEU in such a way that it causes a nuclear chain reaction, through the creation of an Improvised Nuclear Device that could result in Hiroshima-like devastation. How such a crude weapon could be created is highly classified, however, experts point out that any self-respecting college physics student already has that knowledge. Explicit instructions on how to build a nuclear weapon are on the internet.