Los Alamos Security Infiltrated By Reporter

morcheeba writes "Wired reported Noah Shachtman gives a first-hand account of his entry into a high-security area at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Yes, there are pictures. It seems that the birthplace of the atom bomb is being guarded by string, backed up by guards with empty holsters. There's a little more info on Noah's Defense Tech website."

Comments

Borders

[L7_]

Sneaking onto the grounds on LANL is like saying its a feat to sneak across the US-Mexico border.

Trespassing

[Evil Adrian]

How is it that reporters never get nailed for criminal trespass?

Re:Trespassing

[jon787]

They do, but who would report it?

Here is a tour of a 'top secret' nuclear missile silo from some people with too much time on their hands.

Re:Trespassing

[SatanicPuppy]

It's hard to make it stick, for one, especially if they find evidence of some sort of mismanagement.

For the second, do you know how much publicity would come of trying to prosecute a reporter for reporting the truth? This story will fade away into the background in a day or two if they just ignore it, or release a noncommittal statement. A few heads will quietly roll among the security staff and that will be it.

If they try to prosecute it becomes a story of how an incompetent government is incapable of protecting any nation secrets while AT THE SAME TIME trying to impinge on the Freedom of the Press clause in the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights will never get amended because the freaks on the Left would rather die than see freedom of speech/assembly/the press impinged upon, and the freaks on the Right would rather die than see the Right to Bear Arms/Freedom of Religion touched.

On top of all this, this country's leaders are cravenly attached to opinion polls, and opnion polls are VERY strongly influenced by the press, which means that ANY government official is going to be VERY careful before trying to stick it to a member of the press.

Heh. Not exactly the short answer.

Re:Trespassing

[krugdm]

That was great. What I was waiting for, though was:

You have moved into a dark place.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Re:Trespassing

[quintessent]

Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court.

This one actually is bad. Journalism is about getting the truth, and the truth is often stifled by threats to the people who have it. By keeping sources secret, the journalists help the truth to get out while protecting those involved.

Re:Trespassing

[kmellis]

You wrote:

" I don't agree that it was nothing of consequence. He was able to enter, without breaking in, a facility considered secret. He deomnstrated that the level of security that was claimed didn't exist, and that it may well be possible for someone so minded to wreak havoc at the facility."

An AC wrote:

" Gaining unauthorized access to a Top Secret nuclear weapons facility is not "of any real consequence"? Perhaps he should have tried to remove some material from that shack he was in, that would make you happy, that would be something of consequence?"

And another AC wrote:

" Anyone can get in, and the ARMED SECURITY don't even have weapons in their holster!"

As I've written elsewhere, Los Alamos National Laboratories is not a single, secure facility. There are seperate facilities scattered throughout the area. Each of these facilities are seperately secured.

Here is a page describing LANL, and includes a map. Notice the scale of the map and how huge an area LANL covers. Notice that TA-33 is one of the most remote facilities.

And here is a pdf in two parts (part one and part two) that describes every tech area, and includes maps. The description and map of TA-33 is in part one.

Looking at the detail of the area of TA-33 near Highway 4 (because there's a whole bunch of TA-33 away from the highway!), I see dozens of buildings. Clearly, the writer couldn't have approached either of the two buildings that are designated as being in the "hazard category" because they are well within the perimeter of TA-33 and along the main roadway that serves the cluster of buildings at that northern portion of TA-33. He tries to make it sound as if the whole of TA-33--a huge area covering a range of terrain--is or should be guarded with high-level perimeter security and that, once he crossed the perimeter into TA-33, he was "in". But this is just silly. Buildings within technical areas have their own security, and the most senstitive buildings have the most intense security. He walked up to a "silver building" that was near the roadway. Big deal! That means nothing.

You and all the other people here who don't know anything about LANL are being misled by this writer who is preying upon your preconceived ideas about what such an installation is like. LANL is not like what most people imagine. There are lower and higher level security areas. There are areas that are essentially completely insecure. It covers a huge amount of territory, in some cases seemingly intermingled with the town.

I have nothing but contempt for this writer because he took a stupid risk for a trivial payoff. If he believed that the labs were insecure in this way, then he should have researched what the most sensitive buildings were, and attempted to enter them. As it is, his account reads like someone who was driving around, saw that the fence ended, and decided to snoop in the name of journalism. Then, afterwards, he contacted some "sources" and used their claim that TA-33 involved "black-op" stuff to make it seem like the one little portion of it he tresspassed upon was itself important.

He doesn't provide a map, doesn't provide a description of TA-33, doesn't tell you how much area TA-33 covers, doesn't tell you how many different buildings there are. He provides no context from which the ignorant reader can evaluate his claims of discovering a serious security lapse. He does, however, through insinuation and omission, strongly imply that he's done something extraordinary. But he hasn't.

Breaking the law in this manner should be punished regardless. Nevertheless, I'd be willing to applaud his efforts and courage if he was actually doing something worthwhile and noble. Instead, he's grandstanding and being stupid about it, to boot. He deserves to be thrown in jail just for being such a pathetic example of a journalist.

Evolution in Action

[Tackhead]

> Around facilities like the biology lab, where anthrax and other biotoxins have been handled, no sentries stand guard at all. Nor is there any kind of fence to keep the curious and the malicious away -- not even a piece of string.

There is absolutely nothing to prevent anyone from just walking in and, *sniffle*, exploring and *wheeze*, doing whatever they *cough, hack, choke*, gawddamn, I feel like crap today. Better go have a lie down before I write the rest of this article. *glurgle*

My favorite part...

[Zelxyb]

...was when he said that the area he had gotten into was a big top-secret area "according to lab sources".

It turns out that my basement is actually a top-secret area for Los Alamos National Labs too. My sources from the lab told me so.

Not as easy as it looks

[deesqrd]

I visited there in 1999 to interview one of the astrophysicists. He took me to his lab where they had prototypes of the first gamma-ray burst detectors on display in the hall. When I remarked on how easy it was to drive into the base and asked how they keep people out of the interesting parts, he pointed down the hall. There was a floor-to-ceiling turnstile gate that you had to go through to reach a sensitive area. If your badge was not valid, the gate locked until the guards with dogs came to retrieve you. Security is a series of screens. He penetrated the first and flimsiest screen (and probably not really unnoticed). I'd be more impressed and worried if he got into (and out of) the building I saw that was surrounded by 10-foot-high fences capped with razor wire and watched by TV cameras every 50 feet or so.

Mission Ineptitude

[goodviking]

"We didn't fence all 43 square miles," said lab spokeswoman Nancy Ambrosiano. "But if you're near an area that matters, you can't get in."

If you read the article, it turns out this boob managed to infiltrate a "Top-Secret" storage shed for illicit camping gear. There are probably thousands of facilities around the country that house classified facilities that you could still walk into the lobby of and claim to have infiltrated. You can drive onto many military bases around the country, untill you get to the defenses that protect anything important. Shachtman is trully a l33t j00rnul15t.

Re:Worthless.

[kmellis]

" Would you care to point some of them out for us, please?"

Okay. The author doesn't substantiate his claim that the one building he approached (but didn't enter) is actually that sensitive of an area. It's on the list he was given. Big deal. What I'm wondering about is the materials that was supposedly stolen from there: electronic equipment and camping gear? I dunno, that doesn't sound like the kind of place that's doing super-sensitive research.

Secondly, he completely misrepresents what the Lab facilities are like. LANL is not one big, monolithic facility sitting on a single plot of land. It's got a main area, right in town (the "front gate" he refers to), and then lots of little facilities scattered all over the area. They are individually secured.

Getting in the "front gate" is no big deal because, you know, visitors are allowed in. (Unlike Sandia in Albuquerque, which is much harder to get into. But it's a single contiguous site situated within an Air Force base.)

The one facility that easily the most sensitive is the plutonium refinement facility--yes, LANL still has a reactor and refines and stores some plutonium. That area is surrounded by several staggered perimeter fences, with mines between them, dogs, guards, and "helicopter landing denial cables" strung all over the area, for good measure.

Then, if you've ever been in any of the facilities, you'll find that there are armed guards stationed at entraces to sensitive areas within buildings. When I was in high school, and went on a tour of LANL as part of its "High School Senior Science Day", a friend of mine innocently walked down a corridor to a vending machine and was immediately physically hoisted in the air and carried back to the rest of the group by two armed guards.

Furthermore, constantly patrolling the area of the Lab, including parts of town and neighboring areas that border the labs, are MPs in Jeeps with M-16s prominently displayed.

LANL is a sprawling facility built upon finger-like mesas and in deep canyons spread over a huge area. LANL-owned land is fenced off, but for these remote facilities--like those along NM 4--are individually secured. And not all facilities are equal. Some are not that sensitive. There are a lot of relatively insecure facilities at LANL, because they do a lot more research than just weapons research. I had numerous friends who did coop work there while they were in college, and only one of them actually needed a security clearance to do her work.

LANL is, more than Livermore, and certainly more than Sandia and Oak Ridge, a very "civilian-esque" lab. They do weapons design work there, and those areas, along with the plutonium facility, you can be sure are heavily secured.

Finally, this author was an idiot. He was lucky that he tried to approach a facility that apparently isn't that sensitive. He's lucky he didn't get shot. They will shoot you. And you can bet that there will be criminal charges filed against him for this. Imbecile.

Nothing new to see here...

[goingincirclez]

Oh come on... what a disappointing article.

So a guy with a camera hops a fense in the middle of a radioactive desert, and snaps a few pics of some ominous-looking signs near said fence. Big friggin' deal. Just like those photos of Area 51. Who cares? Did he try to go any deeper? Has he asked or thought about why that section was so accessible?

I used to work in a large engine manufacturing plant, that was built during WWII. The sprawl was almost incomprhensible, and even more so when you realized there were caverns underneath the entire complex. Not much went on down there in the late 90's, and most of it was unlit.. nobody really had any business going thru there. Nonetheless, I wandered around one day, and found a room full of dusty forgotten file cabinets, filled with, among other things, the full and complete HR records of people who had worked for the comapny and since died, long before I was even born. Birthdates, positions held, SSNs, all that. Another cabinet had some old drawings, and who knows what else I could have found. Some would see this was a huge deal (I guess leaving all sorts of personnel records around IS pretty stupid), but come on!

One floor above, and barely 100 yards away was a maximum-security area for prototype testing and research. I only got to go back there with escorts ranking up with the plant manager.

Yeah, I probably would have gotten in deep doodoo if I'd been caught snooping in the caverns, but the real areas of interest were protected. I'm sure that goes on in Los Alamos and evereywhere else. At least I HOPE so!

This is nothing new...

[Sajarak]

From Genius--Richard Feynman and Modern Physics by James Gleick

Feynman explored most of [the Los Alamos perimiter fence's] length. When he discovered holes, with well-beaten paths leading through, he pointed them out in a spirit of good citizenship, annoyed only that the guards responded so lackadaisically. ("I explained it to him & the officer in charge," he wrote Arline, "but I bet they don't do anything.") He never realized that the holes had semiofficial sanction. The security staff tolerated them--with Oppenheimer's connivance, it seemed--so that people from the local tribes could come to the laboratory's twelve-cent movies.

Re:No Criminal Intent

[tomhudson]

Actually, intent is crucial in the most important cases. You have the "actus reus" - the criminal act, and the "mens rea" - the criminal mind.

For example, you kill someone - a criminal act. If it is shown that you didn't intend to kill them (for example, that your brakes failed), you have no criminal intent.

Some types of crimes require intent, others don't. So, while you won't be convicted of murder i n the above case, if it is shown that you were aware the brakes were defective and that you neglected to do anything about it, you will probably be convicted of manslaughter. :-(

Sounds like he was disappointed

[north.coaster]

This same author also wrote an article about the shabby conditions at one of the unclassified Los Alamos sites. It's interesting that the physicist that he was interviewing did not complain about the working conditions. So why did the author make a big deal about it?

After reading both articles, my impression is that the author was expecting the entire Los Alamos complex to be some type of high tech super-secure facility, and when his expectations were not met he decided to write a couple articles blasting the place.

Quality journalism? I think not.

Re:Happens in Virginia all the time...

[jnik]

80% of all militay base property is landscaping and wildlife areas. The other 10% is protected to the level of needed security.
And I think it's the remaining 10% that we need to worry about :)

Not much different than most mil bases

[YrWrstNtmr]

Layers. Sure, at most US military bases, you can probably sneak over the fence and walk around. Maybe even sneak into a warehouse or other empty building.

One person walking around and getting into an office building is almost certainly no problem (depending on the alert level).

But to get to the 'good stuff' you have to go through an incredible number of steps. And there is *no way* to access anything really sensitive without quite a few people knowing and challenging you.

Exaggerated

[WatertonMan]

He got into TA-33 which while labelled high security really isn't that big a deal. Now had he gotten into TA-55 with 3 layers of barbed wire, lots of guys with machine guns and other stuff *then* I'd be impressed. Hell, I'd have thought he'd have at least gotten into the secure part of the library. But no, all he did was wander into the forest near a National Park. Hell, even the unused forests up from there have motion detectors and security forces.

This is much ado about nothing.

Don't get me wrong. There is plenty to criticize about security at Los Alamos. But the article is akin to bragging that you got into the "johnny on the spot" outhouse in an used section under construction on the outskirts of a military base.

I will admit that they ought to be more secure about letting people *out* of facilities though. I used to work late and the guards left at 6 and there was only a unidirectional turnstile "guarding" the place. While there were other measures to retain building security, I could have walked out with lots of stuff had I wanted to. If I wanted to get in at night I'd just call the Pro Force and they'd let me into the building, no questions asked, so long as I had a security badge.

However lets also be honest. Most of the stuff labelled "top secret" really isn't terribly significant. The stuff that is important has a *lot* more security on it. For instance our really important servers and stuff were in sealed rooms and then inside rather large safes in those rooms. And only a few people had the passwords. We had all sorts of restrictions for cable length to avoid hacking via E&M signals. We had pretty amazing encryption devices. And the really important areas had amazing security. The weakest link, as always, tends to be the employees and not these sorts of things.

There are problems, but what this story discusses aren't they.