WASHINGTON ? The security guards at a nuclear weapons plant who failed to stop an 82-year-old nun from reaching a bomb fuel storage building earlier this year were also cheating on a recertification exam, according to an internal investigation by the Department of Energy, which owns the weapons plant.
National Nuclear Security Administration, via Reuters
An inspector visiting the Y-12 National Security Complex saw a copy of a recertification exam on the seat of a patrol vehicle.
Shawn Poynter for The New York Times
Sister Megan Gillespie Rice and two accomplices broke into Y-12 on July 28, cutting through three layers of fence.
The exam, with answers, was circulated to guards at the Y-12 National Security Complex, near Oak Ridge, Tenn., before they sat down to take it, according to the report, by the department?s inspector general. The report, released on Wednesday, said that the cheating was enabled by the department itself. It was routine practice for the department to involve contractor personnel in preparation of such exams, because the federal government did not know enough about the security arrangements to write the exam without the help of the contractor.
A federal security official sent the exam by encrypted e-mail to ?trusted agents? at the management contractor, B&W, but did not instruct those executives to keep it secret from the people who would have to take it, according to the report. The government found out about the cheating only because an inspector visiting the plant noticed a copy of an exam on the seat of a patrol vehicle the day before guards were to take it.
The security contractor was Wackenhut, but its contract was terminated after a security breach on July 28, when the nun, Sister Megan Gillespie Rice, and two accomplices cut through three layers of fence, splashed blood on a building housing bomb-grade uranium, performed a Christian ritual and then waited to be apprehended. A subsequent investigation found that many security cameras had been disabled long before the break-in.
B&W remains the management contractor at the site.
The inspector general, Gregory Friedman, said the failure to secure the exam before it was administered was ?inexplicable and inexcusable.? Contractor officials treated the test ?as if it were a training aid,? he wrote. Part of the problem, he said, was ?contractor governance? by the Energy Department. Almost all the work done by the department is performed by contractors.
But there were indications that some officials at Y-12 knew they were doing wrong even as they did it. One contractor official, who had described the exam during a daily meeting of officers, said in an e-mail discovered by the inspector general: ?Please remember the sensitivity issue with these questions. It would not be a good idea for these to be left lying around? or for an officer ?to have these in hand during an audit.?
The inspector general added that ?the issue at Y-12 does not appear to be unique to that site.? Sending exams to the contractor for checking is common because federal officials often lack the knowledge to check the tests themselves before they are administered, the report said. Similar episodes may have happened elsewhere but not been discovered, the inspector general found.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, the part of the Energy Department that runs the weapons plants, disagreed with the report?s conclusions. In a written response, Thomas P. D?Agostino, the head of the administration, said that the problem was not governance, because the issue was not the release of the test to contractor officials for checking, but ?the abuse of discretion (or disregard of controls for further distribution) on the contractor?s part in releasing the materials to a broader group of employees.?
Mr. D?Agostino wrote that his agency would work ?to ensure that there are no similar lapses in the effective control of performance test information in the future.?
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