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UNITED NATIONS -- Years ago, the trademark of the rather silly if harmless
"MAD Magazine" was its classic cover with Alfred E. Newman's immortal line,
"What, Me Worry?" This seems to be the Clinton Administration's damage
control policy when dealing with our nation's most delicate secrets. The
Austrians have a wonderful word for it Schlampig--which better translated in
a Viennese coffeehouse, essentially means sloppy and slipshod.
At best, is seems that the Keystone Kops coordinate a system where highly
sensitive State Department laptops go missing, the Director of the CIA is
surfing the web for porn on a top secret computer, top secret nuclear files
at Los Alamos are lost behind a copy machine, and high-tech satellite data
literally falls out of the sky into Chinese hands. James Bond call your
office.
In every crisis we are soberly assured that the latest foible is the fault
of "human error." It's a bit like letting a college frat have the run of a
beer-stocked missile silo for the weekend with the advice enjoy all the high
tech thrills, just don't push any of those red launch buttons.
The point is that even if the proverbial human error does play a role in of
this, and I'm certain some does, it's simply naive to assume that all this
secret data are in cyber limbo or lost in broom closets.
While I don't underscore the ferocious stupidity of the Clintoian
securocrats whose laxness seems an attribute and smirking arrogance their
best defense, there's something very wrong in all of this. For an
Administration where Animal House pranks seems part of security procedure,
and where the bad guys are in Belgrade and Baghdad, and the use of American
military forces means making the really tough choices as to whether bomb a
pharmicducidal factory in Sudan or land the Marines in Haiti, such is not
the grist of greatness.
To say that Clintonian foreign policy is even Fourth Rate, is to make a
mathematical error of some magnitude.
Making the Energy Secretary Bill Richardson the sacrificial lamb is not the
panacea for a wider incompetence, nor the right thing to do. Despite
Secretary Richardson's hauteur in brushing off Congressional inquiries, the
Energy Secretary stumbled into a hornets nest of stinging bi-partisan
criticism. He has earned the wrath of Congress. He likewise has been
sidelined in his aspirations to seek higher political office.
Last year there was a Los Alamos scandal with a Chinese American scientist
Wen Ho Lee being arrested for allegedly sending classified data on insecure
networks. The current Los Alamos fiasco deals with the misplaced hard drives
holding super secret data on various foreign nuclear weapons programs. The
loss was discovered 7 May during the recent wildfire which burned near the
New Mexico facility. Yet, according to the FBI, the drives were gone in late
March but not one reported them missing. The loss was reported 31 May.
Energy Secretary Richardson stressed, "There is no evidence of espionage,
nor is there evidence that drives have ever left Los Alamos." Technically
this may be true. Yet adept espionage does not leave evidence, and the Los
Alamos National Laboratory facility is huge. They can stay inside the
facility and be copied--there was a two month period between the files
having gone missing and the report of the incident--to do this!
Just last year, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Boad cited
sloppy and inadequate tracking of sensitive nuclear data and offered
withering criticism of security procedures at the Energy's Department's
weapons labs.
Scientists working at the Los Alamos facility have been lax in security
matters; the Administration governing them has been equally careless in its
overall control.
Given the near perpetual scandal at Los Alamos under its current Energy
Depatment tenure, it would be prudent that the Lab should be put under the
Department of Defense in any future Administration.
As to the current scandals, Cover-up may be the word. Callous carelessness
certainly is. It turns out that many people in the scandal ridden Clinton
Administration seem to rather adept at this.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
