Corruption Scandal Rocks Los Alamos Lab 16
An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of recent science fraud stories involving
Bell Labs and Berkeley National Labs, a new scandal is now brewing
at Los Alamos National Lab. Today (Jan 3, 2003),
the New York Times is reporting
that both the Director and Principal Deputy
Director of Los Alamos have submitted their resignations under duress.
A more detailed and earlier CBS News report here . POGO has an archive of related documents
here.
I recommend you visit POGO.org (Project
On Government Oversight), a wonderful non-profit organization dedicated
to fighting fraud and waste in the US government."
Article Link (Score:4, Informative)
Or read all the coverage on google news here [google.com]
wrong kind of fraud (Score:4, Insightful)
This ranges from $3 million in "lost" equipment and improper credit card use, under Browne and Salgado's watch.
Read the whole article (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, that's certainly not pocket change, and it could be abuse of funds, but it sure as hell isn't in the millions of dollars range. Unless the people in charge were the ones actually doing the charging, I don't see why they'd get canned for this. This is not the amount of funds that you'd have to be willfully ignoring to have slip through the cracks to dishonest workers at the lab.
At least from what I've read so far, this smells a *lot* more like internal politicking. Someone screwed someone over or someone wanted to give someone a favor, or someone was blocking someone else's ideas.
I distinctly remember Bush hammering a number of DoE affiliants and top people about a year ago. Given the fact that Bush has tons of Big Energy ties, it's a lot more likely that he's just repaying favors. Perhaps someone would have lost a lot of money if nuclear power become more economic, or perhaps someone wanted to discover something privately and get the patents on it. [shrug] Who knows?
Re:Read the whole article (Score:2)
basically the lab spends billions of dollars each year, its been in operation for over 50 years. And inventory is held on the books at purchase price, not at depreciated value. (a ten year old $8000 computer is held on the books at 8000$ not 0$ its true worth)
to have all of its inventory accounted for down to 141,000 dollars is frankly a miracle unlikely to be replaicated in any other institution of the same size (47 square miles).
Re-read the whole article (Score:2)
If you re-read the article, you will find that PwC (the external auditors) 'found $3.7 million of unreconciled purchases.' The laboratory claims that all but $121,000 worth of purchases have been reconciled. Until an external auditor verifies these claims, I'd be more willing to believe the larger figure. To me it sounds like the laboratory are trying to cover up the rorting that has been going on.
Nuke secrets? (Score:2, Informative)
simply pathetic Bush grandstanding for mini-nukes (Score:5, Insightful)
The kinds of abuses described in the allegations happen all the time, especially in the military, but you don't see any Joint Chiefs of Staff "mutually agreeing" on their resignations for it.
The real problem, from the Bush point of view, is the overwhelming propensity of Californian voters to insist on following the law instead of developing new "bunker buster" mini-nukes [psr.org]. Bush wants these new weapons, now more than ever, and to get them he needs a National Labs administration willing to look the other way.
PLEASE DO SOMTHING ABOUT THIS! (Score:3, Interesting)
Click here to send a letter to your Senators and congressional Representative about this issue [capwiz.com].
Re:simply pathetic Bush grandstanding for mini-nuk (Score:4, Informative)
The article in the NY Times indicates that it was the response of the laboratory leadership to the investigations into the problems with the property, credit card and purchase order accounting that caused Brown and the deputy director to resign. The article read in such a way as to indicate that there was a pretty feeble attempt at a coverup, which was exposed.
There are significant problems with property accounting at Los Alamos. During my time at Los Alamos as a postdoctoral research associate, we had 1 person responsible for accounting for the property in our division. He couldn't keep up with everything going on and there was a lot of hostility to him doing his job. I suspect other divisions were similar.
The credit card system gets so much abuse because it is used so damn much. You can't get anything in a reasonable amount of time by going through the official channels of purchase orders through the appropriate group. If you need something in a timely manner, you find a secretary with a credit card. I suspect that a lot of the problems stem from the fact that they are buying so much stuff that they lose track of what's going on. Slipping in a bogus purchase gets easy when there's so much activity. If you can get away with it once, go back for seconds.
Don't even get me started on the theft of equipment. Our group lost tools by the ton as well as larger ticket items, like air compressors. The air compressor was even chained down. This kind of theft goes on so often it is sickening.
It is unlikely that the resignations are going to alter things significantly, but the odds of improving the situation are better than if things had been left as they were. Personally, I'm hopeful that the lab can straighten some of this out.
Re:simply pathetic Bush grandstanding for mini-nuk (Score:3, Informative)
No argument there; from the Physicians for Social Responsibility Activist Update [psr.org]:
See, the problem is, mini-nukes are illegal. The Regents of the University of California tend to appoint people to their labs who are accountable to the law. Since Spencer Abraham couldn't get Browne and Salgado to look the other way and go ahead on the project under wraps, he called them to the carpet on $141,000 worth of barbeque grills. That 's nothing! "As of March 31, 2002, approximately 8,000 Air Force cardholders had over $5 million in delinquent debt" on the travel cards, the GAO said. [osd.mil]
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
the hidden agenda behind this resignation. Too many people want to put their knives into the University of california contract. Local NM people want the admininstration for their own locally corrupt agenda, the anti-nuke people want to just kill the lab by any means, the POGO people just want publicity so they mis-report the true facts, and the Bush Admin wants to turn los alamos from a research facility in to a production facility replacing UC with a compiant, republican party donating, contractor.
The inventory control system is out of date and a new bussiness information system is about to be implemented. But inventory losses are NOT out of control as suggested by the press reports. And the fact that people are getting nailed for credit card fraud ought to tell you that PEOPLE ARE GETTING NAILED, not getting away with it.
Let's see... (Score:1)
Yup. Sounds like a classic Bush and BIGENERGY maneuver to me.