WASHINGTON — Two computer hard drives containing nuclear secrets from the Los Alamos weapons lab have been found behind a copying machine within the lab's top-secret secure area and are being evaluated, the Energy Department and government sources said Friday.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said the two hard drives, believed to be the ones that disappeared more than six weeks ago, were in an area that apparently had been searched before. Richardson said investigators are looking into "inconsistencies" surrounding the whereabouts of the devices.
The FBI has examined the drives for fingerprints and they were to be examined electronically on Saturday to determine definitely whether they are those that are missing, and whether they had been tampered with or the contents copied, said an official who spoke on condition of not being identified further.
Lab officials have said they "turned the place upside down" after the disappearance first was reported and investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the two drives had been taken elsewhere since last being seen in April.
Federal officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the devices were discovered behind a copying machine in the secure and highly restricted compound — known as the X Division — where nuclear weapons designers work. One officials said while the general area had been searched before, he was uncertain that anyone had looked in the exact spot where they were found.
Richardson said that while the devices have been found, "their authenticity" still must be evaluated. The FBI's continuing criminal investigation has found "strange circumstances and inconsistencies that are being probed" as part of the ongoing criminal investigation.
At least a half dozen Los Alamos scientists — all among two dozen people with free access to the vault where the devices had been kept — have been given polygraph tests and some answers have raised suspicions among investigators, according to government sources.
"We are going to get to the bottom of why this happened and the way it happened," Richardson said at hastily arranged news conference in Phoenix, Ariz.
The two hard drives, which contain an array of nuclear secrets including highly technical information on the dismantling of U.S. and foreign nuclear bombs, were used by a nuclear emergency response team of scientists who worked at the New Mexico lab.
The area where the drives were found "is being treated as a crime scene by the FBI," the Energy Department said in a statement.
Forensic tests will be performed to determine if the drives had been compromised, one official said. White House chief of staff John Podesta and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger were alerted about the discovery, and Podesta was informing President Clinton.
The disappearance of the hard drives triggered an uproar when disclosed Monday. The House Intelligence Committee on Friday called the disappearance "a major failure" and a "potentially devastating compromise ... in national security."
The recovery is unlikely to stem the criticism of security practices at the Energy Department and its weapons lab, especially Los Alamos which was the focus of another security flap last year involving former lab scientist Wen Ho Lee. Lee has been accused of illegally copying secret nuclear weapons computer files and is in jail awaiting trial on charges of security violations.
Richardson said the government would "continue to aggressively pursue" the investigation into the disappearance of the two hard drives. "This is not a victory speech," he said.
"We are going to get to the bottom of this incident and we are going to hold people accountable. There are going to be people disciplined," he said.
Six Los Alamos managers, including the head of the emergency response team that used the devices and the head of the lab's nuclear programs have been put on leave with pay, pending the completion of the investigations. Several of these managers — though not the most senior ones — were aware of the missing drives on May 7, but did not report it.
The two hard drives, each about the size of a deck of cards, were used by the Nuclear Emergency Security Team, or NEST, which is trained to respond to nuclear accidents or nuclear terrorists acts. They were found missing when two members of the team wanted to make certain they were safe as a wildfire threatened to engulf the laboratory on May 7. The next day the lab was shut down and evacuated, and did not return to normal operations for 17 days.
The drives were last reported seen in the vault on April 7 and possibly were there as recently as April 27, according to lab and Energy Department officials. A total of 26 nuclear scientists with the highest security clearance had unescorted access to the 10-by-20-foot vault, but no procedures were in place to track when the devices were checked out.
Los Alamos lab director John Browne said he first learned of the disappearance on May 31 and then "ordered the laboratory turned upside down" but no trace of the two drives were found. More than three dozen FBI and DOE investigators descended on the lab in the first week of June and further searches failed to uncover them.
Associated Press writer Michael J. Sniffen in Washington contributed to this story.