Washington, DC --- Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) a senior Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and co-chair of the Bipartisan Nonproliferation Task Force will hold a press conference on security at Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear weapons facilities. He will release two letters, one to DOE Secretary Spencer Abraham and one to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB).
The letter to Secretary Abraham relates particularly to the possibility that suicidal terrorists could access the weapons-grade uranium and plutonium in the facility to rapidly construct and detonate “dirty bombs” which could spread radioactive materials over a large area, or “homemade nuclear bombs” which could achieve the same explosive force as a small nuclear weapon. Internal DOE documents report that force-on-force exercises at DOE facilities designed to test the adequacy of security have resulted in the mock “terrorists” successfully penetrating the facility and gaining access to weapons-grade uranium and plutonium more than 50% of the time. The letter to PFIAB requests that an unclassified version of the report on security at DOE facilities that is currently being prepared be made available to the public.
Rep. Markey will be joined by:
• Ron Timm, senior analyst for DOE safeguards and security
• Matthew Zipoli, Charles Quinones, Marshall Cole and Mark Danielson, former employees of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s SWAT team
• Mark Graf, Program Manager for Alarm Station Operations, Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Center Guard Force
• Peter Stockton, Special Assistant for evaluating physical and cyber security to then-DOE Secretary Bill Richardson from 1999-2001, currently with the Project on Government Oversight
Wednesday, January 23, 2002 11 AM – 2168 Rayburn House Office Building