I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Oops!
That was the sound that accompanied the collective slap against the forehead from the nation’s national security community when news came out Tuesday that a 266-page report laying out details of the nation’s network of nuclear sites and programs was accidentally released publicly.
The report included particulars about its weapons labs, two of which are in New Mexico: Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The story laying out what happened was posted on the New York Times website Tuesday night.
Here’s an excerpt:
The report details the locations of hundreds of nuclear sites and activities. Each page is marked across the top “Highly Confidential Safeguards Sensitive” in capital letters, with the exception of pages that detailed additional information like site maps. In his transmittal letter, Mr. Obama said the cautionary language was a classification category of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors.
While the author of the Times story writes that information about Los Alamos and Sandia was released in the 266-page report, he doesn’t go into detail but rather says the most serious breach involved the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
The report lists many particulars about nuclear programs and facilities at the nation’s three nuclear weapons laboratories — Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia — as well as dozens of other federal and private nuclear sites.
One of the most serious disclosures appears to center on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which houses the Y-12 National Security Complex, a sprawling site ringed by barbed wire and armed guards. It calls itself the nation’s Fort Knox for highly enriched uranium, a main fuel of nuclear arms.
The Times quotes several experts who debate the seriousness of the breach. Some say it’s devastating. Others says the report lays out what’s pretty much already known publicly.
The Times explains that the information is “considered confidential but not classified” and was assembled for transmission later this year to the International Atomic Energy Agency (AEA).
The report to the AEA is “part of a process by which the United States is opening itself up to stricter inspections in hopes that foreign countries, especially Iran and others believed to be clandestinely developing nuclear arms, will do likewise,” the Times reports.
“President Obama sent the document to Congress on May 5 for Congressional review and possible revision, and the Government Printing Office subsequently posted the draft declaration on its Web site.”
