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.
A 1978 report for Congress on the 1965 disappearance of more than 200 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from a nuclear plant in Apollo, Penn., has been declassified.
Investigators were unable to draw any firm conclusions because of stonewalling by the FBI and CIA, the report states.
The U.S. Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cooperated with investigators, the report shows. But intelligence agencies refused to disclose documents requested by investigators.
The report was prepared by the Government Accounting Office (GAO), now known as the Government Accountability Office.
“The lack of access to CIA and FBI documents made it impossible for GAO to corroborate or check all information it obtained,” the report states. “Agents from the FBI involved in the current investigation told GAO that while there exists circumstantial information which could lead an individual to conclude that a diversion occurred, there is no substantive proof of a diversion.”
The GAO found no evidence that the 200 pounds of weapons-grade uranium had been located or recovered, the report states.
“[I]nstead of resolving the mystery of the missing uranium, it only highlights it,” commented the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy Director Steven Aftergood, on the report’s declassification.
The disappearance of the uranium has fueled various conspiracy theories over intervening decades.
“Circumstantial evidence and popular lore suggested that the material had been clandestinely diverted to Israel for use in its nuclear weapons program, either with or without the acquiescence of the U.S. Government,” Aftergood wrote in a blog.
