By Brian Anderson
Valley Times

Dec. 22, 1999

LIVERMORE — Energy Secretary Bill Richardson vowed his support for Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Director Bruce Tarter while standing behind the lab's problem-plagued laser project Tuesday after a meeting with scientists.

On the second day of a laboratory listening tour in California and New Mexico, Richardson also reiterated a call he made Monday in Albuquerque to mitigate possible job losses to cover a $50 million DOE labs' budget shortfall.

The secretary's public show of support for Tarter was meant to stave off questions about whether Richardson was ill-advised in June about the progress of the National Ignition Facility .

Tarter, through a spokesman, has said he heard reports of possible problems with the $1.2 billion laser project two days before Richardson declared the project was meeting both its budget and schedule. Richardson, however, did not learn until September that the laser could be as much as $350 million in the red and two years behind schedule.

"The director has been doing a good job," Richardson said Tuesday. "I think Director Tarter has always been straight with me."

Tarter, through a spokesman, declined comment Tuesday.

Richardson said garbled project management was to blame for his lack of knowledge of NIF's problems, and maintained that anyone who acted improperly could be punished.

"We have fundamental management and construction problems," Richardson said, adding that management is being rearranged. "(NIF leaders) have got to do a better job at project management. It's important that those who made mistakes are held accountable."

The project's former chief, Michael Campbell, stepped down in August when it was revealed he did not have a doctorate from Princeton University as he had represented. Campbell said last week he will resign from the lab.

Construction of the massive project began in 1997 and is critical to the success of the DOE's stockpile stewardship program, which aims to keep the nuclear arsenal safe and reliable through experiments rather than underground nuclear testing.

As designed, NIF would focus 192 beams on a BB-sized target and the resulting explosion would simulate the high-temperature, high-pressure conditions normally found inside a nuclear weapon or the center of the sun.

Richardson also tried to head off concerns over the potential for layoffs at Sandia National Laboratory sites in Albuquerque and Livermore resulting from $50 million in budget cuts.

"I don't like layoffs, period," Richardson said. "I think we've committed to a budget so that we don't have to have them."

Lab officials have said as many as 500 positions could be eliminated. On Monday, Richardson called that number "grossly overblown" and said he is planning for "near zero" job cuts.

Richardson was at the lab to meet with scientists after what he described as a "difficult and turbulent year" in which the DOE has been besieged by charges that some of the nation's most sensitive weapons secrets have been spirited out of its labs.

Los Alamos (N.M.) lab scientist Wen Ho Lee was fired earlier this year and last week was charged with mishandling classified data. Lee has never been charged with spying and his supporters have said he is a spy-probe scapegoat. Lee filed suit Monday against the DOE, the Justice Department and the FBI, alleging the agencies violated his right to privacy and unjustly labeled him a spy through leaks to the media.

Richardson brushed off those accusations Tuesday, saying Lee's lawsuit was "unfounded" and "without merit."

During a 11/2-hour session Tuesday that was closed to the media, about 300 Livermore lab employees questioned Richardson on polygraph testing, recruitment and projects.

Physicist Kent Johnson said employee morale plunged this year partly out of concern over polygraph testing procedures implemented to beef up security. Richardson's visit, he said, seemed to help.

"He was quite upfront about that he was out here was to rally the troops," Johnson said. "People I talked to ... tended to focus on some of the negatives not being finally resolved. But my morale is slightly improved."