By Brian Anderson
Valley Times

Oct. 23, 2001

LIVERMORE — They are potential terrorist targets. Low-profile but obviously apparent. They are in the Tri-Valley's back yard.

Home to the brains behind America's brawn, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and its neighbor Sandia/California Laboratory are in the midst of a country in conflict. Like the nation's subways, office buildings and power plants, the labs have ramped up security since the Sept. 11 attacks. Barricades have severed surface-street routes around the labs. Heavily armed guards have replaced weaponless watchmen. Eagle eyes have supplanted random checks.

"I think what's changed is that something probably considered unlikely or hard to conceive of happened," said Dennis Fisher, associate director of Lawrence Livermore's safety, security and environmental protection department.

The Sept. 11 attacks "changed the landscape."

In fact, one of the most obvious security alterations at Lawrence Livermore is the landscape itself. High security has been pushed farther from the center since the East Coast attacks, creating a greater barrier for unwanted visitors, Fisher said. What has been built, Fisher said, is a layered system of protection that tightens with each step closer to the "Superblock," where the lab's plutonium and other weapon-fueling chemicals are stored.

As the lab's nucleus, the Superblock and its conspicuous cargo are the facility's greatest priorities. Rows of fencing surround the square block's perimeter, making it appear more like a prison than a place of science.

There are armed guards and watchtowers, sensors and devices, most of them impossible to see and therefore classified, said lab spokesman David Schwoegler. But propped up from the edges are giant poles connected to canvassing nets that cannot be missed.

"It is hardened," Schwoegler said, eyeballing the Superblock, "to protect against an aerial assault."

At Sandia, parking lots have been restricted, badges are inspected more carefully, suspicious packages and people are reported and everyone is in a heightened state of awareness, said spokeswoman Nancy Garcia.

At work at Lawrence Livermore are four SWAT teams trained to battle attackers and handle assaults in defense gear that includes full hazardous materials "moon suits."

Entry points once staffed by unarmed guards are now teeming with heavily outfitted security officers. Wearing black uniforms, bulletproof vests, carrying sidearms and modified machine guns, the officers are equipped to withstand a prolonged firefight.

"Everything is 100 percent," said Loid Shipp, a security official at a Livermore lab post during a recent visit.

Still, there is the potential for failure, according to a report released earlier this month by a watchdog group.

The Project on Government Oversight report showed that U.S. Navy SEALS invaded a Colorado nuclear production facility and removed "enough material to make multiple nuclear weapons" during one mock raid. At Sandia's Los Alamos lab, according to the report, attackers in a staged event dodged security long enough to craft makeshift nuclear weapons.

Marylia Kelley, executive director of local anti-nuclear group Tri-Valley CAREs, said lab officials have long been told to better examine the possibility of aerial assaults.

"It is conceivable that the plutonium facility would be a target," Kelley said. "We think this is a very serious issue and that the government should safeguard the community."

Kelley added that the area's explosive population growth in the past half-century has highlighted the dangers of the lab calling Livermore home.

"This is a highly populated area and homes and apartment buildings are being built right up to the gates of the lab," she said. "It may have been remote back in the 1950s, but it isn't remote any more."