Birthplace of Atomic Bomb, New Mexico Remains Center of Massive U.S. Nuclear Arsenal

from: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/10/11/birthplace_of_atomic_bomb_new_mexico

AMY GOODMAN: Chuck Montaño, welcome to Democracy Now! You worked here at the Los Alamos National Laboratory for more than three decades, for more than 30 years, coming here in 1978. You’re a whistleblower. You left about a year ago. Can you talk about what you did here, what you learned here, why you blew the whistle?

CHUCK MONTAÑO: Well, my background is in audits and fraud investigations, and so I was naturally looking into the control environment at the lab, looking for unallowable costs, excessive spending, cost overruns. And, of course, my—I’m professionally bound to report things as I find them and to develop work papers that will support my findings. The problem with the Department of Energy weapons complex is that auditors that really do their jobs in accordance with their professional requirements aren’t really wanted, because there’s a concern about reporting things that could be an embarrassment to the University of California. As Jay pointed out, the University of California ran the laboratory for 60-some years by itself, until 2006, when it formed a limited liability corporation, and Bechtel brought in Bechtel, the Washington Group and BWXT as industrial partners to run the Los Alamos Lab. But essentially the university maintained a dominant position.

So, my job was to look for fraud, waste and abuse, to look for internal control weaknesses. And what I discovered was that when I reported things as I found them, my reports would get—be held up, would be watered down. Sometimes they wouldn’t be issued. Taxpayers, of course, pay the price when the laboratory, for example, has procurement arrangements to procure certain items at certain prices, and then we find that vendors are actually selling items to lab employees that lab employees aren’t supposed to be purchasing or at costs that are much higher than what was contracted. When I brought those issues to surface, I became a problem. And auditors, in general, become a problem when they do that. Back in 2003, in the aftermath of the Wen Ho Lee situation, there were two seasoned criminal investigators that were brought in, and—

AMY GOODMAN: Wen Ho Lee being the Chinese-American scientist here at Los Alamos who was investigated by the FBI—actually before the 2001 attacks, if people are wondering what the FBI was doing before—saying that he had given secrets to the Chinese, which he adamantly disputed.

CHUCK MONTAÑO: He had not given secrets to anybody, actually. Dr. Wen Ho Lee was scheduled to be laid off along with about a thousand lab employees in 1995. He had received what was referred to as an “at-risk notice.” So at the time he—when he downloaded data, code that he had been working on, he was contemplating having to search for another job. All of that eventually came out, that that was what transpired. But that’s a—Dr. Lee is an interesting situation, because the downloading of classified information was something that I reported in one of my audit reports. That was a serious internal control weakness at the laboratory. Laboratory chose to ignore fixing that problem. Had the laboratory fixed that problem, then conceivably the Wen Ho Lee situation would have never occurred.

Later on, there were also problems with missing tapes containing classified information. One of my findings in this audit that I did of classified computing at the lab was that the laboratory did not have adequate control over the access of classified information. Vaults were basically open to anybody that wanted to go in, and they could remove items from the classified vault without anybody—without a second person as a witness and without having dual controls in place. That was one of my audit findings that’s another example where the laboratory chose to ignore some serious control issues that later on led to some serious problems with the laboratory having missing tapes, computer tapes.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Los Alamos and the millionaires?

CHUCK MONTAÑO: Well, Los Alamos—I’ve lived—I lived in Los Alamos 20 years. I grew up 45 minutes from here, in Santa Fe. We always saw Los Alamos as kind of a very elite community, largely because it’s very, very educated, and also because the laboratory pays very, very well. Normally, New Mexico is one of the poorest regions in the entire nation. So, as Los Alamos grew up and became a legitimate community in northern New Mexico, they basically—they grew up into a community of millionaires. It’s been reported repeatedly that Los Alamos has the most millionaires per capita of any community in the nation. And that’s because the laboratory pays very well. I’m not so sure the laboratory is doing any cutting-edge research anymore, since the Manhattan Project era days. But the people that come to work at the lab tend to stay until they retire, because retirement benefits are enviable. Surrounding communities, of course, are somewhat envious. There’s a line of people that would like to work at the lab, largely because of the salary and the benefits. And, of course, the laboratory tends to recruit from throughout the nation.

AMY GOODMAN: How were you retaliated against when you blew the whistle?

CHUCK MONTAÑO: Well, the standard practice, of course, is to pull your responsibilities away. In my case, I had all my responsibilities removed. I was put in a cubicle. And I characterize it to a Dilbert comic book episode, where I was just sitting in a cubicle without any work to do, absolutely no assignments for a period of nine months. That changed only after I returned legal representation; it didn’t change before that. And in fact, in July of 2004, the Los Angeles Times did an article about the lab and the culture of the lab and, in that article, made reference to my situation at the time I’d been in cubicle isolation for eight months. Even after that article came out, the laboratory did not change its practices with respect to keeping me isolated without any job assignments.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think it’s most important for people to know, both about what happened to you and about what you exposed?

CHUCK MONTAÑO: Well, I think what’s imporant is that the taxpayer needs to understand, is that we’re at the front lines in terms of the employees of these institutions—the auditors, in particular, and investigators. Our job is to root out fraud, waste and abuse and to identify control weaknesses that could lead to fraud, waste and abuse. When we’re targeted for retaliation for doing our job, the taxpayer ultimately pays the price, with higher costs, cost overruns, secrets that get lost or misplaced and don’t get reported, health and environmental concern issues. You know, who’s at the front line, if not the workers, in terms of identifying risky practices that might contaminate the environment or expose workers to high risk, health and safety issues? So, whistleblower protection is critical, especially for facilities like the Los Alamos National Laboratory, because of the nature of the work that’s done and the kind of materials that they work with.