The Government Accountability Office says the Energy Department has for years failed to act on recommendations pointing to gaping holes in its efforts to create an insider threat program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A new watchdog report says the federal agency that keeps the nation\u2019s nuclear secrets has failed to establish an \u201cinsider threat\u201d program to guard against fraudsters, leakers and spies in its midst, a decade after a presidential order to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bluntly-worded report<\/a> by the Government Accountability Office says the Energy Department has for years failed to act on recommendations from four independent reviewers pointing to gaping holes in its efforts to create an insider threat program. And it notes that it in 2017, the most recent year data was available, there were about 250 unclassified insider threat-related security incidents, including sending classified information over unclassified systems, leaving security areas unattended and not properly protecting classified information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There were also several malicious incidents, the report notes, including a nuclear safety program manager sentenced to 18 months<\/a> in prison for accepting almost $500,000 in bribes in exchange for official acts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe theft of nuclear material and the compromise of information could have devastating consequences,\u201d the GAO said. \u201cThreats can come from external adversaries or from \u2018insiders,\u2019 including employees or visitors with trusted access\u2026 Such threats could have significant consequences for national security and could include unauthorized release of classified information; workplace violence; or improper access to sensitive nuclear weapons, material.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The GAO report comes after NBC News reported<\/a> exclusively last year that at least 154 Chinese scientists who worked on government-sponsored research at the Energy Department\u2019s Los Alamos National Laboratory over the last two decades have been recruited to do scientific work in China \u2014 some of which helped advance military technology that threatens America’s national security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A report by Strider Technologies<\/a> described what it calls a systemic effort by the Chinese government to place Chinese scientists at Los Alamos, where nuclear weapons were first developed. Many of the scientists were later lured back to China to help make advances in such technologies as deep-earth-penetrating warheads, hypersonic missiles, quiet submarines and drones, according to the report. It said the scientists were paid as much as $1 million through participation in Beijing’s \u201ctalent programs,\u201d designed to recruit Chinese scientists to return to the Asian country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n