According to the IG, the security failures were nothing less
than astonishing. His report revealed, for example, that high-tech
cameras attached to the three slashed fences had been "out of service" for
months at a time. And at least one critically important camera hadn't
even been turned on during the night on which the three
elderly invaders successfully infiltrated the facility and easily made their
way toward nuclear materials that could kill millions if used as weapons.
Summarizing its findings, the IG reported that "Contract
governance and Federal oversight failed to identify and correct early
indicators of . . . multiple system breakdowns. When combined, these
issues directly contributed to an atmosphere in which the trespassers could
gain access to the protected security area directly adjacent to one of the
Nation's most critically important and highly secured weapons-related
facilities."
Along with the DOE Inspector General, several congressional
committees began investigating the security meltdown within a few days of its
occurrence. These inquiries also produced initial findings that vitally
important cameras had been broken or turned off during the incident, and that
security personnel had failed to detect the invasion or prevent the antiwar
seniors from wandering around the heart of the complex at will for a full hour
before they were finally apprehended.
As expected, both the IG's report and the congressional
inquiries were full of sharply worded language that deplored the stunning lapse
in security at Y-12. They also called for rapid, wide-ranging steps that
could be taken to repair the breakdowns and prevent them from happening again.
But neither the IG's report nor the congressional findings
even mentioned a key aspect of the hugely embarrassing event
at Oak Ridge -- the fact that although dozens (hundreds?) of federal and
contract employees had to know about the broken cameras and other security
lapses that were taking place during the months leading up to the invasion, no
one seems to have reported them to superiors inside or outside
DOE.
Remarkably enough, none of the investigative panels managed to
frame the one key question that may be most important of all, when it comes to
understanding why the debacle occurred last July.
Q. Why didn't somebody speak up about the security
problems in order to prevent a potential tragedy on the scale of 9/11?
The answer to that question is simple enough: Like the
intelligence failures and security breakdowns that occurred during 9/11,
itself, the disastrous failures at Y-12 occurred in large part because there
was no effective system in place to ensure that federal employees can report
such lapses without fear of reprisal from the government agencies where they
work.
Protecting
Federal Whistleblowers: Is the System "Broken"?
Although the system for making sure that the nation's 2.1
million federal workers can report abuses and security-endangering failures
with impunity has a complicated history, the basic structure is easy to
understand.
That structure is determined by the sweeping new federal rules
and regulations that were implemented by the landmark Civil Service Reform Act
(CSRA) of 1978 (along with subsequent amendments).
In order to ensure that federal employees can report problems
without fear of reprisal, CSRA created a new entity -- the executive branch's
Office of Special Counsel (OSC) -- and gave it the authority to order
investigations of reports (called "disclosures," in government parlance) of
fraud, waste and abuse.
At the same time, congress created a second agency -- the Merit
System Protection Board (MSPB) -- that was charged with monitoring the OSC's
effectiveness as both a disclosure channel and the protector of whistle-blowing
federal employees from reprisal. To accomplish that task, MSPB was
assigned to conduct periodic, detailed studies of OSC's performance.
The system looks good on paper, of course . . . but the record
over the past 34 years shows clearly that it has not worked. Hamstrung by
lack of resources and chronically weakened by undue political influence, OSC
has simply failed to establish the kind of "level playing field" that its
congressional supporters intended, when they set out to establish a system that
would protect whistle-blowers for the good of the entire country.
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