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Rep. Chris Shays requested the GAO inquiry into anti-terrorist security precautions throughout the nuclear complex
Rep. Chris Shays requested the GAO inquiry into anti-terrorist security precautions throughout the nuclear complex
Security poor at nuclear storage sites, GAO says
By Dave Montgomery
Star-Telegram Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - The nation's nuclear storage facilities are inadequately prepared to defend themselves in a post-Sept. 11 world and have built their security plans around a smaller terrorist threat than that projected by U.S. intelligence agencies, the General Accounting Office said Tuesday.
"Until we get these sites at conditions we want, we are risk," said Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., who requested the GAO inquiry into anti-terrorist security precautions throughout the nuclear complex that includes the top-secret Pantex weapons plant near Amarillo.
U.S. Energy Department officials who oversee nuclear storage facilities challenged portions of the 31-page GAO report and said the government has moved aggressively to fortify the sites in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
"Today, no nuclear weapons, special nuclear material or classified materials are at risk anywhere within the nuclear weapons complex," said Under Secretary Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the energy department's National Nuclear Security Administration.
In a brief interview following the hearing Shay's House subcommittee, Brooks also issued a robust security assessment of Pantex, the nation's only facility where nuclear weapons are assembled. The 3,500-employee plant near Amarillo came under national scrutiny in January following disclosures that workers taped together broken pieces of a high explosive from the plutonium trigger of a nuclear warhead.