Congress Probes Drug Abuse At Weapons Labs

LIVERMORE, CALIF—Officials at the nation's three top-secret nuclear weapons laboratories know that drug use among employees poses an extremely serious security risk. But they don't appear to be doing enough about it. That's the verdict of some members of Congress, who cite a series of seemingly erratic measures the labs have been taking to combat the problem. "If you have someone who's dependent on drugs," says Clifford Traisman, an aide to a House oversight subcommittee that is looking in

Written byVincent Kiernan

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"If you have someone who's dependent on drugs," says Clifford Traisman, an aide to a House oversight subcommittee that is looking into health and safety issues at the labs, "that person not only won't be able to do his job properly, but he'll also be vulnerable to blackmail. Either way, it's a threat to national security."

Indeed, the numbers suggest that drugs are no less of a problem within the confines of some of the nation's most security-conscious facilities than they are among the general public. Since the beginning of 1986, for example, 174 workers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico have been referred to drug treatment programs, according to Department of Energy spokesman David Jackson. At neighboring Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, 15 employees have been fired in the past 16 years for drug-related problems—a step taken only after the employees failed to respond to individual ...

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