Senior Analyst Alleges Retaliation in Firing Over Publication of Nuclear Abolition Article
NS&D Monitor
8/1/2014
A senior nonproliferation analyst at Los Alamos National Laboratory says he was fired by the lab in retaliation for a report that aligns with President Obama’s nuclear policies but ran afoul of laboratory officials, according to a report by the Center for Public Integrity. The non-profit center reported this week that James Doyle, 55, was fired by the lab July 8. He said he was told his firing was tied to a series of layoffs, but he believed it was linked to an article that was published in the international journal Survival: Global Politics and Strategy.
According to the report, the article was published in early 2013, but after being initially cleared by the lab for publication, he was told the article contained classified information. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, Doyle was placed on investigatory leave for a day without pay, his top-secret clearance was suspended for 30 days, and he was stripped of his access to classified information about the nuclear arsenals of other countries. He filed a whistleblower complaint with the Department of Energy, but the complaint and a subsequent appeal was denied. “Classification has been used against me for the purposes of censorship of the article and retaliation against me for writing the article,” Doyle told the New Mexican. He filed another whistleblower complaint after he was fired July 8, the New Mexican said.
Doyle’s report is available on the website for Nuclear Watch New Mexico, nukewatch.org, and the organization’s director strongly criticized the laboratory’s handling of Doyle. Coghlan said “any quick reading” of Doyle’s study demonstrates that it does not contain classified information, and is instead a “28-page narrative argument by a nationally recognized nonproliferation expert for eliminating the stockpile, while citing the aspirations of both Presidents Reagan and Obama to abolish nuclear weapons.” Coghlan added: “We demand that federal overseers intervene, reprimand the Lab, reinstate James Doyle, fire those responsible for his political firing, and cut contractor award fees because of chronically poor performance and leadership.”
NNSA Pushing Back Planned Construction Start for RLWTF Upgrade
The National Nuclear Security Administration is pushing back the planned start of construction of a new low-level liquid waste treatment facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory based on the results of a peer review that the NNSA is so far declining to discuss publicly. While the NNSA had previously planned to begin the construction of the facility in the third quarter of this year, it is now looking to obtain approval to begin construction by the end of this year, according to agency spokesman Derrick Robinson.
“NNSA has modeled a peer review process for capital projects that mirrors (to the extent practicable) the process utilized within the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Each active capital project is reviewed at least annually (more often for larger projects) to ascertain that the project will meet the established cost, schedule, and scope. NNSA recently completed a peer review for the RLWTF LLW project, and the project team is in the process of addressing findings from the peer review,” Robinson said in a written response this week, adding, “Upon completion of the findings, LLW team will request CD-3 approval (start of construction) by the end of the year.”
Robinson declined to comment, though, as to what the peer review specifically examined or what its findings are, saying, “The Peer Review report is not finalized therefore we cannot provide more information on the results and what specifically the review examined.”
The new low-level liquid waste facility is one of two NNSA is planning to build at Los Alamos to replace the lab’s existing Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility, which is an aging facility with a history of leaks that led to concerns that ongoing operations could be threatened due to a lack of an adequate waste processing ability. Along with the new low-level waste facility, NNSA is also planning to build a new facility to process liquid transuranic waste. The low-level waste facility has been scheduled to be completed by early 2018, with the transuranic waste facility to be completed in 2020.a
