Homeland Security does keep an eye on this place

Authorities in northern New Mexico have stumbled onto what appears to be classified information from Los Alamos National Laboratory while arresting a man suspected of domestic violence and dealing methamphetamine from his mobile home.

Police alerted the FBI to the secret documents, which agents traced back to a woman linked to the drug dealer, officials said. The woman is a contract employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory…

In 2004, the lab was essentially shut down after an inventory showed that two computer disks containing nuclear secrets were missing. A year later the lab concluded that it was just a mistake and the disks never existed.

But the incident highlighted sloppy inventory control and security failures at the nuclear weapons lab. And the Energy Department began moving toward a five-year program to create a so-called diskless environment at Los Alamos to prevent any classified material being carried outside the lab.

Even though Los Alamos is now under new management, Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight said the lab has not done much to clean up its act.

Los Alamos has always seemed to be rewarded for its screw-ups,” Brian said. “We’re waiting with baited breath to see if anything has changed.”

The idea that police found classified documents at a home where a drug sting was being conducted is disturbing, she said. The problem is when you actually have those materials that are supposed to be protected inside the lab and you find them outside the lab in the hands of criminals — that should worry everybody,” Brian said.

I doubt if anyone living in northern New Mexico is surprised by the latest screw-up at the Labs. The Coneheads are pretty much left to their own devices. The Feds would rather concentrate their efforts on activist locals who would prefer to see our tax dollars spent on useful research rather than more Death and Destruction.

The context becomes even more droll when you realize our governor is Bill Richardson, the hack who wasted millions on prosecuting Wen Ho Lee — essentially for bringing work home to put in unpaid overtime.