Linton Brooks Fired from DOE

I have followed this story since the beginning. See here here and here. Linton Brooks, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration was fired because of security breaches in his organization that took place on his watch.

I don’t necessarily think it was Brooks’ lack of leadership that got him fired, but his poor management of his underlings and employees. He gave the CIO position to a high school teacher who bragged about decorating office doors with wrapping paper at Christmas time rather than making sure her internet servers and databases were hacker proof. So when social security numbers were leached off of the network and when a laptop turned up in a meth lab, someone’s head had to roll.

I hope they sweep out the inept CIO and her staff too.

From the AP here:

WASHINGTON – Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman on Thursday dismissed the chief of the country’s nuclear weapons program because of security breakdowns at the Los Alamos, N.M., laboratory and other facilities.

Linton Brooks said he would leave in two weeks to three weeks as head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, a post he held since May 2003.

Bodman said the nuclear agency under Brooks had not adequately fixed security problems. “I have decided it is time for new leadership at the NNSA,” Bodman said.

Brooks was reprimanded in June for failing to report to Bodman a security breach of computers at an agency facility in Albuquerque, N.M., that resulted in the theft of files containing Social Security numbers and other personal data for 1,500 workers. The theft did not become generally known, nor was Bodman made aware of it, for eight months.

Last fall, security at Los Alamos came into question anew. During a drug raid, authorities found classified nuclear-related documents at the home of a woman with top secret clearance who worked at the lab.

The agency is responsible for managing the nuclear weapons complex that includes the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons research labs. The agency has more than 37,000 employees, most of them contractor personnel.

37,000 employees are not that many for a federal IT enterprise. And given that most of the employees are scientists, you would think that they could come up with a good security team and enforceable security practices, right? There are many other federal organizations that have done an excellent job at security, and they have more employees and a smaller budget.