| http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21891-2001Aug30.html
Nuclear Arms Data Get New Classification Wen Ho Lee Case Spawns 'Sigma 16' Level of Secrecy By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 31, 2001; Page A21 The federal government has long classified documents as confidential, secret or top secret. Now, the Energy Department and the Pentagon are starting a category with a name James Bond would appreciate: Sigma 16. The new classification appears to be an outgrowth of the Wen Ho Lee case. The Taiwanese American scientist pleaded guilty to copying the equivalent of 400,000 pages of nuclear weapons-related information from computers at Los Alamos National Laboratory onto portable tapes. But one of the many complications in Lee's case was that a great deal of that information had never been reviewed by security officials and formally classified. Instead, it was labeled "PARD," or protect as restricted data. According to a report on nuclear security released this week by the General Accounting Office, the Sigma 16 classification will apply to documents "containing nuclear weapons design specifications that would permit the reproduction and function of the weapon" -- exactly the sort of information that Lee was accused of mishandling. The report by the GAO, a watchdog arm of Congress, criticizes the Energy Department for the amount of time it has taken to agree on the new category, which will go into effect in October. At the same time, the old PARD category is being eliminated. Technically, Sigma 16 will be a sub-group of sensitive compartmented information, or SCI. In the nuclear weapons world, there already are lower Sigma numbers that apply to specialized information available to limited numbers of people with a particular need for it. Material labeled Sigma 16 will be treatedby the government like other highly sensitive information: full background investigations for anyone with access to it, a single custodian to ensure accountability, an access list for those cleared to handle it, regular inventories and documentation of any reproduction, transfer or destruction. After spending nine months in jail awaiting trial, Lee pleaded guilty to a single count of the government's massive indictment and was sentenced to the time he had already served. The government's case collapsed in part because other nuclear weapons scientists who reviewed the allegedly mishandled PARD material said it was not as important as the government claimed. |
