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Richardson's disinterest leaves bad taste behind
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What began as an upbeat reception ended in disappointment a week ago Monday in Santa Fe when presidential candidate Bill Richardson ignored two requests to address his position on Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Given the financial uncertainties plaguing LANL and Sandia National Laboratories, we thought the former secretary of energy and our current governor would jump at the chance to clear up the conflicting messages he's recently expressed on the subject.
We were wrong.
------Actually I think Richardson had a very good reason to not answer the questions. One, Bill Richardson got royally screwed by Los Alamos National Labs when he was Secretary of Energy. The various security problems and the passive aggressive way the lab shared data with DOE made things worse and made his testimony in front of Congress laughable when LANL management told him everything was 'contained' and after his testimony 'updated' him that the proverbial (and previously non-existant) poop was going to be in the NY Times the next day.
The second reason is that NNSA was not a great solution for the problems at LANL. Adding another layer of bureaucracy, political agendas, and indirection does not bring more sunlight onto a moldy place. Moving the groups now under NNSA over to DOD or finding ways to remove the layers that already existed above it would have done wonders in getting to the heart of the problems at the labs.
