Since I've been at LANL, it seems like the media has a fascination with every single thing that goes wrong here. While there have certainly been some big problems here, the response has been disproportionate to the severity of the actual events. What is really frustrating is that things at least as bad have been occurring at other DOE facilities, including other weapons labs, during this entire time and they go largely unrecognized by both the Congress and the media. So... let's see...

Hrmm... Sandia's guard force has not bee following their own rules, been lax in their record keeping, lax in responding to alarms, and some joker fired his firearm through a door but no one knows exactly when it happened or who was responsible. If these kind of shenanigans had gone on at LANL, it would be on CNN for a week.

After years of bad press, I feel like the general public believes that LANL scientists couldn't keep a secret or keep track of a hard drive if their life depended on it. Looking at DOE facility security incident statistics for recent years, it appears that LANL falls about in the middle of incident frequency.

I'd like to see a single standard implemented here. If this sort of thing is a matter of national importance, then someone needs to crack the freakin' whip on some of these other clowns. If it's not, then stop telling the world that LANL employees are a bunch of undisciplined cowboys.