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Mess in the NEST

Missing hard drives filled with nuclear secrets. Security problems stretching back several years. Super technical details related to America’s crown jewels—her national labs. Add to this a raging forest fire threatening the Los Alamos lab itself, and the destruction of private homes in its wake. A criminal investigation launched by the FBI twenty-four days after the disks were first missing. It boils down to grist for a top-drawer thriller novel! Unfortunately, everything previously mentioned above happened.

The Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST) is the nation’s fireman in the event of a nuclear event. To my knowledge, NEST has never been called upon to deal with a rogue weapon or nuclear event either inside or outside the country’s borders. That is not to suggest the expertise developed in training a cadre of men and women to deal with impending Hiroshima type of catastrophe have not been used—we just do not know about it.

In fact, it is reasonable to believe that with the disintegration of the Soviet Empire and the implementation of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), NEST has been called up to deal with troublesome Soviet nukes. If the rumors are true, the checks and balances have deteriorated in respect to both maintenance and security surrounding the Soviet arsenal. Also, it is unreasonable to assume there have never been any problems related to overall maintenance of our own nuclear stockpiles.

Fiction writers have made reference to NEST from time to time. They emerged in the movie Broken Arrow, Tom Clancy’s Sum of All Fears, and my own novel Blood Covenant. However, the details related to this super secret group are sketchy at best. It is a testament to the effectiveness of their work that most Americans have remained blissfully ignorant of NEST’s existence.

So is it really a big deal that two hard drives vanished for twenty-four days only to show up behind a copy machine? It was probably the next place someone was going to check right after they finished securing the coffee maker. There are basically two issues involved: content and opportunity.

News reports suggest the drives contained information on arming, disarming and dismantlement for all American and certain Chinese, Russian, French and British weapons. Any competent team of data analysts and technical specialists could reverse engineer the data and produce a weapon not easily categorized based on current understanding. However, it is probably over statement to suggest this is a doomsday scenario. No one tasked with the disposal of a rogue weapon could approach the task with complete confidence—there are too many imponderables.

It is unlikely anyone wanted to advertise the fact America had details on other nation’s nuclear devices. It is a clear acknowledgment of our ability to spy on ally and adversary. Hopefully, the specific weapons detailed on the disk drives remain secret; otherwise, the intelligence assets used to secure this knowledge could be compromised. Generally, compromised intelligence assets are executed or worse in China and Russia. There is a price in very human terms to the national lab follies.

The physical disk drive description suggests there is ample opportunity to make copies of the data. Press reports suggest the drives are nothing more than commercially available IDE drives. You average twelve year old can set the jumpers and hook the cables together in order to make copies of the drives. The drives themselves are a couple of hundred dollars apiece. What are a couple hundred bucks when certain groups are willing to pay millions for the information?

I write about a world not terribly distant from the one we inhabit. This is a big deal that could have tremendous consequences for our nation. Rather than assign blame and point fingers, why don’t we get about the job of cleaning up the mess in the NEST.

Douglas De Bono / DouglasDeBono.Com Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota E-Mail readermail@DouglasDeBono.Com