The contracted security force at the Y-12 nuclear weapons facility is facing more heat from the Department of Energy after the agency's inspector general concluded that answers to a knowledge test had been distributed beforehand.
Following an embarrassing security breach last summer, DOE terminated its Y12 security contract with Wackenhut subsidiary WSI Oak Ridge and made it a subcontractor to B&W Y-12. As part of an earlier investigation into the July trespassing incident at the site's Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, a DOE office prepared knowledge tests for Y12 security officers. But in the process, a DOE inspector noticed a draft of what he believed was the test sitting in a patrol vehicle.
This prompted a recently released investigation by the DOE inspector general. The report alleged that a federal official had distributed the test to a limited number of "trusted agents" that included contractor personnel who distributed it as a training aid.
"WSI-OR personnel testified uniformly that there was no intent to cheat on the HSS inspection. While we had no direct evidence to the contrary, we found the credibility of this testimony to be questionable, especially in light of a number of actions that we identified related to the transmission, review and distribution of the test that, at best, demonstrated a lack of due care and negligence. The failure to properly safeguard the test prior to its administration, especially given the intense focus on Y-12 and the security concerns at the site, was, in our opinion, inexplicable and inexcusable," the report read.
Testing was halted after the discovery of the exam copy while DOE officials rewrote the questions. During the inspector general's investigation, the DOE office that issued the test began revising its procedures to better define the role of "trusted agents" and to ensure documents like the test are more clearly marked.