in three acts

Since the late 1990s, nuclear weapons scientists at the US Department of EnergyÕs Los Alamos National Laboratory have faced an unanticipated threat to their work, from politicians and administrators whose reforms and management policiesÑenacted in the name of national security and efficiencyÑhave substan-tially undermined the labÕs ability to function as an institution and to superintend the nuclear stockpile. Morale and productivity have suffered at Los AlamosÑand at the nationÕs other weapons lab, Lawrence Livermore. The institutional decline of Los Alamos has occurred in three distinct phases: beginning with an overreaction to the Chinese-American scientist Wen Ho LeeÕs downloading of secret computer codes, exacerbated by the heavy-handed leadership of Admiral Pete Nanos, and continuing under new manage-ment by a for-profit company that focuses more on personal bonuses than on scientific achievement. The author writes that security lapses at Los Alamos are not, as media and government officials have portrayed them, the result of a culture of arrogance and carelessness. More likely, they are symptoms of structural flaws in the workplace, but it is easier to stereotype and scapegoat scientists than to address these struc-tural problems