Pre Nanos

Many vocal people seem to think that Nanos caused all of the current turmoil at LANL.

Based on talks with friends who have been here since the '60s, there is a more likely story. In this story Nanos and LANS are effects not causes.

Back when Harold Agnew was the director of the lab, the Lab had great power. Scientifically, it was the most productive high quality physics organization on the planet.

Agnew decided to challenge Congress in a game of power. His approach was "We are great. We understand science. We will do what we want with the money that you give us."

Congress won this battle. It got rid of Agnew as director and forced the selection of less powerful directors thereafter. The quality of science at the Lab declined slowly but steadily.

Later, the USSR collapsed and the need for the development of nuclear weapons incessantly decreased. The weapons complex became less politically powerful as other constituents could now make cogent arguments to move the money elsewhere.

LANL, assuming that they had won the Agnew led battle, chose to send less than stellar personnel to DOE on change of station assignments.

The weapons complex was losing political clout and LANL was losing political clout within the weapons complex.

Later on, Wen Ho Lee et al., LANL's enemies (enemies partially created and fed by LANL itself) in the Washington bureaucracy saw a chance to decrease LANL's power further. On the rallying cry of "safety and security", they could get a director in place who would work badly with LANL staff and culture (Nanos). This would make the difficulties of the Lab more obvious. The scientists at LANL obligingly played their part by attacking Nanos and not seeing the bigger picture.

The attack on Nanos allowed the next step of the plan to unfold - putting the Lab out to bid for a consortium that included a private company, preferably one not listed on any stock exchange.

This brings us to today. LANS appears to have been told that they are to create a pit production facility here. Bechtel wins by building lots of buildings. Scientists and many others are RIFed and/or leave.

LANL disappears until a significantly large national crisis arises. Then, phoenix-like, a new LANL arises somewhere. The large national crisis that created LANL and gutted many other faltering organizations was WWII.

So we seem to have come full circle in 60 years.

The only thing left to do is to protect those current employees who are motivated enough to learn to protect themselves.