Security breachesLessons learned: Cheech and Chong at the Y-12 security breach

By Lee Maril

Published 21 September 2012

On 28 July 2012, an 82-year old nun and her two confederates — both senior citizens themselves – breached the vaunted and supposedly impregnable perimeter protection system at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, where uranium for nuclear weapons is processed and stored (the Y-12 complex is not affiliated with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory [ORNL]); a report on the incident by the Inspector General of the Department of Energy is couched in bureaucratic jargon, but it reveals that the Y-12 security system and practices were much worse than Cheech and Chong could have ever portrayed in their wildest stand-up comedy routines or loopy films

Robert Lee Maril, director of the Center for Diversity and Inequality Research at ECU // Source: ecu.edu

The Y-12 security breach is much worse than Cheech and Chong could have ever portrayed in their wildest stand-up comedy routines or loopy films filled with satire and irony about the human condition.  On the one hand, the public is now informed that the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, has “an extensive security mechanism that relies on well-trained and extensively equipped protective force, advanced technology, and a variety of physical fortifications” at a cost this year alone of $150 million. This annual price tag presumably goes to protect and insure the security of this vital nuclear facility.

On the other, when in the early morning hours of 28 July an 82 year old nun and her two senior citizen buddies broke into Y-12, which processes and stores uranium, they bumped into the embodiments of Cheech and Chong at all “layers” of this elaborate security system. Sister Megan Rice and her two accomplices, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed, were arrested only after they literally hailed a passing guard, as most New Yorkers would hail a reluctant cabbie. A Y-12 guard failed to draw his weapon and even allowed the three suspects to retrieve their packs before finally calling for back-up (the Y-12 National Security Complex is one of four production facilities in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Nuclear Security Enterprise located at Oak Ridge; it is not affiliated with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory [ORNL]. The 28 July security breach occurred at the Y-12 complex, not at ORNL).

This trio is of breachers is currently charged with a felony, malicious destruction of property, and trespassing, a misdemeanor.  Included in the felony charges are painting on one of the Y-12 buildings the slogans “woe to the empire of blood” and “the fruit of justice is peace” (AP, “New charges filed in nuclear weapons plant breach”).

But the outcome of this security farce could have been grim beyond belief if the nun and her two buddies were instead professional terrorists.

Now there is a new report in which Gregory H. Friedman, Inspector General of the Department of Energy, investigates this incident (A Special Report: Inquiry into the Security Breach at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s y-12 National Security Complex).

After IG Friedman in his review, “…conducted interviews with Federal and contractor officials, security personnel, and alarm station operators,” along with reading, “…supporting information pertinent to the sequence of events on the might of