Snip from a blurb published today by the Project on Government Oversight, a group that has been tracking security breaches at America’s “National Security Science” center, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico:
A computer which may have contained highly classified nuclear weapons information from the Los Alamos National Laboratory was traded in exchange for drugs, according to unconfirmed sources.
The computer was owned by Jessica Quintana, the former contractor employee at the Lab who pled guilty in May to removing classified information after hundreds of pages of documents were discovered in a methamphetamine drug raid at her trailer.
Among the list of items collected by the Los Alamos Police Department during the execution of the search of the trailer were three memory sticks containing classified LANL documents, as well as hard copies. No computer was listed. A senior POGO source claims that the LAPD did search the computer looking for drug information and found none. They did not search for classified LANL information. POGO has also been told that the FBI never obtained a search warrant to seize the computer for a review of evidence of classified information.
Ms. Quintana allegedly broke down during an FBI polygraph session and indicated the computer she was using to work with the information on the memory sticks was now missing.
PDF Link to docs related to the case, Link to Department of Justice press release, May 15, 2007 (whups, that link’s 404 right now, I’ll try to find an alternate source).