OT - Energy Department requires employees to report love affairs

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So you think were not going to get to the bottom of WHO gave away our nuclear secrets!!

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9/1/99 -- 8:06 PM

Energy Department requires employees to report love affairs

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - The U.S. Department of Energy is asking its employees to kiss and tell.

A notice sent out last month requires 67,000 workers cleared to handle defense secrets to tell counterintelligence officers about any romantic or sexual liaisons with people from countries thought to be developing nuclear weapons,

Those countries include all former Soviet republics, China, Israel, India, North Korea, Cuba and Taiwan.

Employees also are expected to report friendships or professional relationships with any foreign national if they spend ``private time'' together - even on the Internet - or if either one shares information about their personal or professional lives.

Foreign intelligence agencies sometimes use young women to tease secrets from American scientists during pillow talk or other romantic liaisons, said Ed Curran, counterintelligence chief for the Energy Department.

``This is done on a daily basis today,'' Curran, who wrote the Aug. 17 memo, said in a story published Wednesday in the Albuquerque Journal.

``There are many, many cases of this,'' he said. ``The 50-, 60-year-old person stationed overseas for months, away from family and children, that person could be especially vulnerable to this kind of effort.''

However, according to the notice, top-security workers don't have to report one-time sexual contact with a foreign national from listed countries as long as they are not prying for classified information.

Similar reporting policies are in place at the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense.

Jim Dannieskiold, a spokesman for Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico, said the policy was not a big deal and was not even a topic of conversation among employees.

But the document, widely circulated at Los Alamos lab in the wake of congressional and DOE allegations of Chinese spying, prompted some jokes.

A scientist who provided a copy to the Los Alamos Monitor said: ``Apparently, it's all right to sleep with someone - once - but if you buy a car from her, you have to report it.''

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Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), September 01, 1999

Answers

I think they should all *admit* to having had sex (pick your favorite variety) with Clinton (Bill OR Hil). That oughta stop this foolishness. Oh.. gotta be a foreigner? Hmmm... who should it be? Shall we have a contest? Saddam? Boris? Bin Ladin? Any other nominees?

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), September 01, 1999.

Standard government security practices for people with high (SECRET, TOP SECRET, CRYPTO or CNWDI (critical nuclear weapons design information) security clearances. At least standard practice for military personnel. Remember Captain Kelly Flynn? Part of the issue about her adultery charge was that the affair was potential blackmail material affecting her security clearance.

Things DO appear to have been a little more lax for DOE employees. And I'll bet for a certain White House resident, also.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), September 01, 1999.


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