Santa Fe, NM
Today, the Center for Public Integrity broke a story on how Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) fired its nonproliferation specialist James Doyle. That firing followed an inquiry by the Center to senior Lab management about a study Doyle completed in his personal capacity arguing for the abolition of nuclear weapons. LANL retroactively classified his report, which Nuclear Watch believes is a clear abuse of proper classification procedures.
Doyle’s study Why Eliminate Nuclear Weapons? has long been available at our website www.nukewatch.org and an independent online publisher. Any quick reading shows it has no information whatsoever about nuclear weapons designs and materials that would merit classification. The study is instead a 28-page narrative argument by a nationally recognized nonproliferation expert for eliminating the stockpile, while citing the aspirations of both Presidents Reagan and Obama to abolish nuclear weapons. But Los Alamos Lab didn’t like Doyle’s message and sought to kill it through classification. Not coincidentally, LANL’s 2.2 billion dollar annual budget is just under two-thirds nuclear weapons research, testing, and production.