September 24, 2014

Management of Certain Aspects of the Human Reliability Program and Incident Reporting within the Office of Secure Transportation

This report was temporarily unavailable.  Several months after the issuance of this report, the National Nuclear Security Administration questioned the accuracy of portions of the report.  Additionally, we received a separate complaint questioning the accuracy of portions of the report.  Accordingly, the report was removed from the Office of Inspector General website pending completion of an internal review of these concerns. Following our review, the report was updated. A summary of our results are presented below

The full report on this matter has been designated as for "Official Use Only" and is not available for public release.

ADDENDUM

September 30, 2015

The Office of Secure Transportation (OST) is managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and is responsible for the safe and secure transport of Government-owned special nuclear materials within the contiguous United States.  In accordance with Title 10, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 712, Human Reliability Program, OST implemented the Human Reliability Program (HRP).  The HRP is a security and safety reliability program designed to ensure that those who meet the highest standards of reliability, physical, and mental suitability can gain access to nuclear weapons.  The Office of Inspector General received several allegations regarding sabotage and mishandling of the HRP, questionable practices relating to OST's management of the HRP, and the blatant cover-up of a security violation relating to unauthorized access to a nuclear weapons storage area.

We did not substantiate sabotage of the HRP program or a blatant cover-up of an incident of security concern.  However, we substantiated parts of the allegation regarding mishandling and questionable practices related to the management of the HRP within OST.  Specifically, we identified through OST personnel, problems related to notification and consideration of HRP status and weapons qualification prior to assigning OST staff to missions.  These problems permitted an agent who had been suspended from the HRP to inappropriately gain access to a nuclear weapons storage area.