Department of Energy

The United States Department of Energy is the cabinet department that administers the nuclear weapons program, the national laboratories and test sites, and much of federal energy research. Its predecessors include the Atomic Energy Commission, which ran the weapons complex from January 1, 1947, and the Energy Research and Development Administration. The department's laboratories, contractors and officials recur in records of green fireballs and other aerial phenomena over atomic installations, psychic research, nuclear intelligence and counterintelligence, and the sections below follow those appearances.

Establishment and predecessor agencies

The Manhattan Project's postwar successor, the Atomic Energy Commission, was established by Public Law 79-585 of 1946 and set up an Office of Security and Intelligence to liaise with the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and with agencies of the intelligence community.¹ The Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, approved October 11, 1974, provides in section 101(a): "The Atomic Energy Commission is hereby abolished." It created the Energy Research and Development Administration, which inherited the commission's weapons and research functions and, according to the Congressional Research Service, its foreign intelligence and counterintelligence responsibilities under an assistant administrator for national security.¹²

Congress created the department by Public Law 95-91, approved August 4, 1977. Section 201 establishes it "at the seat of government" as "an executive department to be known as the Department of Energy."³ Section 102(18) transfers to it "the functions of the Energy Research and Development Administration related to nuclear weapons and national security," and section 203 lists "management and implementation of the nuclear weapons program" among the duties of its assistant secretaries. Section 208 provides for an Office of Inspector General.³ The Congressional Research Service describes the act as bringing together 40 existing government organizations.¹

James R. Schlesinger, who had chaired the Atomic Energy Commission from 1971 to 1973, was confirmed as the first Secretary of Energy on August 4, 1977 and served from August 6, 1977 to August 23, 1979.⁴⁵ The department's Office of Legacy Management lists the secretaries who followed. Charles Duncan was confirmed on July 31, 1979 and served from August 24, 1979 to January 20, 1981. James B. Edwards served from January 23, 1981 to November 5, 1982, Donald P. Hodel from November 5, 1982 to February 7, 1985, and John S. Herrington from February 7, 1985 to January 20, 1989. James Watkins served from March 1, 1989 to January 20, 1993, and Hazel R. O'Leary from January 22, 1993 to January 20, 1997.⁶ Federico Peña served from March 12, 1997 to June 30, 1998, and Bill Richardson from August 18, 1998 to January 20, 2001.⁶ Spencer Abraham served from January 20, 2001 to January 31, 2005, Samuel W. Bodman from February 2005 to January 2009, Steven Chu from January 21, 2009 to April 22, 2013, and Ernest Moniz from May 21, 2013 to January 20, 2017.⁶ Rick Perry served from March 2, 2017 to December 1, 2019, and Dan Brouillette from December 11, 2019 to January 20, 2021.⁶ Jennifer M. Granholm was sworn in as the sixteenth secretary on February 25, 2021.⁷ Chris Wright was confirmed on February 3, 2025 by a Senate vote of 59 to 38.⁸

Weapons laboratories and the contractor network

The nuclear weapons laboratories that the department runs include Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. In January 2025 the Los Alamos laboratory published a release on a partnership with OpenAI.⁹ In August 2025 it announced that frontier AI models had been launched on its Venado supercomputer.¹⁰

Most of the work at the laboratories and test sites is done under contract. EG&G reported in its annual report for the fiscal year ended January 2, 1994 that it held five Department of Energy contracts. Two related to the Nevada Test Site: Energy Measurements, under which the company "provides scientific and engineering services for the DOE's underground nuclear weapons test program" in cooperation with the Sandia, Los Alamos and Livermore laboratories, and the Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company contract for support and maintenance, construction at the Tonopah Test Range and work at the Yucca Mountain Project. The other three were at Rocky Flats, the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory and the Mound Laboratory.¹¹ The company decided in 1994 not to seek renewal of four of the contracts; the Rocky Flats contract ended in June 1995 and the Reynolds and Energy Measurements contracts expired on December 31, 1995.¹² In its report for the fiscal year ended January 31, 1995, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) reported that the department accounted for 11 percent of its revenue, and listed Donald M. Kerr, formerly president of EG&G, as its corporate executive vice president.¹³

Lockheed Martin operated Sandia through Sandia Corporation from 1993 to 2017, after which management passed to a subsidiary of Honeywell.¹⁴ Its 1995 filing places Sandia, the Oak Ridge facilities (under a contract extended through March 31, 1998 at an estimated Department of Energy budget of $3.5 billion) and Nevada Test Site support services (as subcontractor to Bechtel National) in the company's Energy and Environment sector.¹⁵ Battelle Memorial Institute managed the Hanford laboratories for the Atomic Energy Commission. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's history gives January 4, 1965 as the date on which the "key" to the Hanford Laboratories was transferred to Battelle, and dates the laboratory's renaming to 1995.¹⁶ A company history records that the department selected Battelle in 1978 to manage a program on commercial nuclear waste isolation.¹⁷

A patent application publication, US 2020/0407525 A1, records a confirmatory license to the department from Lawrence Livermore National Security dated July 27, 2020, and names Chasm Technologies in the same record.¹⁸ The White House fact sheet of February 22, 2006 on the DP World port transaction noted that Dubai was "the first Middle Eastern entity" to join the Container Security Initiative and the department's Megaports Initiative.¹⁹ A lobbying registrant of Scale AI, Ariel Marshall, lists service as chief of staff to the Under Secretary for Science and Innovation at the department from 2023 to 2025.²⁰ The department also appears among the agencies with which the U.S. AI Safety Institute coordinates under the Commerce Department's description of the center's tasks.²¹ Garrison Rapmund, a retired Army major general who served on the Star Gate Scientific Oversight Committee, was described in a 2018 alumni memorial as a scientific adviser to the National Institutes of Health, the Federal Aviation Administration and the department.²²

Safeguards, security and the Nevada Test Site

Ralph E. Caudle, a retired Air Force colonel, joined the department in 1975 as Director, Division of Operations, in the Office of Military Application, and in 1981 was promoted to head the Office of Safeguards and Security, with responsibility for protection of nuclear weapons materials and facilities and all department classified information. The Journal of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management reported in its spring 1984 issue that he had been named president of Wackenhut Advanced Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary formed from the Systems Division, the Advanced Technologies Division, the Security Programs Division and NUSAC, Incorporated.²³ His obituary states that from 1975 to 1981 he was program director and director of operations for development and production of nuclear weapons, that he was Director of Safeguards and Securities of Nuclear Weapons at the department from 1981 to 1984, and that earlier, as an Atomic Energy Commission employee, he had been Director of Safeguard and Security of Nuclear Weapons at Germantown, Maryland.²⁴ The Wackenhut annual reports for 1985 and 1986 state that the company's Security Programs Division was selected to design the security system of the nuclear device assembly facility at the Nevada Test Site, and the report covering 1984 states that the department chose Wackenhut Services in 1984 to establish and operate a Safeguards and Security Central Training Academy at Albuquerque.²⁵

The predecessor firm NUSAC listed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the department and the Navy among the clients of its security divisions by spring 1980, and David G. Schofield was senior vice president over those divisions.²⁶ The Wackenhut Corporation's annual report for the fiscal year ended January 1, 1995 states that the department accounted for about 20 percent of its revenue, with the Savannah River Site contract at 9 percent and the Rocky Flats Plant contract at 5 percent, and that Wackenhut Services' revenues were $8.1 million lower in 1994 because the department reduced manpower requirements.²⁷ Wackenhut Services appears in the federal procurement records under department contracts including DE-AC08-87NV10559 for the Nevada Operations Office and DE-AC09-99SR18950 for Savannah River, the latter with obligations of about $901.6 million.²⁸ Senator Edward J. Markey wrote to Secretary Bodman on February 17, 2005 that a force-on-force exercise at the Test Site in August 2004 had ended in failure for the guard force, and cited a department Office of Inspector General report of February 11, 2005 that a Wackenhut employee had taken government and personal handguns to a training exercise at the site in 2003.²⁹

The department's history of the Nevada Test Site, DOE/MA-0518, describes about 1,375 square miles of terrain "owned and controlled by the Department of Energy."³⁰ The site was carved from the Nellis Air Force Gunnery and Bombing Range. President Truman authorized a 680-square-mile section of the range as the Nevada Proving Grounds on December 18, 1950, and the name became Nevada Test Site in 1955.³¹ The same history records the early use of the range: "The Army set up four emergency landing strips on the range. One was on Groom Lake east of the site."³⁰ The Groom Lake airfield is the location of Area 51. EG&G's radar test facility moved to the former U-2 testing site at Area 51 of the Atomic Energy Commission's Nevada Proving Grounds on September 10, 1959, according to the CIA's history of the U-2 program.³²

The department also administers the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which its page on the reserve calls "the world's largest supply of emergency crude oil."³³ The Energy Policy and Conservation Act of December 22, 1975 provides: "A Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the storage of up to 1 billion barrels of petroleum products shall be created pursuant to this part."³⁴

Green fireballs over Los Alamos and Sandia, 1948 to 1951

From December 1948 reports of green fireballs came from the vicinity of Los Alamos and Sandia Base, installations of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. The 17th District of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations at Kirtland Air Force Base collected the reports. In a summary of May 25, 1950 to Brigadier General Joseph F. Carroll, the director of special investigations, the district wrote that its observers included "scientists, Special Agents of the Office of Special Investigations, airline pilots, military pilots, Los Alamos Security Inspectors, military personnel, and many other persons of various occupations whose reliability is not questioned." The summary was distributed to the Director, Security Division, Atomic Energy Commission, at Los Alamos, to the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project at Sandia Base and to the FBI offices at El Paso and Albuquerque.³⁵

A conference on aerial phenomena met at 1300 on February 16, 1949 in room P-162 of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. The attendance list records Major Winn, Major Godsoe and Captain Neef of the Fourth Army, Commander Mandelkorn of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, Lincoln LaPaz of the University of New Mexico, Mr. Maxwell of the FBI, Mr. Morgan and Mr. Newburger of the Atomic Energy Commission's Santa Fe Operations Office, and, from the University of California, which ran the laboratory, Norris Bradbury, Holloway, Hoyt, Manley, Frederick Reines and Edward Teller.³⁶ Newburger opened by stating that the subject was classified Secret. Neef said the matter began in December 1948 with reports from airline pilots and that LaPaz had assisted without charge since then.³⁶

LaPaz described the fireball he had observed near Starvation Peak at about 9:02 p.m. on December 12, 1948: it appeared at full intensity instantly, was yellow-green at about 5200 angstroms, followed an almost horizontal path at constant angular velocity for almost exactly two seconds, and broke into fragments that were still bright green. He told the conference that he regarded it as "not a conventional meteorite fall," that the objects made no sound although a fall of January 30, 1949 over Texas had been followed for 1,600 miles by interviewing hundreds of people, and that he counted ten instances that "definitely merit the most serious consideration" and about twenty more.³⁶ He added that earlier green fireballs had been reported to him near the Hanford area, and daylight white objects near Memphis in May 1948, "not too far from Oak Ridge."³⁶ Asked for an explanation, LaPaz said the only one he had was the one he had given at the start, that the objects were defensive maneuvers of a higher United States command practising in the regions to be defended, and that he had been scolded for saying so, including by Joseph Kaplan.³⁶

Teller worked at the blackboard for about twenty minutes on light output, speed, kinetic energy and shock wave. He then said that putting together what he had heard with what he theoretically believed, "it ought to be a material body" and "might be an electron phenomenon," and estimated that an object producing the observed light without audible sound would be very small. LaPaz replied: "Nothing like this, to my knowledge, has ever been observed in the case of meteorite drops." Teller had earlier remarked that the account "sounds like everything else but meteors" and that the evidence of horizontal flight impressed him. Bradbury closed the discussion: "Still don't feel that the meteor stuff is out. The puzzling thing is the long horizontal path; also, absence of noise is puzzling."³⁶ Godsoe said that "most of the military authorities think we are crackpots" except the Army Air Force, which was the gathering and reporting agency. Newburger said the Air Force had classed the flying discs and the fireballs into one category, and Neef read a letter from the Air Materiel Command that the old Project Sign was now Project Grudge, which included the New Mexico phenomena.³⁶

The Atomic Energy Commission's Santa Fe office transmitted a transcript of the minutes on March 22, 1949 under a Secret cover letter signed by Sidney Newburger, Jr., chief of its Security Operations Branch, to Lieutenant Commander Richard Mandelkorn of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project at Sandia Base. The copy is marked as 24 pages, copy 18 of 25, and carries a Department of Energy declassification review stamp. The department's release program published it on July 10, 2026 as DOE-UAP-D004, in the fourth release of the Department of War's UAP records.³⁶³⁷ The FBI's San Antonio office reported to the Director on the same date, March 22, 1949, on what Fourth Army intelligence had told it of the conference: that the question was classified Secret, that more than ten incidents analogous to the green fireball and some twenty others had occurred since December 5, 1948, and that the sightings were confined to a triangle of Los Alamos, Las Vegas and west Texas. The memorandum then states: "There appears to be reason to believe that the above-mentioned phenomena may be connected with secret experiments being conducted by some U.S. Government Agency as it is believed that the United States is farther advanced in guided missile development than any foreign power."³⁸

The 17th OSI District's summary of May 1950 gives the dates of the Los Alamos conferences as February 17 and October 14, 1949 and lists as present representatives of the Fourth Army, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, the University of New Mexico, the FBI, the Atomic Energy Commission, the University of California, the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, the Air Materiel Command's Geophysical Research Division and the Office of Special Investigations. It states that no logical explanation was offered but that it was "generally concluded that the phenomena existed and that they should be studied scientifically," and that "the continued occurrence of unexplained phenomena of this nature in the vicinity of sensitive installations is cause for concern."³⁵

The Air Force's Cambridge Research Laboratories then ran Project Twinkle. Its project scientist, Louis Elterman, forwarded the final report on December 11, 1951. The report states that "there is considerable doubt in the minds of some of the project personnel that this is a natural phenomenon," records that on August 28, 1951 LaPaz "expressed disbelief in all aerial phenomena except for the green fire-balls," lists reports from Los Alamos employees on January 12, April 1, June 7 and June 8, 1951 (the June 7 item a pointed cylinder in a vertical position that fell into a canyon, where a search party found nothing), and concludes that the year of vigilance "does not permit a conclusive opinion." Its recommendation was that "no further fiscal expenditure be made in pursuing the problem." The transmittal states that "nothing of a security nature has been discovered."³⁹

Edward J. Ruppelt, who directed Project Blue Book, wrote that the February 1949 conference decided the fireballs were a natural phenomenon of some kind and recommended that the Air Force's Cambridge laboratory photograph them; that Twinkle "was a bust" because one of three planned cameras was available; and that it "silently died" when the Korean War began. He also wrote that at an unofficial lunch discussion at the Los Alamos laboratory scientists and technicians, all of whom had seen a green fireball, theorized that the objects could be test vehicles projected from a "spaceship" hovering several hundred miles above the earth. Ruppelt recorded La Paz's view that the genuine fireballs were not meteors, and wrote that at Los Alamos and again at Sandia Base his briefings on unidentified flying objects to the technical staff drew audiences too large for the theater, so that the briefing was recorded and replayed.⁴⁰

A page from the Los Alamos Protective Force files released as DOE-UAP-D002 is a handwritten reply of November 23, 1970 to James L. Tuck, the Los Alamos physicist, that recalls sightings of green lights at Los Alamos between 1948 and 1951. DOE-UAP-D003 is a newsletter of the Pajarito Astronomers of Los Alamos dated May 20, 1986 announcing a talk by John Warren titled "Why Should a Scientist be Concerned about UFO's?"⁴¹

Aerial reports over Oak Ridge, Hanford and other atomic sites, 1947 to 1952

The FBI's headquarters file on flying discs, 62-HQ-83894, released in the Department of War's first release of May 8, 2026, contains reports from the Oak Ridge office. In a letter to the Director, the Knoxville special agent in charge wrote that his information came from G. J. Rathman, chief investigator of the Atomic Energy Commission's Security Division at Oak Ridge, and Colonel C. D. Gasser, resident engineer of the Air Materiel Command at the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft research center at Oak Ridge. Two photographs taken by a resident in July 1947 showed a vapor trail and a ball of fire. Gasser asked Rathman to recover the copies and to tell holders to say nothing about them; Rathman recovered twenty-four copies, and the letter records that Gasser "appeared extremely concerned" and "emphatic that the matter should be given no more publicity than was absolutely necessary."⁴²

Gasser told the FBI that flying discs were believed by the Air Force to be man-made missiles, that it had been learned as much as four years earlier that discs were being experimented on by the Russians, that most approached the United States from the north and returned in the same direction, and that he saw no connection between the objects and Oak Ridge, since they were seen in forty-six of the forty-eight states in July 1947.⁴²⁴³ On February 10, 1949 Gasser wrote to Rathman that the Air Materiel Command's technical intelligence division had examined the negatives and found that a drop of warm water or developer had rolled across two frames. The Knoxville office's memorandum of February 18, 1949 reports that the photographs "are the result of accident or purposeful hoax and are not actually photographs of a flying saucer," and that Gasser personally advised that his statements on the existence of flying saucers stood as previously made.⁴⁴

The same file records radar reports over Oak Ridge. A Knoxville radio station operator reported a radar return directly over Oak Ridge on March 1 and 2, 1950, at altitudes he gave as 40,000 and 100,000 feet; Air Force personnel from the propulsion research center examined his equipment and discounted the report.⁴⁵ The Knoxville office forwarded to the Director Air Force reports on radar detection of unidentified objects over Oak Ridge on October 12, 15 and 16, 1950, with the comment that the reports concerned unidentified objects "which to date have not been explained," and reports of October 20, 23, 24 and 26, 1950. A teletype from Director Hoover of December 5, 1950 instructed the office to obtain all facts on "possible radar jamming by ionization of particles in atmosphere" and to determine whether an incident northeast of Oliver Springs, Tennessee, could have been connected with the alleged jamming. In February 1951 the office forwarded Counter Intelligence Corps reports of January 2 and January 20, 1951 on objects sighted over Oak Ridge.⁴⁶

The file also holds press clippings of July 1947. An Associated Press dispatch quoted Colonel F. J. Clarke, commanding the Hanford Engineering Works, that the saucers were not coming from the atomic plant and that he had been waiting for someone to tie them to Hanford, and reported that David Lilienthal, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, told the Denver Post that the saucers were in no way connected with experiments in atomic energy, the transmutation of metals or similar research. The clippings include a statement attributed to an unnamed person described by a Los Angeles newspaper as a California Institute of Technology staff member that disc experiments were under way at Muroc, White Sands and Portland, and the replies of Harold Urey, who said "transmutation of atomic energy sounds like gibberish," and of the Caltech physicist C. C. Lauritsen, who said the discs had nothing to do with nuclear physics.⁴⁷

Ruppelt wrote that a Ground Observer Corps spotter reported a slow-moving light nearing the Oak Ridge laboratory on the night of June 21, 1952, that an F-47 on combat air patrol was vectored to it and that the light made what seemed to be ramming attacks; and that on December 10, 1952, near Hanford, the pilot and radar observer of an F-94 saw a large round white object with a dim reddish light from two "windows," lost visual contact, obtained a radar lock-on, and found that the object reversed direction and dived away when they tried to close. He wrote that Savannah River reports were not accompanied by publicity, that a report of August 25, 1951 to the 34th Air Defense at Kirtland came from an employee of the Atomic Energy Commission's Sandia Corporation and his wife, who saw a flying-wing shape one and a half times the size of a B-36, and that Blue Book's summary found reports more frequent around areas vital to defense, with the Los Alamos-Albuquerque area, Oak Ridge and White Sands rating high.⁴⁰

Ruppelt also described a conversation in Los Angeles with two physicists working for the Atomic Energy Commission, who asked for no publicity. They told him of a laboratory, which he did not name, where instruments registered radiation about 100 times background in December 1950 at the time that a group of colleagues, who had told others they were a mineral club, were told of a silvery circular object sighted near their instrument shack, and of earlier incidents there in which an object crossed the sky while Geiger counters registered increases. A report on the earlier incidents concluded that the readings were an equipment malfunction and the objects birds or airplanes, and, Ruppelt wrote, "Project Blue Book never got it."⁴⁰

The Robertson Panel, convened by the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the CIA, met from January 14 to 18, 1953 and received an Air Technical Intelligence Center map on which, according to the panel's record, sightings "showed clusters in certain strategic areas such as Los Alamos." The record's contents list includes Los Alamos Bird Watchers Association observation series from August 1950 to January 1951, and a Kirtland Air Force Base outline of a UFO investigation, and states that case histories "involving radar or radar and visual sightings were selected for Dr. Alvarez."⁴⁸ A Fourth Army intelligence summary of a sighting from Sandia Base in February 1949 is held by the Internet Archive.⁴⁹

Kirtland, Manzano and Sandia, 1980

At Kirtland Air Force Base, which adjoins Sandia's Albuquerque site, an Air Force Office of Special Investigations form of October 28, 1980 (file 8017D93-0/29), titled "Alleged Sightings of Unidentified Aerial Lights in Restricted Test Range" and covering August 8 to September 3, 1980, refers to an earlier AFOSI Form 1 of September 8, 1980 of the same title. It records that on October 24, 1980 Dr. Paul Bennewitz contacted Special Agent Richard Doty through Major Ernest E. Edwards, commander of the 1608th Security Police Squadron, and "related he had knowledge and evidence of threats against Manzano Weapons Storage area. The threat was from Aerial phenomena over Manzano." On October 26 Doty, with the assistance of Jerry Miller, GS-15, scientific advisor for the Air Force Test and Evaluation Center, interviewed Bennewitz at his home, "adjacent to the northern boundary of Manzano Base." The form describes Miller as "a former Project Blue Book USAF Investigator who was assigned to Wright-Patterson AFB, OH, with FTD" and as "one of the most knowledgeable and impartial investigators of Aerial Objects in the southwest." Bennewitz produced photographs and over 2,600 feet of 8mm motion picture film "depicting unidentified aerial objects flying over and around Manzano Weapons Storage Area and Coyote Canyon Test area," several electronic recording tapes, and equipment "pointed at Manzano" to record "high frequency electrical beam pulses." Miller related that "the evidence clearly shows that some type of unidentified aerial objects were caught on film; however, no conclusions could be made whether these objects pose a threat to Manzano/Coyote Canyon areas," and that the tapes were inconclusive and could have been gathered from conventional sources. The form states that personnel of the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson had expressed interest, asks for a DCII check on Bennewitz, states that it is responsive to HQ CR 44, and adds: "Command was briefed but did not request an investigation at this time." It is signed by Major Thomas A. Cseh, commander of the Base Investigative Detachment.⁵⁰

A second form of November 26, 1980 records a meeting of November 10 in the 1606th Air Base Wing conference room attended by Brigadier General William Brooksher, Colonels Sheppard, Simmons, Baca and Huey (AFOSI District 17), Lieutenant Colonel Lamport, Major Cseh, Dr. Lehman, director of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, and Ed Breen, instrumentation specialist of that laboratory. Bennewitz presented film and photographs "of alleged unidentified Aerial Objects photographed over KAFB, NM during the last 15 months" and "related he had documented proof that he was in contact with the aliens flying the objects." Lehman advised him to request a USAF grant and said he would help with the documents. On November 17 Doty advised that AFOSI would not become involved; on November 26 a caller who identified himself as Senator Harrison Schmidt of New Mexico asked about AFOSI's role and said he would request that the Secretary of the Air Force determine what agency should investigate. The form notes that Bennewitz had had "a number of conversations" with the senator during the preceding months and that the senator had telephoned Brigadier General Brooksher "since Security Police are responsible for the security of Manzano Storage Area."⁵¹ A third AFOSI communication of July 30, 1981, signed by Colonel Frank M. Huey, records that Senator Pete Domenici was at the 1606th Air Base Wing inspector general's office asking to speak with Doty, left immediately to meet Bennewitz, and that his aide was told AFOSI had conducted no formal investigation of him.⁵²

A letter reproduced in the same report was sent to the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in July 1980 by a writer who described himself as an airman of the 1550th Aircrew Training and Testing Wing at Kirtland. It describes a sighting near Pecos, New Mexico, on July 16, 1980 by a Civil Air Patrol cadet; a visit the next night to the cadet's billets by a man who gave his name as Mr. Huck "from Sandia Laboratories, a secret Depart of Energy Contractor on Kirtland AFB," who said that the craft was "a secret craft from Los Alamos, NM," demanded photographs and warned the cadet not to mention the sighting; and the cadet's report to Kirtland security police, who referred it to AFOSI, where "a Mr. Dody, a special agent with OSI" took the photographs. The writer added that two Sandia Laboratories employees who "also store classified objects in Manzano" had told him that Sandia had examined several UFOs in the previous twenty years and that one that crashed near Roswell in the late 1950s "was examined by Sandia scientists" and "is still being stored in Manzano," and that Colonel Bruce Purvine had told him that AFOSI District 17 had "a special secret detachment" investigating sightings and cattle mutilations.⁵³ William L. Moore said in 1989 that the letter was written by Doty as "bait."⁵⁴

Doty said in 2005 that the Manzano area "housed nuclear weapons, probably the largest nuclear storage area in the southwest" and that as base counterintelligence officer he had to know the classified projects at Kirtland, the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, Sandia and Los Alamos in order to safeguard them. He said that AFOSI had convinced Bennewitz that signals he intercepted were alien in order to protect what was happening at Kirtland.⁵⁵ The writer Robert Hastings wrote in 1989 that a production team member identified Doty as the source "Falcon" and a recently retired Air Force captain assigned to a plasma physics group at Sandia, Robert Collins, as the source "Condor"; Hastings wrote that both denied involvement.⁵⁶ The Aquarius teletype dated November 17, 1980, reproduced in the MJ-12 material that Moore circulated, is described by Moore as "a retyped version of a real AFOSI message with a few spurious additions."⁵⁴⁵⁷ The Black Vault's post of May 20, 2021 on Doty's service record says that Doty "previously worked with" the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, and a National Personnel Records Center release of April 26, 2013 supplied his records; Doty appeared on Coast to Coast AM on February 27, 2005.⁵⁸ A Freedom of Information Act request to the department of June 17, 1985 by Lee Graham, according to the skeptic Philip J. Klass, listed the twelve names of the Majestic-12 papers that Moore had shown him in May 1985.⁵⁹

The UAP Disclosure Act, the 2023 hearing and the 2026 releases

At the hearing of July 26, 2023 before the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Representative Ogles asked: "Is there any indication the Department of Energy is involved in UAP data collection and housing?" Mr. Graves answered "I do not have an answer." David Grusch answered: "I cannot confirm or deny that in a public setting." Asked whether he could answer in a secure setting, Grusch said "Yes."⁶⁰

The Senate-passed text of the defense authorization bill, S. 2226, carried as Division G the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act, offered by Senators Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds. Section 9003(23) defines an "unidentified anomalous phenomena record" as a record related to unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin or non-human intelligence "that was created or made available for use by, obtained by, or otherwise came into the possession of" a list of bodies, among them "(F) the Department of Energy and its progenitors, the Manhattan Project, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Energy Research and Development Administration," and also "(B) the Department of Defense and its progenitors, the Department of War and the Department of the Navy," "(H) the Central Intelligence Agency and its progenitor, the Office of Strategic Services" and "(X) any private sector person or entity formerly or currently under contract or some other agreement with the Federal Government." Section 9003(22) includes among the phenomena what were "previously described as" flying discs, flying saucers and unidentified flying objects.⁶¹ The enacted National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, Public Law 118-31, carries a subtitle on the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection at the National Archives in sections 1841 to 1843. It directs the Archivist to collect "all Government, Government-provided, or Government-funded records" relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin and non-human intelligence, and places the duty to review and transmit on the head of each "Government office"; it does not list the department or its predecessors.⁶²

The department's own releases followed. In the Department of War's second release of May 22, 2026 the department's records include DOE-UAP-D001, the final pages of a Pantex report with a redacted ground surveillance radar image and two enhanced images of an unidentified object processed by Sandia National Laboratories, and D002 and D003 described above.⁶³ In the fourth release of July 10, 2026 the department's records include the minutes of the February 1949 Los Alamos conference (D004) and DOE-UAP-D005, the Pantex Unidentified Object Incident Report of September 1 to 2, 2015, transmitted under cover of a memorandum dated September 9, 2015 that bears the heading of Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC, which operates the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, and the address line Deputy Assistant Manager for Safeguards and Security, NNSA Production Office.⁶⁴ The report states that on September 1, 2015 at approximately 0710 hours the plant's Ground Surveillance Radar detection system identified an unknown object; security officers described it as a "diamond" type shape, more round at the top; two officers followed it in a vehicle, and, in the report's words, "although they were unable to catch up to the object, they stopped their vehicle and got out" and "after viewing it for 1-2 minutes, the object then continued north offsite."³⁷⁶⁴ The report lists among those notified the Central Alarm Station, the Secondary Alarm Station, the Carson County Sheriff's office, Sandia National Laboratories and the FBI.⁶⁴

The Wilson-Davis notes and the EG&G building

The Wilson-Davis Memo, a fifteen-page document headed "EWD NOTES 10/16/02" and "Eric Davis Meeting with Adm. Wilson," records a meeting between Eric Davis and Thomas R. Wilson.⁶⁵ The notes quote an instruction on the meeting place: "Rich says to go to EG&G Special Projects building at Grice and Paradise." They also record "Meet at 10 A.M.," and the entry "We sit in his car in back of EG&G building." The conversation ran until 11:20 a.m., according to the notes.⁶⁵ The notes also record: "Came to test site special area to wrap up projects (he began in '98)." They state that the trip was "set up by NNSA (National Nuclear Security Agency)."⁶⁵

The Black Vault's analysis by John Greenewald records that the document has no provenance and that the images were uploaded to Imgur on April 19, 2019.⁶⁶ The company's annual report for fiscal 1995 lists EG&G Special Projects among its subsidiaries.¹² A Defense Intelligence Agency information memorandum of October 30, 2009 on the review of contract deliverables lists Sandia staff among the outside reviewers and states that the program "apparently will fund the contract's option year one at $12 million."⁶⁷ A one-page enclosure titled "BAASS Goals 2011/2012," released by the Department of Homeland Security in a response to case 2022-HQFO-00386 dated June 20, 2023, was posted online by Marc Cecotti the same day.⁶⁸

Nuclear intelligence and the Vela flash

On September 22, 1979 a Vela satellite recorded a flash over the South Atlantic. The National Security Archive's briefing book of 2016 calls it the Vela incident.⁶⁹ The Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory's Guy Barasch concluded in November 1979 that natural signals would not be confused with those of a nuclear detonation, whose light signature is "unmistakable," and dismissed a lightning superbolt.⁷⁰ A memorandum of the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee to the director of central intelligence, dated February 14, 1980, forwards the judgments of the Nuclear Intelligence Panel, which met February 11 to 13. It states that the attached summary "was prepared by the Panel Chairman, Mr. Louis H. Roddis, Jr."⁷¹ The National Security Archive's earlier briefing book describes the panel as chaired by Donald Kerr, who had served in the Carter administration as acting director of defense programs at the Energy Department, and quotes Seymour Hersh's account that Kerr stated "We had no doubt it was a bomb."⁷⁰ Kerr is the same Donald M. Kerr who in February 1984 is listed as director of Los Alamos National Laboratory.⁷²

Two laboratory reports of May 1980 reached the opposite conclusion from the White House science adviser's panel. Henry G. Horak of Los Alamos concluded there was "strong evidence that a nuclear explosion actually produced Vela Alert 747," and G. H. Mauth of Sandia found the signal "fully consistent with those expected from a low-yield atmospheric [nuclear detonation]."⁷⁰ The Office of Science and Technology Policy's Ad Hoc Panel, chaired by Jack Ruina and including Richard Garwin, Luis Alvarez and Wolfgang Panofsky, reported on May 23, 1980 that the signal was probably not the result of a nuclear detonation.⁷⁰

Earlier, on October 10, 1979, Ross E. Cowey, director of strategic affairs in the State Department's Office of Intelligence and Research, wrote a memorandum for the files summarizing the conclusions of three scientists who had reviewed the data under the auspices of the CIA. They were Harold M. Agnew, former director of Los Alamos, Garwin and Stephen Lukasik. Cowey describes the memorandum as a synopsis of their conclusions, not the full report.⁷³

On January 23, 1980 Gerald G. Oplinger, a nonproliferation specialist on the national security adviser's staff, wrote to Henry Owen, ambassador-at-large, under the subject line "South Atlantic Event." He wrote: "I have talked to John Deutch and Dan Murphy about this matter, and told State to put the press release and Congressional consultations on hold." He added: "Between them, DoE, DoD and technical people within the intelligence community have sufficient doubts about the Press panel report to make it very dangerous to proceed without another look." The memorandum lists four questions: the reliability of the Vela signal, on which "the technical people apparently disagree" with the panel; ionospheric signals picked up at Arecibo, on which the panel found mathematical errors and "DoE and DoD say no"; "new hydro data the panel didn't have," as reported by Deutch; and the lack of fallout. Oplinger continued: "Deutch and Murphy still feel that we should come out with a bottom line that there is no conclusive case for a nuclear source. But they feel strongly that unless these questions are given a further airing, there will be continued internal dissent and an appearance that policy people (including the White House) did a whitewash for political reasons," and added that for Deutch, Murphy and Marcum "it is a c.y.a. operation."⁷⁴ The National Security Archive identifies the "Press panel" as the review that the presidential science adviser, Frank Press, had convened under Ruina, and describes John Deutch as under secretary of energy at the time.⁶⁹

Psychic research and the national laboratories

The most detailed record of the department's laboratories in the psychic research files is the work of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist R. S. Hawke. His outline of acoustic emission experiments with "a Person Reputed to Have Paranormal Metal Bending Abilities," dated January 11, 1979, reports: "At least 4 clear instances of A.E. events occurred with one subject during one session."⁷⁵ A routing note in the same file, undated, says: "There is absolutely no reason to believe that the scientist, Hawke, might have manipulated the data/experiment."⁷⁶

An Army memorandum of October 22, 1979 set a visit to Hawke's laboratory in California for November 6, 1979.⁷⁷ The December 1979 report of the Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee, chaired by Manfred Gale, states in an annex on Hawke's work: "Hawke's experiments are the most objective and scientific of the investigations we have reviewed."⁷⁸ On November 28, 1979, Hawke met Dr. Ruth M. Davis, Assistant for Research Applications at the Department of Energy, and Dr. W. LaBerge of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.⁷⁹ On December 26, 1979 Hawke wrote to Davis, whom he identified as "Assistant for Research Applications, Department of Energy." His letter (EMS79-0117) reports that "Dr. Roger Batzel, has been informed that such a project might be suggested by DOE and/or DOD," that "the equivalent of 5-7 full employees would be the optimum," with tasks distributed "among 10-15 researchers, technicians and other consultants and advisors," and that such discrete research was, in the words of the associate directors he had consulted, "within the capability of LLL." Batzel was named as the person to contact, and copies went to Batzel, Henry McDonald, Dale Nielsen and LaBerge.⁷⁹

Ruth M. Davis, signing as deputy under secretary of defense for research and engineering (research and advanced technology), sent a memorandum to Jack Vorona on November 20, 1978 concerning a remote-viewing project.⁸⁰ A memorandum of July 9, 1979 over the same signature proposes inviting Frank Press and advising him of the Grill Flame work.⁸¹ Minutes of a steering committee meeting of October 30, 1979 list "Dr. Ruth Davis (DOE)" among those present and record that "Dr. Perry wants little to do with the subject."⁸² A note in the same file, undated, records that Davis could not attend a meeting because she had to meet Mr Duncan in DOE.⁸³ The White House announced on September 12, 1979 the President's intention to nominate Ruth M. Davis, then Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Advanced Technology, as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Resource Applications.⁸⁴ The signature block thus changes from the Department of Defense in 1978 and July 1979 to the Department of Energy in the October minutes and the December letter.

The Electro/77 conference held a session on the state of the art in psychic research in New York from April 19 to 21, 1977. The session was chaired by "Dr. George Pezdirtz, Director of Energy Storage Div., ERDA," and its papers included two by Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ of the Stanford Research Institute.⁸⁵ The Energy Research and Development Administration was the predecessor of the department.

A February 1984 SRI document describes a Psychoenergetics Science Advisory Panel that included "Dr. Donald Kerr, Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory," together with Fred Zachariasen and Ross Adey.⁷² A program review dated March 1, 1984, signed by Adey and Zachariasen, concludes that the work "warrants cautious continued fiscal support, and that the research should be conducted as much as possible in an open unclassified mode."⁸⁶ A letter from the Defense Intelligence Agency to Senator William Proxmire of May 16, 1984 states that "the Department of Defense has spent $2,515,000 on Psychic research over the past ten years under project GRILL FLAME."⁸⁷ Annie Jacobsen's account of the program places Donald M. Kerr on a panel that reviewed the Sun Streak effort on January 31, 1986.⁸⁸ An undated DIA summary of American psychoenergetics research facilities lists "Lawrence Livermore Laboratories (L3), Livermore, CA (Lab of R. Hawke)," with the note "Not willing to do classified work."⁸⁹ A DIA document of August 1984 lists Livermore among laboratories "under consideration for contracts in FY 1985," together with McDonnell Douglas and the Mind Science Foundation.⁹⁰

The Los Alamos laboratory is the most consistent laboratory link in the later program. On August 5, 1987 Edward R. Flynn of Los Alamos wrote to Peter J. McNelis of SRI International's cognitive sciences program that the laboratory's magnetically shielded room could be used to measure the influence of very low frequency magnetic fields on subjects, including by repeating SRI's remote viewing experiments inside the room, and that experiments with evoked responses "would best be done at Los Alamos because we have all of the equipment and paradigms basically available now," with magnetoencephalography to localize sources.⁹¹ A 1988 SRI report states: "A contract was let to Los Alamos National Laboratory in order to determine whether there are neurophysiological indicators of remote viewing."⁹² It records a classified physiology conference at SRI on July 28, 1987 with two Los Alamos attendees.⁹² The December 1988 report on the neurophysiological correlates of remote viewing states that viewers from SRI and two from Los Alamos took part, and records visits by SRI viewers to the Los Alamos laboratory on June 20 to 24, August 22 to 26 and October 18 to 21, 1988; the protocol followed that of the laboratory's Neuromagnetism Laboratory in its Life Sciences and Physics Divisions.⁹³ A 1992 proposal by the Science Applications International Corporation states that "SRI International and the Biophysics Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory conducted an experiment using the magnetoencephalograph (MEG) technique," and that SAIC replicated the study in Los Alamos during 1992.⁹⁴

A DIA purchase request for fiscal 1991 lists the action office as "HQ DOE/LANL" and describes its purpose as "biophysical research and analysis" at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a noncompetitive contract of $250,000 funded as line item 1.004 of the fiscal 1991 DIA budget for Congressional Directed Programs.⁹⁵ The statement of work states that "the FY 1991 Defense Authorization Act identified DIA as executive agent of a new program for examining anomalous phenomena," that the earlier brain neuromagnetic pilot work was "performed by the Biophysical Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory" as part of an Army research effort under the Surgeon General's research and development office, and that "direct MIPR action from DIA to LANL would be more appropriate." The interagency transfer was addressed to the department's headquarters, attention IN-40.⁹⁵⁹⁶ A Sandia white paper in the same files, "Brain Disorder Phenomenology Using Noninvasive Brain Analysis," from Sandia's Low Observable Projects Department, proposes a New Mexico center for brain imaging with a 1,000-sensor biomagnetometer, with Sandia, a Veterans Administration laboratory and Los Alamos for sensor research ($500,000) among the participants in a first phase of $16.6 million.⁹⁷

A DIA monthly activity report records a meeting on September 23, 1994 with representatives of the department and a laboratory. The report says: "Funding would come from them."⁹⁸ A June 1994 research and peer review plan for the program says that contacts with "such national laboratories as Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge, and [redacted] have indicated an interest."⁹⁹ Minutes of the program's oversight panel for April 9, 1991 record that the panel was chaired by Michael A. Wartell of Sandia National Laboratories, and the Scientific Oversight Committee roster lists Melvin Schwartz as associate director for high energy and nuclear physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory.¹⁰⁰¹⁰¹

An SRI report on an application-oriented remote viewing experiment, dated April 1988, describes an experiment of May 1987 on the advanced test accelerator at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and states: "The primary target was the ATA facility."¹⁰² The Princeton engineer Robert Jahn, in an undated Princeton Alumni Weekly article, refers to "a well-placed officer of the Department of Energy" who had written to him.¹⁰³

The Advanced Theoretical Physics Working Group that John B. Alexander organized in 1984 met in the secure facility of BDM Corporation, whose vice president for intelligence was Albert Stubblebine. A department "Request for Visit or Access Approval" (form DOE F 5631.20) dated May 8, 1985, from a Los Alamos National Laboratory requester and signed by the laboratory's special security officer, asks that three laboratory employees be admitted to the BDM McLean secure facility on May 20 to 25, 1985 for an "Advance Theoretical Physics Conference," at the access level "TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA SIGMAS AS REQUIRED."¹⁰⁴

Human radiation experiments and openness

The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, in its final report of October 1995, documents eighteen patients injected with plutonium between 1945 and 1947 to determine how excreta could be used to estimate the plutonium remaining in an exposed worker's body. One patient was injected at Oak Ridge Hospital, eleven at the University of Rochester, three at the University of Chicago and three at the University of California.¹⁰⁵ The committee found that the patient-subjects at Rochester and California "were never told that the injections were part of a medical experiment for which there was no expectation that they would benefit, and they never consented to this use of their bodies." It also found "no documents that bear directly on what, if anything, the subjects were told about the injections and whether they consented."¹⁰⁵

On December 24, 1946 Colonel K. D. Nichols ordered a halt to injections of "certain radioactive substances" into human subjects at the University of California.¹⁰⁵ The committee wrote that the Atomic Energy Commission, which succeeded the Manhattan Project on January 1, 1947, decided to keep the plutonium injections secret: "It appears that this decision was based on concerns about legal liability and adverse public reaction, not national security."¹⁰⁵ The committee also records that the department told it that the records of its predecessor's Intelligence Division "had been destroyed mainly during the 1970s, but in some cases as late as 1989."¹⁰⁵

The department's own account dates its openness policy to December 7, 1993, when Hazel R. O'Leary announced her Openness Initiative, and describes "an agency whose institutional birth was in the most secret of wartime programs, the Manhattan Project." The 1995 Roadmap states that the records of the department and its predecessors fill 3.2 million cubic feet and calls the project "a prototype for the larger job of identifying, preserving, and making available the historical record of the American nuclear age."¹⁰⁶ The committee's report says that on reading articles in the Albuquerque Tribune, the secretary "expressed shock," and that she "was particularly concerned because the Department of Energy had its earliest origins in the agencies responsible for building the atomic bomb and sponsoring the plutonium experiments."¹⁰⁵ The department's list of experiments was released at the secretary's June 1994 press conference.¹⁰⁶

Intelligence, counterintelligence and the Wen Ho Lee case

The intelligence elements of the department are listed in the statutory definition of the intelligence community, 50 U.S.C. 3003(4)(H), added by the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1993 (Public Law 102-496). In February 1998, after reports that China had penetrated the weapons laboratories, President Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive 61, which split the department's foreign intelligence and counterintelligence functions into two offices reporting to the Secretary and required the counterintelligence office to be headed by a senior FBI official. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000 (Public Law 106-65) codified the directive and created the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration with its own Office of Defense Nuclear Counterintelligence; the act for fiscal 2007 (Public Law 109-364) abolished that office, and the department's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence resulted.¹¹⁰⁷

In 1999 the government indicted Wen Ho Lee, a physicist at Los Alamos. A joint statement of Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh said that "the Department of Justice and the FBI stand by each and every one of the 59 counts."¹⁰⁸ The statement also says that "The Department of Justice, the Department of Energy, and the FBI also believed strongly that Dr. Lee had to be restricted" from communicating with outsiders during his detention.¹⁰⁸

On September 13, 2000 Lee pleaded guilty. The Justice Department's release that day reads: "Today, after denying any wrongdoing for months, Dr. Lee pleaded guilty to the indictment's charge of unlawfully collecting and keeping classified information related to the national defense."¹⁰⁹ The same release recalls the earlier charge: "Last year, we charged Dr. Wen Ho Lee with downloading classified information about our nuclear arsenal from a secured computer onto 10 unsecured computer tapes," and states that "the fate of 7 of those tapes has never been determined."¹⁰⁹ Judge James Parker approved a plea to one of the fifty-nine counts with a sentence of time served after 278 days. According to the Senate Judiciary Committee's report he told Lee: "I believe you were terribly wronged by being held in custody pretrial . . . under demeaning, unnecessarily punitive conditions. I am truly sorry that I was led by our Executive Branch of government to order your detention last December," and that "it is only the top decision makers in the Executive Branch, especially the Department of Justice and the Department of Energy and locally, during December, who have caused embarrassment by the way this case began and was handled. They did not embarrass me alone. They have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it."¹¹⁰

The House select committee chaired by Representative Christopher Cox reported in January 1999 that "Counterintelligence programs at the national weapons laboratories today fail to meet even minimal standards," and that "Security at the national weapons laboratories will not be satisfactory until at least sometime in the year 2000."¹¹¹ The report describes a bureaucracy that "buried" counterintelligence staff and left them "without access to senior management or the Secretary of Energy."¹¹¹ The Senate Judiciary report states that "The Department of Energy was wrong to allow Wackenhut contract polygraph examiners to administer a polygraph to Dr. Lee on December 23, 1998."¹¹⁰ Arlen Specter's interim report on the investigation states that "The investigation of Dr. Lee since 1982 has been characterized by a series of errors and omissions by the Department of Energy and the Department of Justice, including the FBI."¹¹²

NUMEC and the Israel question

The Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) was a privately owned nuclear plant at Apollo, Pennsylvania, whose owner was Zalman Shapiro. The National Security Archive posted 42 documents from the NUMEC file in a briefing book of November 2, 2016.¹¹³

In a February 1966 letter to Chet Holifield, chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Glenn Seaborg, then chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, wrote: "In the absence of evidence or suspicion of violation of law, we have determined that an inquiry by the FBI is not now warranted." The same letter states that "it cannot be said unequivocally that theft or diversion has not taken place."¹¹⁴ The file refers to 61 kilograms of material for which the government agreed to pay.¹¹⁴ R. L. Hollingsworth, the commission's general manager, wrote in a separate letter: "That survey revealed no evidence which would lead us to believe or suspect that the material had been diverted."¹¹⁴ A General Accounting Office letter of June 20, 1967 states: "We found no evidence of diversion."¹¹⁵

Richard Helms, then director of central intelligence, asked the attorney general for a discreet FBI investigation of the company.¹¹⁴ The file includes a 1976 FBI memorandum concerning the possible diversion (document 20) and an FBI interview report on Shapiro from 1977 that records Shapiro's denials (document 24).¹¹⁶¹¹⁷ A 1972 CIA memorandum on possible diversion of weapons-grade material from NUMEC to Israel is also in the file.¹¹⁸

Export controls and Iraq

Alan Friedman wrote that Bryan Siebert of the Energy Department "had been waging a lonely and unsuccessful battle to get James Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to do something about the steady flow of U.S. exports that were materially assisting Iraq's nuclear weapons program." Friedman wrote that on May 18, 1990 Brent Scowcroft telephoned the Secretary of Agriculture and asked him "not to put out any press release today saying we are terminating the program" of credit guarantees, and that Scowcroft's aides "objected to any measures 'that singled out Iraq.'"¹¹⁹

Officials

James R. Schlesinger is the first Secretary of Energy. Donald M. Kerr appears in the record as acting director of defense programs in the Carter administration according to the National Security Archive, as director of Los Alamos National Laboratory in February 1984 when he sat on the SRI advisory panel, as formerly president of EG&G, and as corporate executive vice president of SAIC in 1995.¹³⁷⁰⁷² Gregory H. Woods, later a judge in the Southern District of New York, was general counsel of the department from 2012 to 2013; he was confirmed by the Senate in April 2012 and nominated to the court on May 9, 2013.¹²⁰¹²¹