Employees at Savannah River Site work on the plutonium protection line. In the 1950s and '60s, the site had stringent security measures to safeguard nuclear-weapons secrets. The measures began to ease in the mid-'70s as Cold War tensions relaxed. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION

Safeguarding secrets

Site's security measures thaw with end of Cold War

Web posted Wednesday, November 8, 2000

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By Justin Martin
Staff Writer

Once, those who worked at Savannah River Site weren't allowed to tell their families where they worked, never mind what they did.

It was the 1950s and '60s, a time when the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves in a nuclear arms race and what became known as the Cold War.

Employees at Savannah River Site, even the construction workers pouring cement for the maintenance garages, underwent background checks and were given varying levels of security clearance while the plant was being built.

Trees and shrubs were planted strategically to hinder and delay the perceived threat of an attacking military force.

Anti-aircraft artillery guns lined the main buildings, protecting the facility from air raids.

And toll booths - barricades really - timed unsuspecting drivers as they made their way down South Carolina Highway 125 and through a section of Savannah River Site property.

If drivers took too long, security personnel were sent out to check on them. The drivers and passengers were interrogated by military police, and sometimes even detained until a security check could be run on them.

But the Cold War thawed and the Soviet Union collapsed, allowing the Department of Defense and the Energy Department to loosen some of the stringent secrecy requirements and security practices that were once part of everyday procedure at SRS.

Today, the anti-aircraft guns are long gone, and so too, are the toll booths.

The less stringent security measures are actually a cost-saver for the facility. Once, every employee needed a top level security clearance to work at the site.

Today, only about two-thirds of the 13,000 employees need security clearance, according to Bill Taylor, a spokesman for the facility.

The initial background checks cost about $2,600 for each employee. An update is required every five years and costs about $1,700, according to SRS officials.

And security officers no longer have to run background checks on the construction workers pouring concrete.

But there are still plenty of military police, security cameras, bomb-sniffing canines, even helicopters manned with special operations units, that make sure top secret information about the federal nuclear weapons site remains that way.

``From a security standpoint, we do the same things today we did back in the 1950s and 1960s,'' said Ron Bartholomew, SRS' internal security director. ``Some of it might be on a smaller scale, but our mission is still to protect special nuclear materials on site and protect classified information and documents.''

That includes certain areas of Savannah River Site that the public is not allowed to see or visit, Mr. Taylor said. He said the amount of plutonium and tritium on site, where they are located and other important details are still kept top secret.

Some watchdog groups, such as the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists, say officials should give good reasons when withholding what SRS determines to be ``classified'' material.

Steve Aftergood is the director of the project on government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. He said officials could always do a better job at explaining why they withhold certain information.

``A lot of times, it's arbitrary,'' Mr. Aftergood said. ``It's the kind of thing where, if it's withheld, it needs to be justified. The officials need to say more than `Oh, that's classified' or `National security, sorry.'

``But openness has definitely come a long way throughout the government system,'' he said. ``There was a tremendous breath of fresh air in the mid-1990s, but there's been some retreat from that in the last year or two largely due to the controversial security defect at Los Alamos and other facilities. It's led some members of Congress to be more aggressive about less declassification.''

Still, practices that would have been deemed absurd at the height of the Cold War are now the norm at Savannah River Site.

Tours of the site began in the mid-1970s and are given to just about anyone who requests one - school groups, retired military veterans, church groups, even social clubs such as the Kiwanis.

``Our tour group flourishes today,'' Mr. Bartholomew said. ``It's sort of fine-tuned to where the folks who run the tours know where they can and can't go.''

There is a rest stop on Highway 125 now, an ecology center, and SRS even has an employee picnic weekend where the facility opens its doors to most of the 13,000 employees and their families.

``You didn't even tell your family where you worked back in the '50s and '60s,'' said Mr. Bartholomew, who has been at SRS since 1987. ``We had 20,000 people here last weekend for family day.''

That's not to say there still aren't tight security measures. There are 900 police officers protecting the facility.

There is still a barricade on Jackson Road, and the terrain - swamps, bushes and trees - is the same to make it difficult for people to wander onto the site.

``We do have a law enforcement group; they're accredited through the state (of South Carolina) and have all the authority of a police officer, but only at the site,'' Mr. Bartholomew said.

``We arrested someone yesterday stealing pine straw,'' he said. ``They had temporary balers, baling pine needles (on Savannah River Site property).''

The security police enforce trespassing ordinances and traffic laws, and investigate theftsand car accidents.

But today, their biggest challenge is not terrorists from land or from sky, but from cyberspace, Mr. Bartholomew said.

``The technology changes every day,'' he said. ``We have to do a lot to meet the challenges.''

``In the '50s and '60s, we worried about people climbing over the fence. Now, it's a little different.''

Reach Justin Martin at (706) 823-3552.

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