An 82-year-old pacifist nun facing felony charges for breaking into a Tennessee nuclear weapons plant was publicly thanked on Wednesday by conservative members of a House committee for exposing security flaws.
Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican had invited Sister Megan Gillespie Rice of Las Vegas to stand up and be recognized at the hearing, held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee?s subcommittee on oversight and investigations.
?That young lady there brought a holy bible,? he said, referring to the escapade on July 28 at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant near Oak Ridge. ?If she had been a terrorist, the lord only knows what would have happened.??
Sister Rice and her two companions have been charged with felonies in connection with damage to the building. They said they were seeking to shut down the complex, which holds tons of nuclear bomb fuel, and they succeeded for a few days: the Energy Department conducted a ?stand-down? to improve security in following days.? Sister Rice asked if she could speak during the hearing and was told no.
The plant break-in occurred at a time when Congress was preparing to loosen the Energy Department?s regulation of contractors who operate much of the weapons complex. In May, the House passed a National Defense Authorization Act that included a provision that would decrease oversight by the department and delegate some responsibilities to the heads of the weapons plants and federal laboratories and the contractors themselves.
The bill passed the House on May 18; the Senate has not acted. Before the incident, critics of the Energy Department had focused mostly on the effect the provisions might have on environmental pollution and worker health, both of which have been problems for decades in the weapons complex.
In testimony on Wednesday, even Energy Department officials were unable to defend that provision. ?We have serious concerns,?? said Daniel B. Poneman, the deputy secretary of energy. The Energy Department?s contractors have been the main force behind the provisions.
While the extent of the security breakdown at Y-12 was detailed in a report by the agency?s inspector general last month, the hearing cast some new light on the department?s struggle to maintain vigilance. Some of the factors that led to the penetration by the three pacifists, which the department is now calling an ?incursion,? were cited as problems in a 2008 audit of security at the site, Mr. Poneman said. ?They were addressed in 2009, they put together the corrective actions, but then in 2010, 2011, we believe that they deteriorated,?? he said.
Sister Rice, speaking to reporters after the hearing, did not seem grateful for the Congressional recognition.? ?They?re just not addressing the root cause of the problem,?? which she views as the manufacture and maintenance of nuclear weapons, she said. As soon as the first nuclear device was exploded, on ?July 16, 1945,? she said, ?they all knew it should never have been used.??
She and her two companions, one of whom, Michael Walli, Sr., was also present in the hearing room, have a court date in February.
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