#10 Worker pleads not guilty of scheme to sell nuke secrets to France
He worked at former K-25 uranium-enrichment site
By Frank Munger
A former maintenance worker at the East Tennessee Technology Park pleaded not guilty in federal court this afternoon to two charges of attempting to sell sensitive nuclear secrets to the French government.
Roy Lynn Oakley, 65, of Harriman, faces a two-count indictment charging that he stole pieces of metal rods from October 2006 to Jan. 26, 2007, for the purpose of selling them.
More seriously, he is charged with offering the material to France “to injure the United States and secure an advantage to a foreign nation.”
He is free on $25,000 bond and his attorney, Herbert S. Moncier, said his client never intended to harm the U.S.
Moncier wouldnÂ’t elaborate on OakleyÂ’s motives.
The arraignment occurred in U.S. District Court before Magistrate Judge Bruce Guyton.
Oakley works for contractor Bechtel Jacobs, which is engaged in dismantling old uranium-enrichment facilities at ETTP, including the original K-25 building that contains classified gaseous diffusion equipment.
“Mr. Oakley was assigned to break up rods with his hands into small sections to be thrown away,” according to a court document. “The rods were not radioactive and, broken into pieces, had no apparent use except to be disposed.”
The rods were associated with the former uranium-enrichment operations at the plant, and Oakley reportedly took three to five of the broken rods to his home and later decided they might be of interest to another country.
Documents indicated the material included sections of “barrier,” the highly complex filtering system that separated different isotopes of uranium and helped concentrate fissile U-235. It also included associated hardware used for uranium enrichment, according to the documents.
The French Embassy in Washington, D.C., reportedly turned down OakleyÂ’s offer, but at some point later Oakley got a call from someone purported to be an official at the embassy. It turned out to be an FBI agent, the document said.
During the conversation, Oakley was supposedly given a code name and they were reported to have negotiated a sale price for the rods.
After a sting operation on Jan. 26, Oakley was detained but not charged, according to the court document.
Neighbors said they were puzzled when the FBI raided OakleyÂ’s property in the Midtown community of Roane County. In addition to his work with Bechtel Jacobs, Oakley has real estate holdings.
The document said Oakley and Moncier had been working with the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. attorneyÂ’s office in Knoxville to negotiate a plea agreement.
However, those talks reportedly broke down, and the U.S. attorneyÂ’s office secured an indictment in the case.
This morning, Oakley, accompanied by his wife and attorney, reported to the U.S. Probation Office in downtown Knoxville for processing.
While going to the sixth-floor FBI offices in the John J. Duncan Federal Office Building, the group was reportedly met by a television crew from Washington as they exited an elevator.
Moncier is now accusing the Justice Department in Washington of leaking the story to a national television network and is expected to argue at a hearing later this afternoon that he be allowed to speak about the case to the news media.
Current local rules prohibit him from doing so.
Oakley reportedly has a high school diploma and has worked as a maintenance worker or laborer all his life. The only reported blemish on his legal record was a reckless driving arrest in 1967, but that charge was later dismissed, according to a court document.
Dennis Hill, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs, said he could not comment on the case. John Shewairy of the Department of EnergyÂ’s Oak Ridge office said the same thing.
Billy Stair, a spokesman at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, today confirmed that the lab “participated closely” with the U.S. attorney’s office in the investigation.
Stair said he could not confirm any details or discuss the case, but he emphasized the reported suspect is not an ORNL employee.
“He was not one of our people. I know that’s for sure,” Stair said.
WNBC.com of New York said federal investigators are calling the theft of secrets a “serious breach” of security.
Oak Ridge has a long history of nuclear research, dating back to the World War II Manhattan Project. In more recent times, ORNL has collaborated with the U.S. Enrichment Corp. on development of advanced centrifuge technologies to enhance the capabilities for enriching uranium for nuclear reactor fuel.
Elizabeth Stuckle, a spokeswoman for USEC in Bethesda, Md., said, “It has nothing to do with USEC at all.”
Bechtel Jacobs, DOEÂ’s environmental cleanup manager, is engaged in a years-long cleanup and dismantlement of former uranium-enrichment facilities at the East Tennessee Technology Park. That includes the removal of uranium deposits in the process systems at the K-25 building, a World War II-era structure.
Even though the gaseous diffusion operations are more than 60 years old, much of the technology remains classified.
Security at U.S. Department of Energy facilities has a huge concern in recent years, dating back to the Wen Ho Lee scandal in 1999 at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Lee initially was accused of accused of stealing nuclear secrets for the PeopleÂ’s Republic of China, but he was later cleared of those allegations.
There have been many other incidents, however, and last the National Nuclear Security Administration proposed a $3 million fine against the operating contractors at Los Alamos for violation of security requirements involving classified information. Investigations at that lab revealed that security weaknesses allowed a subcontractor employee to reproduce and remove classified info from the federal site.
More details as they develop online and in FridayÂ’s News Sentinel.
© 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. |
One person was arrested Thursday for attempting to sell nuclear secrets from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, federal law enforcement officials told FOX News. The person, who was not identified by officials, was named in a yet-to-be unsealed indictment and worked as a contractor for the Tennessee facility.