A self-described methamphetamine addict said he doesn’t know anything about the classified Los Alamos National Laboratory data that authorities found in the mobile home where he was staying.
“I was basically at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Justin Stone, 20, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from jail.
“I don’t know who to sell that kind of information to. I don’t know who would be interested in that kind of stuff,” said Stone, who is jailed on drug and probation violation charges. He arrested at the trailer after police executed a search warrant, but was not charged in connection with the classified data.
Stone was renting a room in the home owned by Jessica Quintana, who previously worked for a lab subcontractor, Information Assets Management. Quintana, 22, has not been charged in the case.
The FBI is investigating the security breach and is reviewing three portable computer storage drives that were removed from the home during a drug bust last week.
Calls for tighter security
According to a statement released by the lab Friday, lab Director Michael Anastasio told employees Thursday that while he couldn’t discuss details, “I can confirm that classified material was found in her residence.”
The National Nuclear Security Administration remained tightlipped Friday, citing the pending criminal investigation.
Anastasio has ordered lab officials to immediately take steps to improve security, including making sure that classified materials can’t be downloaded to unauthorized devices.
Stone, a high school dropout, said he had no idea what was on the computer drives but acknowledged that one of the three USB flash drives the FBI is examining was his. He said he got it in trade for $20 worth of meth from a man who had “no relationship to the lab whatsoever.”
‘I’m freaked out’
Stone said the FBI told him the flash drive, which he had intended to store music on, contained pornography. Stone said he had no knowledge of what was on the other two flash drives.
He said Quintana had never talked about her lab work with him.
“I’m freaked out. I’m still really scared about the whole thing. I had all this information under the roof that I was living in, and all of a sudden the FBI is interrogating me,” Stone said.
The Department of Energy facility, which has been plagued by security lapses in recent years, had been operated by the University of California for decades. Since June, a team made up of the university, Bechtel National, BWX Technologies and Washington Group International has operated it.
“I am shocked that in this day and age you can still have memory sticks,” said Pete Stockton, a senior investigator with the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group. “This is how many years after Wen Ho Lee?”
Lee, a former lab scientist, pleaded guilty in 2000 to a single count of mishandling nuclear secrets. He had transferred information needed to design computer simulations for nuclear explosions to pocket-size portable computer tapes so he could have backup copies. He said he later threw the tapes away in a lab trash bin.