High Nuclear Worker Accused of Uranium Sale, Teen Rapes

WASHINGTON — A senior laboratory technician with a top security clearance at a U.S. nuclear facility has been accused of selling classified documents and uranium to the PLO as well as raping teen-age girls, setting fires and committing robberies, a government report said today.

The General Accounting Office, in a report critical of the Department of Energy’s personnel security practices, did not identify the technician.

“I’ve never read a GAO report like this in my life,” said Rep. Mike Synar (D-Okla.), chairman of the House Government Operations subcommittee on environment, energy and natural resources. “It was scary.”

The GAO report said that the technician suspected of committing the series of crimes got an initial security clearance in 1974 and answered security questionnaires in 1978 and 1984 but that no derogatory information was uncovered until a deputy sheriff told the Department of Energy about the employee’s arrest for carrying a weapon and having an expired license plate.

The report did not say where the technician worked.

But GAO officials said at a House hearing that the technician was employed either at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, the Oak Ridge nuclear facility in Tennessee or in the Albuquerque, N.M., district, which includes the Los Alamos nuclear facility.