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DOE Staff Asked To Blow Whistle On Dangerous Liaisons

R S Shankar in Albuquerque, New Mexico

It may not exactly be that Big Brother is watching, but the United States Department of Energy has ordered its employees to not just kiss and tell, but even provide details of what many of us would think to be an innocent chat.

Still worried over the embarrassment caused by alleged leaks passed onto the Chinese at its nuclear establishments, the department has sent letters to its 66,000 employees dealing with sensitive defense information, demanding that they should tell American counterintelligence officials about any romantic or sexual relationships with people in half a dozen countries including India, Pakistan, China and Russia.

Included in the list of countries thought to be developing nuclear weapons are Cuba, Israel and Taiwan.

But the letter does not stop there. It asks employees to report professional relationships and friendships -- particularly chat over the Internet. If the Americans have unwittingly shared information about their families or chatted about their girlfriends or children, they are asked to report it.

The rationale behind the order being that the information could be used to blackmail the Americans.

The Cold War is not far from over at the Department of Energy, said one employee, adding that paranoia seems to be the order of the day for many officers. John Le Carre could get ammunition for half a dozen novels by just listening to the top officials for a day or two, said the employee.

Ed Curran, the counterintelligence chief at the Department of Energy, did not think it was reacting too much. He told New Mexico newspapers including the Albuquerque Journal that it is an open secret that foreign intelligence agencies have used young women to ferret out secrets from American scientists.

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