University of California President Richard Atkinson has appointed physicists Sidney Drell, an emeritus professor at SLAC, and Robert Dynes, the UC San Diego chancellor, to an oversight board to “help guide Los Alamos National Laboratory Interim Director George ‘Pete’ Nanos.” Nanos took over the top job at LANL in January after the lab became immersed in fraud and theft allegations and director John Browne resigned (see Physics Today, February 2003, page 22).
Drell was the first chairman of the President’s Council on the National Laboratories in 1991 and was on the panel that reviewed LANL’s handling of the Wen Ho Lee case. Dynes also has extensive experience with the National Labs, having served for two decades as a consultant and adviser to the labs.
LANL is being investigated by the FBI, two congressional committees, and the US Department of Energy for allegations of widespread abuse of procurement card...
