National Labs Moving to DOD?

The Obama administration is studying shifting control of the national laboratories operated by the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration to the Defense Department, the Albuquerque Journal reported on Wednesday in a copyrighted story by John Fleck.

The Journal story said the paper had obtained an internal Office of Management and Budget memo detailing a study on the cost and benefits of moving the labs from Energy to Defense by 2011. The affected organizations include NNSA, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, both located in New Mexico, and Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said in a statement, "I think this is a very shortsighted approach and I will fight it tooth and nail if they intended to proceed with it."

Though the three labs' primary mission is on nuclear weapons design, they are considered the crown jewels of American scientific research, and some fear that any shift form Energy to Defense will narrow that focus even more.

Los Alamos, for example, has developed three new vaccines to fight the AIDS virus, developed a new 3D breast scanning technology to detect cancer, and developed technologies to detect outbreaks of a pandemic flu virus -- all research areas that could be dropped under Pentagon management.

A personal note on blogging versus reporting: I'm a reluctant blogger and know that good reporting will always beat any blog, as this Albuquerque Journal story illustrates. The Journal is a privately owned, independent newspaper (a rare item in these times) and is struggling to survive in an environment where all news is supposedly "free," but someone has to pay the bills.

Earlier this month the Journal laid off seven newsroom staffers because it -- like the rest of us in the news business -- try to figure out how to make a buck in a world of seemingly "free" news.

Kudos to Fleck and Journal publisher Thompson Lang for continuing to do a great job in tough times.