“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” – Maya Angelou

I deleted a couple of posts today (the previous footnote). I had no choice. I received a threatening letter from Sandia that left me no recourse. I’m not going to relitigate the whole episode. It confirms that I worked for unethical and corrupt managers there. It simply amplifies the point. These people have absolutely no business managing anything, much less nuclear weapons. Their professional success indicts the institution.

I had downloaded an unclassified document from the OSTI website. It was marked as such, with a Sandia release number indicating it had gone through information release control (SAND2026-20700). These are designated “UUR,” meaning Unclassified Unlimited Release. I treated it as such. Moreover, the document was indeed completely unclassified. I’m an SME in every topic it contains. In fact, the whole reason I was hired by Sandia in the first place was this very expertise. The report was in the bullseye of my professional expertise.

It holds no sensitive information either — that is, unless you’re sensitive to bad results. Until I received the letter, I had no reason to believe otherwise. Any other designation of the document is complete bullshit. Yes, I was a derivative classifier in a previous life, and I take this shit seriously. Classification at Sandia is far more political than technical. The law has massive gaps in it that empower the management to systematically over-classify. They are using it to bury bad results. Rather than fix the problems, they hide them. In the long run, this will come to no good.

What I can share is an episode that defines the character of the person I believe is at the center of this. He’s only the third-worst person I met at Sandia, mind you. Let’s call him “Cilantro” because he leaves a bad taste in some people’s mouths. It’s a worthy nickname for this piece of shit, and feel free to use it if you have the misfortune of interacting with him.

A while back, Cilantro was a group leader overseeing some nuclear weapons work. I was asked to lead a peer review of an important body of work. Red flag number one appeared almost immediately: the review was held at a very high level of security inappropriate for the work. The extra security was immaterial to the work itself, but it reduced the pool of people available to see the work or judge it. My mentor, for example, was excluded as a result.

During the review, the material driving the designation was shown. It was completely immaterial to the presentation. At the end of the day, the work was reasonable in terms of quality and completeness. But the team presenting it was unnecessarily avoidant and belligerent toward the review team and our questions. They continually pointed to a huge stack of documents for answers, basically refusing to provide any detailed ones. I was genuinely perplexed. The work was good, so why the animosity?

What became clear was that they expected a rubber stamp instead of a review. They were arrogant, and it showed. Cilantro was their group leader. Ironically, the material that drove the designation wasn’t even classified — it was export-controlled. When I wrote the report, I had to classify it at the level of the presentation (SRD Sigma 14). I asked for the report to be declassified to the level appropriate for the information. The person responsible failed to do so despite my repeated prompting. I will note that there are rules against over-classification, and I was endeavoring to follow them.

Eventually, time ran out, and all I had was my first draft of the review. They passed, but the unprofessional and belligerent behavior was noted. I found it counterproductive and antagonistic. The memo went out, and I got it declassified at the last minute. It had not gone to the rest of the review team either.

Then Cilantro called me to his office. He didn’t like the memo. When I got there, unbeknownst to me, another manager was waiting. They ambushed and attacked me. How dare I criticize their people? I should have realized then that Cilantro doesn’t like critique unless it says he’s amazing. He refuses to see problems or do anything about them. He just wanted to berate me, and brought along someone else to make sure it was two on one.

So when Cilantro became a manager above me, I should have known to get the fuck out.