Letter to Sandia National Laboratories from the Los Alamos Study Group

June 18, 2004

Mr. Bruce Fetzer, Director of Public Relations & Communications
Mailstop 0111
Sandia National Laboratories
Albuquerque, NM 87185-0111

Re: Inspection of Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and briefing on earth penetrating nuclear weapons programs, August 5, 2004

Dear Mr. Fetzer,

The Los Alamos Study Group and a small team of citizen inspectors would like to visit SNL on August 5, 2004 from approximately 9:00 am to 2:00 pm. We would like you to suggest facilities and sites involved in nuclear weapons modifications, new weapon designs, and earth penetrating weapons which we could visit on that date.

We request a briefing by cognizant Lab officials regarding SNL's role in the aforementioned programs. This briefing would be "on the record." This briefing needn't be held "inside the fence;" it could be held at the Sandia Cooperative Monitoring Center. We anticipate that this briefing would conclude on or before 4:00 pm.

We will cooperate fully with all security regulations and requirements SNL may require. This will not be a demonstration, and the likely number of participants will be twenty at most. We will travel in at most two vehicles, and will stay together as one group for the entirety of the tour. We will submit our vehicle(s) to inspection, and will cooperate with any other required security procedures.

The Los Alamos Study Group and I personally will be responsible for the conduct of guests on this tour. Persons on this inspection will include interested citizens, visiting experts, elected officials from this country and from others, and journalists. We will be able to supply you with a visitor list, including citizenship of the participants. Along these lines, we need to get from you a list of nations whose citizens may not enter the lab.

We anticipate requesting similar inspections on a quarterly basis involving other Sandia facilities germane to its nuclear weapons programs, with some of the same (and some different) persons on each inspection.

Please let us know as soon as possible which facilities we will be able to visit on August 5 and what further information you will need from us regarding this visit and briefing. Should it not be possible for some reason to inspect any of these facilities at this time, please let me know.

Sincerely,
Greg Mello, Executive Director