Linton Brooks

Brooks was sworn in as Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security on May 16, 2003, responsible for managing the National Nuclear Security Administration.[2]

Brooks was the prime force in privatizing the major DOE laboratories. While the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore labs were formerly run by contractors on a non-profit basis, Brooks decided to change the contracts to a for-profit basis. He defended the move by advocating a theory that the inclusion of industrial partners would bring greater efficiency, justifying the additional cost over time. "That was the theory, and that was my belief," he said.[4] A few years later, former Los Alamos director Sig Hecker testified before Congress about the change, and stated: "When we went the direction of contractorization we made a grievous error pushing the laboratories in a direction that simply isn't right for this country and we've suffered from that. The whole environment at these laboratories has changed."[5]

With the new contract for Los Alamos National Laboratory, the agency decided to raise the contractor fee from $8 million to $79 million. The additional funds were to be extracted from the existing budget of the laboratory.[6] When asked by LANL employees how the additional costs were to be paid, Brooks replied in December 2005 that the new contractor would "realize operational efficiencies." On November 20, 2007, the new LANL manager announced layoffs.[7]

Brooks resigned on January 4, 2007, because of security lapses, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.[8]

Brooks was reprimanded for not reporting to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman regarding the theft of computer files at an NNSA facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which contained Social Security numbers and other data for 1,500 workers.[9]

In October 2007, classified weapons-related documents on USB thumb drives from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico were found during a drug raid in the home of a woman who had worked at the lab.[10]

Since his retirement in 2007, Brooks has remained active as an independent consultant on national security issues. He is a strong proponent of developing and mentoring the next generation of nuclear policy analyst. He is a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies for the Project on Nuclear Issues and expert-in-residence at the Public Policy and Nuclear Threats Boot Camp at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at University of California, San Diego.[11][12]

In 2020, Brooks, along with over 130 other former Republican national security officials, signed a statement that asserted that President Trump was unfit to serve another term, and "To that end, we are firmly convinced that it is in the best interest of our nation that Vice President Joe Biden be elected as the next President of the United States, and we will vote for him."[13]