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A round of arrests this month targeting suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen netted a U.S. citizen who had been employed by contractors at five East Coast nuclear power sites from 2002 to 2008, the Associated Press reported Friday (see GSN, Jan. 8).
Sharif Mobley, 26, provided labor at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Maryland; the Salem and Hope Creek complex in New Jersey; and the Peach Bottom, Limerick and Three Mile Island plants in Pennsylvania.
Mobley handled relatively low-level operations at the New Jersey site with hundreds of other contract workers, according to PSEG Nuclear. Records of his tenure at the complex contained no references to rule violations or suspicious incidents, said Mike Drewniak, a spokesman for New Jersey Governor Christopher Christie.
Such laborers seldom deal with information that could pose a threat in the wrong hands, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission indicated. Investigators, though, were looking into the possibility that he obtained sensitive knowledge in his work that could aid violent extremists.
Mobley underwent a clearance process for his employment that included psychological examinations as well as checks on his criminal history, identity and potential drug use, according to officials. Still, information on short-term employees like Mobley can be passed between nuclear power firms, occasionally producing holes in their security profiles, said Edwin Lyman, senior staff scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"The real question is: Was there information that the NRC or utilities could have seen that would have led to his disqualification?" he asked.
"To the best of our knowledge, with the regard to this individual, there was nothing to suggest any kind of problem with him. Had there been, under the system that we have, we have a personnel database that's in place that lets all our companies across the industry know instantaneously if someone is for some reason denied access or flagged for some other kind of reason related to their behavior," said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry organization.
It was uncertain whether Mobley gained access any of the nuclear sites under an old rule that, before 2003, permitted employees to begin work before their security checks were finished.
Following his capture in the Yemeni capital of San'a, Mobley reported symptoms of illness last weekend and was taken to a hospital. There, Mobley stole a gun and shot two security personnel, killing one, before he was again detained, Yemeni officials said (Geoff Mulvihill, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, March 12).