Despite Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's previous assertions that security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory had been improved, the Laboratory revealed on June 12 that two hard drives which contain "encyclopedic" amounts of information about Russian and Chinese nuclear weapon design, as well as weapons of American allies, had been missing since May 7, the day before the lab was evacuated because of the wildfire. The Lab Director and Energy Department officials, however, were not informed until May 31. Despite the sensitivity of the information on the drives, they were not classified at the highest level, and the vault where they were stored is accessible to apparently dozens of employees, none of whom are required to log in or log out. Without these records, there is no way of knowing whether the drives went missing the day the loss was discovered or at some point in the previous weeks. Richardson, who failed to appear at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday, has placed six laboratory managers, including the head of the nuclear weapons programs, on paid leave. He also asked two highly respected former members of Congress, Howard Baker and Lee Hamilton, to conduct an independent investigation and recommend security improvements. In a related development, the Senate voted 97-0 to confirm Air Force Gen. John Gordon, the deputy director of the CIA, to take on a new post of security czar at the Department of Energy. In the meantime, the investigation continues at Los Alamos, where FBI agents plan to give polygraph tests to scientists who had access to the vault.