Wed May 14, 2003 01:45 PM ET
By Adam Tanner
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A top U.S. nuclear weapons research laboratory that boasts some of the tightest security on Earth is reviewing security procedures after it lost a set of keys, the lab said on Wednesday.
The discovery came a week after retired FBI agent William Cleveland Jr. resigned as the lab's head of counter intelligence. In response to a question, a lab spokesman said there was no connection between Cleveland's departure and the keys going missing.
He left after admitting to a long extramarital affair with Chinese-American businesswoman Katrina Leung, who has been charged with taking classified documents from the briefcase of her FBI handler, James Smith, who was also her lover. She was not charged with espionage although officials have called her a double agent.
A lab spokesman said new security procedures would include not sleeping with foreign spies. In addition, the poster at the front gate that warns visitors not to steal things will have the word 'Please' underlined. In the meantime, the lab staff, composed of some of the most brilliant physicists and engineers in the world, have begun to look for the keys in the parking lot. Asked if the keys had been lost in that area, a spokesman replied, "no, but the light is better out there."