In his four years on the job [Chief Risk Officer-RG] MacWilliams had come to understand the D.O.E.’s biggest risks, the way a corporate risk officer might understand the risks inside a company, and had catalogued them for the next administration.
“My team prepared its own books. They were never given to anybody. I never had a chance to sit with [the Trump people] and tell them what we’re doing, even for a day. And I’d have done it for weeks. I think this was a sad thing. There are things you want to know that would keep you up at night. And I never talked to anyone about them.”
t’s been five months since he left government service, and I’m the first person to ask him what he knows. Still, I think it is important, as I pull my chair in to his kitchen table, to conduct the briefing in the spirit the Trump people might have approached it—just to see how he could have helped even those who thought they didn’t need his help. I assume the tone and manner befitting a self-important, mistrustful person newly arrived from some right-wing think tank. And so I wave my hand over his thick briefing books and say, “Just give me the top five risks I need to worry about right away. Start at the top.”
Right away we have a problem. At the very top of his list is an accident with nuclear weapons, and it is difficult to discuss that topic with someone who doesn’t have security clearance. But the Trump people didn’t have it, either, I point out, so he’ll just need to work around it. “I have to be careful here,” he says. He wants to make a big point: the D.O.E. has the job of ensuring that nuclear weapons are not lost or stolen, or at the slightest risk of exploding when they should not. “It’s a thing Rick Perry should worry about every day,” he says.
“Are you telling me that there have been scares?”
He thinks a moment. “They’ve never had a weapon that has been lost,” he says carefully. “Weapons have fallen off planes.” He pauses again. “I would encourage you to spend an hour reading about Broken Arrows.”
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