On March 26, 1999, I became a new staff member of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. I committed the rest of my scientific future there despite the allegations of espionage leveled at one of its weapons scientists, Wen Ho Lee, who, notably, has never been and may never be officially charged. I valued the accomplishments of its distinguished scientists and was confident its able leaders would receive the political support they needed from Washington to cope with the potential damage to its programs arising from the scandal. But in the months since then that support has come into question—and the damage has become real. Washington's reaction to the incident has created an atmosphere of suspicion, which, coupled with efforts to restrict scientific interchange and reduce funds for key research, threaten the essence of the lab—its ability to provide the kind of science-based security that has made it a national treasure. Los Alamos burst upon the national consciousness on Aug 6, 1945, the day it was announced that the atomic weapon dropped on Hiroshima had been developed by scientists working at the lab under the direction of Robert Oppenheimer. The secret of their success was an almost magical mix of three key ingredients: the quality and dedication of the researchers, an open scientific environment that promote collaboration and Oppenheimer's brilliant leadership. That excellence, openness and leadership have largely been maintained in the ensuing 54 years under the enlightened management of the University of California. During the cold war, when national security demanded that we have a competitive edge over the Soviets in nuclear weapons and weapons-related research, Los Alamos led the way. When it became evident that science-based national security depended on world leadership in science, the lab rose to the challenge. It developed an outstanding program to attract the best young researchers and established world-class trans-disciplinary centers for pure and applied scientific research. Indeed, what brought me to Los Alamos was the new Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter, established to work on what promises to be the most exciting science of the new millennium— the search for the higher organizing principles in nature that govern emergent behavior. in matter. But in the past six months members of Congress and the Washington bureaucracy have put the scientific environment at Los Alamos seriously at risk. With the laudable goal of improving the security of classified research, they have attempted to impose inefficient micromanagement strategies while decreasing funding for vital research. As Sen. Pete Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, wrote recently to a Horse colleague, 'The House action is irresponsible.' The damage, he said, 'would be as serious and more assured than the suspected damage that may have been caused by Wen Ho Lee.' Some of that damage has already been done. By my count there's been a 60 percent drop in the number of top researchers accepting postdoctoral fellowships at the lab. Promising young staffers are leaving for university and industry jobs, while leading university scientists have refused to be considered for key administrative positions at Los Alamos. Then, too, there's the loss of the young scientist from China who wanted to come to the lab to work with me this fall. Despite his outstanding record of scientific publication and glowing letters of recommendation, I felt obligated to discourage him from entering the postdoctoral competition. In the current atmosphere, I felt his every move would be monitored. But I wonder whether we've lost a chance to attract to America a major contributor to science—and a potential Nobel laureate. Washington must never forget that science is done by scientists, not by computers. It is vital to build security barriers in physical space and cyberspace to protect classified information. But science is not don