One of America’s main nuclear weapons labs has been taken to task for losing a fairly large number of computers in the last year. Information on the losses only emerged after three were stolen from the home of one employee.

The non-profit Project on Government Oversight obtained a memo in which the government overseer of the Los Alamos National Laboratory notes that 13 computers have been stolen in the last 12 months and 67 are missing.

“The magnitude of exposure and risk to the laboratory is at best unclear as little data on these losses has been collected or pursued …” says the memo.

Lab spokesman Kevin Roark told AP that no classified information had been lost, and that actually 80 computers had been lost in 2008, although 11 were later recovered.

Also apparently missing is a lab BlackBerry, that was lost in a “sensitive foreign country”.

“This DOE memo shows that the Lab admits that 67 computers are currently ‘missing’, and that 13 have been lost or stolen in the past year alone,” says Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight (press release). “It is troubling that the contractor only informed the government of this during investigations into the most recent thefts.”

USA Today notes:

The lab has a history of lost, stolen or mishandled computers and data. The most celebrated case involved former lab scientist Wen Ho Lee, who pleaded guilty to felony mishandling of sensitive information during the 1990s but was acquitted of espionage.