As University of California scientists warn about the potentially warping influence that profit-driven contractors could have on U.S. nuclear weapons labs and nuclear policy, the university quietly has been negotiating with defense contractors to help manage two nuclear weapons labs.

Lately, the university has turned from Honeywell Inc. to talks with Lockheed Martin Corp., the world's largest defense contractor, with $31.8 billion a year in revenue.

The talks are aimed at tightening business operations at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore weapons labs that the university runs for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

Congress threw management of Los Alamos and Livermore labs open to competitive bid for the first time in more than 50 years after allegations of purchase fraud and theft at Los Alamos exposed poor financial oversight by its UC managers.

If the UC-Lockheed talks result in a bidding team for the Los Alamos and Livermore contracts -- albeit a team that UC probably would insist on leading -- Lockheed Martin could gain an unprecedented foothold in all four of the research institutions that influence nuclear policy in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Lockheed could have a managerial role at Los Alamos and Livermore, the two labs that designed both nations' nuclear explosives and provide advice on the need for nuclear testing; Sandia National Laboratories, which weaponizes those explosives for the United States, and the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, the British equivalent of all three labs plus production facilities, near the southern city of Reading.

That kind of influence over the market in nuclear-weapons research would seem to be what university scientists were worried about last week. Los Alamos director Pete Nanos and Livermore director Michael Anastasio cautioned a panel of advisers to the government against allowing corporations to run one or more of the weapons labs.

The two directors said the primary job of the labs -- advising the U.S. government on the operating condition of its nuclear weaponry, a question that inherently includes advice on whether to return to nuclear testing -- should not be left to a corporation interested in profits and dominating the market.

Questioned about its talks, the university declined to describe Lockheed's role in a potential partnership and specifically declined an invitation to rule out a role for the defense contractor in weapons-related advise to the U.S. government.

"The university is continuing to explore potential opportunities with industrial partners to enhance the business and management operations of the laboratories," said UC spokesman Chris Harrington. "These discussions are ongoing and it would be premature for the university to disclose who these entities are or to comment on the nature and the details of the discussions."

Hugh Gusterson, an MIT anthropologist who has studied the weapons labs extensively, said the university appears to be making many arguments of convenience. On one hand, the university says its management of Los Alamos and Livermore is a self-sacrificial service to the nation but on the other it's a boon to UC's researchers and graduate students.

"It's clear the UC is behaving the way that any bureaucracy dominated by lawyers will behave, which is to opportunistically make the arguments they need to prevail," Gusterson said. "So one minute universities are better than private contractors and the next minute private contractors are fine. I guess you could say UC is spinning the issue, and it's really hard to see where the national interest is."

In many ways, a UC-Lockheed team would be a natural. For decades, UC scientists at Los Alamos and Livermore labs worked with Lockheed engineers in Sunnyvale to shoehorn nuclear explosives into the cone-shaped reentry vehicles for U.S. Navy strategic missiles.

In 1993, Lockheed took over operation of Sandia National Laboratories from AT&T. Sandia's weaponeers in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore engineer bombs and warheads for nuclear explosives designed and maintained by Los Alamos and Livermore, respectively.

But as is the case at Aldermaston, Lockheed manages Sandia through a separate corporation designed in part to buffer the laboratory against the defense contractor's business interests. And several officials say the arrangement seems to work; they don't detect Lockheed's parental hand in Sandia weapons work.

Likewise, the University of California hasn't taken much of a hand in managing Los Alamos or Livermore, other than appointing its directors and ordering its top managers not to put the university's reputation at risk.

In the end, said former Sandia weapons executive Bob Peurifoy, who runs theH-bomb labs could be irrelevant.

"The key is the integrity of the three laboratory directors," he said. "If they're doing their job, you could have the contract held by anyone. If they stray from their responsibilities, I question whether any contracting agency could deliver for the country."