When Maj. Gen. Andrew Busch took over the beleaguered, scandal-tarnished Air Force base, he seemed to believe that Utah's largest military facility was already well on the road to recovery.

After years of mistakes - including the accidental shipment of nuclear weapons components to Taiwan - Hill had "recommitted itself to the basic fundamentals of our profession, especially as it applies to oversight and control of sensitive components," Busch said.

But right around the same time Busch came aboard, military auditors were finding that Hill was one of the worst of a number of Air Force bases that had failed to properly account for hundreds of nuclear-related items, according to a recent article in The Air Force Times.

The Times article, based on an Air Force audit conducted last year, indicated none of the accounting errors compromised the safety or security of any weapons. That's good news. But that could have been said about the fuses that Hill accidentally shipped to Taiwan, too. The debacle still caused an international uproar and led to the ouster of the Air Force's top two officials and a number of other military leaders.

The Taiwan incident led to a number of new regulations and a beefed up inspection regime for the nation's inventory of thousands of nuclear components. But a once-classified report detailing the investigation into the blunder centered on rules that already existed - but weren't followed.

For instance: To avoid the Taiwan debacle, all employees of the military contractor EG&G had to do was to open a single container. That's what they were supposed to do, under the terms of the defense company's multi-million contract at Hill.

Instead, they ignored the rules.

And even though heads flew, EG&G (which had a poor record of inventory tracking even before it won the Hill contract) kept its business at Hill.

The internal report concluded that "focused leadership" was needed "to drive home the importance of working on problems while they are still small, before they grow into larger problems."

Is that what Hill is getting, under Busch? He'll undoubtedly have several more opportunities to prove it.