Congress May Track Threat Reduction More Closely
Monday, January 14, 2008
Printable FormatGlobal Security Newswire By Elaine M. Grossman
WASHINGTON — An omnibus federal funding bill that U.S. President George W. Bush signed into law late last month includes provisions intended to allow Congress to more closely monitor progress in nuclear threat reduction efforts (see GSN, Dec. 21, 2007).
Such efforts include U.S. assistance to Russia and other former Soviet states in securing or removing weapon-grade uranium from reactors and storage sites, upgrading security at these facilities, and attempting to block the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction.
Co-sponsored by presidential hopeful Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) in the Senate and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) in the House, the legislative measure calls on the White House to issue a report on a “comprehensive nuclear threat reduction and security plan.” The document, to be submitted to Congress in both classified and unclassified forms, is due June 23.
The new law includes detailed reporting requirements aimed at providing greater executive branch accountability for reducing the risk of nuclear terrorism. Some observers say the measure’s passage into law is the result of mounting frustration among lawmakers with Bush administration efforts to date to stem the threat.
The move “reflects a growing dissatisfaction in Congress with the pace and progress on this important program, given the missed opportunities over the past years,” Leonor Tomero of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation told Global Security Newswire by e-mail.
Lawmakers are seeking more “speedy progress to secure vulnerable fissile material and weapons that might fall into the hands of terrorists seeking to steal or make a nuclear weapon.”
A Senate aide to Obama would not specify any additional actions the lawmaker might take to strengthen nuclear nonproliferation once the 180-day report has been released. However, the staffer did say the issue would remain a pivotal one for Obama.
“If terrorists obtained a nuclear weapon or the essential material to make one, they could cause catastrophic damage to our homeland,” the aide said today. “Senator Obama is committed to working on a bipartisan basis with his colleagues, like Senators [Richard] Lugar [R-Ind.] and Hagel, to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons, and this legislation is a valuable and necessary step in addressing this challenge.”
Tomero asserted last month in a 14-page analysis of the bill’s nuclear nonproliferation elements that federal agencies — including the Defense, State and Energy departments — have insufficiently coordinated their various threat reduction initiatives.
“The administration has so far failed to implement a congressional directive seeking the appointment of a national coordinator for these efforts,” she wrote. Tomero also would like to see more “diplomatic and political priority given to this urgent need,” according to the analysis.
Will Tobey, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s top official for nuclear nonproliferation, told a House subcommittee last March that the “acquisition of nuclear weapons, WMD capabilities, technologies, and expertise by rogue states or terrorists stands as one of the most potent threats to the United States and international security.
“The continued pursuit of nuclear weapons by terrorists and states of concern,” Tobey said in prepared testimony, “underscores the urgency of NNSA’s efforts to secure vulnerable nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials, to improve capabilities to detect and interdict nuclear weapons or materials, to halt the production of fissile material, and ultimately, to dispose of surplus weapons-usable materials.”
In 2005, former Representative Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, said Bush administration efforts “fall far short” of what is required to track down and secure nuclear material that could be used by terrorists. Hamilton said there should be “simply no higher priority on the national security agenda” (see GSN, Dec. 5, 2005).
Tomero, the Washington-based arms control center’s director for nuclear nonproliferation, said little progress has been made toward that end. “We are losing the race to secure nuclear material before terrorists get access to it,” she advised lawmakers in a written report last year.
Several U.S.-sponsored efforts to secure or remove dangerous materials in Russia, for example, “have been hampered by bureaucratic disputes” that in some cases “have resulted in denial of access to sensitive sites,” Tomero writes.
Much Cold War-era nuclear material remains vulnerable to theft or purchase, according to the analyst. “Security upgrades have been completed on only 64 percent of former Soviet buildings containing nuclear material as of December 2005,” she wrote. More than 80 nuclear research reactors worldwide continue to use weapon-grade uranium, according to Tomero. A number of them are secured only by a simple chain link fence and a guard, she said.
In the new legislation, included as part of the fiscal 2008 consolidated appropriations bill that became law on Dec. 26, Congress directs the White House to specify which federal agency should be held responsible for each element of securing weapons and weapon-usable material at vulnerable sites around the globe.
According to the new law, the forthcoming plan must:
— “Clearly designate agency and departmental responsibility and accountability;
— “Specify program goals, with metrics for measuring progress, estimated schedules, and [particular] milestones to be achieved;
— “Provide estimates of the program budget requirements and resources to meet the goals for each year; and
— “Provide the strategy for diplomacy and related tools and authority to accomplish the program [objective].”
The law sets a 2012 deadline for “ensuring that all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable
material at vulnerable sites are secure … against the threats that terrorists have shown they can pose.”
It also says the Bush administration plan must include a strategy for expanding the investment that Russia, China, Japan, the European Union and others offer to help meet nuclear threat reduction goals. The measure additionally calls on the executive branch to outline where nuclear-armed nations are falling short in committing to meet global nuclear security standards.
Funding for threat reduction initiatives is provided by a number of different appropriations bills. The omnibus bill funded the Energy Department’s defense nuclear nonproliferation efforts in 2008 at less than $1.4 billion, a reduction of more than $300 million from the Bush administration request.
The White House request for 2008 was already a dip in funding compared to the prior year. Tobey said in March that a reduced Energy Department budget for threat reduction was the result of its National Nuclear Security Administration “achieving and approaching important milestones in our nuclear security work in Russia, including the completion of major security upgrades at several sites under the International Nuclear Materials Protection and Cooperation program and the anticipated end of construction of a fossil fuel plant in Seversk by the end of calendar year 2008 under the Elimination of Weapons Grade Plutonium Production Program.”
Meanwhile, Congress allocated $428 million for the so-called Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program in this year’s Defense Department funding bill. That is $80 million more than the administration requested and up from a budget of $372 million in 2007.
The State Department’s Global Threat Reduction activities received $57 million for fiscal 2008, a $4 million increase over the administration’s budget request. The effort, previously known as the Nonproliferation of WMD Expertise program, aims in part to engage former Soviet weapons scientists.
The diplomatic agency’s Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund won $34 million for 2008, another $4 million uptick from the budget request. The fund similarly underwrites policy development and negotiations required for threat reduction and other nonproliferation activities, Tomero said.