Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation (VCI)

Sign up for Arms Control and International Security email updates.

The Verification, Compliance, and Implementation (VCI) Bureau is headed by Assistant Secretary Paula A. DeSutter.  The Bureau's core missions are to ensure that appropriate verification requirements and capabilities are fully considered and properly integrated throughout the development, negotiation, and implementation of arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements and commitments and to ensure that other countries’ compliance is carefully watched, rigorously assessed, appropriately reported, and resolutely enforced. In this regard, the Bureau is responsible for preparing the President’s annual report to Congress on Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments. The Bureau is further required to prepare verifiability assessments on proposals and agreements, and to report these to Congress, as required. The Bureau also prepares the President’s semi-annual Iran, North Korea, Syria Nonproliferation Report to Congress, which identifies entities that engage in the transfer of controlled items to and from Iran, North Korea, and Syria and authorizes the imposition of sanctions against these entities.

As required by statue, the Bureau also is responsible for ensuring that U.S. intelligence capabilities to collect, analyze, and disseminate precise and timely information bearing upon matters of verification and compliance – e.g., on the nature and status of foreign governments’ Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and delivery system programs – are effectively acquired, maintained, and enhanced. VCI is designated by law as the principal policy community representative to the Intelligence Community with regard to verification and compliance matters, and uses this role – and the access to and interaction with the Intelligence Community that it entails – both to promote, preserve, and enhance key collection and analytic capabilities and to ensure that verification, compliance, and implementation intelligence requirements are met.

Robust verification, compliance, and implementation are essential to maintaining and strengthening the integrity of arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament regimes. In this regard, the Bureau leads the Department in all matters related to the implementation of certain international arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements and commitments. This includes staffing and managing treaty implementation commissions, creating negotiation and implementation policy for agreements and commitments, and developing policy for future arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament arrangements. The Bureau also leads the Department in providing sophisticated support to arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament policymaking, including information technology support and secure, near-real-time government-to-government communications linkages with foreign government treaty partners.