Statement of Laura S. H. Holgate Vice President for Russia/NIS Programs before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services hearing on “Combating Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) with Nonproliferation Programs: Nonproliferation Assistance Coordination Act of 2001” November 14, 2001 Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify today about how the United States government can strengthen its efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons - and keep them from falling into the hands of groups and states who would do U.S. harm. The nation and the world discovered September 11 that there are terrorist forces in the world who will stop at nothing in their efforts to take innocent lives. The work that the U.S. government does to secure nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and materials is our first line of defense in keeping these weapons out of terrorist hands. These programs are even more important and more urgent than many had previously believed and consequently, they need to be expanded as part of a vigorous and accelerated national security commitment to protect U.S. from weapons of mass destruction. So I would like to thank the chairman and the members of the committee for putting the spotlight on this issue and giving me and others a chance to contribute our ideas. When the Soviet Union collapsed, it left behind a legacy of 30,000 nuclear weapons, more than 1,000 tons of highly enriched uranium and 150 tons of plutonium – enough to build 60,000 to 80,000 weapons - in storage sites poorly secured, and many weapons scientists with no steady paychecks. We have seen hostile efforts to sell, steal and recruit weapons designs, materials and know-how out of Russia. The Washington Post reported yesterday that the head of the safety department at the Russian nuclear regulatory agency has just acknowledged a security violation of "the highest possible consequence" sometime during the last two years. Authorities recently thwarted an inside effort to smuggle 18.5 kilograms of highly enriched uranium out of a nuclear facility in the Urals. That's enough material - with the right expertise -- to build a small nuclear device. The International Atomic Energy Agency has recorded since 1993 more than a dozen thwarted efforts to smuggle plutonium or highly-enriched uranium. What we don't know is what percentage of the smuggling we stop? Is it one hundred percent ... or closer to one percent? Earlier this year, a distinguished bipartisan task force headed by Howard Baker and Lloyd Cutler published a major report on the need to secure Russian weapons, materials and know-how, declaring it "the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States," and calling for a four-fold funding increase for these threat-reduction efforts. This threat is understood and discussed at the highest levels of our government. Speaking just last week via satellite to the Warsaw Conference on Combating Terrorism, President Bush said: "These terrorist groups are seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation; and, eventually, to civilization itself." President Bush is not a newcomer to this concern. Two years ago at the Reagan Library, Candidate Bush praised "the foresight and statesmanship" of Senators Lugar and Nunn for their legislation to improve security at many Russian nuclear facilities. Then he added: "A great deal of Russian nuclear material cannot be accounted for. The next president must press for an accurate inventory of all this material, and we must do more. I will ask the Congress to increase substantially our assistance to dismantle as many of Russia's weapons as possible as quickly as possible." The Administration's actions in the first months of its tenure fall short of the vision and purpose articulated by President Bush. Early this year, the Administration announced a review of nonproliferation programs, then cut the programs' budgets before it began the review. The review itself stopped action in its tracks. Travel was halted. Work was postponed. Momentum was lost. Program managers felt they lacked the authority to go forward. And the review was undertaken without the courtesy of telling our partners in Russia. Now we are told the review is complete, but we have not seen its outcome. I strongly support a review of our nonproliferation programs; we have not had one since 1993. But it needs to be broad or strategic. The review that was recently completed appeared to be aimed merely at finding inefficiencies in individual program activities. That is a worthy purpose on its own terms, but it is no substitute for strategic thinking about U.S. national security goals and how threat reduction programs can help achieve them. I have worked for many years, in many capacities, to implement and advance these programs to prevent nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, weapons materials and weapons know-how from falling into the wrong hands. It is my view that these programs are critically important, largely effective, and -- because of the obvious urgency need than ever of high-level attention, increased funding, greater staffing and continuous fresh thinking to help speed up the pace and widen the scope of the programs. If more in terrorists are racing to acquire weapons of mass destruction, we ought to be racing to stop them. This is a complex task. The expertise necessary for the job is wide-ranging - distributed across many agencies of government. The Defense Department is needed for its expertise in handling and destroying nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; the Energy Department for its knowledge of fissile material management and the national labs' experience in scientist-to-scientist cooperation; the State Department for its role in bilateral and multilateral diplomatic negotiations and in-country expertise, the Agriculture Department for its understanding of animal and plant diseases as they might relate to bioterrorism; the Department of Health and Human Services for its epidemiologists; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its experience in licensing and oversight of nuclear facilities; the Customs and Treasury Departments for their knowledge of export control regulations and processes; the Overseas Private Investment Fund and the Trade and Development Agency for their support of U.S. businesses seeking Russian business partners. Some point to the involvement of so many agencies as evidence of poor management. It is not. It is evidence that such a program, as I said, requires wide-ranging expertise, and therefore will always be a challenge to administer - a challenge that can be fully met, in my view, only with high-level leadership and coordination. This leadership and coordination has been hard to come by since the early days of these programs. Despite the complexity of these nonproliferation cooperation activities, programmatic duplication is remarkably low, and program implementation is in general very effective. Improving the coordination and accountability of these programs should result in even greater improvements in U.S. national security. What is missing in the process is a definitive statement of strategy and consistent advocacy of Administration goals. This must include holding agencies accountable for financing and implementing programs that accomplish those goals. Without this clear high-level direction, and the interagency process that creates and maintains it, agencies have set and articulated their own priorities, resources have not always been aligned with those priorities even within agencies, and differences among agencies' rhetoric and programmatic actions have created perceptions of inefficiency and contradiction which are exploited by opponents of the programs and missions. Programmatic inconsistencies also open doors for recipient nation counterparts to play agencies off against each other. All of this can be remedied with decisive and enduring leadership from the White House. I would like to spend a few minutes reviewing the activities and accomplishments of our nonproliferation programs, discussing some of the barriers they face, and offering several recommendations about how we can make them more effective. Ten years after the passage of the landmark Nunn-Lugar Act established the legal basis for nonproliferation cooperation with Russia and other former Soviet states, U.S. Government activities in this area approach $1 billion annually and involve multiple agencies, myriad contractors, and over a dozen Congressional committees and subcommittees. This growth has been by and large organic, with each agency pursuing its own contacts and relationships in recipient countries, assembling and justifying its own budget, implementing programs based on its own culture and approaches, and interacting with its own Congressional oversight committees. In spite of proceeding without a comprehensive and coordinated vision, administered from the top, these programs, taken collectively, have massively improved U.S. national security, through projects in Russia and the former Soviet Union that secure, consolidate and/or reduce overall quantities of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; the materials required to manufacture them; facilities and equipment required to make and maintain them; and the knowledge and experience necessary to create and use them. Let me describe each in turn: Weapons: The fall of the Soviet Union left behind four new nations with nuclear weapons on their territory, totaling over 10,000 strategic warheads deployed on missiles, bombers and submarines. Removing all Soviet weapons to Russia and helping them implement their arms control commitments to reduce these weapons has been the initial focus of U.S. Government threat reduction programs. In addition, tons of outdated chemical weapons are stockpiled at seven locations in Russia, and need to be destroyed. • The Defense Department's Cooperative Threat Reduction program helped safely remove all nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus - eliminating more nuclear weapons than those possessed in the arsenals of China, France and the United Kingdom combined. Cooperative Threat Reduction has destroyed more than 1600 missiles, silos, • Cooperative Threat Reduction works with Russian military forces to secure tactical and strategic nuclear weapons in storage and during transport. · The Department of Energy cooperates with the Russian Navy on securing naval weapons. Cooperative Threat Reduction provided the basis to purchase and transport to the The State Department's Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund has funded similar "preemptive acquisition" efforts as well as elimination projects for SCUD Cooperative Threat Reduction has also offered Russia assistance for dismantling nuclear warheads - though Russia has not yet accepted the offer. The Department of Defense has reached agreement with the government of Uzbekistan to use the Cooperative Threat Reduction program to destroy what remains of Soviet-manufactured anthrax dumped on an island in the Aral Sea. Cooperative Threat Reduction is funding the design and construction of a Materials: Russia retains massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons materials. No one knows exactly how much because accounting has been so poor under the Soviet system. Best estimates, however, are that the Soviet Union manufactured more than 1,000 metric tons of highly enriched uranium and over 150 metric tons of plutonium which remain in Russia under inadequate security. Ironically, as weapons are dismantled, the challenge of safe storage of their materials increases. Smaller quantities, enough for a few weapons, are held at research facilities around the former Eastern Bloc. Stocks of biological weapons ingredients are also poorly secured. Department of Energy has led U.S. efforts to assist Russia and other new Cooperative Threat Reduction has funded the design and construction of a fissile material storage facility for plutonium removed from dismantled nuclear weapons. DOE funds a small program designed to consolidate nuclear material in fewer locations within Russia, in order to improve its security and to reduce the total number of sites requiring protection. · Department of Energy cooperates with the State Department in supporting an International Atomic Energy Agency effort to convert former Soviet research reactors to run on low-enriched uranium instead of highly enriched uranium thereby reducing the quantity of weapons material located outside Russia. Department of Energy is also cooperating with Russia to implement a September 2000 agreement to eliminate 34 metric tons apiece of weapons plutonium. Several agencies are responsible for overseeing a private entity's execution of the |