cility. And I think that as part of the strategic plan, and as part of the funding requirements, you have to look at the sequencing of these activities and whether or not the timing is going to be different now because of some of these environmental interactions. And again, let us make sure that we can spend the money effectively and efficiently, and if a schedule is going to be stretched out, then let us only put the money in that can be spent during the time frame.

Senator AKAKA. Ms. Holgate, Presidents Bush and Putin have agreed to significant reductions in nuclear weapons. One expert on nonproliferation issues, Kenneth Luongo, said that, "Despite the widespread belief that the United States is helping Russia to dismantle its nuclear weapons, it is not true. There is no dedicated program to assist Russia with wide dismantlement." Will you please share your thoughts on Mr. Luongo's statement?

Ms. HOLGATE. His statement is technically accurate, Mr. Chairman. The challenge comes from the confusion in how we talk about these dangerous pieces of equipment. It is true that there is no dedicated program to deal with the warhead dismantlement itself, and sometimes people use the word "nuclear weapon" to talk about the warhead. Sometimes they use it to talk about the entire delivery system, the missile, the silo, the submarine, or the bomber. And while there are massive programs underway in the Department of Defense aiming at the delivery systems, the Russians have so far refused offers of U.S. assistance to help actually dismantle the warhead.

At the Defense Department, when I led the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program there, we orchestrated a package to offer the Russians to help them dismantle nuclear warheads and they were so concerned at that time about what kind of information and sensitive knowledge might be gained by the United States because of our access requirements that they knew would follow from that money, that they refused to accept our assistance to do that. I would expect that if you ask current Department of Defense officials whether that offer would either be reiterated or whether it is still on the table, you would find that it is, but it is not part of a budget and it is not part of a program at this time.

Senator AKAKA. I have a question for all of you. Prior to that, Senator Carnahan has asked me to place a statement into the record, and so without objection, Senator Carnahan's statement will be placed in the record.

[The prepared statement of Senator Carnahan follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARNAHAN

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This hearing is especially important today, as the United States examines claims by Osama bin Laden that he has acquired chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. The implications are quite serious-whether or not this claim is true. the United States must continue improving its efforts to counter the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that a chief Pakistani nuclear scientist had been holding talks with bin Laden's followers. Equally as disturbing are recent reports that nuclear materials may have been stolen from Russia in the last two years.

The intelligence community has said that it is unlikely that bin Laden's al Quaeda group obtained sufficient resources to construct a nuclear bomb. The prospect of international terrorists and rogue nations obtaining such weapons is

For the last decade, America's enemies have expressed a willingness to pay Soviet scientists for expertise to build weapons of mass destruction. The United States and its allies have tried to stop this so-called "brain drain," by providing financial incentives to former Soviet scientists to discourage them from cooperating with rogue elements.

In addition, the Defense Department's Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program has worked with other governments to reduce former Soviet stockpiles. The results have been quite promising. Since 1997, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus have been free of nuclear weapons. And Russia continues to work with the United States to comply with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). As a result, we have managed to cut nuclear stockpiles practically in half, with Russia maintaining only 8,000 active warheads to date. But much more remains to be done.

I am pleased that President Bush and Russian President Putin are conducting their arms control talks today. Both nations appear committed to work closely together to reduce their nuclear arsenals to START II requirements. This is an important step forward. As we progress on the diplomatic front, we must also improve our internal efforts to re-shape our government to reinforce counter-proliferation policies.

It is imperative that the United States remain proactive in suppressing the worldwide spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. This requires that we upgrade our intelligence capabilities, continue monitoring other nations' compliance with arms control treaties, provide adequate compensation to former Soviet weapons scientists, and continue accounting for the thousands of weapons produced by the Soviet Union.

As of now, our government attempts to accomplish these objectives through several Federal agencies, spread out among three Cabinet Departments. These organizations do great work. But I do not believe that they have reached their maximum potential.

Senator Hagel's proposal attempts to better coordinate America's WMD policies. I am hopeful that this hearing will shed light on this proposal, and provide additional recommendations for improving our counter-proliferation efforts.

I look forward to hearing our panelists' testimony today, and working with Senator Hagel on this important issue. Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Senator AKAKA. To all of you, yesterday, President Bush said, "Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction and we will strengthen our efforts to cut off every possible source of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons material and expertise." From this statement, what changes do you see with respect to U.S. nonproliferation programs in Russia? Ms. Jones.

Ms. JONES. I think that statement calls even more for the kind of committee we are talking about to coordinate the efforts. I think it also underlies the importance of the strategic plan so that we can look at whether or not we have the right mix of nonproliferation programs? Are we providing the funds to those pieces or those programs that could tackle the highest risk? So I think the statement really underscores the need for the strategic plan and this coordinating committee.

Senator AKAKA. Ms. Holgate.

Ms. HOLGATE. Mr. Senator, my fear is that the current efforts to deal with the specific challenge that the President referenced in that statement focus almost exclusively on the demand side of the problem and totally inadequately on the supply side. The current counterterrorism activities are trying to identify, locate, and root out terrorists where they currently are located, but it has no component that addresses how you protect the material that those terrorists might be trying to get access to.

As Dr. Spector mentioned, the $40 billion emergency appropriation to address counterterror activities in the wake of September

programs of cooperation with Russia designed specifically to get at the supply of the materials and the weapons that so concern us all. Senator AKAKA. Mr. Spector.

Mr. SPECTOR. Well, I think that is right. I think there is a disconnect between the President's statement and the actual activities of the administration. We saw it in the way they handled the budget this year, where these programs tended to be trimmed rather than boosted up. We are seeing it now in this sort of ongoing review that never seems to end, so that some of these programs are just mired in uncertainty. Thus, I think there is, as I said, there is a gap, indeed a gulf, between what the President's aspirations are and what his administration is actually doing at this time. I think that is very unfortunate.

Senator AKAKA. Ms. Jones, in your testimony, you note that the Congress has authorized in excess of $5.5 billion for U.S. nonproliferation programs to Russia and the other Newly Independent States. How much of this money has been spent in Russia and the Newly Independent States? Also, would you share some success stories regarding the nonproliferation programs?

Ms. JONES. Senator, I am not sure that I would have the numbers for you. I can certainly try to provide them for the record in terms of how much has been spent in Russia. For two of the programs that we have looked at, the Nuclear Cities Initiative and the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, as Dr. Spector mentioned, a great portion of the funding was initially spent at the weapons complex here in the United States. That has been changing and it is evolving so that more money will be going to Russia. But for the whole $5 billion, I am not sure that I have that breakdown for you. Senator AKAKA. Ms. Holgate, are there routine joint U.S.-Russian strategic planning meetings, and if so, how successful are these meetings?

Ms. HOLGATE. At the current time, I am aware of no such meetings. In the history of the U.S.-Russian cooperation in this area, I would say that the bi-national commission established by Vice President Gore and Prime Minister Chernomyrdin offered one of the few venues in which cabinet-level colleagues in the United States and Russia would interact every 6 months, and the preparation for that interaction, the attention that was brought from the Vice President and his office to delivering on commitments made at the previous 6-month meeting, really did create a mechanism for senior-level interactions, whether it is Defense, Energy, State Department, or other departments involved. That interaction provided-probably not what it was quite planned to do but in this nonproliferation cooperation field, it did provide a good mechanism to be sure that senior people knew what was going on and to give impetus to bureaucracies that might get mired down in workinglevel concerns.

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Spector, you recommend that Congress should require that the President report on the status of its efforts to accelerate the highly-enriched uranium purchase agreement. Do you feel that the current focus on proliferation risks of nuclear material from Russia will accelerate the administration's review of the

Mr. SPECTOR. I wish I could say yes. But, I must say that that has not been my impression. My impression is that this review is a slow but steady effort, and it seems to be dragging on. When I interviewed the National Security Council official I mentioned earlier, I asked him in many different ways what was being done in this sphere in light of September 11. And in many different ways, he deflected me, in effect to say, we are still reviewing these programs. This high-enriched uranium program is one of them. But nothing was said with a sense of urgency and no statement was made suggesting that the administration was moving the process aggressively because it was so concerned about these matters. It was much the opposite, a sort of treadmill. They are just going to go about their business as usual.

Senator AKAKA. Ms. Jones, the Department of Defense is responsible for assisting former Soviet States with destroying their nuclear and chemical weapons stockpiles. Were biological agents stockpiled? If so, are there plans to destroy these stockpiles, as well? Which agency should take the lead for U.S. assistance?

Ms. JONES. I am sorry, Senator, I do not have the information to be able to respond to that question.

Senator AKAKA. Ms. Holgate.

Ms. HOLGATE. I can shed a little bit of light on that question, sir. There was very minimal stockpiling of actual delivery-scale biological agents in Russia in the Soviet time frame. They mainly depended on having massive production capability to allow for surge production in the case of an order given from Moscow. Tons of anthrax could be created, just as an example, within months of a direct order if a need was identified. So there were very little actual stocks in place.

Many of those stocks were destroyed in the wake of President Gorbachev's announcement that, in fact, the Soviet Union had violated the Biological Weapons Convention and they were coming clean in the late 1980's and the Soviets then destroyed many of those stocks. Some of the way that they destroyed them was to bury them on the island called Resurrection Island in the Aral Sea in the territory of what is now Uzbekistan, and there is a project underway through the Department of Defense under the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program to go back and make sure that those stocks were actually permanently destroyed. There was concern that they were not fully destroyed.

And so that is one of the few examples where stocks have been addressed. Mostly, the DOD activities have been focusing on eliminating the massive production capabilities.

Senator AKAKA. Can you answer the question about which agency should take the lead for U.S. assistance?

Ms. HOLGATE. I would say the Department of Defense is already engaged in this area, has good relationships, and has the ability to get the funding when they are ready for it.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you.

Ms. Holgate, cooperative threat reduction efforts have tended to experience mission creep in which funds are used for other activities, such as infrastructure and support costs. How have these tendencies affected the efficiency of these programs and could a coordi

Ms. HOLGATE. Sir, I certainly think a coordinating body can make the programs more efficient, but I would suggest that the inclusion of U.S. Government funds to support some of the infrastructure and supporting activities has actually increased the efficiency of these programs. Rather than representing mission creep, they represent a recognition of the total mission.

The reason that many of these activities have been undertaken in Russia has to do with resource limitations within Russia, and what these program managers were finding was that they might have funding to do a very narrow slice, in some ways the most exciting slice of the project, but it was not moving forward because they had inability to provide funding for the support activities that would actually make the achievement of the nonproliferation goals possible. And so they began to incorporate into budget requests the supporting requirements to achieve the goals, and that has made the achievement of those goals much more efficient in the time since that has been done.

Senator AKAKA. Ms. Jones, the brain drain prevention programs within the Departments of State, Energy, and Defense have enabled former USSR weapons scientists to remain in their states without having to sell their weapons-related knowledge. To what extent can these programs be combined with weapons and material storage and disposal activities? Could former Soviet chemical weapons scientists be employed in the construction of Russian chemical weapons destruction facilities?

Ms. JONES. I think that is, again, where a committee that would be coordinating the various activities of these programs could look for those kinds of synergies. Are there skills and abilities that weapons scientists have, whether they specialized in biological weapons or nuclear weapons, that could be used for some other program?

Just as a simple example, DOE also runs a program to improve the safety of Soviet-designed reactors. When we looked at that program, there was a need for fire doors, metal doors rather than wooden doors in these particular facilities. Let us look at the brain drain programs. Are there people already in Russia that could help design and build those doors, again, looking for leveraging with the different programs? So I think there is room for that, Senator.

Senator AKAKA. I have a final question to all of you. As I said earlier, we will reschedule the administration's testimony after the Bush-Putin summit. As experts in this field, are there questions you would ask of our administration witnesses when they appear before this Subcommittee in a couple of weeks? That is my question to you. If you want to reserve that, please give us the questions and that might help us have better insight into some questions to them.

Again, I want to thank all of you for being here, for your responses, for your testimonies, and I want to thank you, Ms. Jones, Ms. Holgate, and Dr. Spector, for being with us today.

I believe that the Russian government wishes to be a responsible steward of its weapons of mass destruction. I also believe that President Bush recognizes the importance of threat reduction programs. However, I share our witnesses' concerns that the adminis