plicated and ineffective. So that would be one area that I hope the Congress will be able to return to next year. We have looked in a couple of studies about whether or not there would be a benefit from having an individual agency that was responsible for export controls. I would agree with anyone who said that none of the agencies now do a particularly good job. It is very hard to get consensus on where you should move it. And a new agency may not have the power or the clout of an office that is linked to a cabinet member. So it probably would not hurt to shake up the system, but I am not sure we are ready to identify what the outcome would be. Senator AKAKA. I have to go, but we have questions for you. We will send the questions to you for your responses. But I want to thank you so much for coming today and appearing as our second panel and for sharing your statements with us. There is no question, what you have said will help us do a better job here in the U.S. Senate. Thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned. [Whereupon, at 4:59 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] COMBATING PROLIFERATION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (WMD) WITH NONPROLIFERATION PROGRAMS: NONPROLIFERATION ASSISTANCE COORDINATION ACT OF 2001 WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2001 U.S. SENATE, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, PROLIFERATION, OF THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:31 p.m., in room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel Akaka, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. Present: Senators Akaka, Cleland, Domenici, and Cochran. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA Senator AKAKA. The Subcommittee will please come to order. The Subcommittee is here to discuss the threats we face from insecure critical equipment and discontented scientists from the former Soviet nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons complex. I want to thank our colleague, Senator Hagel, for joining us today. I also wish to thank our other witnesses for being here, Ms. Gary Jones, the Director of Nuclear Nonproliferation Issues at GAO; Ms. Laura Holgate, Vice President of the Russian Newly Independent States Program of the Nuclear Threat Initiative; and Mr. Leonard Spector, Deputy Director of the Monterey Institute of International Studies Center for Nonproliferation Studies. President Bush and President Putin yesterday announced historic cuts to the nuclear stockpiles in the United States and Russia. For the future of both our nations and the prospect of a more secure world, I hope they are successful in addressing another legacy of the Cold War, the materials, facilities, equipment, and people used to make these and other weapons in the former Soviet Union. We have faced a major national security problem since the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Control of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapon materials was suddenly spread out among a number of newly independent nations. We could no longer be assured of adequate control of these weapons or the people who had designed them. Prior to 1991, international nonproliferation policy stressed keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of a few states. Since 1991, we have been faced with the possibility the information and materials which would have taken years to acquire to build a WMD weapon could be stolen in an instant. Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, the problem of preventing WMD proliferation has gained both a new urgency and a greater complexity. The FBI's assessment of the anthrax attacks which have plagued the Senate and the Nation's mail may have been perpetrated by a lone disgruntled scientist, demonstrates how a weapon that had only been in the hands of a state can now be wielded by a single terrorist. Weapons that we previously worried about being delivered by an intercontinental ballistic missile we now know can be infiltrated into our midst without any advance warning. We are faced with the prospect of spending billions of dollars to protect our homeland against multiple threats from multiple sources. Nonproliferation programs, the subject of today's hearing, are a critical means to prevent weapons, materials, equipment, and technology from falling into the wrong hands. I want to thank again our colleague, Senator Hagel, for being here to discuss this proposal to achieve a national strategy and improve coordination between the various nonproliferation programs. His legislation, the Nonproliferation Coordination Assistance Act, would establish a coordinating body to ensure that nonproliferation activities are efficient, effective, and further national interests. The Departments of State, Defense, and Energy have asked that their testimony be postponed until after President Bush's summit with President Putin. We have agreed to this and will reschedule their testimony in the near future. In our discussion of current and future nonproliferation plans and the ways to improve and better coordinate them, we must keep in mind two questions. First, how can we adapt to ever-changing WMD threats? And second, are our plans and policies making the world more secure? I look forward to hearing our witnesses' comments on these two questions. At this time, I would like to yield to my friend, Senator Domenici, for his statement. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DOMENICI Senator DOMENICI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Senator Hagel, I am pleased to be here adding some positive thrust to your legislation. I want to compliment you and the Chairman for holding this hearing. In addition, I want to compliment Senator Hagel for his proposed legislation. It has a very simple title but a very profound process is involved in this. It is called Nonproliferation Assistance Coordination Act of 2001. The importance of nonproliferation programs with the former Soviet Union should not be open to question. The collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War, but it also tremendously increased the risk that materials and expertise for weapons of mass destruction could contribute to new threats to global stability. For a country which relied on guards and guns to protect secrets and material, it was a jolting transition to a new situation where it was not clear if the guards, that is, if they were even still present, were The current war on terrorism is critically dependent on minimizing the extent of the threat that terrorists can mount. Preventing their access to weapons of mass destruction must be one of our highest priorities. Many nonproliferation programs were created, all with the best of intentions. Each program has well-stated goals. But these programs frequently are intertwined and interrelated in various complex and difficult ways. There could be no question that better coordination among the programs would lead to enhanced effectiveness, as well as potential cost efficiencies. The Nunn-Lugar-Domenici legislation-it is also obviously in Nunn-Lugar, but this followed it by a few years, in 1996-called for a nonproliferation coordinator for all these programs. The administration at that time chose to ignore that. After the legislation's call for a coordinator expired in 1999, I helped with further legislation for this coordinator in amendments to previous Defense Authorization Acts, again to no avail. There was nobody worried enough about it, and clearly the Executive Branch did not think it was a big enough or a powerful enough issue. Numerous committees have called for this coordination and have studied it. John Deutch chaired one of these committees. More recently, the superb effort from Senator Howard Baker and the Hon. Lloyd Cutler again called for this coordination. That is a current report, Mr. Chairman. For everybody on this staff that is interested in moving this issue along, that is "must reading." It is very current and has many current evaluations and studies in it. My friend, Chuck Hagel, is totally familiar with it, I am sure. In an amendment to the current defense authorization bill, I called for tighter coordination. I was pleased to develop that amendment with Senator Hagel, he might recall, building on the same bill that you are discussing here today. In addition to Senator Hagel, Senators Lugar, Biden, Bingaman, and Landreau joined us in cosponsoring it. All I can say is that it was unfortunate, but no action was taken on that amendment due to confusion in the minutes before the Senate voted on the defense authorization bill. Now I understand that the Armed Services Committee is working in conference to incorporate the themes of that amendment. But I am very pleased that while that is stalemated somewhere, you are giving birth to the idea with your bill here today. I do hope it is given every consideration and I hope you pursue it with vigor. It is very, very important. We can't forget about this coordination as terrorism gets closer and closer on the television monitors of Americans. There is an awful lot of terrorism potential when you think about what can be put together with all of the leftover Soviet materials and all of the material that comes from dismantlement programs. Clearly there are risks that come with the Soviet Union's turning out to have a very different amalgamation of programs. Clearly they have a difficult time finding money to pay just the ordinary kinds of expenditures to maintain control over these materials and expertise to avoid it spreading all over the world. There can be many examples where we needed this improved coordination. One of the immediate concerns involves the very vital tween the United States and Russia. The recent suggestion from the National Security Council that this program might be modified, along with strong budget signals that we are wavering in our support for the program, has introduced some great uncertainties. Failure to coordinate this complex program has led to some very serious issues which threaten to derail the entire effort in terms of plutonium disposition with Russia. We are now seeing the Governor of South Carolina, incidentally, refusing to accept plutonium from Rocky Flats and a German company withdrawing their offer to assist Russia with the MOX program because the administration has injected some really serious uncertainty by saying the program did not work by not having one to take its place. We saw a collapse of the efforts to obtain international funding for the program in Russia. Coordination could have avoided all these problems. In conclusion, I strongly concur, Mr. Chairman, with Senator Hagel and many of our colleagues that a far better coordination is needed across the government for our nonproliferation programs with the former Soviet Union. I might say that I am privileged to serve on a board of directors of a nonprofit corporation that is called the Nuclear Threat Initiative. That was set up with a $50 million a year pledge, I do not know how many years, but it will be a number of years, perhaps 5 years, or $250 million. I note that one of those who are working with Sam Nunn is Laura Holgate, sitting in the front row. She is going to be on our next panel. It has been a pleasure working with Ted Turner, Senator Lugar, and former Senator Nunn, and some other distinguished people, and we are going to make some real headway in terms of getting the world moving with reference to nonproliferation. We commented at our last board meeting that does not mean that we do not need government's action. Quite to the contrary. The reason some of the things are being done by that nonprofit is because our government has failed and they have not done some things they ought to be doing. So this is one of them, to get started on coordinating our own programs. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Senator Hagel. Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Senator Domenici. Thank you for your statement. Senator Cochran, may I yield to you if you have a statement. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COCHRAN Senator COCHRAN. Thank you very much. I ask unanimous consent that my prepared statement be placed in the record as if read. Senator AKAKA. Without objection, it will be placed in the record. [The prepared opening statement of Senator Cochran follows:] PREPARED OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COCHRAN Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to join you in welcoming Senator Hagel and our other witnesses to today's hearing on the United States' nonproliferation and threat reduction assistance programs in the former Soviet Union. I appreciate the fact that Senator Hagel is taking the time to be here with us despite the fact that he has another hearing to attend and so I will make just a brief statement. We have in place already several nonproliferation programs which are important tools that contribute to the effort to control the proliferation of weapons of mass de |