PROLIFERATION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, 11/13/1991, Testimony
- Basis Date:
- 19920110
- Chairperson:
- D. McCurdy
- Committee:
- House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
- Docfile Number:
- T91AN329
- Hearing Date:
- 19911113
- DOE Lead Office:
- IN
- Hearing Subject:
- PROLIFERATION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
- Witness Name:
- V. Alessi
-
Hearing Text:
-
STATEMENT OF
VICTOR E. ALESSI
DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF ARMS CONTROL AND NONPROLIFERATION TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT
BEFORE THE
HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
NOVEMBER 13, 1991
Introductory Remarks
I welcome this opportunity to speak before the Committee on
Intelligence on the subject of the control of weapons of mass
destruction.
As the Committee has requested, I will focus my comments on Iraq.
By way of introduction, let me briefly describe some recent steps
taken by Secretary of Energy, Admiral James Watkins, to strengthen the
ability of the Department of Energy (DOE) to combat the threat posed by
the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction such as we faced in Iraq. On
October 1, 1991, Admiral Watkins directed that all of the Department's
technical and policy resources devoted to non-proliferation be
centralized
and consolidated with the Office of Arms Control. This new Office will
report directly to the Secretary who has made nuclear nonproliferation a
top
priority of the DOE. I am pleased to be here to discuss the role that
the
DOE has taken in dealing with the Iraqi nuclear program since the end of
the
war. In early April, immediately following the cease fire in Iraq, the
Secretary of Energy was asked by the Secretary of State to offer all
possible assistance to United States and United Nations efforts to
implement
the provisions of the cease fire -- U.N. Security Council Resolution 687.
This Resolution calls for the destruction and long-term monitoring of
Iraq's
nuclear weapons program. Secretary Watkins pledged the strong support of
the
DOE to this important task.
Since then, the Department has sent U.S. nuclear weapons experts to
Iraq on every nuclear inspection. The Department has also placed its
expertise at the disposal of the State Department in preparing and
planning
for each inspection and in the analysis and interpretation of what we
have
found. The Department has drawn upon nuclear weapons experts from its
laboratories at Los Alamos, Livermore, Oak Ridge, and Sandia. These
experts
have also brought with them technical expertise and intimate knowledge of
nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel cycle technology. Many have been trained
to
deal with field emergencies because they are members of DOE's Nuclear
Emergency Search Teams, or NEST teams.
DOE experts helped discover and identify the calutrons on trucks
and
had shots fired at them in performing their tasks. DOE experts also spent
four nights in the parking lot outside PC3, the Headquarters building of
the
Iraqi nuclear weapons program after having acquired the documents which
removed all doubts about the intentions of the Iraq nuclear program.
Other
DOE experts have been assigned to assist the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq in
New York, and the Department of State (DOS) in support of these on-going
efforts.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) will (has) describe the key
intelligence assessments as you requested. I shall confine my remarks to
the
related policy issues appropriate to the DOE.
The Committee has asked about possible gaps in U.S. technology
transfer and arms control agreements that have been or can be exploited
by
proliferators. Let me respond by making some general observations about
the
interrelationship between denying technologies and nuclear proliferation.
There are some limits to what export control can do to prevent
proliferation. In discussing this relationship, we should recognize that
nuclear weapons are based on an old technology. It has been almost a half
century since the first nuclear explosion. Although the technical world
has
changed immensely since the era of the now-obsolete B-29 that carried the
first nuclear weapon, the fundamental physics and technology required to
make a nuclear weapon have not changed. Since the 1940's, there have been
immense advances in technology all over the world, which make the design
and
fabrication of nuclear weapons more difficult to control. To give a
couple
of examples, high school students today have personal computers many
times
more powerful than those that were used by our weapons laboratories as
late
as the 1960's to help design many of the weapons in our stockpile. The
oscilloscope used in a commercial television repair shop is far superior
to
that available to the first nuclear weapons designers.
This means that we cannot prevent, but only slow down, nuclear
proliferation through the denial of technology. Technology denial will be
most effective against relatively underdeveloped states which do not have
the technology base to draw upon and must therefore acquire their
technology
base from abroad. Technology denial and export controls will have much
less
impact in preventing a state with a well-developed industrial base from
eventually acquiring a nuclear weapon capability.
Unfortunately, unlike most underdeveloped states, Iraq has spent
many
billions of dollars to develop a broad industrial infrastructure which
can
support a nuclear weapons program.
Furthermore, Iraq has made a deliberate effort to make its nuclear
program self-sufficient and not reliant upon foreign suppliers. In a
private
conversation with DOE inspectors, during one of the inspections, Dr.
Jaffar,
the father of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program, said that a fundamental
decision on self-sufficiency was made in 1981. As you may recall in 1981,
Israeli aircraft destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor at Tuwaitha. After
the
bombing, there was a debate in Iraq on how to recover. It was then that
they
decided to reduce their reliance upon foreign suppliers and attain
nuclear
self-sufficiency. At that time, Iraq appears to have made the political
decision to send its nuclear program 'underground
Their decision to invest billions of dollars in uranium enrichment
through electro-magnetic isotope separation, the so-called calutron
program,
is an example of how they went about implementing this policy of self-
sufficiency. It was a program that did not have to depend on
sophisticated
imports needed for more modern and efficient methods of uranium
enrichment.
The Iraqi calutron program was largely indigenous and, in fact, was an
improvement over the technology used by the United States in the 1940's.
At
one point, the Iraqis informed us that they had attempted to build a
replica
of a U.S. calutron, but were unable to make it work.
We should not mislead ourselves into thinking that export controls
will, by themselves, prevent a country with the appropriate financial and
technical resources from developing a covert nuclear weapons program
should
they have the political determination to move down that path. The first
nuclear weapons were made with 1940's technology. It is hard to argue
that
such technology is not readily available worldwide even with strict and
effective export controls. While it is true the Iraqis certainly pursued
acquisition of modern sophisticated technology, such as gas centrifuges
for
uranium enrichment, that would make their nuclear weapons program more
efficient, they hedged their bets with more primitive systems such as
calutrons that they could make themselves.
The Iraqis still possess in abundance the single most important
dual-
use resource necessary for nuclear weapons development -- a reservoir of
trained, dedicated, and experienced scientists and technicians. In this
regard, DOE scientists on the IAEA inspection teams have frequently
expressed-surprise that the Iraq scientists do not behave like they are
members of a defeated nation. In fact, they have openly boasted that the
U.N. inspectors cannot take away the knowledge which Iraqi scientists
have
in their heads and that this can be used to rebuild their program. Our
experts were impressed with the quality and depth of technical expertise
in
Iraq.
It is against this background of what it takes in terms of
technology
and people to make a nuclear weapon, that I would describe United States
and
international export controls. In the long term, export controls cannot
prevent, but can only make it more difficult and lengthy, to produce
nuclear
weapons. The importance of controls is real and tangible, but should not
be
exaggerated.
The relatively minor role played by imports from the United States
in
Iraq's nuclear program indicates that stringent U.S. export controls,
combined with unique U.S. intelligence resources, make procurement from
the
United States relatively unattractive to a proliferant state.
In light of this, let me discuss the prospects for strengthening
existing technology transfer and arms control agreements or negotiating
new
agreements to contain proliferation.
The major weakness in export control regimes to contain nuclear
proliferation has not been the lack of U.S. controls but of international
controls on so-called nuclear dual-use items. Dual use items are items
which
have legitimate commercial and industrial uses but which can also
contribute
significantly to a nuclear weapons program if misused. Examples are
computers, oscilloscopes, machine tools, and zirconium.
There is an international regime, based on IAEA safeguards, to
control
fissile material that could be used to make nuclear weapons. Obviously,
this
regime could be strengthened as we have found out in the Iraq case.
Nevertheless, we have a international foundation to build upon. However,
there is no effective international regime to control the equipment and
technology which is necessary to convert fissile material into nuclear
weapons. The framers of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)
expected
states to live up to their objectives not to acquire unsafeguarded
fissile
materials. They believed that, if all fissile material was subjected to
international safeguards, there would be no need to explicitly prohibit
weaponization activities. Thus, no international regime exists which
specifically controls assistance in weaponization.
The United States is now leading an international effort under the
Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to create an international dual-use export
control regime which loosely parallels current United States controls.
The
regime would consist of export control guidelines which would apply to an
agreed list of commodities and technologies. The group of 26 nations, has
had meetings in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United States. Our
efforts
have been helped by the revelations concerning Iraq's massive procurement
of
dual-use technology. It is important that we take advantage of the new
atmosphere of heightened sensitivity to nuclear proliferation to press
for
as rigorous a regime as possible. I believe the prospects are very good
for
creating a dual-use regime sometime in 1992.
We are actively engaged with the Intelligence Community in
analyzing
what lessons can be drawn from the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Our
understanding of this program is still incomplete. However, our analysis
is
well underway.
DOE is committed to a thorough, systems approach, to determining
the
lessons of Iraq as they should apply to future proliferant states. We
have
asked DOE's national laboratories to produce a methodology that will
enable
us to better integrate what we know from national intelligence, export
control information, IAEA safeguards reports, etc. to give a more
systematic
approach to evaluating potential nuclear proliferants in the future. The
lessons learned thus far from Iraq have resulted in a clearer
understanding
of some of the steps necessary to strengthen our nuclear nonproliferation
policy. These include:
First, strengthened IAEA safeguards;
Second, improved international export controls, particularly in the
dual-use area;
Third, better sharing of information about proliferant state
programs
and procurement activities with the United Nations, the IAEA, and among
suppliers;
Fourth, an increased focus on proliferation by the United Nations,
particularly the Security Council.
Fifth, consideration of regional approaches in future international
agreements to contain proliferation. An example is the President's Middle
East Initiative. As a representative of a technical agency, I would
stress
that in addition to controlling technology, it is essential that there be
political and diplomatic efforts to control the motivations that drive
states to seek nuclear weapons.
The proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass
destruction are direct threats to the United States. The DOE considers
strengthening the international nuclear nonproliferation regime whose
centerpiece is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as essential to
United
States and international security.
This concludes my testimony, and I will be happy to take questions.
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