[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-2]
PREVENTING WEAPONS OF MASS
DESTRUCTION PROLIFERATION
AND TERRORISM
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
FULL COMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
JANUARY 22, 2009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TONGRESS.#13
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Eleventh Congress
IKE SKELTON, Missouri, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi HOWARD P. ``BUCK'' McKEON,
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii California
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
ADAM SMITH, Washington W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina JEFF MILLER, Florida
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California JOE WILSON, South Carolina
ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey ROB BISHOP, Utah
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California MICHAEL TURNER, Ohio
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
RICK LARSEN, Washington MIKE ROGERS, Alabama
JIM COOPER, Tennessee TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
PATRICK J. MURPHY, Pennsylvania DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado
HANK JOHNSON, Georgia ROB WITTMAN, Virginia
CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut DUNCAN HUNTER, California
DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa JOHN C. FLEMING, Louisiana
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
GLENN NYE, Virginia
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
LARRY KISSELL, North Carolina
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
FRANK M. KRATOVIL, Jr., Maryland
ERIC J.J. MASSA, New York
BOBBY BRIGHT, Alabama
Erin C. Conaton, Staff Director
Julie Unmacht, Professional Staff Member
Aileen Alexander, Professional Staff Member
Caterina Dutto, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
----------
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2009
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, January 22, 2009, Preventing Weapons of Mass
Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism........................ 1
Appendix:
Thursday, January 22, 2009....................................... 51
----------
THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2009
PREVENTING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION PROLIFERATION AND TERRORISM
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
McHugh, Hon. John M., a Representative from New York, Ranking
Member, Committee on Armed Services............................ 2
Ortiz, Hon. Solomon P., a Representative from Texas, Committee on
Armed Services................................................. 1
WITNESSES
Allison, Dr. Graham, Commissioner, Commission on the Prevention
of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism..... 8
Graham, Hon. Bob, Chairman, Commission on the Prevention of
Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism........ 4
Talent, Hon. James, Vice Chairman, Commission on the Prevention
of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism..... 6
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Graham, Hon. Bob, joint with Hon. James Talent and Dr. Graham
Allison.................................................... 57
Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Chairman,
Committee on Armed Services................................ 55
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Forbes................................................... 73
Ms. Shea-Porter.............................................. 75
Mr. Wilson................................................... 74
PREVENTING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION PROLIFERATION AND TERRORISM
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Thursday, January 22, 2009.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Solomon Ortiz
presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, A REPRESENTATIVE
FROM TEXAS, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. Ortiz. Good morning. Welcome to this hearing this
morning.
And the statement that I am about to read will be entered
for the record. Chairman Skelton is a little under the weather,
and he couldn't be here. But I want to welcome our witnesses
and all our old committee members and new committee members to
this great committee.
``Good morning. I would like to start by welcoming my
colleague, Representative John McHugh from New York, to his
first hearing as ranking member of this committee.''
Congratulations, sir.
``I would also like to extend a warm welcome to Senators
Bob Graham and Jim Talent,'' a former member of this
committee--James, so good to see you, and welcome to this
committee--``and to Dr. Graham Allison.''
Thank you, sir.
``Thank you all for being here today and for your hard work
on the Commission dealing with the prevention of weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) proliferation and terrorism.
``This committee was instrumental in the creation of the
Commission in the 9/11 bill, and the Commission's recent report
could not be more timely. This committee authorizes the bulk of
key U.S. nonproliferation programs, and our Subcommittee on
Terrorism and Unconventional Threats, chaired by Adam Smith,
also looks broadly at issues of terrorism and counter-
proliferation. We will begin the annual process of reviewing
these programs when the budget is released this spring.
``The risks associated with the proliferation of WMD,
particularly the risk that such weapons could fall into
terrorist hands, are some of the gravest threats facing our
country. Since the end of the Cold War, the world has
experienced a new era of proliferation.
``In the last eight years alone, North Korea has tested a
nuclear weapon and expanded its nuclear arsenal; Iran has
rapidly developed capabilities that may enable it to build
nuclear weapons; authorities uncovered a far-reaching nuclear
nonproliferation network run by Dr. A.Q. Khan of Pakistan;
nuclear arms rivalries have intensified in Asia and the Middle
East; changes in civil nuclear power programs have challenged
the nonproliferation regime; the spread of biotechnology has
increased the availability of pathogens and technologies for
sinister purposes; and dangerous chemical, nuclear,
radiological, and biological materials have remained poorly
secured throughout the world.
``At the same time, terrorism has spread around the globe,
and Pakistan has experienced rapid political change and
internal economic and security challenges while terrorist safe
havens have grown in its border areas.
``Yet, United States policy and strategy have not kept pace
with the growing risks associated with WMD proliferation and
terrorism and have failed to fully address the serious WMD
concerns raised by the 9/11 Commission. Nonproliferation and
threat reduction programs and activities have been under-
resourced and remain too narrow in scope; engagement with other
countries and international regimes on WMD threats has been
insufficient; and the interagency process has lacked the
leadership, coordination, flexibility, and innovation necessary
to effectively address these threats. This must change.
``This committee has already taken a number of important
steps on United States nonproliferation and threat reduction
programs that have moved these programs in the right direction.
However, there are additional opportunities to address WMD
threats.
``The United States must do what we can to secure and
reduce WMD and vulnerable WMD-usable material around the world,
and to reduce the risk that such dangerous weapons and material
could ever fall into terrorist hands. However, while we must do
more, the fact remains that we inevitably will be required to
make difficult assessments of risk in order to prioritize our
efforts. I look forward to the Commission's recommendations in
this regard.''
[The prepared statement of Mr. Skelton can be found in the
Appendix on page 55.]
Mr. Ortiz. And now let me yield to my good friend, the
ranking member of this committee, Mr. John McHugh.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN M. MCHUGH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW
YORK, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. McHugh. Thank you very much, my good friend Solomon
Ortiz.
And although the words he read were from the chairman of
the full committee, I know he wishes me his personal best as
well.
Do you not?
The record will show he does. I will need that later in the
year.
But, Mr. Chairman, I have a very extensive statement. And
simply because this is a very, very important issue, I would
ask unanimous consent that that formal written statement be
entered in its entirety in the record. And let me just try to
summarize a bit.
First of all, in spite of his absence here today, obviously
we wish Chairman Skelton a quick and speedy recovery from what
I understand is hopefully a relatively minor but very
bothersome affliction. But nevertheless, we all owe him a great
deal of gratitude for calling this hearing and providing what I
think is an important forum for an incredibly important issue.
And, in that regard, I want to join with my good friend,
Mr. Ortiz, in wishing our words of thanks and welcome to our
panelists here today, two of whom are what we still fondly look
at as congressional colleagues, Senator Graham and, of course,
my good friend and former House member, Jim Talent.
And, Dr. Allison, thank you, as well, for being here and
for placing your considerable talents and your intellect
against what is one of the most pressing issues this Nation
faces.
As my good friend from Texas, Mr. Ortiz, noted, this is a
timely hearing. Recent U.S. sanctions placed on individuals and
private companies from Europe and Asia who were involved in the
A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network should remind us all of
the willful intent of actors around the world to proliferate
WMD capability.
We learned on September 11th there is a clear and
dangerous, frightening nexus between WMD proliferation and
terrorism. As I said, this is not new. For the last seven to
eight years, we have known the harsh reality that Al Qaeda
seeks weapons of mass destruction to inflict the maximum amount
of human suffering, geopolitical disorder, and economic damage.
We have remained unyielding in our efforts to prevent Al
Qaeda from planning and executing a successful attack in the
United States. However, this statement is not made without
caution. Despite our best efforts, I concur with the Commission
that, as they put it, our margin of safety is shrinking, not
growing.
This week, we mark a new Administration. As such, we all
have a new opportunity to work in a bipartisan fashion to
develop a comprehensive and, I hope, concrete strategy to
ensure we have a diverse set of tools to counter WMD threats.
This strategy must include nonproliferation efforts but also
look more broadly at all other efforts--technology investments,
missile defenses, emergency response capabilities, and
interagency and international coordination efforts--that could
prevent and limit the damage caused by WMD proliferation and
terrorism.
This Commission's reports serve as a foundation for this
approach. There are many issues that lie before us--Russia's
recent actions; the miscalculations that could trigger a
nuclear confrontation between Pakistan and India; Iran; North
Korea--the kinds of things that face us each and every day and
must be confronted in new and material ways.
Before concluding, I want to mention another congressional
commission, the United States Strategic Commission established
by this committee. They are examining our strategic posture.
Their recent interim report was issued in December and
highlighted the need to maintain a secure, reliable deterrence
force for the foreseeable future, but also design a nuclear
program that contributes to decreasing the global dangers of
proliferation.
I see a natural complement to these two bodies, our
distinguished panel here today and that of the U.S. Strategic
Commission. Work could be instrumental in bringing together a
bifurcated approach, as it has been in the past, for a better
path to the future. And, gentlemen, Dr. Allison, I would be
interested in your thoughts on this possible eventuality.
Again, I commend you and your fellow commissioners and
staff on your work to address these complex issues.
And, Mr. Chairman, with that, I yield back.
Mr. Ortiz. Thank you, sir.
We are very honored to have three distinguished witnesses
before this committee today, and they have done a great job.
And I hope we can learn a lot from you today.
And I guess this morning we will start with you, Senator
Graham. Thank you so much, sir, for the work that you have
done, you and your members of your committee and members of
your staff. So we will begin with your statement whenever you
are ready, sir.
STATEMENT OF HON. BOB GRAHAM, CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON THE
PREVENTION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION PROLIFERATION AND
TERRORISM
Mr. Graham. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Congressman
McHugh, and the other outstanding, distinguished members of
this committee.
I would like to introduce one other person, who is the
executive director of our Commission and led us with great
intelligence and occasionally discipline when required, Ms.
Evelyn Farkas.
Mr. Ortiz. Welcome.
Mr. Graham. I am accompanied today, as you have said, by my
good friend and a person who, frankly, I did not know well
during our period of service in the Senate but have now come to
appreciate his intelligence and dedication to the security of
this Nation. And I know that much of his wisdom came from his
service on this committee.
And then Graham Allison, who is a true national treasure. I
doubt that there are more people than the fingers on one hand
who know as much about this subject as does Graham Allison. And
he was a tremendous contributor to our Commission.
Mr. Chairman and members, you created this Commission, and
we appreciate the opportunity that you have given us to serve.
Our charge was to assess our current policies as they relate to
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism
and then to make recommendations as to how we thought we could
further secure our Nation. You gave us six months to accomplish
this significant task.
I am pleased to report that our bipartisan Commission,
appointed by the leadership of the Congress, was unanimous in
the recommendations that we will be submitting to you today.
Our full report is available in book form, and I notice you
have those at your desk. And I hope that you will have an
opportunity to read further of our analysis and our
recommendations.
Our report was conducted through a staff of more than two
dozen professionals from the intelligence, military, scientific
communities, all of whom gave us great insight and a depth of
experience on these issues. We conducted more than 250
interviews with other officials and nongovernmental (NGO)
experts. We held eight major Commission hearings and one public
hearing.
We visited the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque
and also met with officials in the United Kingdom, Vienna at
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and in Russia.
We had planned to visit Pakistan, a country to which we
give considerable emphasis in this report. We were at the
airport in Kuwait awaiting a flight to Islamabad when we were
informed that the hotel in which we were going to spend the
night, the Marriott, had just been destroyed by a suicide
bomber. That brought the significance of what we were doing
into sharp, very personal focus.
Unlike some of the reports that we have heard in the recent
past, such as the 9/11 Commission, the Iraq Study Commission,
there has been, thanks to God, no weapon of mass destruction
used against U.S. interests or in the world by terrorists to
date. Therefore, there is no trail of evidence of how that
particular event evolved, no tangible ability to then analyze
and assess causation. We are talking about an event that has
not yet occurred and which it is, we think, within our
capability, within your responsibility to take steps to
mitigate the prospects that will occur.
Our report attempted to be as direct and as honest as
possible. And, as I said, these were the unanimous conclusions
of our Commission. Let me state three of our most significant
conclusions.
One, our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing.
Although the United States has done many things to try to
increase our security, we are not operating alone. We are
operating on a field against adversaries who, in our judgment,
in conjunction with changes in technology, have been moving at
a pace faster than our efforts to control them.
Second, the Commission believes that, on the current
trajectory, it is more likely than not--more likely than not--
that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist
attack somewhere in the world by the end of the year 2013. That
is not only our assessment, but the assessment of the United
States Intelligence Community.
And third, as we have concluded, it is more likely that
that attack will be with a biological weapon than with a
nuclear weapon, given the wider availability of biological
materials and know-how.
As we learned, the world is at risk. It is at risk because
of a new era of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The fast pace of development in the biological field, nuclear
proliferation, a coming nuclear energy renaissance, and a
nascent arms race, nuclear arms race in Asia, all conspire to
increase the risk to the United States and the world.
While the mandate of the Commission was to examine the full
sweep of the challenges by the nexus of terrorist activity and
proliferation to all forms of weapons of mass destruction--
chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear--we opted to
center the Commission's finding on those two that we felt had
the greatest likelihood of mass deaths: biological and nuclear.
Our report does not sugarcoat this threat, but we are not
helpless. We believe that our recommendations, if promptly
adopted, will increase the margin of safety for America and the
world.
It is my pleasure to introduce my colleague, Senator and
Congressman Jim Talent, who will discuss those recommendations
which will increase our margin of safety.
[The joint prepared statement of Mr. Graham, Mr. Talent,
and Dr. Allison can be found in the Appendix on page 57.]
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES TALENT, VICE CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON
THE PREVENTION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION PROLIFERATION AND
TERRORISM
Mr. Talent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank
Mr. McHugh for your kind words, and our chairman here on the
Commission, Senator Graham, who just did an excellent job of
pulling us all together behind this report.
I thought when I agreed to serve on this Commission as the
vice chairman that it certainly could be no more difficult than
getting the kind of consensus you often get here on the
committee and we often got when I served on it. And then I
found out we have nine very strong-minded people who are
experts in this field, and trying to get them all to agree to
one thing is difficult. And Senator Graham did a great job of
getting us there.
I know when I was in your position I wanted to get to the
question time as quickly as possible. I am going to be brief
for that reason and also because Dr. Allison is going to talk
about much of the part of our report that is in your
jurisdiction. I have a couple of comments about the threat and
then about the biological recommendations and about Pakistan,
and then I will yield to Dr. Allison.
First of all, we have had a lot of questions about why
2013. Well, it is our best belief, based on the interviews, the
review of the material, the travel around the world, that this
is a near-term threat, not an intermediate-term or long-term
threat. And that is one of the things we wanted to emphasize.
We all know that this town tends to constantly defer the
important in the name of doing the urgent. And the point of our
report is this is both important and urgent. This is not
something that may happen 10, 15, 20, 25 years from now. This
is a near-term threat. And with everything else that you have
to do--and we know what you have to do--we strongly recommend
that you keep this as a first-year priority, as you have done,
by the way, in your oversight and refining and expansion of
your Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) efforts.
We know that the terrorists want to get these weapons. We
know that they have tried to get these weapons. And we know
that they are sophisticated enough, organizationally, to
develop the capabilities. They don't have to become some new
order of organization in order to get weapons of mass
destruction, particularly biological, which is one of the
reasons we are so concerned about that.
And we also know that their view of the world--and,
strategically, they view the world, in many respects, better
than we do--is driving them in this direction. They understand
that, for their purposes, the world is really a nexus or a
matrix of systems--you know, financial, communications,
transportation--on which we depend more than they do, and the
links of which are very vulnerable to attack. And they also
know that, having no national base, the traditional kinds of
deterrents don't work against them.
They are also very sophisticated in the concept of
asymmetric weapons, which you all deal with all the time. And
it is very logical for them to want to step up the asymmetric
weaponry at their disposal and their capabilities in that
regard. And the next logical step for them is to get weapons of
mass destruction.
Now, the report's recommendations are organized in four
areas: biological, nuclear, changing government culture in
certain respects, and then citizen participation. I am just
going to talk briefly about biological and Pakistan. We had
some single-country recommendations, and Pakistan was the most
significant of those.
In the biological area, a big concern we have about
biological is that it is going to be easier for them to develop
the capability not only to attack with biological but then to
repeat the attack. They can get the nuclear capability, but, as
you know, because of the bottleneck of nuclear materials, it is
hard for them to get enough to put together more than one bomb.
But once you isolate a pathogen and you are able to develop it
and weaponize it, it is relatively easy to develop more than
one weapon. And that gives them the capability to potentially
hit the same city two or three times in a row. My concern is
that they might be able to kill an American city doing that
because they just terrify people so they won't live there
anymore. That is another reason we think they may be going in
the direction of biological.
Now, there is a number of things we need to do with
biological. Our government regulates the high-containment
laboratories through three different agencies and a number of
different regulatory schemes. And we recommend unifying it with
one agency and having one single set of regulations that
everybody can understand; and working with the life science
community to create a greater culture of accountability and
security within that community, as already exists in the
nuclear science community.
We note in our report that the nuclear age began with a
nuclear explosion. So everybody in nuclear science got it. You
know, this is a technology that, if it is abused, can be very
destructive. Everybody in life science, on the other hand, is
in it for the right purposes. They are all working very hard to
develop new cures, to make life better, and they are just not
as conscious of the danger that that technology will be abused.
We believe that the very act of this Congress passing a
kind of regulatory reform that you did in the intelligence
area, for example, although it would be much smaller, is going
to raise awareness within that community, and that is going to
be very helpful.
Internationally--and this is the piece that you all have
direct jurisdiction over--we need to expand CTR and apply it
more to biological. You have taken some good steps in that
direction. We have to secure these materials and these
scientists around the world better than we are doing. Again,
the government has been making progress, you all have been
making progress, the Department of State has been making
progress, but more needs to be done.
Pakistan, as we know, it is an epicenter of everything that
concerns us. It is a nuclear power. It is expanding its nuclear
weaponry. It is a center for terrorism activity. It is a
government that has definite characteristics of instability
that may be penetrated by the terrorists. And it is also
involved in a tremendous competition with India, which raises
the prospect of a nation-state perhaps using nuclear weapons.
So that has to be a priority of American foreign policy and
defense policy.
In terms of your jurisdiction, the military is doing a
tremendous job of working on eliminating safe havens and going
after the terrorists in various areas in Pakistan. That needs
to continue. And also we know that the Department of Defense
(DOD) is appropriately talking in terms of using smart power or
soft power to complement the hard power already at its
disposal. And that is a very good thing.
We talk a lot about it in the report, about the need for
the civilian agencies of national power, the State Department
and the other agencies that possess various capabilities, to go
through the kind of examination and culture change that you all
helped shepherd the military through beginning in the late
1940s and then through Goldwater-Nichols.
And one of the things we wanted to say to you all is you
need to look and work with your counterparts in the Committee
on Foreign Affairs about whether DOD ought to develop this
capability or whether DOD ought to help the Department of State
and the civilian agencies develop this capability. The danger
is that, because they need the capability to complement the
traditional military power that they exercise, and if the
civilian agencies are slow in developing it, that the
Department may just develop it because they need it. So, by
default, it will be resident in the Department. And maybe that
is the right policy, but maybe it isn't, and the policy ought
not to be made by default.
But we think it would be great if the rest of the
government looked at what has happened with the military, look
at what is happening with intelligence, and pursued the same
kind of culture change. And we think Pakistan is a great test
case, a great place to begin that. Because, without the tools
of smart or soft power, we are not going to succeed in
Pakistan. We believe that very strongly.
Mr. Chairman, I think I am going to end my comments now and
yield to Graham Allison, whose work and expertise in this area
is known and is going to discuss CTR and the whole nuclear
side.
[The joint prepared statement of Mr. Talent, Mr. Graham,
and Dr. Allison can be found in the Appendix on page 57.]
Mr. Ortiz. Dr. Allison.
STATEMENT OF DR. GRAHAM ALLISON, COMMISSIONER, COMMISSION ON
THE PREVENTION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION PROLIFERATION AND
TERRORISM
Dr. Allison. Thank you very much. And it is a great honor
to have an opportunity to appear before the committee again.
And it was a great honor to be chosen to serve on this
Commission with the great chairman and vice chairman.
I submitted some brief comments for the record, but let me
try to summarize my points very briefly under three headings:
first, some good news; secondly, some bad news; and then
thirdly, an inconvenient question.
So, the good news. January 1st--to put this in perspective,
January 1st was the 17th anniversary of the collapse of the
Soviet Union. January 1st, 17 years ago, the Soviet Union
disappeared. Emerged Russia and 14 newly independent states,
with about 15,000 nuclear weapons left outside of Russia and
about 15,000 weapons inside Russia, under conditions of chaos,
corruption, confusion. So the question, how many of those
30,000 nuclear weapons have been found loose somewhere in
international markets in the 17 years since then? And the
unbelievable answer is zero--zero.
If you want to see how unbelievable it is, go back and read
the transcript of ``Meet the Press'' in December 1991 when the
question was asked of the then-Secretary of Defense, whose name
was Dick Cheney, what is going to happen to the nuclear weapons
in the Soviet Union if the Soviet Union unravels. And he said,
quote, ``If they have about 30,000 nuclear weapons and they are
99 percent effective in controlling them, which is more than
you could expect, that would leave 300 weapons loose.'' And he
said, with the confusion and chaos of the time, it is hard to
imagine FedEx would do better than them.
So how has that happened? I would say a whole lot of
factors, but, among those factors, a crucial element has been
the strong support of this committee and the Congress for what
became Nunn-Lugar and the Cooperative Threat Reduction
programs. Success always has a thousand fathers and mothers.
And if tomorrow we found a dozen weapons somewhere in the world
that were loose, nobody who has worked on the program would be
shocked. But I think, remarkably, as a combination of great
work by the Russians, lots of imaginative actions by Americans
authorized and funded by this committee, and a big chunk of
grace and good fortune, in any case, something that was almost
unbelievable that would have changed our world if it had
happened didn't happen.
So I would say the good news is this is not something about
which we should be fatalistic. This is something about which we
have actually focused on it before, we have done some things,
those things have had effect. That is point one.
The bad news: As Senator Graham has already said, a major
finding, bottom line, of this report is that the likelihood of
a successful WMD terrorist attack over the period ahead is
growing, not shrinking. Now, that seems unfair, and, as Senator
Talent has explained, we have certainly been doing more things.
You have funded more programs. More people have been more
active. So how can it be that the problem is getting worse? And
we say there are two factors that I mention in my testimony.
First, an adverse trend line in which science and
technology is relentlessly advancing and enabling more and more
people with the capacity to kill massively in a form that only
states could have done previously. So that is the trend line
that is just there externally.
And secondly, ineffective policies, ineffective policies
that leave North Korea with ten bombs' worth of plutonium,
rather than two at the beginning of the century; Iran with
5,000 centrifuges, rather than zero at the beginning of the
century; Pakistan having tripled its arsenal as the state
became more at risk.
So the bad news is the likelihood, we believe--and this was
nine quite diverse Republicans and Democrats on the
Commission--unanimously agree that the likelihood of an attack
has been growing, not shrinking.
So the inconvenient question, finally, that I have been
troubled about lately--so this is not the Commission report but
my own reflection as I have been thinking about this after--as
all of us have watched the collapse of the financial system,
which this time last year people were assuring us was stable
and successful, I think most of us have taken a pause from time
to time to say, ``Do we really understand the systemic risk in
global systems on which we are dependent?'' I certainly have
been thinking about that.
And if I ask myself, is the global nuclear order more
stable or less stable than the global financial order was this
time a year ago or two years ago, it looks to me like in the
same zone and, therefore, to be extremely troublesome.
So I will stop with that.
[The joint prepared statement of Dr. Allison, Mr. Graham,
and Mr. Talent can be found in the Appendix on page 57.]
Mr. Ortiz. Thank you so much.
This is scary, to put it one way.
And I know that the Commission's report highlighted the
need for increased attention on regional WMDs' proliferation
and terrorism in nations in Asia and the Middle East and a
comprehensive strategy for such issues, particularly in
Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea.
Now, if you could elaborate a little bit on what type of
strategy does the Commission recommend, for instance, for
Pakistan, for Iran, for Korea, would these be new strategies
that maybe have not been tried before? Maybe you could
elaborate a little bit on that, if you will.
Mr. Graham. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
One of the things that the Commission attempted to do was
to not micromanage how these policies should be carried out.
There are going to be very able people now in positions of
responsibility in the Congress and in the executive branch, and
it is your challenge to view the facts as they are in time and
make tactical judgments. So our recommendations are what we
hope are at the strategic level, primarily focusing on what
goals we wish to accomplish.
In the case of North Korea and Iran, our statement is that
the goal of the United States policy should be the elimination
of their nuclear program and its ability to become weaponized.
And then we made a series of general suggestions of how to get
to that objective: that we should be prepared to engage
directly with North Korea and Iran; that, in that engagement,
we should have both incentives and disincentives to offer; we
should not take off the table, at any point, the use of force
in the event that diplomacy failed. We think it is very
important that neither of those states, in the case of North
Korea, are able to continue to expand their weapons program,
which, as Dr. Allison said, eight years ago had two bombs and
today has the capability of ten; and, in the case of Iran, had
zero nuclear capability eight years ago and today is on the
verge of enough material to make its first bomb.
If either of those two countries were to go nuclear, one,
they would in and of themselves be threatening. North Korea is
seen as a significant threat to our allies, South Korea and
Japan. It also would likely trigger a regional escalation of
nuclear capability. In the Middle East, if Iran goes nuclear,
it is almost inevitable that Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia will
seriously consider and likely attempt to acquire nuclear
capability. So the world will become a much more destabilized
and dangerous place if that occurred.
In the case of Pakistan--and let me say the obvious: None
of these recommendations are easy. If they were easy, they
would have already been accomplished. But, in the case of
Pakistan, it is the intersection of every bad thing you would
want in terms of the likelihood of a weapon of mass destruction
falling into the hands of a terrorist.
We think that we have to fundamentally change our approach
to Pakistan to one of beginning to focus on building the
institutions that will stabilize the country and begin to drain
off some of the enmity that is currently being evinced towards
the United States and Western culture generally.
We don't think you can solve Pakistan within the boundaries
of Pakistan. Again, as Dr. Allison said and as Vice Chairman
Talent underscored, a big part of Pakistan's danger is its 60-
year, 4-war relationship with India. India and Pakistan, as
well as China, are all rapidly increasing their nuclear
arsenals. Soon they could well be the third, fourth, and fifth
largest nuclear states in the world. So, to solve Pakistan, you
have to look regionally.
I personally think that the pending appointment, if it has
not already occurred, of Richard Holbrooke to be the envoy to
that region of the world is a very positive development and
that he will take that broad perspective of what we need to do
to begin to stabilize Pakistan and initiate policies that will
reduce its current center role as a site for weapons of mass
destruction and proliferation.
I will just conclude with the unhappy statement that
virtually every person--intelligence, military, political--who
has studied this issue has come to the conclusion that the most
likely place that the next terrorist attack will be launched
will be from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA),
those uncontrolled territories between Pakistan and
Afghanistan, again underscoring the centrality of Pakistan in
terms our efforts to avoid this global catastrophe.
Mr. Talent. Mr. Chairman, as Senator Graham said, we don't
want to get really into the tactics on the ground in foreign
policy because Presidents have to have discretion to respond to
events, and also there were some areas where, frankly, we just
really couldn't get a consensus in terms of tactics. And Iran
and North Korea were that.
But we anticipate direct engagement by the new
Administration and said, look, if you do that, your goal should
be elimination of their nuclear weapon program in their
entirety; you should negotiate from a position of strength and
be prepared to use direct action.
And I am a believer--and Dr. Allison may want to talk about
this. He talks a lot about the importance of having credible,
significant carrots and credible, significant sticks. Because,
to me, it is just common sense that if you want somebody to do
something, you would be prepared to give them good things if
they do it and make them understand bad things will happen if
they don't. And that is probably the best chance we have to
consistently follow that policy over time.
With regard to Pakistan, we recommend continuing to
eliminate the safe havens, which we are doing; expanding what
are basically CTR efforts to secure the nuclear and biological
materials, which we have done some of but need to do a lot
more; and that we engage actively tools to defeat the extremist
ideology. And here again, we are referring to the tools of soft
power.
And I think of it in these terms. I want Presidents to have
options. So when the new President is considering what to do
about Pakistan, it would be great if he had the option of
saying, ``Well, let's use our resident capability of
effectively communicating messages about our intentions to the
people of Pakistan so as to cut off terrorist recruiting
there.'' And I am really glad we have that capability resident
in the ex agency. And I think that the Department of Defense
can either develop that capability or be a huge help, as it can
this committee, in assisting the Department of State in
developing that capability; also building, you know, local
economic and grassroots institutions, which requires the same
kind of capabilities.
Mr. Ortiz. Would you like to add something, Dr. Allison?
Dr. Allison. Just briefly, one of the strong lines in the
report, I think probably written by Chairman Graham, is that if
you map weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, all roads
intersect in Pakistan. So I would say that is a big takeaway.
Secondly, to agree with Senator Talent, we, in part because
we couldn't agree among ourselves and in part because we didn't
want to be micromanaging, retreated to what is the normal
commission style and sometimes even Congressional style, which
is stating ambitious objectives and then turning it over to
somebody else to figure out how to do it.
And I think the hard and unpleasant fact is that the hand
that the new Administration will inherit with respect to North
Korea is a country that has ten bombs' worth of plutonium and
has conducted a test. So it is perfectly appropriate to say
North Korea should eliminate these, and that should be our
objective, but it is where it is. So facts on the ground have
advanced.
In the case of Iran, our objective should be that Iran
would eliminate all of its enrichment activity. But,
unfortunately, Iran has crossed already ten red lines that we
said they couldn't cross before. It manufactures centrifuges.
It operates centrifuges. It operates them in a cascade. It
enriches uranium. So those are facts that will be extremely
difficult to erase.
And in the case of Pakistan, I would say the most troubling
thing for me is that it has essentially tripled its arsenal of
nuclear weapons over this period, as the state has become
increasingly fragile and shaky. And, yes, of course, they
should have fewer nuclear weapons, and they should be stable.
Over to Holbrooke, I would say, you know, good luck.
We should notice that the history moves on. And once it has
moved on, our opportunity to intervene often is among shrunken
options that are less attractive than what we would have wished
or hoped or maybe even would have been available if we had
acted earlier.
Mr. Ortiz. And I just have one more short question for you.
I think, in my personal opinion, we are focused in two wars
that we are fighting now, and there was a tendency by some not
to engage those countries who were identified as being
terrorists or groups that were terrorists.
Do you think that we have done enough diplomatically?
Should we do more? Should we engage those countries to see if
we can win them over? What is your idea?
And then I will yield to my good friend from New York.
Mr. Graham. I think one of our most fundamental
recommendations--and it certainly falls into the category Dr.
Allison just described of where we identified a big problem and
a goal, recognizing the enormous difficulty of achieving it. In
my assessment, we have been fighting the war on terror by
fighting the symptoms of terror: the suicide bomber, the people
who blew up the buildings on 9/11.
What we have to start doing is dealing with the root causes
of terror. Why are so many tens of millions of people prepared,
apparently, to send their sons and daughters to commit suicide
on behalf of an extremist cause? What is within our capability
of trying to reduce that enmity so that our children and
grandchildren don't live in a world of this enormous hatred? I
think that is an issue that is worthy of the best minds in the
United States Congress to work with the Administration to try
to determine what is a strategy.
Now, I personally think that, while it is extremely
difficult, it is not an impossible dream. On a smaller scale,
it is something that, Mr. Chairman, I imagine you have
experienced, as have I, given where we come from. Sixty years
ago, our relations in Latin America were truly awful. The Vice
President of the United States tried to make a 12-stop visit to
Latin America in the 1950s and was so abused in the first 2
stops that he turned the plane around and came back to
Washington.
Now, while our relationships in the hemisphere are not
perfect, they are dramatically better than they were. And that
didn't just happen by accident. We and our neighbors did some
things that improved the relations. One of the things, for
instance, was thousands of young people from Latin America
decided, rather than staying home or going to Europe, they
would come to the United States to get their education. And so
now the President of Colombia happens to be a graduate of the
Kennedy School. So he knows America not by a two-dimensional
cardboard cutout image, but by the flesh and blood of the
people he has actually dealt with.
I cite that as an example of a major challenge that we, I
think, can take pride at the progress that we have made. And I
hope that the people who are sitting in your chairs two
generations from now will be able to say that we have made some
significant progress in improving our relations in the part of
the world from which many of our most significant threats are
now emanating.
Mr. Ortiz. Mr. McHugh.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And again, gentlemen, thank you so much for being here.
Such an extraordinarily important topic.
Dr. Allison, I heard your comments about the nuclear
arsenal in Pakistan. I am curious, what is your assessment of
the command and control of the security of that arsenal right
now?
Dr. Allison. I would suggest that the committee would
appropriately look at the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE),
and you might want to ask that in a closed setting to folks
from the Intelligence Community.
But I think, from the public record, what has been said and
what I believe and what we say in the report, is that U.S.
assistance, as well as Pakistan's own efforts, leave the
nuclear arsenal itself in better shape than it was, say, some
number of years ago, especially before the A.Q. Khan episodes,
with more question marks about the nuclear weapons-usable
material in the laboratories at some facilities like the
facility that A.Q. Khan was the director of.
That is for the technical systems and for the personal
systems in which the Army plays the crucial role. But the
counterpart to that, which I think you can get to by logic, is
if the state itself becomes shaky or even unstable or perhaps
even comes apart, those systems don't magically control stuff.
The systems mostly are incorporated in people. And I have told
several times at the Commission, I have been extremely
interested in this question for a long time and have talked to
Musharraf about it three or four times on separate occasions.
And the agency had him as a visitor at Harvard for a couple of
days. And he said, ``Don't worry, everything is under 100
percent control, it is not conceivable that something could be
lost.''
And on one of these occasions, he had, just two weeks
before, come within a second and a half of being assassinated.
And the prevention of the assassination was only possible by
some technical assistance from the U.S. Government. So I said
to him, how likely is it that your nuclear weapons are more
secure than the president of the country?
Mr. McHugh. Let's take that a step further because I agree
with you. While you can asses the command and control of those
weapons stockpiled now and assess them to be relatively secure,
they really are dependent upon the security and stability of
the government.
What we hear from Pakistan is their actions in the FATA
have the potential of undermining the stability of the central
government. And as we have seen this aggressive and then less
aggressive posture, in part that has been driven by domestic
politics, as policies are here.
To what extent can we count on the Pakistani Government to
rid the FATA of those threats that cause this Commission to say
all roads of terror lead to Pakistan, or all roads of potential
WMD, without disrupting that balance that would cause the fall
of that government and then, down the chain, call into question
the security of the stockpile?
Dr. Allison. I would say, for my nickel, you are absolutely
on the bull's-eye. And when one looks at the complexity of
Pakistan and the fragility of the political system--as one of
my friends who knows Pakistan very well says, there is only one
load-bearing institution in Pakistan, and that is the army.
So the political system is extremely fragile. The
differences among people are quite large. The population's
views about the War on Terror and even the activities in the
FATA is that this is doing Americans a favor. That is not the
universal view, but that is the majority view.
So trying to balance, on the one hand, the motivation and
cooperation required to prevent Al Qaeda from reconstituting
its operations in ungoverned Pakistan, which is totally
unacceptable from an American point of view I believe, and
without, on the other hand, contributing to the instability in
Pakistan has been the dilemma in the policy for some period of
time.
Now, as Chairman Graham said--and the Commission debated
this at some considerable length--for quite a long time--again,
now, this is just from what the newspapers report--for quite a
long time, the U.S. did not attack Al Qaeda in ungoverned
Pakistan. And only last summer did the Predator program become
active again, if we read the newspapers. And since then, there
have been quite a lot of attacks, including a number of Al
Qaeda operatives killed, including one of my favorites, a
fellow named Hatab, who was the head of their nuclear and
biological program.
So, is this stressful for Pakistani politics and the
society in which one country is operating militarily inside
another country without its approval? Indeed, it is. It is
extremely. On the other hand, if the alternative is to allow
the reconstitution of headquarters and training camps for Al
Qaeda, excuse me, that is what happened in Afghanistan before
9/11 and for which we say shame on us. So I think that balance
is extremely difficult.
And I think the new President of Pakistan, you know, sort
of is struggling with that every day, as is the American
Ambassador, as is whoever is going to try to formulate American
policy in the next phase.
Mr. McHugh. If those attacks, if those attacks are
happening by U.S. policy, you would agree you have to be
extraordinarily careful not to cause the downfall of this
relatively stable government, at least for the moment?
Dr. Allison. Absolutely. And, again, the fact is that one
can read about things going on in the newspapers. One would
wish that there were things that went on about which you
wouldn't read in the newspapers. But I would say that is maybe
history. I would prefer such a situation, but I think that if
and when an attack occurs in a village in Pakistan, killing
some foreigners who were there, the Pakistani press reports it
and the American press reports it, and it has the
reverberations in Pakistani politics that you suggest.
Mr. McHugh. One last question for any of the panelists. I
remember Henry Kissinger, who was somewhat excoriated during
his career, said that the potential of the force of the United
States military has to be kept on the table in defending the
oil fields, which were critical to our economy and our way of
life. And without getting back into that debate, as I read the
Commission's report, the ultimate potential of military force
must be reserved against Iran and North Korea. Unfortunately, I
couldn't agree more. And I say ``unfortunately'' because that
is obviously a place we would prefer not to go.
However, I would be interested in you gentlemen's
assessment of how other important nations in that equation,
particularly Russia et al., might view that kind of
recommendation.
Mr. Graham. If I could use your question to talk about that
and the issue of Russia generally, between Russia and the
United States, we control over 95 percent of the nuclear
material on earth. So a positive relationship on this issue of
security of nuclear material and hopefully a strengthened
relationship on security of biological material is critical.
We visited Russia in September of last year. I was
concerned that our visit would be terminated because we
couldn't get visas to go into Russia. This was shortly after
the invasion of Georgia; tensions were high between our two
countries. We did get visas.
Then I was concerned that we would meet a very hostile
group of Russians. Quite to the contrary. The recurring theme
was, yes, we have some serious issues between us--Georgia,
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion, missile
defense--but that is going to be the pattern when two large
countries are living in the same global space. But we
understand that there is one thing that we have in common, and
that is a responsibility to our people and to the world to
protect all this nuclear material that comes under our control.
And they reiterated, we are as committed to this as we were
prior to this current set of disagreements. And that statement
was confirmed by our embassy and by our United States
Department of Energy scientific personnel who are in Russia,
whose purpose it is to oversee what the Russians are doing
relative to nuclear security.
In our report, we made a recommendation that we needed to
communicate to the rest of the world that this relationship on
nuclear security had not been breached. And we made several
suggestions of how we might do that.
One of the suggestions came from a personal experience that
I had had in Pakistan as chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee when we met with representatives of the Pakistani
Joint Command and I asked the question, what controls do you
and the Indians have in place to avoid an accidental nuclear
launch? The answer was, virtually none. There was no and is no
equivalent of the red phone that was symbolic of our efforts
during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
So one of our recommendations is that Russia and the United
States together could serve a very valuable function for the
world to work with Pakistan and India and try to encourage them
to adopt those kinds of fail-safe and mistake-containment
policies that worked so well for us for the better part of 40
years.
So I think Russia is a very critical part of this equation.
And we need to continue to work to see that, whatever disputes
we may have, that they don't leak out and infect our common
responsibility of nuclear security.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Either of the two gentleman, Dr. Allison, Senator Talent?
Dr. Allison. Just a quick footnote on Bob Graham's point.
As a result of the Bratislava agreement, which was between
President Bush and President Putin in February of 2005, so just
the beginning of President Bush's second term, they developed a
recipe in which the two Presidents took personal responsibility
for the nuclear terrorism threat at the top of the agenda.
They agreed on a work plan for securing to a defined level
called comprehensive upgrades 75 percent of Russian nuclear
weapons and material, which were all the ones they would let us
work on, everything except for the jewel boxes that they work
on mostly themselves.
People were identified as the lead responsibility for this
issue, including Sam Bodman for the U.S. and his Russian
counterpart. And they had to report to the two Presidents every
six months on how they were doing.
So, with all of the back and forth in Russia, what then
happened? And I would say it is a great good-news story. In
December, Secretary Bodman reported, and President Bush then
announced, that all the weapons and materials, which are about
75 percent of Russian weapons and materials, in the work plan
had been completed over that period of time.
So that is part of the National Nuclear Security
Administration (NNSA) activity in particular that this
committee has supported and examined and overseen and funded,
or authorized. And I would say, again, it is another part of a
good-news story as an example.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you.
Mr. Talent. I think you have to distinguish between when we
are dealing with countries whose objectives at least basically
are similar to ours and those who at least we suspect have
objectives that are not similar to ours.
And the traditional tools we have--diplomacy, public
assistance, military power, the international regime as it is
now constituted--I think if we use those tools effectively and
consistently, they are probably good enough in dealing with the
first class of countries that basically want what we want at
the end of the day, but we may just have difficulty dealing
with them. And that is most of the countries, including Russia
in the context of this kind of a problem, because they really
don't want proliferation of these materials, we think.
But you are going to have some regimes which may have more
aggressive objectives or just may be very, very difficult to
predict, like the North Koreans or the Iranians. And the burden
of our report is that it is clear, in dealing with those
governments, we have to expand the options and the capabilities
that any President has at his or her disposal to be able to
deal with those countries. I mean, diplomacy as traditionally
constituted, foreign assistance--I mean, it is fine; it just
doesn't do the trick.
And so, for example, we suggest strengthening the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), better funding,
better technology because it is being overwhelmed, a range of
penalties that effectively shift the burden of proof for a Non-
Proliferation Treaty (NPT) violation, so that countries like
this have to show the international community that they are
complying instead of playing some kind of Perry Mason game over
years where, you know, they have a pretense of complying and we
accept the pretense because it is hard not to.
And then what we talked about before, developing these
capabilities so that a President has the option of saying, in a
place like Pakistan, well, look, let's do something about how
we are viewed in Pakistan by helping build local institutions
of democracy and economics and good public relations campaigns
like you all have to conduct every two years if you want to be
here, right? I mean, develop those capabilities so that the
Pakistani Government can be seen as helping us without becoming
less stable.
A theme through the report is that this game is about, in
part, increasing resident capabilities so that Presidents have
a wider range of options in dealing with the hard cases.
Mr. McHugh. Thank you.
Thank you gentlemen.
Mr. Chairman, I will yield back.
Mr. Taylor. [Presiding.] Thank you.
We would like to remind the newer members that, by
tradition, the chairman and the ranking member are not limited
by time; everyone else is.
We will now recognize people in the order that they were
here at the gavel, and we will strictly enforce the five-minute
rule.
Dr. Snyder from Arkansas for five minutes.
Dr. Snyder. And of course those of us who are not the
chairman or ranking member sometimes wish that that tradition
changed, but, you know, we are all supportive of tradition.
I appreciate you all being here. It is great to see you
all.
Senator Graham, you look great. You and I had some doctors
cut into our chests about the same time some years ago, and I
haven't seen you since then. And you look like you have been
spending some time in Florida, and that is great.
Dr. Allison, I wanted to ask you, I don't know who Douglas
Dillon was. Who is Douglas Dillon?
Dr. Allison. Douglas Dillon was the Secretary of the
Treasury in John F. Kennedy's administration. And a famous New
York investment banker, Dillon Reed, was part of that same
family. And they gave a professorship at Harvard, to which I
have the great honor to be the Chair, that I have the honor to
sit in.
Dr. Snyder. I think I had to memorize that name in my
civics class.
Mr. Talent. Congressman, if I could say, this is an example
of the role Dr. Allison played on the Commission. He was to our
commission what the professor was to the other people on
Gilligan's Island. You could ask him anything, and he had the
authoritative answer.
Dr. Snyder. Senator Talent, you are taking part of my five
minutes now.
Mr. Talent. That rule, by the way, in the Senate is honored
in the breach. Maybe the chairman will give you another 15
seconds.
Dr. Snyder. I also appreciate all the efforts that Evelyn
put into this.
I wanted to ask--and I did read the report. You did not
dwell very much on why you did not discuss chemical weapons.
You talk about the availability--I think you did probably most
detail here today--the availability of nuclear weapons, even
the smaller nuclear weapons. Obviously, there are millions of
chemical weapons that are out there. I don't think some people
would be--I don't want to say dismissive, but I think some
people would have included that in the topic.
If you all would respond to that, anyone.
Mr. Graham. First, you gave us six months to do this
report. So we had to make some decisions in order to be able to
focus our time and staff resources in sufficient depth to make
quality recommendations where we thought necessary.
Second, we felt that the likelihood of a chemical weapon
achieving the levels of lethality which a biological or a
nuclear could was limited.
Third, we have had a lot of experience with chemical
responses. An anhydrous ammonia tank truck falls off the
railroad track, punctures, and creates a serious situation in
the neighborhood. We know how to respond to that because we
have done it over and over and have minimized the consequences.
We have never dealt with a nuclear or biological attack and the
consequences that that may cause.
So we did not mean to denigrate the importance of chemical
or radiological or other possible weapons of mass destruction.
We felt we could be of the greatest service by focusing on
these two areas that we thought were the most likely to be able
to result in massive deaths.
Dr. Snyder. Another question I wanted to ask, with regard
specifically to your comments in the report about Iran, I think
you choose your words very carefully and are very clear in the
report that you do not want Iran to have any nuclear weapons
program.
I take it from the language that you used that you do not
have a problem with Iran having a nuclear power program if it
has the kind of controls that you envision. Is that an accurate
statement?
Mr. Graham. Yes. Although I will say that on the Commission
there were people who were concerned about almost any expansion
of civilian nuclear because of the potential for perversion.
Dr. Snyder. But your report specifically only says nuclear
weapons.
You mentioned--my time is winding down.
Mr. Graham. And let me say, Dr. Allison uses the term
``lease.'' The arrangement that the Iranians have with the
Russians--and we discussed this at some length when we were in
Moscow--is that Russia will provide the uranium necessary to
operate its civilian reactors. And that is the beginning of an
international bank of nuclear material. And then, when the rods
are used, Russia will take them back. So, essentially, Russia
is leasing the nuclear material to Iran, which we think goes a
long way to pacifying the concerns about proliferation into
inappropriate areas.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman from Arkansas.
We now recognize the gentleman from Maryland, Dr. Bartlett.
Mr. Bartlett. Thank you very much.
Thank you gentlemen for your service and for your testimony
today.
Dr. Allison, you gave a good discussion of the dissolution
of the Soviet Union and the potential availability of nuclear
weapons.
General Lebed, before this committee several years ago,
told us that there were about 80 of the suitcase bombs
developed by the Soviet Union that were loose somewhere. That
is also your general understanding?
Dr. Allison. This is--it is hard to give a short answer,
but this is a topic I have been extremely interested in. I
served as Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first term of
the Clinton Administration when, with thanks to Nunn-Lugar and
the Cooperative Threat Reduction program that you all
authorized, we were dealing with this.
I remember when Lebed made this comment. I have tried to
trace this story down. I actually, in the book that I wrote in
2004 called Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable
Catastrophe, advanced the story somewhat.
My current best belief is as follows: There were such
weapons. They were not uniquely identified with a code number,
so that they--particularly the ones produced for the KGB. Most
of the weapons were collected and destroyed. There may be some
of those weapons continued to be missing, but the unbelievable
good news is we have been looking for them pretty hard and we
haven't found them in 17 years.
So, each year, as it goes by, it seems to me more and more
likely that we may have succeeded in doing something that I
think we couldn't conceivably succeed in doing. So I am
schizophrenic.
Mr. Bartlett. So that is one potential source of a nuclear
weapon for a non-state actor.
Dr. Allison. And just one more thing. Excuse me. There was
an occasion that, again, I think we report in the Commission,
in 2004--it is either in our report or in the 9/11 Commission
Report--in 2003 or 2004 in which there were serious discussions
occurring among Al Qaeda types about buying four of these
weapons, which weapons were never found.
Mr. Bartlett. Do we know the origin, the destination, and
the cargo of all the ships in the North Atlantic shipping
lanes?
Dr. Allison. No, sir.
Mr. Bartlett. Okay. I understand that you can buy a Scud
launcher on the world's open market. A Scud launcher? I think
that is true, that they are available on the world open market.
So now a terrorist can potentially buy a weapon, a nuclear
weapon. He can get himself a tramp steamer, and he can have a
Scud launcher on deck, and if he throws a tarp over it, you
don't know whether it is baled hay or a Scud launcher
underneath because you can't see through the thinnest thing
like that from space.
So now you are a terrorist and you have this nuclear weapon
off our shore. Could we, of a certainty, take out that missile
if he fired it at us today?
Dr. Allison. I think that none of the missile defense
systems discussed do very well against cruise missiles, so----
Mr. Bartlett. I think the average citizen doesn't
understand that. They think we are protected. Thank you for
your answer. We certainly are not protected. I think the
probability of taking one out is very, very small.
So now you are a terrorist out there with this weapon. What
are you going do with it? You can do two things with it: one,
try to drop it on New York City, but, gee, you don't have a
very good launcher there, and you don't have much precision;
you might miss. The other thing you could do with it is launch
it extra-atmospherically and produce an electromagnetic pulse
(EMP) laydown.
Which of those, even if you could hit New York City, which
of those would provide the most harm to our country? I think,
of a certainty, the EMP laydown, because it could take out the
whole Northeast, which would be Katrina in at least an order of
magnitude larger.
I am very much concerned, members of the Commission, that
we have essentially no ability to protect ourselves against
such an attack or to recover in any seemly way from such an
attack. Am I wrong?
Dr. Allison. No, you are not wrong, but if I could put it
in perspective just for a second.
If I imagine a terrorist with a nuclear bomb, let's say he
gets one of Lebed's suitcase bombs, and he asked himself, how
can I do the most damage to the U.S.? So this is Mr. Osama bin
Laden. So he has to think about, how do I get this weapon to
the target and how do I explode it.
The number of ways in which illegal things come to New York
City or Washington or Los Angeles every day--I have a chapter,
actually, in my book, which I will send you, about this where
it says, let me count the ways. Okay? Every way that illegal
drugs come to your city, that is precisely the same way a bomb
could come. As one of my colleagues says, who has been
chancellor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),
if you have any doubt about terrorists' ability to bring a bomb
to an American city, remember, they could always hide it in a
bale of marijuana, which we know comes through American cities.
So the most likely track is the same way that illegal people
and illegal drugs and other illegal items come to American
cities.
The likelihood that the terrorist not only gets this bomb
but also a missile, which is now another hurdle--it is not
impossible, but--and especially a missile that is an
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), so he has to get to
the atmosphere--that is another hurdle, not impossible--I say
you get further down the chain.
And the last thing to say about missiles is that they have
one fatal flaw: They leave an unambiguous return address.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman from Maryland.
Now recognizes the gentleman from Washington State, Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you gentlemen for your work and for this
presentation.
We have a lot of programs in this area and a lot of money
being spent. And you make a number of recommendations in a
bunch of different areas, but I am going to try to narrow that
down a little bit.
Two questions. One, where are we spending money on counter-
proliferation or nonproliferation or any of these things that
you took a look and said, you know, that is not really working,
that is not helping, that is an area that we can shut down and
put the resources in a different direction?
And second, what are the one or two areas--and you
mentioned about a dozen different ideas in a number of
different departments, from the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) to Homeland Security, Defense Threat Reduction
Agency (DTRA), a lot of places--but what are the one or two
where you are saying, that is where we are getting the most
bang for our buck?
Sorry, I am a little back from the microphone. Let me try
that again.
So the two questions are: one, what are the areas where we
are spending money that we shouldn't be, it isn't really
working? And, two, what are the one or two areas where you go,
this is really working?
Because the bottom line here is there is no magic solution
to this problem. I mean, when you think about the number of
biological weapons that are out there, the number of people who
are working on them, we cannot wrap our arms completely around
this problem, either on the biological or the nuclear side.
But there are some things that are working better than
others, I am sure. And it would be helpful for us on the
committee to know, you know, if you only have one place to put
it, here is the place to put it because it is really making a
difference.
Mr. Graham. One of the things that this committee
recognized when it passed the same bill that contained our
commission was that there isn't anybody who has the
responsibility of answering the two questions that you have
just asked.
Your directive was that there be a person in the White
House whose sole responsibility was the issue of weapons of
mass destruction and proliferation. That is a position which
has gone unfilled, in large part over a debate as to whether
that position should be Senate-confirmed or traditional White
House staff directly responsible solely to the President.
We think, and one of our recommendations is, that position
needs to be created and it needs to be filled. I am pleased to
say that candidate Barack Obama indicated his support for that
proposition. When that is in place, when that person is in
place, we should have someone who can look specifically at the
question.
Now, in answer to your question, I would say that one area
that cries out for greater attention is the biological area. We
have been focused largely on nuclear. And I have looked at the
authorization list from this committee, and it is a big list,
almost two billion dollars, heavily oriented towards the
nuclear side of the equation. Our conclusion was the greater
threat is biological.
Mr. Smith. And is there a particular place right now that
is doing biological work, an agency or entity where we should
be focusing those resources?
Mr. Graham. Well, there are lots of places which are
currently doing it, and that may be both part of the solution
and part of the problem, is the lack of clarity of
accountability for this effort.
I don't think it is appropriate for us to be telling the
next President or telling the Congress which agency is most
competent to do it. But we would say you ought to decide on
somebody.
Mr. Smith. Senator, I think it is appropriate for you. I
mean, you spent six months studying this, and you are very,
very smart people. I think it is perfectly appropriate for you
to say, this agency works better. If it is not in the report
and it is a conclusion you couldn't get to, that is fine. But
is seems to me like, right now, you are the guys who would know
best.
Mr. Graham. Well, you know, I think that this is
essentially a science issue, and, therefore, I would personally
be inclined to try to put it into the agencies such as the
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) with mandates to come up with
better procedures to quickly identify the nature of the attack,
to establish systems to report that an attack is under way.
Here in the Washington, D.C., area, for instance, there
probably are, what, 25 or more hospitals. If each one of those
hospitals had 5 or 6 people come in over a 24-hour period with
a particular, rather exotic symptom, they might think, well, 6
people happened to get sick. But if they knew that the same
number had come up at 24 other places, they might say, this is
more than just a series of coincidences; something systemic is
happening.
We don't think we have the capability, and I believe that
an agency like the CDC would have the potential to assign the
responsibility to figure out the science and the means of
applying the science at an operational level.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman from Washington
State. Would now recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr.
Forbes.
Mr. Forbes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you gentlemen for being here. And as has been
mentioned, we appreciate your expertise and knowledge. This is
an incredibly complex area.
Senator Talent, in your opening remarks, you addressed the
date issue, the 2013, and indicated to us that people had asked
you why you picked that particular date. Was there some
calculus that went into 2013? Or was 2013 simply, as you kind
of indicated, to show that it was quicker rather than later? Or
did 2013 have a significance?
Mr. Talent. It was not like we had a piece of intelligence,
classified or unclassified, saying, oh, they are planning
something now that is going to happen in 2013.
But it was our evaluation, if you look at the acceleration
of the availability of this material, if you look at what we do
know about their intentions and the increasing priority that
they are giving to this, that the probability rises above 50-
50, we think, within the next 5 years.
And, obviously, it is an estimate based on, you know, the
experience we each had and the material we reviewed. But it is
an estimate and a belief that is reflected pretty
comprehensively within the Intelligence Community, as the
Director of National Intelligence's (DNI's) comments a couple
of weeks after we issued the report indicate.
Mr. Forbes. And I don't want to press you on this. I am
just trying for my own understanding. But there was basically
some calculus that you used, whatever that calculus might have
been, to get 2013 as opposed to 2011 or 2015, I would take it?
Is that a fair statement?
Mr. Talent. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't so precise. Could we
have said four years or six years? Yeah, I mean, it is just a
gut. You have to pick a point. And we knew it was near-term,
and we picked 2013.
Mr. Forbes. In that calculus, however vague it might have
been or specific, does the probability of such attack increase
as you go further out in terms of the date? So, in other words,
is it more likely in 2015 than in 2013? Was that a part of
this?
Mr. Talent. Yeah, because the trends are not going in the
right direction. So, unless they are reversed, which we think
it is very possible to do, or unless there are changes, either
because of some conscious policy or something happens that is a
break for us, then we are not going in the right direction. So,
yeah, I do think it increases.
Now, I think what is hard to say about that at any given
time--and, to me, the wild card in this--people say, why
haven't you been attacked? And I think we have made a lot of
progress in the Intelligence Community, because--I have been
talking about resident capabilities--I think those capabilities
are growing in that community. And my hope is that that this
trend, this growing capability will increase. In other words,
the rate of growth will get faster and faster.
So, to answer Mr. Bartlett's question, what is our defense
against the terrorists doing this? It is true we don't have the
passive defense, but we are getting better and better at
finding out that that is the plan and getting them before they
can do it. And I don't know how fast that capability will grow.
Mr. Forbes. Nor their capability or our capability, either
one. But I think whatever it is, this complex mixture of good
and effective carrots and sticks that you were talking about,
at some point in time, if you guys come back on January 22,
2017, and we haven't had an attack, we will say we had a good
mix, as opposed to not having a good mix.
Take that same calculus back to January 22, 2001, if you
would. If you use that same calculus, what would you have
picked as a date when you might have had an assumptions that we
might have had a weapons of mass destruction attack? Did you
ever look at that particular calculus? If you did, what would
that date have been?
Mr. Talent. We certainly didn't formally. I think we might
each have a gut. I don't know that I would even want to hazard
a guess because we didn't look at that systematically. And we
have tried to be--you know, you walk a line with this sort of
thing between you want to be very direct, never say anything
that you don't believe, but at the same time not speculate too
much because, in a subject like this, that will cause a bunch
of the speculation and comments and consequences that may be
negative.
So I don't know that I would want to hazard a guess, but
Dr. Allison might. I mean, he has been studying this for a long
time.
In other words, you know, what would you have said as of
2001, I guess he is asking.
Dr. Allison. I think the question--our answer is there is
not a well-established scientific methodology for picking more
likely than not or 51 percent as opposed to 42 percent;
similarly for the time frame.
So I think, in January of 2001, people who had been
studying terrorism--the center that I run at Harvard, we had
published four books on this subject--were predicting that
there would be a major terrorist attack on the American
homeland. That was not an uncommon view in some parts of the
U.S. Intelligence Community but was certainly not the broad
consensus view.
And, actually, when I had been assistant secretary of
defense, I had written a memo on ``A Hundred Horribles'' in
which a 9/11-like attack with airplanes was just above the
halfway mark. So there are a lot of things worse than that.
In the period since then, we also know that at least one
biological terrorist attack on the New York subway was in train
and was interrupted.
Mr. Forbes. Doctor, I am sorry, my time has expired. If you
could just give me that in writing.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman. The chair now
recognizes the gentlewoman from California.
Ms. Tauscher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank my colleagues, Senator Graham, certainly
Senator Talent, and my old friend Graham Allison, for your very
diligent work.
As the chairman of Strategic Forces over the last couple of
years, I have led many congressional delegations, working on
our area of jurisdiction. We have the National Nuclear Security
Administration, the NNSA; we have missile defense. And,
certainly, the last couple of trips we have taken, I think,
have been very informative, certainly going to Pakistan in
September, where we met with General Kiyani and General Kidwai,
who are nominally and specifically in charge of the army and
the nuclear weapons complex in Pakistan.
And to direct my comments to my great colleague, the
ranking member, we have a lot of work to do. We have done a
lot. Certainly, in early 2000 when India and Pakistan came to
blows over Kashmir, the United States directly intervened, with
our friends at the NNSA, to make sure that they had the kind of
nonproliferation and other things that we have in the United
States to assure that their stockpile would be safe.
But there is nothing we can do about the political
instability in Pakistan. And, ultimately, that is the way we
safeguard these weapons, is to make sure that that country has
political stability. And no one can assure us, certainly in the
short term, that it will.
In December, I led another congressional delegation to
Russia, where we have an enormously complicated relationship.
As I said at the time, especially in the intervening time since
Georgia, you can't go back to business as usual, but we have
business to do.
And this is a very illuminating hearing. We have a lot of
different critical issues to work on. But what I want to
specifically ask the members of the Commission is that the
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which, as you know,
expires at the end of 2009, has been enormously valuable in the
verification process. And with the kind of relationship we have
with Russia right now, which is not the best, but with the new
Administration that promises more engagement, what you
recommend is something that I have recommended, which is that
we extend START for the short term.
What I am really interested in understanding is, would you
say that we just push START forward as START is? Should we work
to do what we call sometimes a better START or a START Plus?
And where are those areas that you think we should concentrate
on?
And secondly, if you can briefly touch on the question of
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which I have
advocated for a long time that we ratify. And can you please
just describe what you think the benefits of ratifying the CTBT
would be?
Thank you.
Dr. Allison. Just briefly, I think Ronald Reagan's mantra
was ``trust but verify.'' And there was a bit of peculiarity in
which we have been interested in less verification than the
Russians. I regard that as odd, from my history as an old Cold
Warrior.
So I would say, even though there is a lot of--or some of
the elements of the verification system may have been outmoded
and we may be able to move on, I would say keeping it more or
less is better, and especially if one worries about scenarios
in which our relationship with the Russians may be worse rather
than better.
With respect to going beyond START and Strategic Offensive
Reductions Treaty (SORT), I would think moving another
significant step to some number like 1,500 or even 1,000 would
make good sense in the next round of START Plus.
And with respect to CTBT, I think the debate that got aired
over that in the Senate needs to be re-examined because the
mechanisms for verifying that people are complying with the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty have improved significantly.
And I think when people look at them, they would judge, as
I believe that there is a strong view of--this is not a
Commission view, but a broad view--that CTBT would actually
constrain other people a whole lot more than it does us and,
therefore, would be to our advantage.
Ms. Tauscher. On the way back from Pakistan, we stopped in
Vienna to see Secretary General ElBaradei. And I think the
issue of nuclear fuel banking, something that I have advocated
for a long time, is now coming to fore, certainly between
Russia and Iran. But clearly the IAEA is underfunded, has been
chronically underfunded for a very, very long time.
Chairman, can you talk briefly about what you think we can
do to gain international consensus to increase their funding,
give them a bigger mission and more teeth?
Mr. Graham. Well, first, the United States needs to be
certain that it is meeting its obligations. I, at one time, was
Chair of the Nuclear Subcommittee of the Senate Environment and
Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over things like
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). And we hadn't paid our
dues to the IAEA for several years. That has now been overcome.
But one of the tendencies that the international community
has gotten into is that, rather than deal with the base budget
of the IAEA, we do all these special assessments whenever there
is a new problem. That is a very unstable financing for an
organization that has to make long-term commitments. You have
to be able to----
Mr. Taylor. Senator, I am sorry, but we are trying to
adhere to the five-minute rule. Could you supply the rest for
the record?
Mr. Graham. I would say that this committee would be well-
served to take a serious look at not only the amount of funding
for the IAEA, but the way in which we have gone about funding
and how the United States can lead the international community
in strengthening both of those components.
Ms. Tauscher. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks Mrs. Tauscher.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina,
Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Commission members, for being here today.
Senator Graham, I particularly appreciate all of you trying
to alert us to an event that has not occurred. It is so
frustrating, but it is so important that we celebrate hopefully
a non-event.
And, additionally, I want to thank Senator Talent for his
explaining the urgency of what we are facing.
And then, Dr. Allison, as a fellow Cold Warrior, I
appreciate your referencing the 17 years of success in
nonproliferation with Russia and the 14 now-independent states.
And so there can be success. And we should be ever vigilant, as
Congressman Bartlett pointed out, but, to me, that is a real
extraordinary success.
But my concern, and you all referenced it, is biological
terrorism. Given the information in the report, should
pharmaceutical companies sharing toxins such as botulinum with
Iranian scientists and Iranian universities reconsider their
relationships? And further, should the United States do more to
discourage a relationship between pharmaceutical companies and
Iranian researchers?
Mr. Graham. I guess the answer is yes. We think that one of
the most significant components of this escalating biological
threat is when the capability to produce pathogens falls into
the hands of rogue states and terrorist organizations.
And the United States has some controls in terms of the
transmission of materials and scientific knowledge, but given
the reality of what is happening, they are not sufficient to
the challenge.
Mr. Talent. If I could add to this, and this would be
responsive to a question Mr. Smith had that I was going to
answer but the time ran out.
The biological area here in this report, I think, is the
lowest-hanging fruit in the report for the Congress. And we
need better, more consistent, more unified regulations. And
this area ought to be within a single agency. I think the
Commission would say the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS);
you guys decide. I probably would prefer DHS, except I don't
have confidence in DHS's ability to do anything. But, I mean,
if they could do something, this is probably something they
ought to do.
And we need changes within that research community and
their approaches, certainly, which is the thing that you are
mentioning as well.
Mr. Smith also mentioned, what don't we need? We recommend
collapsing the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) and
the HSC, among other things, because we think that all they are
generating now is meetings with these dual staffs.
Mr. Wilson. And when you mentioned regulations, would these
regulations include barring pharmaceutical companies from doing
business in the United States so long as they have a
relationship as currently exists in Iran?
Mr. Talent. We don't have that specific recommendation. But
one of the reasons why I pointed out before, I think,
legislation as opposed to executive action--and this is so
important--is because I think this will be a big piece of
legislation. It will be a vehicle for a lot of considerations,
you know, what might we do in a lot of areas to make different
agencies sensitive to these concerns.
And the very fact that Congress takes this in hand and
legislates on it is going to make all the different agencies,
foreign and domestic, aware that this needs to be a priority.
But, no, we don't specifically recommend that.
Mr. Wilson. And the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of
1972, does it have sufficient safeguards against providing
toxins to hostile nations?
Mr. Graham. The answer to that question is no. We describe
that treaty as being anemic. It is now almost 40 years old. It
is badly in need of major revision and strengthening. We make
some recommendations as to the direction that we think that
strengthening should take. But it is not serving our interests
in a world in which biological advancement is moving at flank
speed with a 40-year-old instrument to try to control it.
Mr. Talent. It is too weak, and countries don't pay
attention to it anyway. We endorsed the decision to withdraw
from the protocol because of the verification issues. But we
encourage voluntary and strong compliance with the convention
and new agreements, as well.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much.
Mr. Taylor. The Chair thanks the gentleman. Now recognize
the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Andrews.
Mr. Andrews. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you gentlemen for your service to our country, both
in this endeavor and prior to it. We very grateful to you.
I would like to focus on the area of fissile material in
secured or unsecured storage areas and also the issue of
blending down and converting highly enriched uranium (HEU) to
low-enriched uranium (LEU), which is discussed, I think, on
page 58 of the report.
And on page 58 of the supporting appendix, you make
reference to the Baker-Cutler review process in 2001. And there
is a discussion of a need to upgrade that review now, given the
new dynamics that we face.
Of this committee were to lay out a set of criteria or
benchmarks for a new Baker-Cutler review, what questions should
we ask? What should the criteria be that we measure our
progress against in that area?
Mr. Graham. Well, I am going to defer to Dr. Allison for
most of the answer because of his extensive expertise.
But I would say that, in my opinion, number one is to
dramatically increase the focus on biological. I said yesterday
that, on a scale of zero to ten, I think we are doing about an
8.5 job in terms of securing nuclear material inside Russia. We
are doing a dramatically poorer job, maybe in the nature of a
one, as it relates to biological.
Mr. Andrews. Senator, how might we compel that increase and
focus on biological? What would we do to make that happen?
Mr. Graham. Well, I think, first, maybe, as the Baker-
Cutler Commission did, it brought focus to the issue of nuclear
security; something analogous to that that would give specific
focus to the issue of biological security.
Mr. Andrews. Thank you.
Dr. Allison. I had the great honor to serve on the Baker-
Cutler Commission, and I think it did, with Howard Baker and
Lloyd Cutler, a terrific job.
One of the things that it emphasized is that if highly
enriched uranium is blended down to low-enriched uranium, it
can be made into a fuel rod, used in a civilian nuclear
reactor, and then effectively burned up.
And most people don't realize, but if we take the lights
here, of the electricity that is powering our lights today here
in the U.S., nuclear produces about 20 percent of the
electricity. Half of all that electricity is low-enriched
uranium rods from Russia that used to be high-enriched uranium,
some of which were part of bombs or others of which could be
made into bombs. So there has been this deal for 500 tons of
HEU to get blended down.
We say in the report that you reference that we should
incentivize another--there is another 300 tons of excess HEU
sitting there. Getting it blended down in Russia or blended
down and back into the markets seems to me to be a very good
place to go, with respect to the nuclear piece.
And I think wherever there is highly enriched uranium or
plutonium, that is stuff from which people can make a bomb.
Wherever that highly enriched uranium becomes low-enriched
uranium, it can't be made into a bomb. So I would say the logic
of the case we have both seen working in the HEU deal that
currently operates. It concludes in 2013, as the report says,
and could be extended and should be.
Mr. Andrews. Thank you. And we would be very interested in
your suggestions for the biological Baker-Cutler review the
Senator mentioned, as to what questions we might ask and what
criteria we might put into the statute to require that review
to be properly focused.
Senator Talent.
Mr. Talent. I think we recommend, probably in this order,
the kind of domestic regulatory reform we are talking about, so
we establish a model internationally and show we are taking the
lead. And then we recommend calling an international conference
of the major bioscience powers to begin putting in place the
kind of comprehensive regime that we already have in the
nuclear area.
The big strategic change we want with Baker-Cutler is
moving Russia, our relationship, from a donor-recipient
relationship to a partnership relationship. That strategically
is what we think needs to happen so we can extend----
Mr. Andrews. How probable do you think that change will be
five years from today? Will it happen or not?
Mr. Talent. Well, Senator Graham really is one of our
Russia experts. It was our opinion, in talking with them, that
whatever the issues we have in other areas--and we have other
issues--that they do want to cooperate with us in this, that
they see this as consistent with their national interest.
Mr. Andrews. That is welcome news, indeed.
Mr. Graham. And I believe that, as Russia has become
economically stronger, they are unsettled by this donor-
recipient relationship. And for their own national pride and
now with the capability to match that pride, they are ready to
be approached about a partnership rather than a philanthropy.
Mr. Andrews. Thank you very much
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman. The chair now
recognizes the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Lamborn.
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have a very short and then a longer question.
The short question is, on page 63 of your report, you say
that Iran could acquire sufficient HEU to build a nuclear bomb
within 6 months to 2 years, or 24 months. This report is dated
December 2nd, which is a month and a half ago. Can I conclude
from that that your range now would be 4\1/2\ months to 22\1/2\
months?
Mr. Graham. Yes.
Mr. Lamborn. Okay. Thank you.
My longer question is, you also state on the next page,
under recommendation number five, that such engagement with
both Iran and North Korea--but I want to concentrate on Iran
because they are in a different posture than North Korea,
obviously, not having already gone nuclear, where direct
intervention becomes much more problematic. But, in the case of
Iran and North Korea, you say, ``Such engagement must be backed
by the credible threat of direct action in the event that
diplomacy fails.''
Can you elaborate on what you mean by ``credible threat of
direct action''? And how important is this to happen before
Iran goes nuclear?
Mr. Graham. As I commented on earlier, the consequences of
Iran going nuclear and of North Korea continuing to add to its
warehouse of nuclear materials is unacceptable--unacceptable in
the risk that they singularly would each represent and
unacceptable in the consequences within the regions in which
they live, the rapid escalation of the number of weaponized
nuclear states.
And so we suggest a strategy which is a layered strategy,
starting with engagement incentives and disincentives, but
always reserving that, if those all fail, that direct action is
a very difficult but necessary step to avoid the other
alternative, which is a nuclear Iran and a North Korea with
enough material to not only launch an attack but survive an
attack and start another attack, which is potentially its
capability in the foreseeable future if they continue along
their current course.
Mr. Talent. Direct action is a threat of force of some
kind, as Senator Graham said.
Mr. Lamborn. Thank you very much.
Mr. Taylor. Does the gentleman yield back?
Mr. Lamborn. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman
Mr. Taylor. Thank you very much, sir.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Rhode Island,
Mr. Langevin.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I would like to thank the members for their testimony
and the hard work that you have put in in putting this report
together.
This is an issue that I have devoted a great deal of time
and attention to, and I share many of the concerns that you
raised in the report. I also, in particular, reached the same
conclusion that you do, that a biological attack is probably
the most likely event that we need to worry about in the near
term.
Let me put it in these terms. I look at these issues in
terms of prevention, detection, and response as the best way to
deal with them. And as much as I would like to get into all of
them, let me look at the prevention, the detection issue first.
And I know we have touched on some of these already, but,
in terms of a biological attack, can you identify perhaps the
single greatest thing that we could do in preventing a
biological attack, outside of interagency cooperation, which is
something I am going to ask about as well?
There is a glaring vulnerability on the biological front
that we are not doing that we need to do. In particular, now,
on the interagency issue, in your report you rightly conclude
that interagency coordination is a necessary step in combating
terrorism, both at home and abroad. Could you elaborate on the
ways interagency coordination can be improved upon?
And you recommend that President Obama should designate a
White House principal adviser for WMD proliferation and
terrorism and restructuring the National Security Council (NSC)
and Homeland Security Council, which I agree with. But what do
you believe should be the qualifications of this adviser, and
how will this adviser work to actively improve interagency
coordination?
My next area in terms of response, in terms of detection,
obviously we want to try to push those rings out as far as
possible. The first would be the deployment of biological
sensors. I think most people would be surprised and
disappointed to learn that we only have sensors deployed right
now in about 30 major U.S. cities, and they are very human-
dependent, and that it would take days to collect the samples
and then analyze those samples to know even if a biological
event had occurred. And we need to put more resources into
deploying the next generation of sensors that would be real-
time and require little to no human interaction.
So can you comment on the state of our ability to detect
and then also the current state of, say, our public health
system and our ability to monitor, for example, pharmacies and
emergency rooms to know that an event is actually occurring?
And at what level are we, in terms of the resources we are
putting into that type of thing of a system, and how much more
do we need to put into developing such a detection system?
Mr. Talent. Okay. We have just been talking, Congressman. I
will do the biological piece first and then defer to the
chairman and Dr. Allison.
The most important thing on the biological side of it, we
believe, is to get a handle and create incentives within the
life science community to keep a handle on the potential misuse
of dual-use technology.
Now, you have studied this. You know that the high-
contaminant laboratories, some of them are not regulated at
all. If they don't receive federal funds and they don't deal
with agents on the select agent list, they are not regulated at
all. Those that are are regulated by three different agencies,
HHS, DHS, and Agriculture, if it is an animal-science-type lab.
A lot of those animal pathogens can be turned into pathogens
that can be used against people.
So they are regulated by three different agencies,
different kinds of regulatory requirements. We say get them
under one agency, probably DHS or HHS. The labs have safety
protocols and security protocols. Let's combine those so we
have one laboratory security protocol which is uniformly
followed.
Let's get into the curriculum, when scientists are going
through school, that, look, security is important. And do some
common-sense things. Get a Nobel Prize laureate to chair a
commission and speak out about the importance of being
security-conscious in the life science community. And then
organize international bioscience powers and try to get them to
do the same thing. I mean, we really just have not done what we
needed to do in this area.
You mentioned sensors. We made an executive decision, the
chairman did and I agreed with him, that we would not go
heavily into consequence management. Because the problem in
this kind of report is saying something without trying to say
everything, right?
So we didn't get--we had testimony in New York about the
sensors, and I agree, personally, that we need more of that.
Because the quicker we can establish there is an attack, the
better we can manage the consequence of it and maybe get
attribution. So I completely agree. We didn't get heavily into
that.
The one area we did say was that we have to get on the ball
in dealing with anthrax. We don't have an adequate procedure
for getting the Cipro out to people, and you can imagine the
panic that is going to happen if people realize they are living
in a city where there was an anthrax dispersal and they have 48
hours to get the Cipro, and right now we are mailing it to
them.
I mean, so we have issues. But we did not get
comprehensively into consequence management.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman. The chair now
recognizes the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Coffman.
Mr. Coffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me ask a question on the nuclear side, then on the
biological side.
What role, do you think, on the nuclear side, does having
an effective missile defense system aid us?
And then, on the biological side, it seems so difficult to
contain a biological agent. I mean, and it would seem that it
would be more likely used by a non-state actor.
Where is it in terms of the science marrying up with those
groups, number one? And number two, I mean, how likely a
scenario is that, to be used as a weapon for a terrorist group
or non-state actors?
Mr. Talent. Yeah, we agree with your evaluation, that the
use of a biological weapon is more likely than the use of a
nuclear weapon. Although, I am always careful, because the
nuclear weapon they are trying to get too. And either are very
feasible for them.
We didn't get into missile defense because, really, it
wasn't at the center of what our mandate was. I always was a
supporter of missile defense. I always thought it was a more
useful tool in dealing with rogue nation-states, though, than
dealing with terrorists. Not that it wouldn't have some use for
that, but simply because they are more likely to use the
existence of a nuclear missile and a missile delivery system,
either actually use it or use it as leverage in some kind of
international confrontation, and that the missile defense would
defuse it.
But I think for the reasons that Dr. Allison indicated
earlier, the terrorists have a wider range of options that they
can use, some of which will not cause them to have a signature
in using the weapon.
Mr. Graham. I am now going to express a personal view that
is not the Commission's view. It seems to me that we are in the
area of missile defense approaching the world as it was during
the Cold War. The Soviet Union had no compunction of having its
name and signature on a missile that it might launch against
the United States. A terrorist who is other than so lunatic
that they would be institutionalized, would like to be somewhat
clandestine in their form of attack. And therefore I think it
is much more likely that they attack in subtle ways that do not
immediately identify who is responsible. And thus as we look at
the likelihood of a range of occurrences and begin to allocate
our resources, I personally would like to see us put more
resources on those things that would hopefully detect the non-
missile delivery system because that is the one that we are
most likely to in reality have to confront.
That is my position, not the Commission's position.
Dr. Allison. I agree with Senator Graham's personal
position. Again, the Commission didn't take a view on it
because since--as we were discussing earlier--there is one big
hurdle for terrorists to get or make a nuclear bomb. Then
secondly, to get a missile is a whole nother exercise. Third,
to get a bomb that can be weaponized so that it fits as the
warhead of a missile, that is rocket science. There is a third
hurdle. And then fourth, if the terrorists--I am attacking you
with a missile, the crosshairs of a launch site appear in an
American target within a minute after the launch of a missile.
So if I had the choice between something that has an
unambiguous return address and a surreptitious or covert
delivery system, I think the latter is a lot more attractive.
Mr. Taylor. Does the gentleman yield back his time?
Mr. Talent. If you are Iran and you are considering
aggression in the Mideast and you have the missile and a
missile delivery system, that is a hedge against defeat in
whatever conventional action you may be occurring. An effective
missile defense then can diffuse that hedge, if you will. But
we are discussing the nation state in the terrorist context.
Mr. Taylor. Thanks to the gentleman. The Chair now
recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Admiral Sestak.
Mr. Sestak. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. This was a great report
on what needs to be done. And I am sure the door to the new
Administration is already open for it. It won't take much
pushing since some of the recommendations are similar. But the
conundrum, as you kind of put out, is how to make it happen. So
I only had two questions, one international. One is on the
domestic aspects of your report.
And, Senator, the reason for that is for you, please, I was
struck by what you said during the testimony today that you
cannot solve the problems of Pakistan within Pakistan's
borders. You must look regionally to solve Pakistan's problems
in this proliferation issue. How then do you sit back--and I
know you only had six months, but we have some very good
functional recommendations here. However, even when we dealt
with, let us say, Pakistan in the report, it was still a
functional counter-proliferation regime approach when you
looked at anything within the region or even worldwide. Could
you comment about how well can you really address counter-
proliferation absent taking in regional goals of the other
players and of ourselves? And is that a piece that probably by
itself makes this maybe less than what you would have desired?
Mr. Graham. My answer is I don't think you can do it
effectively just focusing on a single nation state. As an
example, the issue of Kashmir, that has been a thorn in the
Indian-Pakistani relationship since those two nations were
created out of the old English-Indian empire. It is one of the
classic cases of kicking the can down the road with the
expectation that somehow the problem is going to become less
severe. The reality is that in almost all instances it becomes
more severe, more ominous, and more universal. So if I were
going to advise the new envoy, Mr. Holbrooke, one of the first
places I would focus my attention would be on how then to begin
to mitigate that controversy because as long as it is in its
current state, it going to be a bleeding scab between those two
countries. I would also put focus on what I suggest that the
U.S. and Russia ought to do together to try to encourage those
two countries to develop some protocols that will take them a
little bit on less of a hair-trigger use of nuclear in the
event of a conflict.
Mr. Sestak. My second question has to do with domestically
and it touches upon your answer. And, Senator, keep in mind
that throughout today we heard the words ``safeguards,''
``verification,'' ``accounting,'' ``counting,'' ``missing labs,
lab personnel,'' et cetera. And to some degree, you can only do
so much if you don't have the right information. And yet the
study--step back--and although my first question had to do with
how can you really look at proliferation in the absence of
regional goals--is your recommendation by and large to the
Intelligence Community--and I know I am doing it short shrift
here--is you know what, we have uprooted--you even quote
General Hayden in it--every 18 months to look and see how they
are doing and sticking them back in. Let us kind of leave them
alone for a while. My question really comes if that is the
right issue. You talk about Pakistan, if I could go back. There
is 70,000 people involved in the nuclear industry in Pakistan;
8,000 of them are scientists, 2,000 of them are core, but that
talent is coming from the universities which is the most
radical time they have ever had in their universities. How do
we know who is in those labs and what they are doing? Even
though we have safeguards over what they have already produced.
And my question comes really to you because you were all
denied, from my understanding, access to the Intelligence
Community in some regards.
For example, according to Mr. Henry Sokolski, a member of
your commission, you were not permitted to have access--well,
actually you got a single classified briefing on North Korea
and the same on Iran and you were denied the access of how
Russia is assisting Iran. How can you be certain that your
recommendation to leave the Intelligence Community by and large
alone, when information and knowledge is what it is all about
in the future, is the right one when you yourself didn't quite
gain potentially the access to the intelligence to make that
recommendation to us?
Mr. Graham. Well, as someone who has spent a lot of my 18
years in the U.S. Senate in the area of intelligence, I
recognize that the President of the United States is the
principal customer and consumer of U.S. intelligence
information and that he or she is going to be the recipient of
the largest volume and the most subtle qualitative
intelligence. But I felt that we had adequate access for our
purposes. I did not feel that our ability to make the
recommendations that we did was constrained by an absence of
access to intelligence.
Second, there are a variety of ways in which the
Intelligence Community can reform, one of which is what
happened in 2004, which was a massive congressional
restructuring of the basic architecture of the Intelligence
Community. I think now we have got some very good people who
have been in place, like Admiral McConnell and General Hayden,
and we have another group soon to arrive, Admiral Blair and
former Congressman Leon Panetta. I would entrust to them to
carry these reforms to the next level.
Mr. Taylor. The Chair thanks the gentleman. The Chair now
recognizes the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Franks.
Mr. Franks. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank all the
members of the panel here. I think that the subject that you
speak about today is something that perhaps the country
underestimates and that your involvement is critically
important. I was struck by, Dr. Allison, your comment related
to certain timelines passing and reducing our ability to
respond and our options. I think that is an extremely important
point. Senator Talent, I consider your voice one of the great
voices on missile defense in the country. And I actually
believe that it is a pertinent issue here today because I
believe missile defense has the ability to devalue nuclear
programs to the extent that maybe they don't occur, which is
how a lot of these other potential nuclear proliferation
items--how--the genesis of where they would come from. And I
think that we are making some pretty serious mistakes related
to Iran in not making sure our missile defense capability in
Eastern--in Europe and other places is not there at least as
part of the dissuasion to prevent them from having that
capability.
Mr. Talent. It is the calculus that you are trying to
affect. I agree.
Mr. Franks. And, of course, missile defense is also a good
idea if one really is coming. It can be a real encouragement.
But with that said, I am struck by Mr. Bartlett's scenario
where someone off of our shore would watch either a Scud
missile or something like that, whether it was an
electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack or directly on our country.
And, Dr. Allison, I am not convinced that terrorists would be
that concerned about their identity being known at that point
because they can think--there is just a lot of things. And most
of the terrorists on the airplane weren't too concerned that we
might know their name after the deed was done.
So my question really is this: I understand that the
biological threat was emphasized, and I completely agree with
that. But I am focusing for a moment on the nuclear issue
because I somehow have this crazy notion in my mind that
terrorists would like to see one of our cities in nuclear
flames or some type of EMP attack just for the spectacular
nature of it. And with that said, I am not sure that I will
focus on Iran. Your own report says just how much time does the
world have to seek this full clarity about Iran's past and
present nuclear program and decide what to do. Experts such as
David Albright of the Institute for Science and International
Security (ISIS) have underscored that the timeline for Iran's
acquisition of sufficient highly enriched uranium to build a
nuclear bomb is ominously short. It ranges from only six months
to two years.
I guess the bottom line is this: How much time do we have
related to Iran gaining a nuclear capability which they could
give to terrorists? How much time do we have to ascertain their
capability? And will anything short of either a direct military
intervention or the conviction in their minds that that will
occur be enough to dissuade them?
And I will start with you, Senator Talent. And if there is
time, I hope you all take a shot at it.
Mr. Talent. We don't have a lot of time. I think the report
reflects that the threat of direct action has to be on the
table and the inference from that is that without the belief
that the--the credible belief that will be the use, the various
diplomatic issues won't work and I think that is based on
inference, Iranian intentions. I said at the beginning of the
hearing, these groups are trying to acquire these weapons for a
reason because in the context of their goals and the globalized
world, this is an asymmetric weapon of enormous power for them
and to the extent that you can diffuse the effectiveness of a
weapon, however you do it--and I would agree with you that
missile defense is a key thing. We don't address that in the
report. To the extent you diffuse the effectiveness of the
weapon, you undermine their reasons for trying to get the
weapon and make it less likely that they will do it. So I
certainly agree with your analysis in that regard. And this is
our feeling regarding Iran, without going into the tactics of
how it could be done or the likelihood of being able to
accomplish it.
Mr. Franks. Anyone else? How much time do we have and what
short of direct military intervention will dissuade Iran or at
least the conviction in their minds that that will occur?
Dr. Allison. Iran today probably has enough low-end
enriched uranium (LEU)--if not today, in a month or two
months-- which, if it were run back through the Natanz
centrifuges, could produce enough highly enriched uranium (HEU)
for its first bomb. So they have already got into that zone.
What we should rightly worry about is a covert Natanz that we
don't know about and can't identify, which is doing the same
thing. Because how likely if you were the manager of the
Iranian nuclear program is it that you would put all your eggs
in one basket under the lights of international inspection. I
think not very good.
Mr. Franks. So what is your recommendation that we do about
it? What is your recommendation that we do?
Dr. Allison. So if you try to work through the military
options, one of the things for sure, you can't destroy targets
that you can't identify. So trying to get to Iran in a
negotiation in which you have got lots of carrots and lots of
sticks making as credible as possible that those include a
military option, even though it is not a very good option, is
where I would go.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman. The chair now
recognizes the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Nye.
Mr. Nye. First of all, Senator Graham, I just want to thank
you and your fellow panelists for the work and the judgement
that you have obviously applied to this report. Senator Talent,
I particularly appreciate your comments today on the use of
soft power and the need for a greater focus on that in our time
going forward, not least because I spent a considerable amount
of time working with the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) in both Iraq and Afghanistan on democratic
and economic development. And I agree with the findings in the
report that Pakistan is indeed a nexus of threat and that to a
large degree that threat will be centered in these Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan.
What I would like to ask you, Senator, and the other
panelists if you wish to comment, can you please give us your
assessment after going through this process of both the
capability and the inclination of the new government in
Pakistan to work with us and be helpful in perhaps taking a
more proactive look at those FATA areas in terms of applying
soft power, trying to neutralize these threats?
Mr. Talent. Officially, of course, they have the--in terms
of using soft power in place of threats, that is a different
issue. I think one of the things we have got to do with soft
power and the tools of smart power or soft power is to create a
greater sense within the Pakistani government first and other
governments in similar circumstances that these kinds of tools
are very helpful, and one of the goals of the use of soft power
would be to communicate the intention that this is a good thing
that is going to help reinforce them and their government and
lead to better relationships. So that is one of the mindsets we
have to create. I don't think it is there yet. I don't think--
because I just don't think we have been effective in doing
this. And you have had personal experience with this. We have
had to use these tools or tried to use them in Bosnia. We have
had to use them in Afghanistan. Now we need them in Pakistan.
At what point are we going to decide this is a capability we
have to have organically someplace that Presidents can deploy
effectively and quickly like they deploy the capabilities that
this committee oversees routinely through all three of the
services.
Mr. Graham. My sense is that the new government in Pakistan
very much wants to create a new beginning for the country with
one of its goals is to keep the country unified. I think one of
the real, at least a possibility, is a splintering apart of
Pakistan and with those northwest territories being likely the
first to secede from the nation. A part of the reason is the
fact that they feel in that area that they have not received
the kind of attention and schools and hospitals, economic
development that other parts of the country have. So I believe
that the new government is going to make a special effort to
demonstrate that it has value to those parts of the country in
order to tamp down any secessionist aspirations.
Now, what is going to be the capability of the government
to do that? That is yet to be tested.
Dr. Allison. Let me just say I am pessimistic.
Mr. Nye. Thank you for your candor. I will yield back the
remainder of my time.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman. The chair now
recognizes the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Graham,
Senator Talent, Dr. Allison, thank you so much for all of your
effort that went into this report. I think it is very, very
telling. I did want to focus again on Pakistan. You do speak
about some positive things going on there. You speak to
President Zardari's remarks after the Marriott bombing in
Islamabad, that the war on terrorism is their war. You also
speak to the tribal leaders uniting, organizing against Al
Qaeda both in the FATA and the North-West Frontier Province
(NWFP). One thing that you have left out that I am curious
about, and that is the feelings of the Pakistani Army, General
Kiyani, and what General Kiyani's feelings are about this
effort, about our efforts there to counter terrorism in the
area to try to secure those tribal regions. I see that as a
critical link with this. Obviously there is always this dynamic
there between the government and the army. I want to know where
do you believe General Kiyani is with this and, as you know,
General Hamad there too sometimes has a little bit different
feelings than General Kiyani.
Can you give us some of your overview about how you see
that dynamic coming along and where that leads Pakistan in this
effort?
Mr. Graham. Again, I think that is a relationship that is
yet to be fully tested. The general has made the right
statements as to his desire to be subservient to the civilian
government and function within the democratic framework. But we
have had one small test when the civilian government said they
would send the head of the intelligence agency to India to help
with the Mumbai investigation and then the military rescinded
the right of the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
to go. That was not an encouraging sign. As Dr. Allison said,
the military has in Pakistan been the only load bearing part of
the society and whether they are going to be willing to see
themselves as a load bearing unit carrying affirmatively the
weight of democracy and protecting it is going to be one of the
several key questions as to the future of Pakistan.
Dr. Allison. I agree with him entirely, the two comments
made. I think that Kiyani in terms of his history has had a
reasonable relationship with the U.S. And I think what is hard
to appreciate is the turbulence from the cross currents of the
environment in which they are operating. If you were to wake up
some general in Pakistan in the middle of the night and say
what is going on in Afghanistan, they would think what is going
on in Afghanistan is negative for Pakistan and that it has
something to do with Americans and Indians being in cahoots
surrounding them. So if you listened to the noises after the
Mumbai bombing for two weeks of universally denying Pakistani
engagement of even LTs when there was one of the terrorists
whom they had captured. So I would say that the--I feel very
uncomfortable about the extent of which they and we inherit the
same--have the same picture of what is going on.
Mr. Talent. And I would just add--and these two gentlemen
are more expert on the Pakistanis than I am. But that situation
is extremely fluid. Dr. Allison referred to cross currents. You
get a leadership that is in an unstable situation like that,
where they are worried about staying in power personally or
their personal fortunes, they are not spending a lot of time on
the long-term efforts to secure nuclear material. They are just
thinking about surviving day to day. And I think that is a huge
part of the problem.
Mr. Wittman. One quick follow-up question. Are there things
that the U.S. can do to try to encourage general Kiyani in a
productive way to sort of mirror the efforts there? At least
President Zardari has indicated the direction he would like to
see things go.
Mr. Graham. I think a part of that is for the United States
not to be as fixated on relations with the military as it has
been in the past. And that is not just a comment for the last
eight years. It goes back much further than that. We have got
to give more recognition to the civilian government in order to
domestically enhance its credibility as the responsible party.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman. The chair now
recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Kissell.
Mr. Kissell. As everyone has said, thank you for your time
and efforts. And I have got--we have covered some pretty broad
ranges--a couple of just specific questions. And in
anticipating a biological attack, what agent or range of agents
would you think might be used and what would be the degree of
danger amongst those particular choices?
Mr. Graham. I think most of the experts would say that
today the answer would be anthrax. It is the most available. It
is the one that has been weaponized to the greatest degree. Now
anthrax has a number of problems, one of which is effective
dissemination. It has been tried in two or three instances,
particularly in Japan. And the technical problems of getting it
out there in a way that it can kill a lot of people were not
resolved, thankfully.
The second problem is that anthrax is not communicable
person to person. So its ability to multiply is much less. Our
concern, as we talk about in the report, is that there are a
lot of in some cases new and some others old pathogens that are
being regenerated. For instance, in 1918 there was an influenza
attack that killed up to 40 million people worldwide. That
influenza has been extinct for most of the last 70 years. It
has just been recreated in a laboratory. If that were to get
out with the reality that we have almost no anecdotes today to
that strain of influenza, it could kill a lot more than 40
million people.
So today it is anthrax. Tomorrow it is likely to be one of
these more communicable and more newer or recently resuscitated
pathogens.
Mr. Kissell. We talked about Russia and hopefully since the
cooperation, does Russia feel threatened that it might be
attacked in this way?
Mr. Graham. The answer is it is very concerned about being
attacked nuclear and that is part of the reason we have had
such good cooperation. It is not just all a matter of their
good feeling towards us. They recognize their self-interest,
particularly some of the incidents that have occurred in
Chechnya and the fact that they have a massive non-ethnic
Russian population immediately to their south that is
concerning them. But given the way they have dealt with
biological, very weak security and a much less willingness to
involve not just the United States, but the international
community in efforts to enhance that security, we tend to--
would tend to lead me to believe that they don't put as high a
priority on the possibility of a biological attack as our
report does.
Mr. Kissell. And my last question. I grew up in the 1950s
and the 1960s in the Cold War and the concept of mutually
assured destruction, MAD. Dr. Allison, you kind of alluded to
this a couple of times, that trail back to where the missile
came from. The states that we are most concerned about, does
the concept of mutually assured destruction affect them
whatsoever and especially in terms of how they might actually
be trying to control these weapons?
Dr. Allison. A very good question and if we take North
Korea, which I would say is the most troublesome for me because
Kim Jong-il has demonstrated he would sell and build a nuclear
reactor in Syria when we told him he can't do that, every red
line that President Bush laid down for him he stepped over. So
what is deterring him from selling a nuclear bomb to Osama bin
Laden? The answer is I worry about that every day. So if we had
developed an adequate nuclear forensics capability so that we
could credibly identify his fingerprints on that bomb and if we
were prepared then to explain to him that a bomb that was made
in North Korea, even if it was delivered in a boat by Osama bin
Laden, would be treated by us precisely as if it had been put
on a missile and shot against Los Angeles. I think he has got
the idea in his head that if he were to launch a missile with a
nuclear weapon against Los Angeles, North Korea would be erased
from the map.
So that is MAD with respect to identifiable sources. The
question is could we extend that idea in the nuclear terror
space. I have been a strong advocate of trying to do so. One of
the areas in which our investment pattern has been woefully
inadequate is in developing that nuclear forensics capability.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman. And I now
recognize the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Rooney.
Mr. Rooney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you
for your testimony. And, Senator Graham, I think it is a great
honor for me that the first question I ever ask as a
Congressman on a committee is to you, having worked in Senator
Connie Mack's mailroom in the early 1990s and getting to ride
the elevator with you and you knowing the mascot of my high
school, Benjamin Buccaneer. I have always been a big fan of
yours. So my question is basically just a follow-up with some
of the things that have been touched on early with regard to an
issue unfortunately that wasn't discussed directly in your
report, and that is with missile defense.
You testified earlier that Pakistan and India didn't per se
have safeguards in place, no red phone-type system. Does a
missile defense system with either the United States
spearheading it or another country or a series of alliances,
does that have any role in that India-Pakistan--I guess it
would be your opinion because it is not in the report. Do you
think that a missile defense system has any role in that area
of the world, and if we have any obligations there with regard
to keeping, you know, the global community safe?
Mr. Graham. First, Mr. Congressman, I want to congratulate
you for your election and you are going to be representing a
wonderful part of our State in America and I know that your
constituents are in good hands. Congratulations. And it is an
honor to try to respond to your first very good question.
I would personally doubt that an investment in missile
defense in the India-Pakistan region would be very productive.
The reality is that the imbalance of population, with India
having over a billion people and Pakistan about 150 million,
plus or minus, has created on the Pakistani side the military
doctrine that they have to go nuclear quickly because they
cannot defend themselves against a land attack.
So I don't think that the existence of missile defense as
we know today would be much of a restraint. I think what we
have got to do is to work on the relationships between those
two countries and try to get them to back down on the hair-
trigger nature of their current military posture because
Pakistan will have some justifiable basis for greater conflicts
if they are not going to be overwhelmed by an Indian infantry
assault.
Mr. Talent. For follow up, Congressman. I don't want to
interfere with your agenda. To me this points to a larger
strategic reality that implicates the overall work of this
committee. The stabilizing nature of American power and
influence, to the extent that the world believes with some
confidence that the United States is capable of taking the lead
with other nations, of dealing swiftly and effectively with
major threats to the international order, it stabilizes--
whether that is through missile defense or some other tool. And
to the extent that they begin to lose that confidence, we have
destabilization, which is part of the danger, reason why we are
afraid of a nuclear cascade.
Now let us switch to a different venue. With North Korea in
possession of nuclear weapons, what do the Japanese do? If you
are the leader of Japan--and of course they have a history of
non-nuclear tradition--you have to consider whether you need to
develop a nuclear deterrent on your own. Well, what is the
reason they have it? And part of it is their tradition and part
of it is their confidence that the United States--the umbrella
of American power, if you will, is capable of dealing with that
in some productive fashion.
So one good way to look at this and maybe try and achieve a
constructive kind of agreement is to say on the question of
missile defense I am a strong supporter. As an operational
question, what capability do we need? But to help achieve
something that strategically we all believe we have to sustain,
which is the confidence in American leadership and power around
the world, I agree with you, I think missile defense is a
useful and flexible tool, particularly when dealing with nation
states.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Taylor. Thank you very much.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from New Mexico, Mr.
Heinrich.
Mr. Heinrich. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to
kind of return for just a moment to something that Mr. Nye
brought up earlier and that is the role of soft power or smart
power, particularly in Pakistan and in the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas. And I didn't see--I read your
recommendations regarding additional support for education and
commerce efforts and particularly in that portion of the
country, but I didn't see a lot of confidence or faith in the
current government in Pakistan to be able to impact that on the
ground. I wondered if you--where do we get the ball rolling
there? How do you start that process of--you know, we are at
three percent literacy for women in that region of the country.
You would think there is no place to go but up from here, but
how do you get that process going?
Mr. Graham. I think first in terms of the U.S. role is for
the United States to decide that is important to do, which is
not a posture that I believe we have been in historically in
our relations with Pakistan. We have with the host nation and
with other members of the international community attacked
these kinds of problems elsewhere in the world with some
considerable success. It is not going to be easy to do it in
that area of Pakistan in large part because the security is so
fractious. But the fact that it is hard doesn't mean that it is
not important and in this instance we think urgent to make the
very best effort that we can. In the ideal world it would be
with the leadership of the Pakistani government and our
support. In a less than perfect world, it may be more direct
action by the United States.
Mr. Talent. I look at smart power as maybe a very
significant refinement, if not an entirely new platform, a very
significant upgrade to the traditional tools of diplomacy and
foreign assistance, which are effective in some context, but
frankly just not in others and I also see it as a more targeted
tool. So I think I would maybe restate your question, if I
could, to say, okay, let us say we have determined that
improving literacy in Pakistan is an important way of messaging
America's benign intentions. Okay? What we need is a capability
for a President to be able to say right now here is the poll
numbers in the area of FATA about American intentions, which
is, like, way down. Now, six months from now, I want it to be
three times what it is now, just as we might say this to one of
our political consultants. Right? Now, I want the capability
for the President to be able to say that and do that and maybe
that includes improving literacy or maybe it is health care. So
maybe what we do is figure out what the people in that area
want the most and try and be helpful in delivering that to
them. But you see how this is more targeted and in the context
of a more--of a direct American goal and integrated in the rest
of foreign policy. The problem is whereas if you need littoral
combat capability in DOD, you target--tell the Navy that, they
figure what they need, they get the capability. We don't have
that mechanism in civilian agencies to do this. So Presidents
are left with we can recommend these things broadly. You can't.
President Obama has got to figure out how to try and do it. And
right now I just don't think we have the capability to
implement his directive in that regard. So he holds the bag for
something he really doesn't have any authority to do.
Mr. Heinrich. I have a second question that is on a
markedly different subject and I will direct this to Dr.
Allison. And I was very intrigued by the discussion regarding
the lack of protocols between India and Pakistan should those
countries find themselves at odds. And it occurred to me our
Nation has gone to great lengths over time to make sure that
our nuclear assets are secure from the sense that--just
basically from very basic things, like an accidental or an
unplanned ignition, and we do that through our technology and
to great success. And obviously the Russians have done the same
thing, judging from at least the lack of an unplanned ignition.
I am curious, do India and Pakistan have the same--do they have
the technical capabilities in place today to make sure that
there is not something as basic as an unplanned ignition?
Mr. Taylor. Dr. Allison, if I may. We have two additional--
--
Dr. Allison. I will answer no.
Mr. Taylor. That is a great one. Okay. And if it requires
further, if you could do it for the record, please, sir. The
chair thanks the gentleman.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Maryland, Mr.
Kratovil.
Mr. Kratovil. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
go back to the first question that was asked by the chairman. I
understand the Commission didn't want to bind the incoming, now
the new President with particular recommendations as it related
to Iran and North Korea. The counter to that obviously is we
are in a sense looking to you for guidance on how best to deal
with that issue. So without binding anyone, my question is--and
perhaps, Dr. Allison, this is best towards you--what are the
carrots--we know what the sticks are essentially--but what are
the carrots that you think we should be using in dealing with
North Korea and Iran, and I gather from all of your
recommendations that we should be using various carrots and
sticks seems to imply that you do believe in direct dealings
with Iran. So the question is, what specific carrots do you
suggest and do you--did the Commission unanimously agree that
direct talks with Iran based on success with--some success with
North Korea is appropriate?
Dr. Allison. The Commission did not have a consensus on
this. Actually we had some quite strongly different views.
There were some people who strongly supported the view of the
Bush Administration in the first term or I would say John
Bolton's views, which are the solution to the problem in North
Korea and Iran is regime change and the only problem is we
don't know how to do that. But in any case, that is our
objective and that is the problem we should work on. We should
isolate them, we should not negotiate with them. And if they do
things in the meantime that we don't like, like, for example,
go from having two bombs worth of plutonium to ten bombs, we
should blame them for that.
So I am not giving, I think, the most charitable
interpretation of that view, but you might gather I disagree
with it. There is an alternative which says this is a lousy
regime, it is a horrible group of people. They do starve their
own people, the North Korean regime. But in any case, a North
Korean regime that has two bombs worth of plutonium and no
tests is hugely better than one that has ten bombs and has
conducted a test. As one of my colleagues likes to say,
challenge them to conduct their first tests with two bombs and
then tell them that you can't do that again. So two bombs and
ten bombs in a test are two totally different worlds.
What Bush inherited is a totally different threat than what
he is leaving to his successor. So in the North Korean case, if
one were prepared to live with a miserable regime, but
nonetheless not to threaten regime change to the regime and one
were able to persuade the Chinese to exercise leverage, because
the only people that have really powerful leverage with the
North Koreans are the Chinese, I would say that is our best
hope for trying to get that rolled back. And at this stage, I
would say it is not a very great hope.
In the Iranian case, again what is it that the Supreme
Ayatollah is most concerned about in Iran? It is the
preservation of the regime. That is his responsibility. What is
it that we say we want to do? Change the regime. Now, actually
in the second term, as the negotiations developed a bit, we
backed off of that somewhat. But I would say the combination of
carrots and sticks for Iran would stop Iran short of a nuclear
bomb, stop Iran short of highly enriched uranium. How much
further can I get them back? Well, again it depends on how much
I can give and how much I can threaten. But I think that hand
is going to be extremely difficult. When they had zero
centrifuges, it was plausible that you might stop them with
zero centrifuges. When they had one cascade or two, it is
possible that you might stop them with that. At this stage, I
worry that even if they were to erase Natanz they already have
the know-how. And what I worry about is the covert Natanz, not
the one that exists. So I would say the Iranian case is quite
difficult, but it would include, I believe if we are going to
be successful, acknowledging that a regime that we don't like,
we are going to live with because a lousy Iranian regime with
no bombs is terrible, but it is a lot better than that same
regime with nuclear bombs.
Mr. Kratovil. Mr. Chair, do I have any time remaining?
Mr. Taylor. Forty seconds, sir.
Mr. Kratovil. What country should we be most concerned
about in terms of the bioterrorism threat? In other words,
where are the safeguards that you suggest we need most lacking?
What countries?
Mr. Graham. Pakistan would again be at the top of the list.
But with the biological, it is becoming a very rapidly
expanding set of countries. For instance, India, Malaysia,
Indonesia, Brazil are all--Cuba--developing substantial
biological capabilities. That is why our recommendation is that
one of the immediate steps that the new Administration should
take would be to convene a conference of exactly those
countries as well as the more traditional first world countries
with biological capability to start from the premise that we
all are at risk. The world is at risk by this and that we share
a common responsibility to try to take those steps that will
begin to turn that line that Dr. Allison talks about on another
trajectory.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman. The chair now
recognizes the gentleman from New York, Captain Massa.
Mr. Massa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Senator Graham, it is a
pleasure to be with you again after years of being apart. And I
am too honored that my first question in the hearing would be
directed to yourself. These are relatively straightforward. So
if you will bear with me. I understand from your testimony and
is it in fact the position of the Commission that the threat of
biological and chemical warfare attacks against the United
States from rogue nations or individual terrorist is a higher
threat than those of concentrated nuclear attack, am I
understanding that correct?
Mr. Graham. A threat to the world, it is more likely that
somewhere in the world a biological device will be used than it
is--that it will be a nuclear device.
Mr. Massa. And both you and Senator Talent with literally
decades of combined Senate experience have witnessed the
expenditure of tens of billions if not hundreds of billions of
dollars on an anti-ballistic missile nuclear defense shield
that has come under several names from Star Wars to its current
environs, both in fixed missile defense as we have in the
Aleutian Islands, and as the Navy and Air Force's versions for
mobile. Would you agree that we have expended if not hundreds,
at least tens of billions of dollars in that effort?
Mr. Graham. That is a statement of fact, yes.
Mr. Massa. So is there any situation that your Commission
is aware of by which the current emphasis on strategic
ballistic missile defense as it occurs today and we are
spending money on today can address the potential imminent
threat of chemical or biological terrorist attack as you have
seen and studied in your six months of this Commission? Are the
two matched up in any way at all that one could defend against
the other? Specifically, for instance, anthrax.
Mr. Graham. The answer is I guess it is technically
feasible that a missile could have on its nose a biological
weapon.
Mr. Massa. Is it probable in your opinion?
Mr. Graham. Is it--I would think that it would be unlikely
that the biological weapon, which we think is the more likely
to be delivered, would be delivered on a missile, beginning
from the fact that the group that we are most concerned about
are the terrorists and I think for them access to a reliable
delivery system through a missile is highly unlikely.
Mr. Massa. In that the power of this body is publicly seen
as being a largely controlled national treasury, the power of
the purse, we are in command of nothing except a small portion
of the authority of the budget, do you believe it is
appropriate that as a body we examine or reexamine the national
allocation of funds to the strategic missile defensive
initiatives to more accurately match the threats that you have
described here today?
Mr. Graham. As I said to an earlier question, I think that
we need to have at some point in the Federal Government,
Congress or the executive branch, a capability of looking at
our threats, assessing what it is going to take to mitigate or
eliminate those threats, and then allocating resources against
some sense of prioritization, putting the most effort on those
that are the most likely.
Mr. Massa. Dr. Allison, you embody quite literally decades
of experience on this subject. We are going to be spending tens
of billions of dollars during my two-year term here on
strategic missile defense. Do you believe that money could be
better spent in protecting us from the biological threats that
you have discussed here today?
Dr. Allison. I believe that both nuclear terrorist threats
and biological terrorist threats are greater threats to America
than is the delivery of a warhead by a missile against
Americans. So in the hierarchy of threats I have no question in
my mind that terrorist attacks not using missiles are a greater
threat than missile attacks.
There is a second question, which is how much money should
we spend on defense altogether, and I tend to be mostly
conservative. So I pretty much want to cover all the bets. But
in terms of priorities I would focus on the greater threats to
us, and I think under the current situation in which we spend,
I think the current missile defense budget is nine or ten
billion dollars on missile defense annually and we spend a
small percentage of that on higher ranking threats doesn't make
sense.
Mr. Massa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the
balance of my time.
Mr. Taylor. The chair thanks the gentleman. The Chair now
recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Spratt. And
again I want to thank you, gentlemen. We are going to wrap it
up after Mr. Spratt's questions.
Mr. Spratt. Thank you very much for your excellent
testimony. I got here late, but I heard the gist of it all, and
I have been doing my homework sitting here as you testify. And
I think you have made an enormous contribution. You are asking
for your charter to be renewed and extended. If you did that,
would you use it to focus on biological threats or to more
fully focus on the traditional concerns we have had over
nuclear weapons and radiological dirty bombs and things of that
nature? Is there any particular purpose you have in mind for
the extended term, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Graham. I appreciate your asking that question,
Congressman Spratt. We would--our goal, if we are asked to
extend beyond submitting the report, is going to be
educational. We believe the American public needs to understand
the implications of what we think the risk assessments are and
the need to urgently move to the steps that we have outlined to
reduce that risk. So our principal activities would be things
like we are doing today, responding to requests by individuals
and committees of the Congress on this issue. We also have and
will do briefings of the appropriate new executive officials
who will have responsibility on this matter, and we will
respond to requests from universities and other groups who
would like to learn more. We think that last point is
particularly important in light of what Senator Talent has
emphasized, and that is the importance of developing within the
scientific and academic community this culture of security for
biological materials that is inadequate today.
Mr. Talent. Could I add one word, Congressman, to that? I
agree with everything that Senator Graham said. And we would do
all of this with respect to the broad range of recommendations
in the report. We tend to emphasize biological because one of
our goals is to raise the visibility in that area because we
think it hasn't been visible enough.
Mr. Spratt. When you say to raise it, the level of
education, are we talking about awareness, too, on the part of
those who are able to synthesize DNA and constitute a real
threat of unknown genomics? Is that part of your purpose, too,
to go to try to begin some process for self-restraint on their
part?
Mr. Graham. The answer is yes. And we wouldn't be doing
this alone. As an example there are now some 20 research
universities which have come together to encourage this greater
sense of common purpose in the use of particularly biological
materials. It is being chaired by the President of Pennsylvania
State University, Graham Spangler. And we would work with
groups like that in supporting their efforts, as well as groups
similarly who are involved in other aspects of our effort.
The book that we have published that I believe you have,
whatever royalties come from that book are going to go to an
American foundation which is working with the education and
health care systems in Pakistan. We think that is the kind of
thing that we would like to be able to continue to support.
Mr. Spratt. We have had a program in the past that has had
different names and different shorter names as well as
acronyms. But it is a city-to-city--nuclear cities program,
IPP, International Police. And I have forgotten what that even
stands for. But it is all about engaging scientists from the
nuclear, as well as the biological realm, keeping them
constructively engaged instead of allowing them to take their
talents elsewhere and pedaling them to the highest bidder,
including some people who are up to no good.
Is this programs still working? It has been criticized in
the past because the labs were taking a substantial share off
the top in order to administer the program. A lot of people
question whether or not it was achieving its intended purpose.
Do you think it still has a role to play?
Mr. Graham. Let me just answer that in one context and that
is Russia, where there was great concern when the Soviet Union
collapsed that there would be thousands of scientists from its
large nuclear industry that would drift off into the hands of
bad people. When we were in Russia in September, we asked about
that question and they--and our effort, which was to provide
alternative employment for those scientists. They said in the
nuclear area they thought it had been highly successful. And
frankly now that Russia was recovering and has more economic
capability of its own, our program is beginning to retreat with
victory. There has not been a similar effort on the biological
side, and that would be an area that we would hope to
encourage. Because we think that the way that terrorists are
likely to become biologically capable is not when the
terrorists becomes a biologist, but when the biologist becomes
a terrorist and brings their expertise to the table of
destruction.
Mr. Spratt. We went to Vektar together some years ago. You
have probably been so many times you have forgotten that
particular trip. I remember looking over the shoulder of one of
the biologists there in the lab and he was working on a project
and he was connected by the Internet with Chapel Hill doing the
same sort of work in sponsoring that particular program.
Time is just about up. Let me ask you two last questions.
In raising the level of awareness to the----
Mr. Taylor. Mr. Spratt, if I may. We have three votes on
the House floor. I am going to yield the chair to you and you
can stay here as long as you want. But I am going to go try to
make those votes. Okay?
Mr. Spratt. Hit the road.
Mr. Taylor. I want to thank you, gentlemen, for a very,
very strong and sobering report.
Mr. McHugh. Mr. Chairman, before you yield, would you yield
to me? And we are going to see what devastation Mr. Spratt can
create by himself. But I want to add my words and I am sure
there will be none. Great appreciation to you and your fellow
commissioners, particularly to our two former congressional
colleagues. I hope we can have the opportunity, particularly in
the classified setting, to submit some questions that in my
mind arose during the discussion.
And in an editorial comment in closing, I would say when we
are talking about ballistic missile defense (BMD) or the
likelihood of chemical versus biological, I will agree with Dr.
Allison--he didn't put it in these words--but we better learn
very quickly how to walk and chew gum because we have got to be
prepared to meet all those level of threats. And your report
has helped us to focus on that and I commend and thank you for
it. With that, I would yield to the acting chairman, the acting
gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Spratt.
Mr. Spratt. [Presiding.] Two quick questions. In raising
the level of attention to the biological threat which has
tended to be back-burnered in the past, I don't think you mean
to leave the interpretation that we can let up our efforts in
the nuclear area in particular.
Dr. Allison. Agreed.
Mr. Spratt. That is an affirmative nod on the part of the
two of you, I take it.
Mr. Talent. We agree, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Spratt. And secondly, we have spent about the same
amount of money on all of these programs, even though the
content of what we have been spending it for has changed from
year to year. About $400 million for Nunn-Lugar, altogether the
Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) is about two billion
dollars. Do you think this is adequate particularly in light of
your new found concern for biological weapons? Are we spending
enough here to----
Mr. Graham. In my assessment, the answer is no. And two
areas--I will not repeat the biological, but I will return to
an earlier question. We have been underfunding our key
international agency on the nuclear side, and that is the
International Atomic Energy Agency, and have been providing
much of the funding in a very unstable set of small project
funding. We need to reevaluate what we are--what we want the
IAEA to be able to do for our benefit and what the resources
are going to be required to do that. And then we need to lead
the international community to provide those resources.
Dr. Allison. If I could briefly. I agree that the answer is
no. I think--if I could recommend, I would say President Obama
in the campaign said that he was going to develop a plan over
the first four years of his Administration to assure that on
the nuclear front all weapons and all material everywhere in
the world was locked down to a satisfactory standard. I would
suggest you might challenge the Administration to come forth
with that plan and a strategy for accomplishing it and saying
money is not the constraint, tell us what money you need for
those purposes. I don't think it is a lot more money, but I
think it is somewhat more money. And I think, secondly, the
flexibility to use the money in particular ways they should be
challenged to say if there is some constraint that Congress is
now putting on the spending of the money that is preventing you
from accomplishing that objective, come back and tell us about
that.
Mr. Spratt. We will be in further touch with you. Thank you
very much for your good work and for your excellent testimony
today. We greatly appreciate it.
Mr. Graham. Thank you very much, Mr. Congressman. And on
behalf of the three of us and the other members of the
Commission, we express our deep gratitude for the opportunity
to present this report to such an important committee of the
Congress.
[Whereupon, at 1:05 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
January 22, 2009
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
January 22, 2009
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. FORBES
Mr. Forbes. Clearly, obtaining a nuclear weapon is very difficult
but biological weapons are more readily available and require a
different and lesser technological skill set and more readily available
materials. Based on your studies, what is a possible scenario and how
can we undertake a proactive stance today that would prevent this
event?
Mr. Graham, Mr. Talent, and Dr. Allison. Our commissioners
unanimously concluded that unless we act urgently and decisively, it
was more likely than not that terrorists would use a weapon of mass
destruction somewhere in the world by the end 2013. We also concluded
that terrorists are more likely to obtain and use a biological weapon
than a nuclear weapon. On December 2, 2008, the Director of National
Intelligence publicly agreed with this assessment.
Possible bioterrorism scenarios range from a domestic lone-wolf
contaminating a salad bar in a fast-food restaurant, to small- and
large-scale bioattacks by non-state actors, and bioattacks on a
catastrophic scale by a nation-state.
Preventing nuclear terrorism is simple in concept: keep terrorists
from obtaining highly enriched uranium or plutonium. If they don't have
these materials, they will not be able to build a nuclear weapon.
The classic nuclear nonproliferation model--locating, locking down
and eliminating loose nuclear materials--is not applicable to the bio
threat. This is true for several reasons. First, highly enriched
uranium and plutonium do not exist in nature, while virtually all of
the potential bioterrorism pathogens are found across the globe.
Second, the engineering skills necessary to build a nuclear weapon are
highly specialized. The skills needed to produce a bioweapon, on the
other hand, are today possessed by graduate students. Lab technicians
isolate anthrax, plague, tularemia and other deadly pathogens every day
as they treat patients or conduct research in human and veterinary
medicine. And every crop-dusting farmer knows the process to spray live
biological materials. Third, the equipment needed to produce large
quantities of weapons-grade pathogens can be purchased on the Internet
for little more than what you would pay for a used minivan. Thus, the
pathogens in question cannot be contained, the equipment needed to
produce them is readily available, and their application is common
knowledge. The false notion that bioweapons can be contained through
the same policies as nuclear weapons must be discarded.
Unfortunately, the only thing that nuclear weapons and bioweapons
do have in common is that the potential lethality from a properly
executed biological attack could rival or exceed that of a nuclear
weapon.
Fortunately, there are proactive steps that the nation can take
against a biological attack. These actions include continued support
and investment in international treaties such as the Biological Weapons
Convention (BWC), support for U.N. Resolution 1540, and common-sense
security measures for U.S. labs.
U.S. leadership at the upcoming 2011 Review Conference of the BWC
is essential. The 1972 BWC outlaws biological weapons, bars parties
from providing assistance to anyone seeking them, and obligates
governments to take any necessary measures to prevent anyone on their
territory from obtaining biological weapons. To be clear, the
Commission believes that the U.S. decision to withdraw from the 2001
BWC Protocol negotiations was sound. However, opposition to the
Protocol is not a firm basis for U.S. policy. We must lead by promoting
a new approach for strengthening national implementation of the BWC.
One clear way to convey the importance that the U.S. places on halting
proliferation would be for the Obama Administration to send a high-
level official to address the Conference.
Between now and 2011, the United States should work with its allies
to promote measures that would ensure more effective national
implementation of the BWC. The ability of the U.S. to exercise maximum
influence to enhance the global effort to avoid the proliferation of
biological weapons would be significantly advanced if Congress were to
adopt the recommendations of the Commission. This action would position
the U.S. as having the gold standard for national security of
biological weapons or materials.
These steps are essential, but their adoption and adherence will
not stop a determined adversary.
Given the accessibility of the pathogens in question, and the
skills and equipment needed to produce them, everyone must understand
that there are clear limits to what can be done to prevent an attack.
In order to deter such an attack, or severely limit its lethality, the
United States must develop the capabilities to (1) rapidly recognize a
pathogen or biological weapon, (2) treat the population before illness
sets in, and (3) be able to vaccinate those who could be exposed in the
future. In short, we must develop the capability to prevent a highly
lethal pandemic, or a bio attack from becoming a bio-Katrina and
causing mass casualties. Our ability to develop these capabilities is
not a matter of speculation, it is a question of our nation's budgetary
priorities.
As stated in our attached article, ``Bioterrorism: Redefining
Prevention,'' we expanded the use of the word prevention when referring
to the bio threat. We must pursue all traditional forms of prevention,
but America must also he prepared to prevent a bioattack from becoming
a biocatastrophe. This is why we strongly support investments in
programs that will improve capabilities for rapid recognition, rapid
response and rapid recovery. There is no higher priority than properly
funding the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority
(BARDA) at the Department of Health and Human Services. America must
have the capability to produce vaccines and therapeutics rapidly and
inexpensively.
Developing these capabilities will require significant logistical
and technological advancements. However, within these enormous
challenges lies an opportunity for no-regret investments in our
national security, economic growth, and technological dominance. The
United States has an opportunity to lead the world by innovating how
vaccines and medicines are made, so that they can be made more rapidly
and less expensively. Improving the infrastructure to respond to a
public health crisis (whether an attack or a natural event) is an
opportunity to improve U.S. national security and for global American
leadership, technical innovation, and economic stimulus.
Mr. Forbes. The Commission did a good job with regards to Iran,
Russia and North Korea in terms of state-sponsored WMD. What are your
perceptions regarding China and its role in the proliferation of
nuclear weapon technology and capability, particularly with respect to
non-state entities and countries that we would not consider allies?
Dr. Allison. As the emerging superpower and, potentially, a future
target, China has an opportunity and vital interest to lead in
preventing nuclear terrorism and proliferation. As has been repeatedly
demonstrated over the last several years, China is the only party that
could plausibly orchestrate the complete, verifiable elimination of
North Korea's nuclear arsenal. Further, due to its long history of
relations with Islamabad, China has an important role to play in the
Pakistani case as well.
Rather than seeing China as a competitor or spoiler, in an effort
to bolster the nonproliferation regime and enhance nuclear security
globally, we should enlist it as a leading partner in President Obama's
ambitious nuclear security agenda.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. WILSON
Mr. Wilson. Given the information presented in the report, should
entities sharing select agents and toxins such as botulinum toxin with
Iran and Iranian universities, and collaborating with scientists in
Iran on the handling and manipulation of toxin[sl, reconsider those
relationships? Furthermore, should the U.S. be doing more to ensure
that entities that have these relationships are not incentivized to
continue and/or expand these relationships?
Mr. Talent. The current regulatory scheme in the U.S. regarding
Iran is extensive, and precludes legally sharing select agents and
toxins such as botulinum toxin to Iranian universities without
extensive oversight and licensing from the U.S. government.
Domestically, aliens from Iran are prohibited from possessing
select agents, of which botulinum is one. Within the U.S., select
agents are regulated by the Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA). The possession and
transfer of the toxin is restricted to those people who have (1)
received a Security Risk Assessment (SRA), which entails a background
check performed by the Department of Justice (DOJ), and (2) are working
in a facility that is cleared for select agents and has been inspected
by either HHS or USDA. According to the USA PATRIOT Act (2001), aliens
from Iran, and other countries determined by the Department of State to
have provided support for international terrorism, are considered to be
restricted persons and are prohibited from possession of select agents.
For export of select agents such as botulinum toxin, the regulatory
regime is likewise extensive:
According to the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets
Control (OFAC), U.S. persons generally may not enter into any
transactions, including exports of goods or services, to Cuba, Iran,
and Sudan or to foreign nationals from those countries.
Articles of military significance, of which botulinum
toxin would be considered, are subject to export controls that are part
of the State Department's International Traffic in Arms Regulations
(ITAR). ITAR-controlled items and services may not be exported from the
U.S. without a license from the State Department's Directorate of
Defense Trade Controls.
U.S. companies may not engage in export transactions
involving persons whose export privileges have been revoked or
suspended, or with entities known to have ties to embargoed countries,
terrorist organizations, or international narcotics traffickers. There
are lists maintained by Treasury and State for this determination.
Export control regulations prohibit exports of any items
when the exporter knows that the items will be used in connection with
the proliferation of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
Again, the current export regulatory scheme in the U.S. precludes
the legal transfer to Iranian universities without extensive oversight.
The process does not appear to be currently incentivized in the
slightest.
Mr. Wilson. The [Commission] report states that ``to counter the
threat of Biological Weapons proliferation and terrorism will require
concerted action across a continuum that extends from prevention to
consequence management.'' Does prevention include limiting companies
which may be involved in the proliferation of Weapons of Mass
Destruction from having full access to United States markets?
Mr. Talent. Detecting companies transferring WMD technology is
usually a function of good intelligence and law enforcement work. There
are a host of U.S. statutes governing the export of U.S. technology,
especially pertaining to weapons of mass destruction, and it has long
been the policy of the United States to encourage other states to enact
and enforce strong export control laws.
In April 2004, the U.N. Security Council adopted United Nations
Security Council Resolution 1540, establishing for the first time
binding obligations on all U.N. member states under Chapter VII of the
U.N. Charter to take and enforce effective measures against the
proliferation of WMD, their means of delivery, and related materials.
UNSCR 1540, if fully implemented, can help ensure that no State or non-
State actor is a source or beneficiary of WMD proliferation. All states
have three primary obligations under UNSCR 1540 relating to such items:
to prohibit support to non-State actors seeking such items; to adopt
and enforce effective laws prohibiting the proliferation of such items
to non-State actors, and prohibiting assisting or financing such
proliferation; and to take and enforce effective measures to control
these items, in order to prevent their proliferation, as well as to
control the provision of funds and services that contribute to
proliferation.
If implemented successfully, each state's actions will
significantly strengthen the international standards relating to the
export of sensitive items and support for proliferators (including
financing) and ensure that non-state actors, including terrorist and
black-market networks, do not gain access to chemical, nuclear or
biological weapons, their means of delivery or related materials. The
Commission discussed Resolution 1540 and endorsed adherence via
international initiatives like the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear
Terrorism.
______
QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MS. SHEA-PORTER
Ms. Shea-Porter. In 2005, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
issued a report called ``Safety and Security of Commercial Spent
Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report.'' This report concluded, ``Spent
nuclear fuel stored in pools at some of the nation's 103 operating
commercial nuclear reactors may be at risk from terrorist attacks.''
Among the NAS findings (Finding 2A),
``Terrorists view nuclear power plant facilities as desirable
targets because of the large inventories of radionuclides they
contain. The committee believes that knowledgeable terrorists
might choose to attack spent fuel pools because (1) at U.S.
commercial power plants, these pools are less well protected
structurally than reactor cores; and (2) they typically contain
inventories of medium- and long-lived radionuclides that are
several times greater than those contained in individual
reactor cores.''
They noted the 9/11 Commission's finding (in Staff Statement No.
16, Outline of the 9/11 Plot, pages 12-13) that Al Qaeda had originally
targeted nuclear plants, an indication that `commercial nuclear plants
are of interest to terrorist groups.'
The NAS committee considered many terrorist scenarios and found
that spent fuel containment pools were vulnerable to attack. It found
that government had not considered the risk presented by a plane flown
at high speed and deliberately crashed into a commercial nuclear
plant's spent fuel containment pool, which could set off fires and
release large amounts of radiation.
According to CRS, spent nuclear fuel is moved from pool storage to
dry storage as needed to make room for newly discharged spent fuel from
reactors. So there isn't much net reduction in pool storage (except in
the case of decommissioned reactors, where all the spent fuel is put
into dry storage so the pools can be closed). In the four years since
the NAS report, the U.S. has not made progress in converting to a safer
method of storage.
My corner of New England has one of these vulnerable nuclear
plants. About 1.35 million people in New Hampshire, Maine, and
Massachusetts live within 30 miles of Seabrook Station Nuclear Power
Plant (located in the Seacoast region of New Hampshire), and 3.8
million live within 40 miles in the Greater Boston area. An attack
could be catastrophic, as a fire in the containment pool would lead to
an explosion that could take out most of New England and the Canadian
Maritimes, depending on the winds, for centuries.
Have you considered this particular type of nuclear threat? Please
elaborate. What recommendations do you have to deal with this kind of
terrorist threat?
Dr. Allison. I share your concern and I address that very threat in
my book, Nuclear Terrorism (pg. 53-56). To address this vulnerability
in a sustainable way, Congress must work to separate politics from
science in our deliberations about Yucca Mountain as a permanent
disposal site of nuclear waste.
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