U.S. Nuclear Security Measures Inadequate, Roemer Says

Thursday, May 18, 2006

By David Francis, Global Security Newsletter

December 9, 2005

WASHINGTON, DC -- A member of the Sept. 11 commission recently blasted the federal government and U.S. lawmakers for not acting quickly enough to secure nuclear and radiological materials to ensure they do not end up in the hands of terrorists (see GSN, Dec. 5).

“Right now Osama bin Laden’s timetable has been to acquire nuclear weapons and he’s been trying for the last 10 years. The Bush administration’s timetable is to give another 15 years for securing the most dangerous weapons in the world,” Tim Roemer said in a recent interview with Global Security Newswire. “That gives jihadists a quarter of a century to steal these weapons that can destroy a major U.S. city. That’s not the urgent timetable and response that will make America safer.”

In 2002, President George W. Bush formed the Sept. 11 commission and asked it to look into intelligence failures leading up to the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on the United States. After completing its official work in July 2004 by submitting its recommendations on how to prevent future terror attacks, committee members have subsequently issued four unofficial reports critiquing the Bush administration’s implementation of the panel’s recommendations. The final report, released earlier this week, found federal antiterrorism efforts still widely lacking. The third report, released last month and dealing specifically with the nuclear threat, found that the Bush administration and Congress had made “insufficient progress” in their nonproliferation efforts since the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks.

In the third report, the panel said federal antiterrorism preparedness efforts must focus on securing nuclear materials, because the detonation of a nuclear or radiological bomb poses the greatest threat to the United States.

“The president should develop a comprehensive plan to dramatically accelerate the timetable for securing all nuclear weapons-usable material around the world and request the necessary resources to complete this task. The president should publicly make this goal his top national security priority, and ride herd on the bureaucracy to maintain a sense of urgency,” the report says.

The commission also urged Congress to allocate resources to improving security over nuclear materials and move to streamline cooperative threat reduction programs to secure weapons of mass destruction in former Soviet states. The United States and Russia should also work to renew the underlying threat reduction agreement before it expires next year, the report states.

The report offers no details on how to accomplish these goals.

Democrats on the House Homeland Security said yesterday that they were trying to implement these recommendations but are meeting opposition from Republican lawmakers and the White House.

“We’ve been unsuccessful in getting Republican leadership and Republican membership to take us seriously,” said the committee’s ranking minority member, Bennie Thompson (Miss.), in a conference call with reporters. “This administration talks about making us safer but refuses to take the reasonable steps to get the job done. … We have to do better.”

Committee Republicans did not return calls asking for comment on Thompson’s remarks or the commission’s recommendations. The State, Energy and Defense departments did not return calls for comment on their nonproliferation activities.

Strengthening CTR, PSI

The cooperative threat reduction program aims to secure nuclear material and weapons in the former Soviet Union, establish safeguards against WMD proliferation and demilitarize former defense industries and capabilities in one-time Soviet states. The U.S.-Russian umbrella agreement for the program expires in June 2006.

For the program to continue, the Bush administration must remove diplomatic hurdles that hinder the effort, including issues of worker liability and payment for work and equipment, according to Roemer and other observers.

“The entire framework of threat reduction with Russia is now in some question because of the ongoing discussion and ongoing negotiations about the umbrella agreement that facilitates threat reduction programs between the U.S. and Russia,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

Making sure the work is expedited is crucial to world security, said Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana who now serves as the president of the Center for National Policy.

Many Russian facilities “contain enough highly enriched uranium to fashion a nuclear device. Many of these sites are lacking even the most basic security features. They may have one guard and a chain-link fence. That’s not nearly enough to protect an American city,” Roemer said.

Roemer also suggested the United States involve more countries in the Proliferation Security Initiative, an effort by the United States and international partners to stop the maritime transport of weapons of mass destruction and WMD materials. Eleven countries agreed to participate in the initiative when it was first announced in 2003, and additional countries have since joined (see GSN, Aug. 5).

While Roemer said the initiative has had limited success, he said the number of countries participating in the program needs to grow to expand its effectiveness.

The initiative “could be more effective if it uses intelligence and planning resources of NATO alliance countries and we should open up membership to other non-NATO members,” Roemer said. “We need world participation. It would be like saying we’re going to fight the jihadists in Baghdad and that’s solely where we’re going to fight them. We know jihadists are attacking in Madrid and Amman, Jordan and Bali and London and the United States. It’s a worldwide threat. The same can be said of the securing of these weapons of mass destruction.”

First response training and evacuation planning are also lacking, Roemer said, arguing that responses to Hurricanes Rita and Katrina earlier this year show that the United States is not prepared to deal with the catastrophic damage caused by a nuclear attack. “We need better practicing of these plans, we need better plans, we need simulations of these plans,” he said.

Roemer said he believes that Congress has not allocated enough money for a plan for the emergency response to an act of nuclear terrorism. “Congress is pork-barrel spending to most districts in the country rather than investing in what might happen as a result of a nuclear attack or a biological attack,” he said.

“We keep asking Congress and Homeland Security to keep developing this national strategy based on intelligence and risk vulnerability,” he added. “Four and a half years after 9/11 they’re still pork-barrel politicking rather than investing taxpayer money in risk assessment and a strategic plan. A strategic response plan would have a WMD attack or a chemical or biological attack as a part of a national plan.”

The United States will remain vulnerable to a potentially catastrophic attack as long as it fails to find ways to counter the WMD threat, Roemer said.

“We need to have people employed that are thinking outside the box that are creatively looking at this issue,” Roemer said. “The terrorists came at us with a van in 1993 in New York City, they changed to planes in 2001, they’re likely to do neither a van nor a plane next time, but it might well be a major American city that they target and we’re not doing enough to protect against that.”

The Arms Control Association’s Kimball concurred that more must be done to secure materials and that Congress and the White House need to dedicate more resources to the cause. The program was to receive $415.5 million for fiscal 2006.

“The resources are not there in many cases,” he said, adding that while there is adequate money that could be directed to the program, “the executive branch is not pursuing [Cooperation Threat Reduction] with the kind of speed one would expect.”