A Report Card on the Department of Energy’s Nonproliferation Programs with Russia, dated January 10, 2001 – by Howard Baker, Lloyd Cutler

Background

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, we have witnessed the dissolution of an empire having over 40,000 nuclear weapons, over a thousand metric tons of nuclear materials, vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons materials, and thousands of missiles. This Cold War arsenal is spread across I I time zones and lacks the Cold War infrastructure that provided the control and financing necessary to assure that chains of command remain intact and nuclear weapons and materials remain securely beyond the reach of terrorists and weapons-proliferating states. This problem is compounded by the existence of thousands of weapons scientists who, not always having the resources necessary to adequately care for their families, may be tempted to sell their expertise to countries of proliferation concern.

In order to assess the Department of Energy’s part of current U.S. efforts to deal with this critical situation, in February 2000 Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson asked former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker and former White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler to co-chair a bipartisan task force to review and assess DOE’s nonproliferation programs in Russia and to make recommendations for their improvement. After nine months of careful examination of current DOE programs
and consideration of related nonproliferation policies and programs of the U.S. Government, the Task Force reached the following conclusions and recommendations.

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