Inviting Life To Imitate Art: Will A ‘Peacemaker’ Exploit Deficient Security At U.S. Nuclear Facilities?

(Washington, D.C.): On 22 October, USA
Today contained an
“above-the-fold” front-page
investigative report describing a
dangerous decline in the physical
security of the American nuclear
stockpile. Thanks to cuts totaling 34
percent over the last five years,
security forces have been reduced,
maintenance deferred and upgrades
canceled, leading to a steady degradation
in installations housing the Nation’s
nuclear materials.

The O’Leary Legacy

Worse yet, the risks of an attack on
one or more of these facilities by
terrorists or others hostile to the
United States have been greatly
exacerbated by former Secretary of Energy
Hazel O’Leary’s 25 November 1996 decision
to disclose the exact whereabouts of
every gram of U.S. “special nuclear
material.” As the Center observed
four days later:

“Of particular concern is
the fact that Mrs.
O’Leary’s glasnost
campaign has made public precise
information concerning the
quantities and whereabouts of
U.S. plutonium and highly
enriched uranium stocks….
In this manner, she has
effectively invited attacks on
these facilities and left them
significantly able to thwart such
attacks — with potentially
ominous implications for the
local communities and/or for the
effort to staunch the
proliferation of radiological,
atomic or thermonuclear
weapons.”⁽¹⁾

More Early Warnings

This problem was also identified in
the course of a High-Level Roundtable
Discussion on “The Future of the
U.S. Nuclear Deterrent” convened by
the Center for Security Policy on 15 July
1997. In the presence of a distinguished
group of former senior government
officials and other experts — including
notably former Secretary of the
Departments of Defense and Energy James
Schlesinger and former Secretary of
Defense Caspar Weinberger — alarms were
raised about this issue. As the summary
of this proceeding indicated on 25
August:

“[Concern was expressed
about] the government’s declining
ability to safeguard the
facilities and materials of the
Department of Energy weapons
complex. One participant
suggested that this shortfall was
a symptom of the larger problems
afflicting the Department’s
infrastructure.

“The unfortunate reality is
that there is more nuclear
weapons-grade material in the
system than at the height of the
Cold War (a function of both
sizeable returns of special
nuclear material by the
Department of Defense and the
quantities of such material
extracted from the former Soviet
Union). The budgets for
protecting such materials and the
sites that house them, however,
have been reduced by more
than 40 percent.

“The strategic significance
of deficiencies in the physical
security of the complex is
further heightened to the extent
that it winds up being dependent
upon single facilities for
critical production and
maintenance functions. The
discussion noted that, during the
1980s, Members of Congress —
particularly the then-chairman of
the House Energy Committee, Rep.
John Dingell (D-MI) —
exhibited considerable concern
about the adequacy of security
precautions intended to safeguard
the Department of Energy complex.
Unfortunately, no such oversight
is occurring at a moment when the
need for security is, if
anything, greater and
the resources needed to provide
it are being dramatically
reduced.”⁽²⁾

Roosting Chickens

Three reports — one issued in August
by a Department of Energy (DoE) Security
Task Force, an internal DoE memorandum
circulated in July and a draft of a
recent Department of Defense review
classified “Confidential” —
indicate that security safeguards
at nuclear weapons facilities across the
country are in an advanced state of
disrepair. The USA Today article
highlighted the following points from
each of these studies:

“A draft of the Pentagon
review raises ‘serious concerns
over the status of physical
security’ at DoE facilities….An
August report by a DoE security
task force urged immediate
action ‘to meet the developing
crisis in special nuclear
materials protection’….[And]
a July internal DoE memorandum by
a top security official noted
‘serious issues exist at key
facilities possessing hundreds of
kilograms of direct use nuclear
material.'”

Among the shortcomings cited by USA
Today are:

• “Inexperienced managers
  overseeing dwindling and aging
  security forces”;
• “Alarms that don’t
  function”;
• “[Nuclear storage] vaults
  that are inadequate”;
• “[M]ajor problems at three
  facilities: Rocky Flats in
  Colorado, the Mound plant in Ohio
  and Lawrence Livermore National
  Laboratory in California.”

Whistling Past the Nuclear
Graveyard?

Faced with the revelation of these
problems, the Clinton Administration —
which has studiously ignored previous
warnings — has decided not to dispute
the danger they will constitute if
left uncorrected. For example, USA
Today quotes Joseph Mahaley, DoE’s
Director of Security Affairs, as saying:
“Are we in crisis? No, I don’t think
we’re in crisis. If we do nothing, we’ll
be in crisis. We have to make adjustments
and we are.”

In an interview on Fox News yesterday,
however, Mr. Mahaley’s predecessor at the
Department of Energy, Major General
George McFadden (USA, Ret.), sounded a
rather more ominous note:

“I think it’s absolutely
mandatory that the management
interests on the part of the
senior officials at DoE and the
managers at the specific sites
around the country realize that this
is a problem that needs immediate
attention and attention means not
only their interest but adequate
resources to ensure that
we have the right amount of
security at these
installations….”

When asked point blank by Fox’s David
Asmin, “Are we close to a
nuclear disaster here, General?”
Gen. McFadden responded: “I would
say that if we continue down the road
that we’ve been taking for the last 2-3
years on budgeting, the answer [to] that
would be ‘Yes.'” The
General tried to sound reassuring when he
added, “But we’re not there
yet.”

The Bottom Line

It is ironic that the dangerous
erosion of physical security in America’s
nuclear weapons complex is, in part,
attributable to the diversion of DoE
funds from its own program to enhance the
security of Russian nuclear
materials via the so-called Cooperative
Threat Reduction initiative (usually
identified as the Nunn-Lugar program).
Unfortunately, while the hemorrhage of
nuclear materials from Russian facilities
is a serious problem, improving
the “locks” in the former
Soviet nuclear complex is unlikely
materially to reduce this peril as long
as the “keys” are held by
corrupt and/or malevolent individuals
trafficking in such commodities.

In short, the United States
may be winding up with the worst of both
worlds: Doing little, if
anything, to secure nuclear materials in
Russia at the expense of investments that
could measurably improve the security of
those in the United States. Such an
absurd — and reckless — situation cries
out for congressional oversight
and corrective action.

As it happens, an early opportunity to
begin the needed review may arise as
early as 2:00 p.m. on next
Monday, 27 October. At that
hour, the Governmental Affairs
Committee’s Subcommittee on International
Security, Proliferation and Federal
Services, chaired by Sen. Thad Cochran
(R-MS), will take testimony from Dr.
Schlesinger, Assistant Secretary of
Energy for Defense Programs Vic Reis and
Dr. Robert Barker, former Assistant to
the Secretary of Defense for Atomic
Energy concerning the related
subject of the safety and reliability of
the U.S. nuclear deterrent in the context
of the Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB)
Treaty.

Since the Clinton-O’Leary
“denuclearization” policy that
is taking risks with the safety and
reliability of the U.S. deterrent and
that is bringing the Senate the CTB also
seems to animate the Administration’s blasé
attitude toward the security of the
nuclear complex, it must be earnestly
hoped that Senators will give close
attention to the last — and arguably
most pressing — of these issues, as
well.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s
Transition Brief
entitled Fiddling While the
Nation’s Nuclear Weapons Complex ‘Burns’
Down: O’Leary’s Last Denuclearization
Shot? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-T_120″>No. 96-T 120,
29 November 1996).

2. See the
Center’s Press Release
entitled High-Level
Roundtable Discussion Reveals U.S.
Nuclear Deterrent’s Credibility,
Reliability Imperilled ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-P_117″>No. 97-P 117, 25
August 1997).