U.S. ‘DE-NUCLEARIZATION’: WHO IS MINDING THE STORE?

(Washington, D.C.): It is somehow
fitting that the Secretary of Energy,
Hazel O’Leary, chose Pearl Harbor Day
1993 to launch what was, arguably, the
most devastating single attack on the
underpinnings of the U.S. national
security structure since Japan’s
lightning strike on the 7th Fleet
fifty-two years ago. Ironically, Mrs.
O’Leary’s target was her own department,
what remains of its capacity to conduct
activities related to maintaining an
effective civilian and military nuclear
programs and the public support essential
to such activities.

In a lengthy — and frequently
incoherent — press conference on
Tuesday, 7 December 1993, Mrs. O’Leary
exhibited righteous indignation as she
revealed: that the United States had
conducted 204 previously unannounced
nuclear weapons tests; the total quantity
and precise locations around the country
of much of the nation’s stockpile of
plutonium; that there are “three
miles” of ostensibly unduly
classified documents (which she will be
aggressively trying to declassify); and
that predecessors to the Department of
Energy had conducted radiological
experiments on human beings without
obtaining the participants’ informed
consent.

‘What’?

Before assessing these points — and
their implications for the future of U.S.
nuclear deterrence — in turn, it is
instructive to consider the following,
illustrative example of Secretary
O’Leary’s comments and what it
suggests about the clarity of thought
behind her announcements:

“…What’s led us here,
the…overhauling [of] our Cold
War policies, what we’re
focussing on — and anybody who
watched the press yesterday and
the beginnings of the discussion
between President Clinton and
President Yeltsin and those
representing our government to
talk about even aiming our
capability to deliver nuclear
weapons away from Russia pretty
much tells us where we are in
this overhauling of our Cold War
policies and even the way we view
former combatants or people with
whom we had no allegiance or felt
no confidence in.”

Translated into plain language, this
gobbledy-gook suggests that the Secretary
of Energy has embraced the idea that,
because “the Cold War is over”
and the United States is considering
aiming its nuclear missiles at remote
areas of the ocean rather than at targets
in the former Soviet Union, the time has
come for greater “transparency”
about “the impact of the Cold War
both in terms of its environmental,
health and safety impacts and also impact
on, if you will, the psyche of the
nation.”

Importantly,
Mrs. O’Leary saw fit to list first among
the so-called “stake-holders”
in a “dialogue” on these issues
“those who have been interested for
years in ‘de-nuclearization.'”
She elaborated, in her fashion, by
saying:

“I’m trying not to use the
word those who are interested
really in issues involving
non-proliferation as well,
insuring that, while we are
releasing information, we’re not
putting other information in the
hands of people from terrorist
states who could design a very
crude bomb and do damage. And
that really is the threat we look
at today, but certainly not,
quote ‘the old enemies.'”

Another “stakeholder” —
particularly with respect to the
disclosure of information concerning
“the plutonium inventory [and]
scientific details of research on fusion
energy” — is said to be the
scientific community:

“U.S. scientists, who really
began to trail really [sic]
in this area, [who] could now
share information with their
counterparts in Europe, who’ve
not ever been restricted or not
be [sic] restricted
lately from discoursing and
sharing this information, and so
we might move along as
competitors to create a
technology which will answer some
of the questions for energy of
the future.”

What’s Coming

At
best, such statements bespeak a
muddleheadedness that should disqualify
an individual from holding a position of
great responsibility in the United States
government. At worst, they suggest that
Secretary O’Leary does not have the
foggiest idea about what she is doing —
or the longer-term implications of her
actions.

Even a cursory examination of her
announcements, however, suggests the
following repercussions are likely:

• The dramatic disclosure of
  hundreds of heretofore unrevealed
  nuclear weapons tests conjures up
  an image of secret government run
  amok and unaccountable. The truth
  of the matter is very different: Secret
  weapons tests are a part of
  virtually all military
  development programs, nuclear and
  non-nuclear alike. The
  responsible congressional
  committees were duly advised of
  these tests. They were conducted
  in a safe manner consistent with
  U.S. treaty obligations.

Secretary O’Leary’s disclosure
seems calculated, however, to
intensify opposition to any
resumption of American nuclear
testing — a stance the Secretary
has already been instrumental in
promoting. By feeding too rife
misapprehensions that the
U.S.government is up-to-no-good
in the nuclear area, Mrs. O’Leary
has encouraged new obstacles to
this activity essential to an
effective, reliable and safe
nuclear deterrent.

• Uh-Oh: Ironically,
  however, in so doing, Mrs.
  O’Leary has raised a significant
  new problem for advocates of a
  comprehensive test ban (CTB): She
  tacitly acknowledged in her press
  conference that her data about
  secret tests would give lie to
  one of the central claims of
  anti-testing advocates — i.e.,
  that it would be possible to
  detect even the smallest of
  nuclear detonations anywhere on
  the planet. In fact, the O’Leary
  revelations show that the CTB
  proponents have been wrong by
  a factor of two in their
  estimates of U.S. undeclared
  low-yield tests.

In identifying the quantity and
sites housing the nation’s
stockpile of plutonium, Secretary
O’Leary will not only
“generate a lot of public
debate” about the
“ultimate disposition of
plutonium.” Her announcement
will almost certainly serve as
well to generate a lot of new
litigation and environmental
harassment aimed at impeding
swift disposition of plutonium
stocks in safe, secure
repositories.

• More extraordinary even than Mrs.
  O’Leary’s repeated statement
  about the “miles” of
  unnecessarily classified
  documents was the attitude she
  conveyed about her
  responsibilities to protect
  sensitive information. As the
  Secretary of Energy put it:

“I want it clear
that I’m gonna be, as
usual, the person pushing
harder to get it done
[i.e., declassifying
information] and someone
else has the job of
looking more carefully at
the national security
interest.”

• The upshot of these
  pronouncements — and Secretary
  O’Leary’s invitation to the
  denuclearizers,
  environmentalists, scientists,
  historians and other
  “stake-holders” to
  attend a “work session”
  in February 1994 to let her know
  “what your priorities are,
  not necessarily what our’s
  are” in determining what
  information will be declassified
  — is predictable: A redoubling
  of demands for data that divert
  nuclear-related people and
  resources in the Department of
  Energy from their intended
  purpose — managing the weapons
  complex, civil nuclear program
  and associated waste and clean-up
  functions.

• The most sensational aspect of
  Mrs. O’Leary’s briefing was the
  heightened visibility she gave to
  reports of experiments conducted
  many years ago involving
  plutonium and other radioactive
  exposure. Without shedding
  any new light on the subject,
  she managed to hype stories that
  have been in the public domain
  since 1986. Worse yet, she
  exacerbated the adverse publicity
  by commingling the eighteen
  instances in which informed
  consent was evidently not
  obtained with 800 experiments
  involving some 600 people in
  which it was.

Here, too, the effect of
the Secretary’s remarks will
almost certainly be further to
discredit her organization
— and not, as she claimed, to
create the new basis for public
trust and confidence in the
Department or her stewardship of
it.

‘It Is No Accident, Comrade’

That the Secretary of Energy should be
embarked upon a course that will make it
vastly more difficult for her department
to play the key role it must in the
maintenance of an effective nuclear
deterrent, viable commercial nuclear
sector and safe management of nuclear
wastes should come as no surprise. Not
only is she supremely attentive to the
demands of those seeking
denuclearization; she, her senior
subordinates and advisors, other top
officials of the Clinton Administration
and even the President, himself,
apparently are committed to that goal.
Consider the following:

Item: Mrs. O’Leary’s
stunning and adamant opposition to
nuclear testing reversed a position held
by every previous Secretary of Energy and
the past and present officials who are
responsible for certifying that U.S.
nuclear weapons are safe, effective and
reliable. In dismissing serious concerns
about the consequences of a CTB expressed
by the relevant officials, she made
unmistakably clear her commitment to
woolly-headed disarmament notions (e.g.,
that a test ban would prevent
proliferation). href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾

Item: A number of Mrs.
O’Leary’s key advisors and top
subordinates have been drawn from the
ranks of the Natural Resources Defense
Council (NRDC), one of the most
aggressive anti-nuclear advocacy groups
in the country. These include: Dan
Reicher, a former Senior Attorney at NRDC
who is now serving as the Secretary’s
Chief of Staff; Gus Speth, another NRDC
Senior Attorney who headed up the Clinton
DOE transition team; and Terry Lash, the
new nominee for the position of Director
for Nuclear Energy, who has long been
active in anti-nuclear efforts promoted
by the NRDC and other organizations.

Other top Energy officials have
similar, interesting connections: Tara
O’Toole, Assistant Secretary of Energy
for Environment, Health and Safety was a
former member of a
“Marxist-Feminist” reading
group. A special assistant to Mrs.
O’Leary, Bob DeGrasse, meanwhile is
married to a Washington-based
anti-nuclear activist, Beth DeGrasse, who
is a director of the Nuclear Information
and Resource Service. In October, this
organization aggressively lobbied
Congress for termination of two of the
nation’s few remaining nuclear
energy-related development programs.

Item: Other Clinton
Administration officials who share the
O’Leary enthusiasm for denuclearization
include George Stephanopoulos, Senior
Advisor to the President for Policy and
Strategy. In his salutatory address to
Columbia University in 1982,
Stephanopoulos laid out a philosophy
toward nuclear arms still in evidence
today: “…The assumption that
nuclear weapons bring security is as
absurd as its existence is sad.” href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

Item: Worse yet,
President Clinton himself has now
publicly adopted the key term: At a 6
December 1993 press conference he said, “We’re
working very hard with the Russians to
continue the denuclearization
and to make them and others feel more
secure….”

The Bottom Line

It should not be surprising, given
this line-up, that the U.S. government
has decided not only to forego nuclear
testing but to end production of any
nuclear weapons and the special materials
they require and to proceed with
dismantling of the industrial and
technological infrastructure associated
with these activities. No less at risk is
the present and future character of
civilian nuclear technology in this
country.

The outrageous nature and content of
Mrs. O’Leary’s pronouncements of 7
December, however, should prompt more
thoughtful policy-makers and responsible
legislators to rethink the choices now
being made to promote U.S.
denuclearization. Especially in
light of Secretary of Defense Aspin’s
statement — made, ironically, on the
same day as the Secretary of Energy was
releasing her bombshell —
concerning the burgeoning problem posed
by other nations who are getting into the
nuclear weapons business, it is high time
to reconsider Clinton policies which
will, inexorably, put the United States out
of that business.

– 30 –

1. For
more on this and other dubious arguments
advanced by proponents of a Comprehensive
Test Ban, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled ‘New
Democrat’ Watch #8: Clinton
Bungee-Jumping on Nuclear Testing
Engagers National Security, href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=93-D_58″> (No. 93-58, 6 July
1993).

2. As
quoted by Fred Barnes in “The
Importance of Being George,” New
Republic, 6 September 1993.