Overview
	Technical Background
	The Threat
	Securing Nuclear Warheads and Materials
Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling   Second Line of Defense   Export Control & Border Security   International Counterproliferation   WMD Proliferation Prevention   International Interdiction Efforts
	Stabilizing Employment for Nuclear Personnel
	Monitoring Stockpiles
	Ending Further Production
	Reducing Stockpiles

 

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Previous Publications
	Funding for U.S. Efforts to Improve Controls Over Nuclear Weapons, Materials, and Expertise Overseas: Recent Developments and Trends February2007 Readthe Full Report (1.5M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2006 The latest report in our series, from May 2006, finds that even though the gap between the threat of nuclear terrorism and the response has narrowed in recent years, there remains an unacceptable danger that terrorists might succeed in their quest to get and use a nuclear bomb, turning a modern city into a smoking ruin. Offering concrete steps to confront that danger, the report calls for world leaders to launch a fast-paced global coalition against nuclear terrorism focused on locking down all stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear materials worldwide as rapidly as possible. Read the Executive Summary (379K PDF) or the Full Report (1.7M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb 2005: The New Global Imperatives Our May 2005 report finds that while the United States and other countries laid important foundations for an accelerated effort to prevent nuclear terrorism in the last year, sustained presidential leadership will be needed to win the race to lock down the world’s nuclear stockpiles before terrorists and thieves can get to them. Read the Executive Summary (281 K) or the Full Report (1.9M PDF)
	Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action Building on the previous years' reports, this 2004 NTI-commissioned report grades current efforts and recommends new actions to more effectively prevent nuclear terrorism. It finds that programs to reduce this danger are making progress, but there remains a potentially deadly gap between the urgency of the threat and the scope and pace of efforts to address it. Download the Full Report (1.2 M PDF) Выписки из доклада по-русски (423K PDF)
	Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials: A Report Card and Action Plan 2003 report published by Harvard and NTI measures the progress made in keeping nuclear weapons and materials out of terrorist hands, and outlines a comprehensive plan to reduce the danger. Download the Full Report (2.7M PDF)
	Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate Action 2002 report co-published by Harvard and NTI outlines seven urgent steps to reduce the threat of stolen nuclear weapons or materials falling into the hands of terrorists or hostile states. Read the Full Report (516K PDF)

Interdicting Nuclear Smuggling

International Counterproliferation Program

Status

Since its inception in the mid-1990s, the cooperation of the Department of Defense with both the FBI and the U.S. Customs Service has played an often overlooked, but nonetheless important role in the overall U.S. effort to control nuclear warheads and materials. Despite being administered by the equivalent of only eight full-time employees at DOD, as of mid-2002, the program has trained around 1,200 officials responsible for the security of their countries' borders and has provided equipment, such as hand-held radiation detection "pagers" and pedestrian portal monitors, in 26 countries.[1] Indeed, despite having a relatively small budget with which to work, program officials point to a number of specific incidents in which foreign participants in the program and equipment provided by the program resulted in the interdiction of fissionable or radioactive material at a border checkpoint.[2] For instance, the 1999 seizure by Bulgarian officials who had received training from this program of 10g of highly enriched uranium hidden in an air compressor in the trunk of a car, as discussed below, is one example DOD officials often highlight.[3]

Nevertheless, this program faces a number of key issues, some of which are faced by all the programs aimed at interdicting nuclear smuggling. Among these are ensuring that this program is a fully integrated component of a well planned, coordinated U.S. effort, and working to create a seamless complement of efforts in the recipient countries that truly secure the whole border. Moreover, for this program, like others aimed at interdicting nuclear smuggling, measuring the progress towards its stated goals is difficult. After all, it is impossible to know exactly how much nuclear material is smuggled successfully. These and other issues are discussed below, as are recommendations for addressing these concerns.

The International Counterproliferation Program actually consists of two separate programs, with two separate origins and two separate emphases in their implementation: the DOD/FBI Counterproliferation program, and the DOD/USCS Counterproliferation program. The same personnel at the Department of Defense run both programs, however, so there is no discernible dividing line between the collaborative efforts with the two other agencies. Moreover, DOD program officials oversee the provision of equipment by both the FBI and USCS programs to participating host countries.

DOD/FBI Counterproliferation program.As early as 1993, the Department of Defense provided direct export control and border security assistance to several of the Newly Independent States (NIS) of the Former Soviet Union through its Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program. DOD worked with the Departments of Justice, Commerce, State and others to implement this assistance.[4] Then, beginning in 1996, DOD began transferring the leadership on a number of CTR efforts to the Department of Energy and State, including the export control program, which became what is now called the Export Control and Border Security program at the State Department.[5]

Then, in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1995 (Public Law 103-337), Congress directed DOD and the FBI to set up a joint program:

"to expand and improve United States efforts to deter the possible proliferation and acquisition weapons of mass destruction by organized crime organizations in Eastern Europe, the Baltic countries, and states of the former Soviet Union."[6]

DOD used previously unspent CTR funds fund the effort until 1997, at which time Congress appropriated new funds outside the CTR line item (see the discussion in the Budget section).[7]

In this component of the International Counterproliferation program, DOD works with the FBI's Division of International Training to engage senior- and mid-level country officials as well as working-level investigators and other law enforcement officials. Courses targeted at senior- and mid-level officials tend to be broad, making officials aware of various issues related to weapons of mass destruction and crisis management. For example, seminars at the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest, Hungary have exposed recipient-country legislative, executive, and judicial officials to the WMD threat and to legislative and law enforcement efforts to counter that threat. According to DOD, nearly 400 officials have participated in these seminars as of mid-2002.[8] At the working level, DOD and FBI experts train counterpart law enforcement officials on specific techniques related to WMD, such as collecting evidence from a WMD crime scene, conducting investigations into the criminal sale or transport of WMD or related materials, and responding appropriately to WMD crime scenes.[9]

The courses attempt to build a cadre of officials at various levels in their governments who are aware of the issues of WMD smuggling, and who know how to look for and respond to a case of WMD smuggling. They also have the added benefit, in the words of program documents, of fostering "a cooperative relationship between officials from the United States and the participating country on counterproliferation issues."[10] The value of U.S. law enforcement officials meeting and building relationships with counterparts is an important, if intangible, benefit.

DOD/USCS Counterproliferation program. On the heels of the perceived success of the DOD/FBI Counterproliferation program, in section 1424 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997 (Public Law 104-201), Congress authorized DOD to work with the U.S. Customs Service, the agency in the United States most centrally responsible for interdicting smuggling, to

"carry out programs for assisting customs officials and border guard officials in the independent states of the former Soviet Union, the Baltic states, and other countries of Eastern Europe in preventing unauthorized transfer and transportation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and related materials. Training, expert advice, maintenance of equipment, loan of equipment, and audits may be provided under or in connection with the programs."[11]

As noted previously, fiscal year (FY) 1997 was the year Congress also began funding the program with funds separate than the Cooperative Threat Reduction funding line.

The courses stress four fundamental elements: identification, detection, interdiction, and investigations.[12] Some examples of the courses offered include Investigative Training, Counterproliferation Data Analysis Training, and Tracking Training. The latter course teaches "techniques and strategies for identifying and tracking pedestrian, vehicle and pack-animal traffic in backcountry or off-road areas."[13] One of the relatively few courses offered in the United States, the RADACAD (Radiation Academy) course, is held at the Department of Energy's HAMMER (Hazardous Materials Management and Emergency Response Training and Education Center Facility) at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. According to Customs Service documents, it is "the only program in the world that allows law enforcement to train with actual special nuclear materials."[14] Otherwise, most training sessions are carried out in the recipient country.[15]

DOD officials responsible for the program's implementation point with pride to the fact that participants in DOD/USCS training courses have later been involved with important interdictions of radioactive materials at their countries' borders. For instance, in May 1999, Bulgarian customs officials at the Rousse border crossing with Romania seized 10 grams of highly enriched uranium (HEU) that had been enclosed inside a lead container to mask its radioactivity, and then hidden inside an air compressor stored in the trunk.[16] Rousse had been the site of a joint Romanian-Bulgarian customs exercise sponsored and organized by DOD and the U.S. Customs Service. Two of the Bulgarian officials who actually discovered the HEU had been trained by U.S. Customs Service officials in the lead up to the joint training exercise. Indeed, U.S. Customs officials familiar with the case are quick to point out that the hand-held radiation detection pagers provided to the Bulgarians would not have been able to detect the well-concealed container unless the pagers had been touching it.[17] Instead, the Bulgarian officials began searching the car only after they suspicions were raised by the driver's inability to answer questions about a shipping document they found mentioning uranium. Reports also indicate that the arrested the suspect after he offered bribes to let him go.[18]

Equipment. As described in the original congressional language authorizing the DOD/USCS Counterproliferation program, the International Counterproliferation program is permitted to "loan" equipment to countries to improve their efforts to interdict nuclear and other WMD smuggling. In reality, the equipment is loaned in name only; program officials do not expect the equipment to ultimately be returned by the recipient country.[19] Equipment provided includes such items as:

• "radiation pagers" (devices that police or customs agents can wear on their belts that will set off an alarm if they detect radiation);
  
  
• pedestrian and vehicle portal monitors (devices designed to detect the radiation from nuclear material as a person or vehicle passes through the monitor);
  
  
• personal protection equipment (suits to protect the wearer from nuclear, chemical, or biological materials); and
  
  
• crime scene investigation equipment (which can cover a broad range of items).
  

In both parts of the International Counterproliferation program, the provision of equipment and of training in how to use it are always fully integrated. Program officials strive to ensure that participants in training courses receive equipment packages that include radiation pagers and tools for searching people and vehicles.[20] As noted above, equipment has been provided to officials in 26 countries as of mid-2002.[21]

As with the training program, program officials are pleased to point to cases in which U.S.-provided equipment enabled interdictions of radioactive material. For instance, in April 2000, Uzbek customs officials were tipped off by DOD/USCS-provided radiation detection pagers to an Iranian-licensed truck trying to cross the border with 10 hidden, highly radioactive lead containers.[22] The Iranian driver of the truck said its final destination was Quetta, Pakistan, though DOD officials believe Iran may have been the true destination.[23]

Appropriateness of the level of technology equipment intended to detect nuclear or radiological material was one particular issue on which a May 2002 General Accounting Office (GAO) report focused. While it chastised the Department of State's Export Control and Border Security program for providing portal monitors that only detected gamma radiation, it praised the International Counterproliferation program, along with the Department of Energy's Second Line of Defense program, for providing equipment that was able to detect both gamma and neutron emissions.[24] GAO did note, however, that even DOD officials had admitted that some equipment that had been provided was being underutilized. Specifically, the official disclosed to a January 2002 IAEA conference that

"audits found that detection equipment in several countries had never been used and remained in storage; expensive high-technology equipment was only used in the presence of visiting U.S. delegations; and equipment was going unused because it needed battery replacement, very minor repairs, or major repairs that required out-of-country servicing."[25]

The official cited several reasons for this, including that some equipment was too difficult to use for those trying to use it, and that repairs of the equipment could be too difficult for the host nations.[26] GAO also discussed problems that U.S. programs providing equipment, including the International Counterproliferation program, have had in obtaining information from the recipient country about the performance of the equipment. "While agencies are receiving feedback on the performance level of equipment, such as whether the equipment is properly calibrated or performing according to technical specifications," writes GAO, "limited information is provided about the impact of the equipment  namely to what extent is it detecting weapons-usable and other types of radioactive material."[27]

Program implementers are fully aware that they must cope with a number of distinct challenges in the provision of equipment. Equipment certainly must be designed to detect the types of material and the methods of transport, and it must be calibrated so that it does not produce so many false alarms that it breeds complacency.[28] Equipment must be hardy enough to remain useful, while recipient countries and the stations at which equipment is posted must be able to maintain the equipment sufficiently to prevent breaks in protection.

GAO's May 2002 also concluded that coordination among the various U.S. government agencies, as well as within those agencies, is a key issue faced by all of these programs:

The current multiple-agency approach to providing U.S. assistance to combat nuclear smuggling is not, in our view, the most effective way to deliver this assistance. To date, the efforts of the six U.S. agencies participating in these programs and activities have not been well coordinated, and there is no single agency that leads the effort to effectively establish funding priorities and thoroughly assess recipient country requirements. Coordination is also a problem within agencies providing assistance.[29]

While leaving the larger discussion for interagency coordination to the overview section on interdicting nuclear smuggling, it is appropriate to discuss GAO's last point on coordination within agencies here. Although the GAO report highlights the Departments of State and Energy, at the same time that GAO was concluding the production of its report, the Department of Defense announced its desire to start its own new program for FY 2003, the WMD Proliferation Prevention program, to be funded at $40 million in its first year, to help countries interdict WMD smuggling. The stated goal of this program is "to enhance non-Russian FSU capabilities to prevent, deter, detect and interdict illicit trafficking in WMD and related materials, and to respond effectively to trafficking incidents at the border."[30] Although this stated goal sounds very similar to that of the International Counterproliferation program, the two programs would reside in different offices, would report to different managers, and would be funded out of different budget lines.[31] According to testimony at the July 30, 2002 Senate hearing, the exact nature of the WMD Proliferation Prevention program has yet to be worked out. The intent, though, appears to be to focus on the vast areas between border checkpoints, as well as the provision of interoperable skills and equipment related more to the military aspect of the mission undertaken by the paramilitary agencies responsible for border security in the recipient countries.[32] Nevertheless, the new program also appears to want to carry out projects at ports of entry, as evidenced by the consideration of proposals by Uzbek official to add portal monitors at key border checkpoints in their country.[33] The new program seems to overlap the International Coordination program's work on port of entry security, leaving education in law enforcement techniques and seminars on the WMD issue for senior- and mid-level officials to the International Counterproliferation, while expanding horizontally past the International Counterproliferation to worry about smuggling across borders between border checkpoints.

Measuring the performance of the International Counterproliferation program in meeting its overall goals presents another challenge for the program. Clearly, there is no way to measure how much, if any, smuggling these programs are failing to prevent: program officials cannot know what has not been detected. Moreover, stating that x number of officials in y number of countries have received training, while important from a basic accounting perspective, is not particularly helpful in explaining how well the program is doing at limiting the smuggling of nuclear and radioactive material. To judge that would require information about what fraction of these officials were actually working in their countries' efforts to interdict nuclear smuggling, how much the training and equipment increased their capabilities, how effectively these countries' efforts to interdict WMD smuggling were organized and how the training and equipment provided was integrated into these efforts, and how many personnel critical to accomplishing the mission had not been trained or given equipment. Similarly, describing the total amount of equipment provided, while not a statistic that should be ignored, does not tell one how well that equipment is working, or where previously provided equipment is near the end of its life-cycle and will soon need to be replaced. In other words, it is less important to tally up numbers of people trained and gadgets provided, than to attempt to estimate how well the recipient countries' can combat nuclear and other WMD smuggling, and how much these programs have helped. Measuring the change from year to year in each country's capabilities can help to inform program officials and others responsible for program oversight about the impact the program is having. The use of expert evaluation and surveys to gauge recipient country officials' attitudes towards anti-smuggling efforts could be effective tools to build the kinds of measurements needed to provide a true picture of the performance of the program intervention.

Budget

See budget table

With a proposed budget for FY 2003 of $9.0 million, the International Counterproliferation program is one of the smaller programs in the efforts by the United States to control nuclear warheads and materials. The budget for this program for FY 2002 (the year ending September 31, 2002) was $8.4 million. From 1997 through 2000, the program was budgeted a total of $23.8 million. Unlike other Department of Defense efforts to control nuclear warheads and materials, this program is not funded out of the budget for the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. Thus, budget allocation decisions for the International Counterproliferation program are made on a slightly different track than other programs at the Department of Defense, including the newly proposed WMD Proliferation Prevention program.

Though DOD officials have recognized the need to develop country-specific strategic plans to reach self-sufficient, effective border security programs in the recipient country, the International Counterproliferation program has not clearly stated when officials believe that assistance will be considered no longer necessary.[34] Accordingly, there is no current estimate of how expensive a job this ultimately will be. Just as with the borders of the United States, there will not be a time when responsible officials in recipient countries could entirely relax and declare that their borders are secure enough. Nevertheless, U.S. officials should determine how they will decide when these countries' borders will be secure enough to not require U.S. assistance.

Key Issues and Recommendations

Equipment. The May 2002 GAO report chastised U.S. programs collectively (though especially the Department of State's Export Control and Border Security program) for not always providing the best equipment available in a workable, sustainable fashion. They also expressed concern that all agencies were not getting the information they should from the recipient countries on the performance of the equipment.

• Recommendation: The FBI and U.S. Customs Service technical experts in the International Counterproliferation program, who help decide what equipment to provide to recipient countries in their program and who are closely familiar with equipment in use in the United States, should form a standing working group to collaborate with technical experts in the Department of Energy's Second Line of Defense program. Informal and ad hoc communication certainly is going on, and the Department of State's Export Control and Border Security program has already announced that it has agreed to have Energy Department experts maintain the equipment that State has already provided.[35]

Nevertheless, the International Counterproliferation program needs to be working closely with all of the other experts to ensure that equipment provide is compatible and meets a common standard of performance. For instance, one can imagine, even if one can not describe what the specific uses might be, that if U.S.-provided equipment were able to share information among recipient countries, important advances in border security could be achieved.

• Recommendation: When providing stationary detection equipment, such as portal monitors through which pedestrians, trucks or trains might pass, program officials should include the ability to report alarms, as well as all other performance information, to a central repository, to insure that someone other than the guards at the station at which the equipment is posted knows how the equipment is performing and whether there have been any incidences of radioactive material passing through. Such capability would help to address GAO's concern about the sharing of information about smuggling incidents by the recipient countries, as U.S. program officials could go to a central source to request the data on equipment performance. Letting post border guards know that information about what is going through their post is being provided to a central office will also create a disincentive for corruption among the guards themselves. They will know that someone more senior will know when a monitor has detected radioactive material, so accepting a bribe to ignore it would have consequences for their own position. For example, DOE's Material Protection, Control, and Accounting (MPC&A;) program is installing cameras at nuclear material sites that allow site managers to observe key guard posts and nuclear material areas; a similar approach could be taken for nuclear smuggling equipment at border posts.

Interagency Coordination. The obvious question raised by DOD's new WMD Proliferation Prevention program is: where does it leave the International Counterproliferation program? From what little is known publicly about the new WMD Proliferation Prevention program, it appears to share the International Counterproliferation program's mission of stopping WMD smuggling in and around the former Soviet Union. The distinction is that the former seems to focus on paramilitary security operations patrolling stretches of the border, while the latter focuses on discrete border checkpoints and cooperation with law enforcement and customs officials. It is not clear why these two offices would have two different bosses, who only then would report to the same Assistant Secretary of Defense.[36] Such a divided organizational structure by the providers of assistance may well serve to exacerbate divisions between law enforcement and border security troops among the recipients of assistance. Efforts to interdict WMD smuggling by properly training and outfitting law enforcement and customs officials as well as educating senior- and mid-level civilian officials should be a fully integrated component of a larger, more heavily funded effort to patrol and monitor the long borders between checkpoints.

• Recommendation: Rather than continue to approach the problem of nuclear smuggling in piecemeal and disjointed fashion, it is important that the government follow the GAO's advice as well as program officials' own statements, and develop a comprehensive approach for how the government plans to combat nuclear, and all WMD, smuggling.
  
  
• Recommendation: DOD should strongly consider combining the International Counterproliferation program office with the new WMD Proliferation Prevention program. This would allow the new program to benefit from the expertise developed in the existing program, especially in its collaboration with experts at the FBI and U.S. Customs Service, and contacts to recipient country officials. There is no apparent good reason to create yet another bureaucracy devoted to helping other countries keep their borders secure. Collaboration between DOD, FBI, and U.S. Customs Service experts on the one side and customs officials in the recipient countries certainly should not cease; instead they should be an integral part of DOD cooperation with those parts of the recipient countries' internal security apparatus responsible for the security of borders in the long stretches between border customs checkpoints.
  
  
• Recommendation: Congress should authorize the use of CTR funds to interdict nuclear smuggling anywhere it is a concern, even if that is outside the Newly Independent States. Barring that, the funding can continue to come out of two separate budget lines, as it does now, but the same people can administer those two funding sources. In short, the goal must be to maximize the expertise and financial resources directed towards the problem of nuclear smuggling while minimizing the duplication of effort.

Measuring Performance. Without doubt, program implementers understand that measuring the performance of their programs is important. They are on the front lines, and they are passionate about the problems they are working day in and day out to solve. They want to be sure that the work they are doing is having the highest possible impact, and they know that performance measures are a critical step in that making that happen. On the other hand, they almost certainly feel that they never have the time or the budgets to devote to performance measurement, surveys, and evaluation. Nevertheless, it is imperative that the Department of Defense, and all the agencies involved in trying to interdict nuclear smuggling, cooperate to measure the impact their efforts are having.

• Recommendation: The development of a comprehensive approach for nuclear, and WMD, smuggling must be accompanied by the development of improved performance measures. When developing the comprehensive plan, program experts will need to state clearly the characteristics they envision a recipient country to possess when they are able to sustain their own efforts to interdict nuclear smuggling. Various measures should then follow to determine the progress towards those end characteristics  including but not limited to evaluations on the part of program implementers of the capabilities of assistance recipients.

Recipient Country Absorption. The DOD International Counterproliferation program has been cooperating with several countries for several years now. At the same time, the Department of State's Export Control and Border Security and the Department of Energy's Second Line of Defense have been working with officials in many of the same countries. As a result, DOD program officials noted that they are concerned about the possibility that recipient officials are becoming saturated to the point that they can no longer effectively absorb additional assistance.[37] Indeed, a reliance on performance measures focused on the outputs of the program, such as number of officials trained or countries assisted, could negatively affect this problem. Program officials and oversight bodies might become unduly focused on how much assistance is provided, rather than on the improvement such assistance is having in the recipient countries' ability to secure their own borders.

• Recommendation: If effective performance measures are developed and applied, as previously recommended, the results should highlight those areas where assistance is no longer being absorbed effectively, and program managers can modify their efforts appropriately to avoid pouring additional resources into areas where they are not needed.

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Written by Matthew Bunn.
Last updated by Anthony Wier on August 27, 2002.

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The Securing the Bomb section of the NTI website is produced by the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) for NTI, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. MTA welcomes comments and suggestions at atom@harvard.edu. Copyright 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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