>> as they were working their way down through the building they happened to go back to the back of a narrow hall in the basement and opened the door and found a little room that the

iraqi cleanup crew had missed. and there amongst all the documents it was the first thing i pulled out of the pile was a six-month report on the bomb that included a detailed engineering drawings of an explosion device. so he had his proof, but then he had to get it out and get back to new york. that was going to be a problem because the iraqis were really unhappy that he was searching this building. and begin that day, the four-day standoff in the parking lot that i'm sure all of you remember all live on cnn because he had a satellite phone, or the old-fashioned ones with a suitcase that opened up to make the antenna there can be said that was their lives on. we really weren't sure what was were determined that we weren't going to leave the building as we had to do previously on a couple of inspections without

the documents in our possession. part of the secret is he had already shipped them out. he said we had a colonel who had the worst case of diarrhea and he said that i've ever seen, and we had to get into a hospital to get him rehydrated. the iraqis were sympathetic. he said that we had these medics who were tough, smart guys. so he said i just up the document into the colonel's shirt and he lay down on the gurney and they carried him out and everything was fine. that document went to a german transport plane at the international airport the same day, flew off to new york. nevertheless they were still stuck in the parking lot because they weren't going to give away the fact that the document was already gone and had many other documents as well, with a satellite phone as the one linked to the world and their one hope that they would

survive. so after about 23 hours on this phone the first day nonstop, kaye said we hung it up for a moment. and it immediately rang. he said i picked it up and it was the operator in london. and the operator said, we don't know what you're doing but you have been on this phone for 23 hours, but we're going to need a credit card. [laughter] >> and kaye said, kaye is in texas, very smart men. he said you're not going to get my getting credit card. he said, but let me tell you what's going on here. and he told them. one of the things he said was our reception really isn't very good. the signal cuts in and out. we can't maintain the connection we would like to maintain. the operator said, maybe we can help you with that. i'll call you back in half an hour. so 30 minutes later the phone

rang. kaye picked it up and the operator said, we want to help you with your situation. we're going to move the satellite. so he had a good connection through those four days, and it was one of the lifelines for them. and that you know, of course, one could think about this process as the first compulsory inspection, something that i think would probably be one ultimate component of any world where nuclear weapons had been eliminated because someone decided to cheat, and all else failed. one of the things that would be possible to do would be to invade that country, and that's basically what we did with iraq. the withdrawal of all of our ground-launched tactical nuclear, with drawl to united states was another step that went on in terms of cold war

clear, particularly important in terms of north korea because north korea was fully aware that there were lots of american nukes in south america began by removing them that began a process that would culminate at the end of the decade, and almost resolution of the major conflicts between the united states and north korea. in fact, let me just run through the store quickly because it's quite a dramatic story, and i tell some length in the book. as you know, we were negotiating with north korea all through the '90s about its reactor, a reactor that we were convinced was bleeding plutonium and we're increase the north koreans might be preparing to extract the plutonium or weapons. and, of course, that was the process they were on.

this culminate in 1994 in a very close call for another war with north korea. so close that bob kaluza who is negotiating with the north koreans at that time told the county said i can't seem to convince everybody am anyway how close we work to a war with north korea. he said we're just about to evacuate the u.s. embassy in seoul. that would've been a clear signal to the north koreans that we were preparing to attack them. or at least attack the first phase of the war. president clinton had already had a discussion with the general who's in charge of u.s. forces in korea. luck had come back to washington to say to the president a few months prior to the close call that we could win a war with north korea, but the cost would be a million and a trillion.

and president clinton said meaning what? he said meaning 1 million south korean lives and a trillion dollars from the economy because of the destruction. so those were the stakes. they were pretty terrible stakes. that clinton had kind of backed himself into a corporate it was going to be a series of ratcheted up restrictions on north korea, and north korea's response had been to turn seoul and south korea into a sea of sliced turkey probably remember that phrase. so both sides were kind of ratcheting up into the conflict neither side seemed to have a way to pull back from. it was just at that point that former president jimmy carter decided he had better step in. and he took advantage of the fact for the previous three years he had an invitation from

the north koreans every year to come to their country. and so he went, and within 24 hours, had been able to negotiate a stand down on that side. back at the white house with clinton and his immediate people, discussing was the next up is going to be. carter called from north korea. the call came into the white house. secretary came into the room and said its north korea, its president carter. so president clinton of course took to take the car -- the call, and she said no, he's calling bob kaluza. boxer didn't exactly crawl out of the room on all fours, and, of course, the resolution was good. the outcome was gallucci went back to negotiate with the north koreans.

what they wanted was a couple of power reactors. they're happy to have them under international control and all that, but during the korean war we had general lemay at the strategic air command systematically firebombed north korea, almost literally as he said back to the stone age. we killed more than 2 million north korean civilians. we have blown up all their power dams, 57% of the electrical supply was hydroelectric. and they were still after all these years having tried first the soviet union and now trying get renewed electrical supply for their country. it sounds like a lot less than it maybe should have been, but i ask gallucci why would you go to north korea and give two nuclear reactors but he said because that's what they want a.

that was the do. under the terms of the deal that would have worked out. but there were delays and then finally secretary of state madeleine albright went to north korea in the last months of the clinton administration in 1999. president clinton was just about to go himself and the election was included by the question whether george bush or al gore had been elected. clinton didn't feel he could leave the country with a constitutional crisis, and it all fell apart. when the george w. bush administration came in, they seem to have a policy rule whatever it did, do the opposite. but they found what was probably at the most a laboratory scale investigation in north korea of uranium enrichment, and that became a pretext for basically throwing out all of the great framework that gallucci had

previously negotiated. and things went downhill from there. and now finally it looks like they might be coming back uphill a little bit, but not without north korea taking a step of becoming a nuclear power, which is pretty sad and tragic. you know about these points, limitations on the two sides, arsenals, the amazing story of the three countries which were major nuclear powers as a result of the dissolution of the soviet union, deciding, and i decided to finally agree after u.s. efforts to negotiate with them that they would give up their nuclear arsenal, move the bombs and missiles to russia, inside a nuclear nonproliferation treaty. i'm standing on the right in this picture. the man on the left was the

first head of state of the new country, belarus. his wife, he and she were both nuclear physicists, very much affected by chernobyl. 75% of the fallout of chernobyl fell on belarus. and as he told me, he immediately contacted moscow and asked if they could break out the potassium iodine tablets in the bomb shelters to get to the children to protect their thyroids from iodine 131 followed. and the response was comrade, are you a fool? we don't want to start a riot. to shut up about it, don't talk about. and even at one point confiscated the instruments that some of the other belarusian scientists were using to measure the radioactivity of the so i asked him why he so easily give up a nuclear arsenal that consisted of 81 missiles, enough

to take out europe and north america. and he said because they came with russian soldiers. so he wanted them out of the country. and the oath in belarus took to the united states was support for the actual transportation process to move them out. then negotiated a little more but they get rid of their missiles. ukraine was really the sticking point, a country that had suspicions and justifiable suspicions of russia's intentions and their direction. but eventually through a process, russian coercion and the united states encouragement and support, they also in 1996 signed the nonproliferation treaty. then there's the story that some of you probably took an active part in which was the effort by our labs here to connect with their counterparts in former soviet union, people who had

been living in secret cities and living very well, cities behind barbed wire suddenly with no means visible means of support, suddenly facing the fact that they might well be moved out within a few months. the effort then was to encourage them through the scientific and human people to people exchanges that los alamos and other labs arranged to be willing to discuss what else they might do. and that, of course, tied in with the program in congress that finally came up basically with support through the other years of the '90s and saw them through that really terrible transition time. this is the moment, the time the director of los alamos, a tall man on the right, was just about to shake hands with the oppenheimer of the soviet union and the director, when their

hands met, corydon who spoke beautiful british english, working side-by-side with robert oppenheimer, although they barely never knew each other, he said i've been waiting for this moment for three years. it was a tough job convincing the other nations who are signatories of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty that they should permanently extend the treaty. the treaty had been set up with a 25 year breakpoint in 1970 when he came into effect, because a number of non-nuclear were understandably suspicious of the nuclear powers commitment to actually eliminate their nuclear weapons. as a result, unlike most history was set up with an up or down vote on his permit extension for 25 years after it came to power which would've been an was 191995.

it was a very questionable issue at the outset of the '90s whether or not the treaty was going to be permanently rescinded and it was important to us, everyone, that it be primarily extended, however much the superpower had been playing games about it. so tom graham was a u.s. ambassador and at one time and active head of the arms control of the disarmament agency decided he would personally go to the capital of all the countries that were in any doubt whatsoever about signing, and negotiate with their leaders. and he spent the next two or three years on the road doing just that. and was able by 1995 to have turned the tide and the tree was permanently extended, with however, and rightly so, the more requirements in terms of the nuclear powers meeting their card of the bargain.

but it was as you know nuclear nonproliferation treaty wasn't anything that protected the world from having 25 or 30 or even 40 nuclear powers, instead of denying that we have today. dashing instead of the ninth that we have today. i won't say much more about the net, except that, of course, when it finally came up for ratification in the senate in 1999, the republican right has managed to maneuver things around so that they didn't get even a simple majority of the senate vote, much less two-thirds as it needed. and as of today have still not been ratified. i suspect it's on president obama's listed down the road, but for now fortunately the united states still observes the terms of the agreement and provides funds for the very collabra program -- elaborate

rogue ram investigation that has been installed around the world to track any possible nuclear test. and, indeed, i think was one of the first substitutes to identify the first north korea's attempt. so with that said, it's interesting to look at what all those cold war costs us. these are numbers that i've converted to $2010 so the full impact is there. i think the most important number to me is the cost of our nuclear weapons and delivery systems. $7.8 trillion, and the cold war total, 18.5 trillion, which carl sagan famously said, in other words, everything in the united states except the land. i think we should ask ourselves whether we really need to spend that much money. it's interesting to see what we

didn't do because of that expense, among others. the american society of civil engineers puts out an annual report card on u.s. civil infrastructure. this is the most recent one, 2009. it's slightly better than another when i looked at in 2005, but it's not very good. because we know that the infrastructure of the united states is in pretty bad repair. we know it because bridges fall down, i was get torn, and schools don't work very well, the buildings i mean. we have a major, major investment that has been foregone for many years, partly because of the cost of the cold war and nuclear arsenals that went with it. so the society of civil engineers estimate is that it would take about $2.2 trillion to bring us back up to a good

standard. then there's another question, and i really don't need to tell this audience that, but i would just say briefly sometimes i think to most americans it seems that issues are no longer on the table. i know that there are plenty of americans who believe if we eliminate our nuclear arsenal at the end of the cold war, which sounds ill-informed but is, in fact, i think informed by a gut instinct that the cold war was the reason for the arms race, and that with the closure of the cold war why would we need to maintain a large nuclear arsenal anymore? that i think is the logic behind that misunderstanding. but the truth is even a small regional nuclear war would have worldscale dramatic effects. the same group of scientists who worked out the model of nuclear

winter back in the 1970s and '80s, more recently took them much more sophisticated climate models that have been developed estimated there global warming estimates and found that indeed global warming from a full scale soviet and american nuclear exchange would have been worse than the earlier estimates indicated. but they were also interested in asking the question what would a small regional nuclear war due to the rest of the world? so they looked at 115 kilotons, in other words, erosion plus nine nuclear weapons exchange between india and pakistan. and as soon that those weapons would necessarily be exploded over cities, and they then calculated, so ,-comcome with

tiger 150 -- were talking at 1.5 megatons but, you know, we have weapons or had weapons that were larger than that, individual weapons. but many people don't understand the main effect of a nuclear explosion in that fire, not radiation, not last. its mass fire. and i just throw in this photograph, this vivid photograph to make that point. most of the people who died in nagasaki died in fire. they didn't die from blast or radiation. so now unfortunately my crap isn't going to animate for us, but if it did do so you would see a little black speck emerge between india and pakistan, and slow the growth into a gray haze that would cross about a three month period, spread out across the entire world.

the estimates that scientists came up with was that there would be about a two bit three-degree annual reduction in average world temperature as result of that small nuclear regional war. two to three degrees doesn't sound like much either, but it's enough to produce hard freezes in july. in their estimate was that there would be proper deaths from the actual attack of about 20 million people. and the lady death from starvation among people who live on the edge of starvation now around the world of about 2 billion. so we are still very much engaged in the issues related to nuclear weapons and nuclear arsenals.

sorry, i gave the wrong number of starvation. i just listed the largest cities here in terms of numbers of people because we are still in a world where even the small nuclear weapon could produce mass casualties in amazing numbers. numbers far beyond most national disasters in history of our here are today's inventories. i think we're going to see this go down very rapidly with out in fact, the column on the right is indication of after the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty comes into effect. where are arsenals will be reduced, but 5883 weapons is still enough for all of these that i have been describing to be part of the risks that we all live with. and i should just add, and again i'm not telling you anything you don't know, that we have come to

a different place now with the potentials for subnational groups to acquire or even perhaps make, if they can get the nuclear materials, terrorist weapons. we have come to a place where deterrent as it was classically described isn't going to work anymore. there's nothing that osama bin laden and his group, that i know of, hold that would be at risk, other than in bora bora if they decide to set off a nuclear weapon in the middle of new york city. i think one of the reasons we invaded iraq and the second gulf war, which i will talk about in a moment, is rather like the drunk who lost his wallet and a dark street and look for under the streetlight, because he could see there, he couldn't see any other places.

i don't mean that to be insulting of the president but it's pretty clear that one of the main reasons for invading iraq in 2003 was to send a message to whomever was involved in these efforts to even subnational groups. so i want to talk a moment about the efforts that have been made since the end of the cold war toward thinking about eliminating the physical nuclear weapons of the world. richard butler the ambassador from australia who has been active in nuclear element nation effort since the late '80s chaired a commission that was called by the australian prime minister in 1995. it was a group of people from many different walks of life of distinction around the world. generals, beatniks and everybody in between. and alter many conclusions, one

that richard was proudest of was the most important thing that came from that effort was what he called, to meet the very fundamental rule. my most fundamental rule is the remark of 1944 to franklin roosevelt, that we are in an entirely new situation that could not be resolved by war. in other words, nuclear weapons introduce a condition to the world with a solution to problems have to be diplomatic. it couldn't be the result of a successful war unless it was a war against a nonnuclear power at and given that we found would be compromise by those very alliances that i was talking about at the outset of this talk. that's my basic fundamental principle about this whole issue. but this axiom in a way follows

from that because deterrence operates on the principle that if you have nuclear weapons sufficiently guarded and protected and you are attacked by country that has nuclear weapons or threatens to be, you can threaten in return to attack them and that's a standoff because neither side wants to be destroyed. that's not a victory. so, therefore, it followed the commission, that as long as any country has nuclear weapons, others will seek to acquire those. that's the axiom of proliferation. president obama in his speeches certainly after was inaugurated as president, added a kind of a corollary. if we believe that the threat of nuclear weapons is inevitable, and in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable. i say that because i think

there's been caching it's been much too easy to believe that the status quo that was so hard earned on the part of you here, and many others around the world, status quo of deterrence is somehow going to be a potential fate. but, you know, technology doesn't work that way. machines aren't that reliable. people change their mind. situation and circumstances change as well. that's what i think president obama's corollary follows clearly that as long as there are nuclear weapons in the world, the possibility exists that their use, indeed their probability exists of their use. more so now than when the cold war established to size that managed to find ways to cooperate across the cold war in many different ways. that's kind of a store that has never really been told, but it's

true. even our negotiations with the soviet union had to do with trying to at least know what the other side was doing. against the idea of deterrence, helmut schmidt and his people in germany in the middle of the cold war, looking for a way to resolve the dispute that has led to the division of their country into the stand west, phone with the idea of security. i think of this again as an outgrowth, that as long as we're in a new situation, it can't be resolved by wars. the germans took the idea of common security to the russians, agreed with the russians to sign a treaty that would make permanent the existing borders

of states in europe. meaning west germany agreed to a division of itself, but they did that believing that was the first step toward a negotiated resolution of their differences and, of course, they turned out to be right. no longer against each other but only with each other shall we be secure. and this was then formulated more elaborately by a commission headed by the prime minister of sweden who was assassinated several years later. with the commission at the u.n. all states even the most powerful are intended in the end up on the good sense and restraint of other nations, even ideological and political opponents have a shared interest of survival. in the long run donation can be the security on the insecurity of the others.

these steps towards nuclear, i will post with a because i'm sure you're all very familiar with them. but to me they are less important right now than for us to rethink now that the cold war is long over. what is the function of nuclear weapons? is there some way to have the good parts of the protections that nuclear weapons afforded us for decades and decades, without the risks that are inherent in the maintenance of fallible machines and fallible human beings? i think the answer to that in the longer run is going to be what some of called virtual deterrence, what some have called delay deterrent.

as you and people like you with knowledge of how to build and maintain nuclear arsenals, maintain that knowledge, it's possible to think of the situation in the world where there are no physical weapons around. you could think of it as a kind of reverse process of threat. if you take a warhead off of it icbm and put it in the next size up, it will take perhaps three hours to put it back on and launch the missile in that three hours instead of 30 minutes to a few moved 60 miles down the road maybe it takes a day. if you take the weapons apart and store the parts separately, as india and pakistan do today, besides the so that they don't have to face a first strike capability from the other side, then you have more time. what's the time good for? time is good for trying to find

some other way to resolve the dispute. you can walk that back as far as you would like. i would say to walk it back six months to a time when the materials are available, perhaps even the parts, but the weapons have to be assembled, certified and then inserted onto the delivery system and so forth. in that situation there's always of course the risk of someone deciding to break out. and i think back to the remarkable document that robert oppenheimer and the other members of the commission assembled, put together, worked out in 1946, which was then kind of botched by bernard and changed around what he presented to the united nations. baroque at one point asked oppenheimer was your army? somebody cheats somehow you going to stop that? there's no provision for any enforcement. and oppenheimer said, someone

started building a nuclear weapon, that would be an act of war. and that means that every other agreement would necessarily be threatened and concerned, and presumably would proceed step-by-step toward from negotiation to coercive negotiation, to perhaps conventional negotiation as with iraq in 1991. but oppenheimer pointed out as the ultimate point, if all else failed the other countries involved could always reconstitute their nuclear arsenals as well. and under those circumstances we would only be back to where we are right now. so it's not so implausible i think, or idealistic as i think plan for the elimination of weapons most often seen especially to those of you who

have worked on them and have been involved on them for all of these years. the question really is why would anybody want to go there? why would anybody take the risk? and i think that has to be surrounded with all of these steps that i posted in the previous slide, so that there is a very high level of confidence that nobody is going to cheat on the agreement. furthermore, and i think this is a point that often escapes lay people, including myself, and that these treaties are normally negotiated with the idea that you're going to cheat on them. they are gnomon to negotiate because all sides feel that they have value, that they give security, and under those circumstances it's not easy to imagine the situation where someone would try to break out. but if they did, the fact of delay deterrent would be there in the background, as long as we

maintain a nuclear infrastructure of people and equipment that would make it possible to reconstitute. for me this is the bottom line. it's not simply a statement. it's a base on a very fundamental fact. when it became possible -- when it became possible to release the energy locked in the adams, all the systems that have set up of international politics that were based on the assumption that national sovereignty could be defended with conventional forces, fell to the wayside, it no longer became possible to maintain national sovereignty by going to war.

because war became as the phrase was all those years, suicidal. under those circumstances it's as if nuclear energy shortage out the limited amount of energy available for conventional explosives and move the whole political system over to a different place. we are still in the middle of beginning to work out the consequences of this discovery of this formulation. and we haven't made that much progress, but if you look, for example, at the number of nuclear tests over the last 60 years, there's a japanese artist who put together an animated slide, a map of the world and it shows each nuclear test. and it's absolutely fascinating and runs 15 minutes. you've got a ping, ping, ping.

the middle of the cold war is a symphony of sound. it becomes clear very quickly that besides testing, design, there is something like a communication going on at this very low bit rate as it were a nuclear explosion between the united states and the soviet union. it drops off dramatically in 1991, and then there are just a few. and in five and 2006 there are a couple of north korea, and that's it. silence. that is to me a really deep graphic version of what's been going on. all of this, and now we are down here, and the question really is where do we go from here? and i know you are all involved in the question, and i hope the answer is we go to someplace that safer and more secure where negotiations to the extent that it can, replaces threat. those would seem to be would be

the ideal place to go. but that's for meet the end of 30 years of work. i have written my last volume. i caught up with the president. i will have to wait another decade before there's another book to write. i still hope i live that long. but in the meantime, i think i want to say as i said to this audience before, thank you for your dedication and commitment. doing something that is morally complicated, very much so, and i'm sure you know that, but with something this nation asked you to do, not always i think for the best reasons, but there he was and there you were, and you did as we all know what a superb job. but the fact is no nuclear weapons have exploded by accident since 1945, so thank you very much. [applause]

>> so questions and comments, we can do a little bit of that. >> let's take a moment for whoever would like to ask a question, for the c-span folks, raise your hand to be called. richard, you decide who is going to have questions from. >> you want to wait for the mic? [inaudible] >> i can't even hear you. >> any idea if they use real ways, store their weapons, where they've got there, are they stored separately in peace to a? >> i don't know. no. there's a certain amount of knowledge but not very much about the israeli nuclear arsenal. icing essence that they provide about as much as 80 weapons, 300 weapons. it's pretty clear that's why they need tritium.

but how they are stored i have no idea. thank you. >> there's another corollary to the when you're talking about, proliferation force, and it's also overwhelming security causes, it immense value to a country doesn't have the money to counter that, to get a nuclear weapon. so we are in kind a quandary here i in the u.s. where we are documented, and that's a roadblock. >> the comment had to do with overwhelming conviction of superiority. i'm sure you're aware that the united states would be relatively even more dominant in a nonnuclear world that we are now. one of the things that is a threat, of course to united states, even from a small country would be nuclear weapons. but that's not at all true when we're talking about conventional

weapons. so it seems clear to me as i tried to think about how you move from where we are to where i am suggesting we might go, that united states is going to be asked to reduce its conventional capability. the sheer mass of military force that we have assembled, and that's going to be very complicated because we're also going to be asked to eliminate our nuclear weapons. i don't imagine this is all going to happen tomorrow or take place very easily. it's going to depend very much on how much it makes sense to people. practical, conventional, defensive, security sense to live in a world without the threat of these weapons of immense capacity. we will see.

>> in some sense though having nuclear weapons sort of kept the peace, after all, countries which have a nuclear arsenal have they ever really gone to war with each other? and perhaps part out of fear, what might happen if india and pakistan have fought correctly. there is an argument that mutual assured destruction does work to keep the peace. >> good question. have nuclear weapons in fact kept the peace. there's no question i think that has a deep level, the level of depth here, that deterrence works. but if you look at deterrence as a theory which is utterly develop i what i call nuclear mandarins during the high years of the cold war, we accepted defeat in vietnam. the russians accepted defeat in afghanistan rather than escalate the use of nuclear weapons. they were not weapons --

deterrence didn't work at the level of coercion very much, but it certainly coerced the two superpowers. but, unfortunately, and this is why the so-called four horsemen, george shultz come sam nunn, bill perry and henry kissinger, back in 2006, on the '30s and a version of reykjreykjavík got together and decided to start an effort to move toward eliminating nuclear weapons. there is now the real possibility, and i think it can be an increasingly possibility in the future, that subnational groups can get their hands on some sort of nuclear weapons or kind in that circumstance deterrence seemingly has no value at all. and under those circumstances what could we threaten such a group with. the other thing we could do was hope we were able to apprehend them, stop them before they set off whatever device they had. so from the point of view of the

four horsemen, and i mentioned that because my opinion is my opinion, but those men at least had major expense in government. they saw that change as very important, and as recent to move to zero as quickly as possible. >> richard, do you really think the iaea and the u.n. are capable of brokering a deal diplomatically about nuclear weapons? if they can't, who's going to do it? how do we do it? >> the activities that have been a part of the nuclear test ban treaty have involved the development of systems of surveillance and inspection all over the world. and i think it's in that

context. i don't imagine that the u.n. can viably serve that function under the security council present formulation. richard butler, for example, have proposed a new special security council for nuclear issues where there would be no beaches. that would be vital because the veto had been of course the spoiler through many, many occasions since the u.n. was formed in 1945. by the iaea has the capability. the u.n. can do a bad job in iraq and are somewhat limited circumstances. and again i have to say, and i know this is really hard for people to buy, but countries don't sign treaties with the express intention achieving us, no is a community obvious to me what a country that secretly

built a few nukes would really be able to do to the rest of the world anyway. they could make a mess, no question, but what exactly what they're threat be and what would be its basis, and how long could they expect to operate be for other countries responded in ways that would be painful to them? i mean, it to me is part of the evidence that we are on a very early point thinking this new world through, that that kind of question is valid and it isn't immediately obvious how you answer it. but we do have a lot the beginnings all over the place. the nuclear test ban treaty is one of them, and a test ban treaty particularly with all of its international programs, surveillance and inspection, the only development that some of you probably are involved in to develop a nuclear forensics so

that if nuclear materials to turn up in the wrong places in the wrong hands, one can identify a country, can identify where they came from. that's been one of our threats to north korea. if a bomb goes off and we know it came from you, it will be as if you were the one who set it off. all of this, you know, we had to invest a huge infrastructure after 1945 to do with the fact of nuclear weapons. we're going to have to invent another huge infrastructure to deal with the idea of the world are there are no nuclear weapons. it's sort of a mirror image of the other in a way. but in some ways very similar. i don't mean to sound high in the sky because i'm not. i understand this will be a hard, hard problem, and the question is always going to be will it be worth it for enough country so that they can move.

>> you mentioned the 30th anniversary of reykjavík. do you think that the world situation related nuclear weapons would be different if the results of the reykjavík meeting had been different? >> the question is would the world a different place right now if reykjavík had been a success? i was fascinated with the reykjavík summit. i got my hands on not only the american transcript, but also the russian. and i had the russian transcript translated without reading that language. and i put them side-by-side. one of the things i discovered, what is supposed to be raw primary documents had already been fixed up a little bit. there was great concern on the part of president reagan's advisers that he not be depicted as offering to eliminate nuclear weapons. that was kind of cut out of the transcript but it was in the russian transcript and not surprisingly the russian transcript was a verbatim

stenographic report. whoever was making that record didn't want to be shown when he got home to moscow as having been remiss or having been left anything out. he was afraid of that. of you with these two documents that i wrote a play which has had meetings around the country of the reykjavík summit, which i hope will get a production one of these days somewhere. it still needs to work, but i was so struck by the inherent drama of these two leaders, both the intent of president reagan was a nuclear abolitionist from 1945 on. there was a little known fact for most of his life, but he saw it as his most important goal as president. and again the people around them in the white house thought he was a fool. they just didn't listen to him. the problem for him was he couldn't see what he would do about a cheater to get some

country decided to cheat on elimination, a world without nuclear weapons, how could you do with that? that? and as he came up with was, a technological solution to the problem. encouraged by edward. so when he came to the summit in reykjavík, president gorbachev goal was to these cut nuclear arsenals ideally again to eliminate them because he wanted that piece of the soviet budget to go into supporting improving the lives of the soviet people. gorbachev was a very unusual leader of the soviet union. he was a farmer's son. he grew up on a collective farm. he won a four-year scholarship to the best university in russia, moscow university, by combining more we in the summer of his 17th year than any

other teenager in the old soviet union. he got a lemon medal for it which he always said afterwards was the best metal he had on his chest. he was someone who came from a totally different place than a city slicker than moscow who were generally part of the soviet hierarchy. and one of the things he discovered early on was a possible exception of nikita khrushchev, no soviet leader had ever told a saudi complex know, you can't have all you want. they basically rubberstamped whatever the military investor complex asked for. and what was left over went to the people. windows people came into his office, his response was are you planning to attack the united states, comrade? because if you aren't, get out of my office. we don't need that stuff. and nevertheless when he came to reykjavík, he had been given a limit to his negotiating to a

limited nuclear weapons, and that was president reagan had to give up sdi. well, i mean that's mohamed and a mountain out of a. but in the background he made such a perfect villain in a way was richard perle. at a crucial on the last day of the negotiations, president reagan said, well, maybe we should take this deal. but george shultz said mr. president, we can work it out at geneva down the road. this is the best deal i've seen in 25 years of negotiating with the soviets. take the deal. and as the president told his adviser around the room, he came to richard perle and richard perle, knowing exactly where to stick in the night said, mr. president, it will destroy sdi. the result was president reagan said i can't make the deal. they went away unhappy, but as gorbachev realize at the end of the summit and as he said at the

press conference, this was not a failure. this was a success. we have agreed to a limit whole class of nuclear weapons. and it's the beginning of something that will continue. so gorbachev brought common security to the table. president reagan brought sdi, and it was sadly not quite as much as it might have been. however, i will add this, that people are in government on our side have said to me more than once, if you think that president reagan or president gorbachev could have gone back to their capital with a deal like that and gotten anywhere with it at all, you're crazy. so there were vested interests on both sides who certainly would have thought any such agreement. would've happened? it didn't quite happen, but it certainly makes interesting

speak. spent ladies and gentlemen, let's get a big round of applause. [applause] >> richard rhodes is the author of over 20 books. in his book "the making of the atomic bomb" with the recipient of the to surprise in in nonfiction and the national book award for nonfiction. mr. roach is also the host a correspondent of public televisions and there and experience and frontline. for more information, visit richardrhodes.com. >> we are here at the national press club talking with spencer abraham about his book, lights out. can you tell us what some of these solutions are to our

energy crisis that you detail in the book? >> i will. as energy secretary i want to seem to work and what i felt was not working. we have a real energy challenge facing america going forward. and i think first we need to increase dramatically the whole nuclear energy place here in united states. right now it is 20% of our power and i think they should be 30% by 2030. we also need to increase the role of renewable energy here in the united states. right now it's wind, solar, biomass, geothermal. these renewables are only about 2% of our energy. we need them to be much, much higher so we need to support that effort. i'm a conservative so i believe in conservation. one of the things would also need to do is to find ways to improve our energy efficiency so that we don't demand as much growth and energy demand as right now is projected to be the case. >> what do we do about the argument to keep costs down in

terms of incorporating other energy sources? >> that's certainly a challenge, and i think most of these are costs which we would be willing to bear. i think first of all the private sector should and can't and will play an active role in deploying these new forms of energy, but i think there's a role for the federal government to encourage them as well. i think in the last couple of years we've seen some progress along these lines but it's going to take a lot more, at least given right now it looks like the demands not only in the united states but the rest of the world. if we don't that we will see prices for energy sky rocket. we are going see america, at the mercy of producing countries you're exporting to us our energy and would like to put us in a politically difficult position. if we don't address these issues will have growing environmental challenges as well. so what the book tries to shove

is a pathway for to address all of those. unfortunately, i think there is but it will take will and tough decision and we've been a little bit unwilling to make those tough decisions the last few years. >> do you tackle how to change i guess public perspective and their perception of what we should do? and being more cooperative. >> it's a good point. one of the real impediments to what we need to do in energy is what they call the not in my backyard. the one thing i found as energy secretary is it didn't matter what type of energy project you are talking about our energy infrastructure deployment. there was tremendous resistance because people didn't want it anywhere near the. they wanted lots of energy. they wanted cheap energy but they didn't want anybody to either make it or use it around them. and you can't do that. at the end of the day as a

country we have to be grownups about this and say that yes, it would be terrific if we could have all of the energy, facility somewhere else. but we need them to be deployed on a broad basis. i do address that in the book. i don't profess to have a solution to convincing americans that they ought to do this, but i think the more we explain to them of the consequences of not allowing projects to go forward, they will see the benefit ultimately as to our country. >> and have you found that resistance falls more along party lines, or is that something more kind of a myth? >> the not in my backyard resistance is universal. it knows no party or regional or other kinds of boundaries. and it's grown i think in recent years. and that's not surprising because the country has gotten larger, the populations increased. that means we need more power.