announcer: on december 12, 1991 president george h.w. bush signed the soviet nuclear threat reduction act, also known as the non-lugar act. beginning a formal process between the russians and the united states of cooperative storage, dismantling and destruction of soviet nuclear and chemical weapons. next, in commemoration of the act's 25th anniversary, a panel of government officials and policymakers discuss their role in implementing the legislation. this 80 minute program was cohosted by the national security archive. the carnegie corporation, the carnegie endowment and the nuclear threat initiative. >> ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your attention. we have some real heroes of the

implementation of non-lugar. i turn this panel over to david hoffman to moderate the biographies of these extraordinary individuals. they are in your program. i will not spend our time going over those, but i want to turn it to david hoffman for his penetrating questions and authoritarian moderation. [laughter] david: thank you all again for joining us for the second panel. you heard in the first panel some discussion about the hopes and also some of the disappointments, but where the rubber meets the road is where this panel is about. is about implementation. and as all of us know from 25 years of experience, it is one thing to give a good speech on the senate floor, it is another thing to get a missile silo closed in ukraine. and i hope this panel will help

us understand how some of those accomplishments were actually carried out. it is my experience in my reporting that there were hundreds, probably thousands of people involved in this implementation. they are not all here. but in my six years in moscow, almost every week i met people that were working on ctr and going to far corners. i remember going to the enormous factory where weapons were being destroyed with senators and being surprised at the incredible effort that was going on way in the far corners of russia to destroy that huge stockpile of chemical weapons. it was not something that you heard much about in washington. it was a giant factory as big as any chemical factory i have seen. the idea of those warheads carrying deadly chemicals being brought by train into that factory with both russians and americans taking them apart, it was quite a sight to see.

the big question for everybody on this panel will be how did we get to actually accomplish something with this program? we will start with sig. i think my big question for you sig, you were there very early lab with russian officials at our test sites. you were there almost until recently with the mountain remediation, decades. what is the key to building trust in all of this? how did you do it? sig: thank you, david. good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. it is a great pleasure to be here with such a distinguished audience and the group that really laid out on nunn-lugar for us. david, i would say, you asked a similar question before -- what

is the key, how do we build up the personal relationships? i would say it is the personal relationships. to me, the single most important thing was captured in an american song. it is called "walk a mile in your shoes." your shoes, i say, because it was important for us to walk a mile in the russian shoes. because people ask how did we convince the russian nuclear weapons scientist to go through all of these things with us? from nuclear weapons safety, to material security to the people-related things, it was important to understand what was it like inside of russia. and david, you mentioned in your opening, that in your book, you said the russians got an inheritance from hell. that is what the nuclear complex

was. when we got into the russian facilities in 1992 -- and we did, we were not just sitting around the conference table, we were doing experiments together. what we found out what the russian scientist wanted to do, was science. they wanted to create new knowledge. they wanted to build new things. engineers like to build things. scientists create new knowledge. you have all heard of the make a -- the megatons to megawatts. fantastic program. there was much science in that. but we did with the russians was megatons to megagouse. magnetic fields. we used russian explosives with american diagnostics. we created together the highest magnetic field ever created on this earth.

in their los alamos. and when we went there, inside los alamos, and we spent weeks working together hand-in-hand, you could barely tell who was doing what. what we found is that, to the russians, the nuclear complex was not an inheritance from hell. to them, it was the means for the revival of a great russia to nuclear weapons. i usually try to give the inheritance from hell to an american side. identify the loose nukes for weapons. as you heard, there were tens of thousands of loose materials. there were over one million kilograms of enriched uranium. loose people, perhaps, hundreds of thousands in the nuclear complex.

and loose exports, the sale of everything that was not nailed down. that's what we were concerned about. those loose problems. that is not the way the russians looked at it. the weapons were to ensure the sovereignty of the country. especially when everything was coming apart. the nuclear material, especially the plutonium. it was fair their children -- it was for their children. it was going to be burned in reactors to make electricity. loose people or brain drain? heavens, no. these were the best and brightest in all of russia. they were going to be the engine of their economic recovery. and loose exports, we did have some problems in the 1990's. we had some concern. but russia became a responsible nuclear exporting state. that is what they viewed as really being important. that is what they were trying to

make sure that survived. we learned that by working with them. with the enormous support of the nunn lugar program from here, we were able to do things together with the russian navy, and in the end there were no loose nukes, essentially no loose people. very few loose materials. after the initial export concern, a responsible exporting state. as i like to say, when i come to washington, there is often the saying that there is plenty of blame to go around. in this case, ladies and gentlemen, there is plenty of praise and credit to go around. you just heard the american government, secretary perry, the people who allowed us to do those things in the department. charlie curtis was our partner in all of this.

jim turner was there. so many of you. and then of course most of all, it was really the russian nuclear weapons scientists. their patriotism, their professionalism, their dedication and their willingness to suffer. and they had to suffer in the 1990's to make it through. david, instead of my 10 minute presentation i gave you a few minute answer to your question. david: let me follow up for one second. i cannot help but ask you, don't you think there was a little bit of denial in those attitudes? you yourself went to the leaders of the two laboratories with your little briefcase of pictures and said, you guys left plutonium in that mountain. will you help us find it and get rid of it? i mean, it was not as if there was anything loose in this.

egfried: the dangers were real in the russian nuclear complex. i mean, everything. economically, things just collapsed. so yes, there were real concerns. some of them that were quite easy to understand. for example, the fresh fuel for the russian nuclear navy. some were not so easy to understand, such as, what was left behind. andy weber and his colleagues were over there closing tunnels and doing lots of things that -- was not appreciated. there were other experiments done. nuclear materials that were not blown up in a mushroom cloud. either above or contained underneath. so yes, those things were left behind, but, quite frankly, from a russian perspective the way we finally solved the problem was with the russians, americans and

the kazaks together. from a russian perspective, when they did the experiments in the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's, who would have thought that test site would ever be in somebody else's hands? it was that connection that i said, did you leave something behind that you are concerned about? or that we should be concerned about? the answer initially was that we are not going back. they did go back. yes, that stuff was loose. , andy weberilateral worked on this for many, many years -- through trilateral cooperation we did manage to litigate the problem. >> it took 17 years. a lot of recently and stick to it of this -- stucktuitiveness. i would like to turn to implementation of another problem that was a little more linear and less mysterious.

that is the question of the icbm's and nuclear warheads left outside the russian federation at the time of the collapse. this is a source of great concern for the united states for many years, and all of them were brought back to russia. we have with us, two people who helped work on the implementation of this problem. a real arms control and cooperative threat reduction problem. i would like to hear more about how they actually accomplished it. i would like to start with gloria. gloria: thanks, david. i truly apologize for the quality of my voice. it is an honor and pleasure to be here with so many colleagues and friends. some of whom i have not seen for the past 20 years or so. on the historic 25th anniversary of the signing of the nunn-lugar legislation. the first thing i would like to say, as one who implemented it, was that legislation was very

foresightful and brilliant. it correctly and insightfully assess the problems and the trends that it sought to address. it was well crafted to enable many of us here in the room to find practical solutions and problems. our implementation of the legislation was a very entrepreneurial activity. we knew the problems and the goals of the legislation, but despite our intelligence, we did not know exactly what the situation would be on the ground, and how exactly our goals could be reached. the act provided the authority and flexibility we needed to get the job done. when a request came in, many of them very unique and unforeseen requests from the former soviet countries. for instance, remove weapons grade uranium from kazakhstan. stand up the foundation so we

-- the civilian r&d foundation employ russian scientists in russia while they install the operation of the ispc. in each case, we found the authority in the law that we needed to get those jobs done. secondly, nunn-lugar was and is an exercise in international cooperation, but it has also been an example of an intra-agency and interagency cooperation in the u.s. whatever i was able to do, whatever we were able to do at dod depended on the cooperation and mentorship as a negotiator of my friend jim and the state department. the blessing of jim who came to bash the blessing of cam savage who came to our office from the comptroller's office in d.o.d.

and knew how to work the budget and administrative issues at d.o.d. also jack, i see you here, who is our assigned legal counsel from the d.o.d. office of general counsel. who cast a very sharp eye on the proposed agreement, and in the end always found a way to make it happen. there were so many other colleagues from other d.o.d. offices and agencies within the u.s. government. it was a great example of transcending the divisions that exist between agencies and even inside agencies. finally, i would like to tell a story, because it illustrates the extraordinary cooperation we had in the former soviet union. and how it often depended on one courageous individual. in the winter of 1995, dr. perry led a bilateral working group to

moscow. one of those long-lost bilateral regular bilateral forums we used to have. we were at a big rectangular table. the russians were there with their various programs and offices represented from the ministry of defense, and the same from d.o.d. and i was there to brief on the nunn-lugar program. i literally received a tap on the shoulder from behind. and i looked around, and there was standing a person who i did not yet know was general maslin. he said are you the nunn-lugar person? i said, yes, i think so. are you the person we talked to about nunn-lugar assistance? and he wanted to talk to me so , we went off in another part of the room. he told me about his fears about the security of nuclear weapons,

which were under his control as earlier described when being transported, serviced, maintained, stored, etc. he talked about some very specific concerns. it was the time of the chechnya chechnyian uprisings. he was concerned that there could be a hijacking on the tracks, a stoppage of a weapon 's train and theft of weapons. he was concerned that there were demobilized officers who did not have housing, living on strategic rocket forces bases because they had nowhere to go. and that corruption or greed could lead to communication between them and their still-employed, still in service colleagues, that could lead to the theft and perhaps black-market sales of a nuclear weapon. he was concerned about the reliability of their people,

their personnel working on the commanding control of nuclear weapons, transport and storage. so he asked for talks with us and possible assistance that we might provide. i sent a long classified cable back to washington from moscow. we had some meetings in the d.o.d. and talked about how we could be helpful. some of you may remember those meetings, that went over our experience with reliability of personnel with safety of nuclear nearns with incidents and accidents with nuclear weapons. we composed a team, then we went back to moscow in march. we had several days of meetings with the general and this team. a group of colonels and lower-level generals talking in a most extraordinary way about the problems they faced.

it included disclosure of their mishaps and near-mishaps. in included discussions about the very specific personnel reliability problems they had. included fears about chechnyans and what could happen to their nuclear weapons. we asked questions, it also included concerns about an antiquated way of keeping track of the whereabouts of the nuclear weapons. sort of pre-digital era. while in transit and in storage. our team, when asked a question, as these meetings usually went, can you be more specific, tell us more. the generals and colonels, the maslin maslin -- general was there sometimes at the

table, sometimes elsewhere in m.o.d. they would look to him and say, can we talk about this? in each case he went like this, go ahead. c'mon, go ahead. we had that thing discussion back at d.o.d. about how much we could share and disclose. at the end of this discussion and in the months and years following, we provided assistance with detecting threats to weapons trains, help with tracking weapons by more digital means, also some sharing of experience on personal reliability, including testing and other methods. but the end of our march 1995 meeting in moscow, where we first discussed this, the general invited his team and ours to one of the seats of the patriarch of the russian orthodox church to have lunch and to tour the monastery and

meet someone from the patriarch's office. at the end of this rather extraordinary day, which is at the end of an extraordinary week, i asked general maslin why did you bring us here? he said, and i quote, "because god is watching us and watching what we do." whether it is god or simply the ethical imperative to cooperate with the common good, this type of attitude is something we could obviously use a lot more of today. [applause] david: i guess god is watching over some of this, but it requires human endeavor. i think you as a negotiator and as a diplomat have put a lot of time and effort into making some of this happen. tell us how it worked.

>> thank you. thank you very much. the diplomatic world is always divided into two pieces. what is procedure and the other one is procedure, the other is substance. you have heard a lot about the substance, i want to talk about the procedure. between the nunn-lugar legislation and the actual destruction of missiles and silos, there was another area that had to do with creating the legal framework. defining what it was or what we were planning to do with our counterparts in russia, ukraine, kazakhstan. belarus. how to allocate the funds as we started specific projects. that was a task of an interagency group. it was initially headed by general bill burns, father of carnegie president bill burns. i hoped one of the other could be here but let me speak a little bit about bill burns

senior. he had been head of the arms control agency after a distinguished military career. he had been asked if he would pick up the nunn-lugar negotiations to negotiate the legal framework i just mentioned. he accepted. he had other things he preferred to do but he thought this was a noble cause, which indeed it was. he became the first head of the interagency delegation that traveled to various capitals to negotiate the legal framework. he, after the change of presidencies, decided he should step down. he was doing all of this pro bono, by the way. he wanted to spend more time at home with his family. so i was visited -- at that point i was at the lewis institute of peace on a sabbatical from carnegie mellon university where i had gone after leaving to department of

state. jim and bob einhorn came to see me at the institute and asked me would i take bill burns's place? i did nothing wrong about it. -- i didn't think long about it, i thought it was important to do so i accepted. , i was told that i had to understand that this was in interagency effort, it was not the state department in charge. all of the money came from the pentagon. and therefore, the agreements had to be signed by the pentagon representative, who was gloria duffy. so i got to sit up front and help with the negotiations. gloria signed the agreements. in the process, i want to mention two attorneys that helped me and gloria very much, you have already mentioned one of them. jack beard and roy gardner. two very able lawyers from the defense department. i think it is fair to say that jack beard probably created this

legal framework. it consisted of we call an umbrella agreement that describe what the scope of what the operations were going to be with the four countries we were negotiating with. there were also implementing agreements, which described in more specific terms, what it is exactly that was going to be done. destroying a silo, missile, and so forth. the task of the interagency group was essentially to negotiate one umbrella agreement with each of these four countries. then also a series of implementing agreements. bill burns had already done some of that. he pretty well finished the negotiations in belarus. he started with russia, we had not gotten very far with ukraine or kazakhstan. so in march of 1993, i took over that job, and in the next year, i took the job for one year.

in the process of that year, thanks to a really effective team -- jim turner was my department of energy deputy, sitting in the front row. the commander, back there was from osd. there are many others. gloria played a very important role as the d.o.d. deputy. by the end of the first year, the only year i was actually doing that job, we had negotiated something like 30 agreements. three umbrella agreements. the rest of them implementing agreements. the cooperative threat reduction office put out a report that came to my attention, that made me very pleased. that commitment went up almost in a straight line from where they had been. there was a lot that was done.

it was mainly due to the people that were on this team. it was a remarkable group. i wish i did give you all of the names. i have given you the ones that worked very closely with me, i remember them very well, but there were many others as well. gloria is right to emphasize how many people really did take part in this operation. i wanted to mention one other thing. i had the feeling that nunn-lugar was such a good idea, that we should try to expand it and move into other areas. something that also many other people have thought about. we actually did that. in 1995, we created something we called safe and secure dismantlement. this came out of a gore commission initiative. it was in important element of what we were doing with the russians at that point. i think it is not ever given

enough credit for what it did. but what we were thinking about were two things. one, cooperation with the russians on security of materials. we developed a fairly elaborate rapport and how that would be done. and the other part was dismantling nuclear warheads. the u.s. delegation was given fast-track authority to negotiate an agreement to exchange restricted data, which is quite a remarkable thing. even in those days it was quite remarkable. we made quite a bit of progress in doing that. we also tried to negotiate kind of implementing a scope agreement on what we were actually going to do with respect to this. a lot of it had to do with exchanging data. to get a proper database. which makes a lot of sense, but the fact of the matter is, we overreached. we were asking for a lot of

historical data about materials. which i suspect the russians did not actually have. the lesson i offer to all of you who are doing these things in the future, never overreach. realize what the limits are. do that and take another step later on. in any event, we were making some progress at the end of i guess it was 1996, probably. a friend of mine from the russian embassy came to see me and said we will have to post -- postpone the next meeting. we were actually getting to the point where we talked about negotiations, and talking about where it would be. and whether helsinki or geneva, we had begun to work out how this would be done. the rug was pulled out at the end of 1996. i do not know exactly what happened, but something happened in moscow that made it clear that this was not on.

the whole thing collapsed. there have been other interested talk about war had -- about warhead dismantlement which we still don't do. , that is that, but i recommend something like that get started again. with that i will close. [applause] david: i suspect that jim gave us a very representative, diplomatic explanation of some moments in actuality were very dramatic. that safe secure and dismantlement program for its short life included the agreement between the russians and the united states that the ofted states would take one the real cars transporting the nuclear weapons, put it on a barge, fly it to the national

laboratory where it would be taken apart. tickets were developed to make the rail cards more secure and installed in russia. i think of that example a lot. i was the correspondent of the washington post in moscow. i missed that story. [laughter] david: but it was a traumatic cooperationgermanic that had tangible results in making the world a little safer. especially when you saw those railcars with the wood insides without a team indication device with various guards, without security blankets. it was all done cooperatively and quickly. one of the things that senator nunn-lugar mentioned today was to that they were proud of getting it signed and in place. it was really an authorization. as we sit here in the halls of congress, everyone knows the important thing is getting it appropriated. that was long and difficult,

especially in the first few years when expectation had been raised. nunn-lugar existed as an authorization. getting the money appropriated and spent in the pentagon was extremely difficult. it took a while to ramp up. i hope the general will enlighten us about how you did that. >> let me say, when jim and gloria were done with their work , like these brilliant surgeons they left the operating peter -- operating theater and said ok, sew it up. and i would be back there wondering if he is going to survive and, am i going to get blamed for this? i would mostly like to talk about the projects i work on with general maslin.

he couldn't to be here today, let me talk about some of those programs. they all had to do with nuclear warheads. i would've hoped that as we got into this program, we would have started on something a little less controversial or sensitive than nuclear warheads. we were launched right into the warheads. warheads tend to be at the top of the dismantlement scheme. the same way they sit on top of a missile, which ironically is the most secure place for them to be when they are in a silo. when we start the dismantlement process we take the warheads off and start them on their perilous journey. it was everything having to do with warheads that general and the 12 main directors were concerned with. once we were able to get the

warhead off, we dealt with the other things that were related with a lot of emphasis of getting rid of the missiles. the missiles were not terribly difficult once we got the fuel separated from them. we could easily destroy those in a manner that the treaty could recognize. the fuel was a lot more complicated. the fuel was difficult for us to deal with because, it was clearly not a threat related item. it was an item that had to be taken care of so that we could continue with this entire process. particularly, liquid fuel. that got us into programs that were horribly complicated and expensive. special containers, railroad cars, railroad tinkers, even

-- railroad tinkers, even railroad tankers, even forcing us to work on railways. rail roads in order to get all of that taken care of. , taking careiles of them, the silos were straightforward. it was just ugly, brute force that lou up though silos. nunn-lugar provided bulldozers that would sweep all of the debris into the holes. at that point, a lot of us would have liked to have walked away from the program before we ever heard the word remediation. remediation was a loaded concept. once we started talking about this, we knew at the end of it

would be ordering sunflower seeds. in fact, remediation was not the end of it. as general muslin -- general asli -- general maslin reminded us, it is fine when you take your of the entire weapon system, the part of the structure is the unit. he would have liked to invited us back to the grounds where we see the units colors retard. then he point to all the soldiers and say, surely you will find a civilized way to deal with my office this year. that was housing. housing is enormously complicated. secretary perry wanted to do this. in ukraine, we did get involved in a modest effort using a defense conversion angle.

in russia itself, we never did. it was a big disappointment for the general. what we did manage to do to help charge of the 12 in 1992, the problems were enormous. he had 20,000 tactical nukes that he had to bring back from the forward areas. including the former soviet union. he had us referred to 3000 nuclear warheads in kazakhstan and ukraine. all of this wild on top of a -- all of this piled on top of a normal dismantlement scheme in russia that had 2000 warheads that had to be taking care of.

huge problem. he did it all with good humor and amazing grace. it is too bad he was not here today to personally receive his award. some of the things we did, material containers were at the begin. there is the beginning of our project that was the tail end of the dismantlement team when they finally went out there and the materials with the fiscal material removed from them. they had to go into some containers. this was primarily before and maslin and my's involvement. it was amazingly successful. he came up with the specs, the containers are made in new mexico. 25,000, they were delivered. they were delivered with delays, but they were built in delays that we could not escape. i would have thought that the

success of this program would've given them the confidence that they were dealing with a serious partner. i don't agree ever earned confidence. at the beginning of the process, as these warheads were being loaded to start on that journey to the dismantlement plant, the first thing was a stopgap measure to get arming blankets. a simple project. the initial ones came out of u.s. army stocks in western europe. that was a contract to buy a whole bunch. kevlar blankets they were , brought in and hopefully the help that the early part of that process with a little more security. general maslin said it would have been much more helpful if we could find a container to put the warhead into before it went into the railcar.

we came up with this fortified container, or super containers we called them. the specs contract was let out. it was awarded to the british firm, 150th east. super containers were delivered to russia. the railcars were discussed how those were improved with kits that were produced in the united states and sent rack for install. with all of this activity going on, russia divided into five response areas in case there was an accident, or in incident. they asked us for assistance,

which we eventually provided, to provide each of those regions with a large response kit to improve with safety, various an incidenttigate should it happen. one of the most complicated an t should it things was, to keep track of all the missiles as they were moving around. it was suggested and accepted that there be an automated inventory control of programs control program. this would involve a lot of computers. andas very technical sensitive. hadink general maslin

confidence we would provide serious assistance, but had doubts that all of these providing themre might have allowed us to keep track of his inventory as he was keeping track of his inventory. we've brought a ton of hewlett-packard computers. i wonder how many of those, when they got through security inspections were in operating order? it was always interesting to me. sites they were going to were stuffed with more warheads than ever been intended for. there was a need to improve the security. huge problem. the actual, technical response to the requirement was fairly simple.

a whole bunch of fences and sensors, and intrusion devices. all of this was straightforward and could be provided. some of those contracts could actually let in russia. the hiccup was, the federal acquisition regulation. far. we all hated far because it prevented us from being terribly responsive. it's one of the reasons the programs stretched out for a long time. a lot of good reasons that all of these protections should have been in place, but it was difficult. that if we required provided assistance, we would be on-site to verify the assistance was being used for its intended

purposes. that the fences were going around the nuclear storage site, and not some other on authorized place. we worked on this forever to see if we could come up with an agreement to satisfy both sides. general moslin's proposal was something like, plato's allegory of the cave. he would have had ctr inspectors going through a cave and watch a on the far walls as reflections of our assistance were paraded behind us, then sign off. [laughter] >> we could not exactly by that, that, but we came up with something that made the far

people nervous and did not completely satisfy general moslin. the last thing we did was to provide assistance to build a technical training base for all of these new procedures and techniques and computers could be tried out. concepts could be worked out. it took a lot time and cost a lot of money. hopefully, it is still being used and still being appreciated by the russian side. i just want to say in quick conclusion, this is a very productive relationship we had with a very sensitive subject. failure here could've had a far wider consequence than any place else. 10 years before, i had an officer killed in east germany for trespassing on a soviet training range.

this was not a terribly sensitive area. the tanks were not even first line threats, and yet we had this horrible outcome. 10 years later, i was discussing with general moslin, how both sides could agree that official material emerging from a dismantlement site and being put into a container actually came from a missile and not another source of nuclear materials. we got to that level of specificity. it was amazing to me, and i was delighted to have done this with a very fine officer and a very

fine representative of the russian people. [applause] david: thank you very much. [applause] david: we have a lot of participants here. we thought that we would try and speed up the pace just a little bit, because are are a lot of people we would like to hear from. time is slipping through my fingers a little bit. we will have very brief comments from a handful of people. i would like to call on everyone to give us one highlight of their experience with nunn-lugar, and maybe a lesson to be learned with that. i will start with charlie curtis. charlie: thank you very much. i wrote an introduction to the amazing work that documented the cooperation between the u.s. and russia.

particularly, its laboratories and the scientific institutes. i pointed out that this was a fated cooperation where the scientist on both sides, who understood the dangers that the russian federation was facing in the post-soviet period. they became the advocates for cooperation. not only the instruments for securing weapons and materials, thealso the advocates and validators internally within the russian federation. you heard bill perry talk about that on military to military cooperation. i think that is what made this extraordinary program work. it's that the people who knew the dangers became the advocates and supporters of the cooperation that grew out of this danger.

i do not know whether it was a situation from hell, but it was certainly a hellacious problem. it was an urgent problem in the case of the security of materials that were very broadly distributed in large numbers. in a circumstance in which the security apparatus was not paid . the defenses were not secure. the insider threat was not protected against at all. the anecdote to all of that is, i had the privilege of going the hadoing to the city, and we a dinner at the very beginning

of the lab to lab program. we were presenting, in essence, a proposal. he stood up and gave an initial toast. it is one of russia's great weapons secrets that they get everybody drunk at these dinners. however, rodney gave a very nice toast. i stood up immediately afterwards to introduce my toast. i said, "i am told that one should not let in interval passed between the first toast and the second toast than is any greater the than it takes a bullet to pass from one side of the table to the other side of the table." i had been provided that by my staff. i thought i was pretty funny. it turns out it was a kgb toast. [laughter] charlie: everybody at the table

started going like this. it was a great privilege to have worked with so many people, state defense, and the department of energy -- and particularly its laboratories. i can only think that this is a time when government worked. when our congress worked together on a bipartisan basis. when the inner agency worked together with many people sitting in this room. let us hope for that day in the future will be recovered. there is great opportunity for cooperation still between russia and the united states. and a habit of cooperation on things nuclear. that is research, safety, security, environmental remediation. if we want to start on a basis of a sound foundation,

rebuilding a cooperative relationship between our two countries, i think that is the footing we should start with. david: thank you, charlie. [applause] david: next on my list, victor. a couple minutes, please. ittor: i will try to keep very short. i just moved from the agency to the department of energy, which decided they wanted to play in this game. the first thing that came across my desk was the joint verification experiment. we had two treaties language for anguished for 15 years on fied because we cannot verified.

-- could not get it verified. the united states and soviet union agreed to have a joint verification experiment, where they would come to our test site and measure a yield of a explosion. right on site in one of the most secret places in the u.s. we would do the same in the soviet union. in the course of those negotiations, our scientists worked like brothers with their scientists. before long, i don't think it was a year, we had two test, which showed that if we combined the two countries, we could verify compliance with these treaties. in the course of all of this, these friendships that were developed between the u.s. and the soviet scientists -- we found out that the soviet union was very fragile. one of the provisions of the treaty was going to be that, all tests had to be done on national

soil. it could not be in antarctica for example. the russians would say, we cannot agree to that, because we are not sure that kazakhstan will be a part of the soviet union. it may be falling apart. i think that triggered in our scientists' minds the need to continue dealing with russians in scientific manners. and so, the lab to lab program begin. i must admit, i used to have to go after your guys who went all over the place in russia. you identified what exactly needed to be done. the science that we did through

that program and later programs -- they were part of this whole effort. in large part -- let me just move on. i do not want to take up too much time. one of the things that happened was, the nunn-lugar legislation passed as we were facing all the disintegration of the soviet union. one of the things i asked in russia -- and secretary baker wanted to know what could we do right now to get the program really flying? and so, i sent a message back to someone in my office, and said post the laboratories on projects that we could start right now. the next day -- this was about

-- the nextir time day i got a reply coordinated with all of the laboratories. i have a copy of it with me. it was then reviewed by the inner agencies in one to two days. it was sent immediately to the soviets/russia. they accepted it. we found a couple of them could not work for technical reasons. many of those were the basis for the wonderful work that we have heard from all of you. i think that we need to begin to think -- as someone suggested, what will we do next? can we persuade the next president that his special relationship with russia could lead to some interesting things unexpected by all of us? thank you. david: thank you, victor. [applause]

david: ok, glen. as glenn takes a microphone, the the national security archive has a new posting of documents, some of which go to this event. one of them is a memorandum of a discussion of 1993 about the state of employment in many of the russian nuclear laboratories. namely, a memo to moscow saying the workers have not been paid. i think that was a problem that glenn confronted in his early days. please, give us a quick highlight. glen: in 1997, dod asked to develop a framework for carrying out a biological engagement program with russia. we delivered a report shortly thereafter. addressed --course

while we of course addressed the bio security issues -- safety issues, the centerpiece was a have a biological research program. the defense department came back saying, "impossible, we have to have results now." it will be too complicated and too sensitive, we cannot do it. we argued, give us a chance. they gave us a little money and we developed eight pilot projects, got them through isdc within two months. within six months, we had contracts ready to sign. five with vector, all of them calling for one-year demonstration projects of less than $100,000. they were all funded. seven out of eight were considered success stories. and the defense department biological research program was on its way. over the next three years, dod

spent $10 million in contracts for their research projects. hhs followed up with $20 million. there was one disappointment. about five years later we said, let us go back and take a look at what the impact has been. we think that these have had long-term implications for russia. we were unsuccessful, and no one went back to look. i am convinced that, had we looked at those biological research programs results five or 10 years later, we would have seen magnificent results and would have strengthened greatly our call for my money in this area. lesson learned. do not think about one-off activities. think about the long term. david: thank you very much. [applause]

david: our next speaker, ken fairfax. i will remind you in that posting online is the famous cable that ken wrote from moscow embassy to washington that there were holes in the fence in the russian nuclear facilities. ken? a quick one. ken: i am honored to be included. my perspective is not from the manager or leader of program, but from the worker bee. when i was in moscow in 1993, my job was to help with logistics for the doe force. in the course of that work, i got to know the russian nuclear complex. the civilian side -- although russia has a different meaning than it did in the u.s. special nuclear materials before they enter the official nuclear programs.

i got to know the programs, and i were shocked by what i saw. so yes, i wrote about holes in the fences. i also wrote about scientists who were not being paid. if they were, it with seven dollars a month. i wrote about incredible dedication and knowledge and the strain it was under. i wrote a lot. i think a couple hundred a year was normal. but writing was not enough. i became with, no authority, no rank, and no funding, a gaslight. every time a lab group would come out, i would help them. i would have three or four ideas for other great labs, strong reasons, great scientists. every time i would go to russia, i would ask that look about take abilities try to pair them up with other people. targeting, writing computer code for other company. others developing systems for

underground for oil companies. it was money, a kept people employed, and it kept the system safe. there i was as a worker bee. later, i worked with charlie curtis a lot to implement programs on nonproliferation. that was an exciting period. but the most exciting was the luck of being in moscow at the right place at the right time. the only advice i did have -- i would have the worker bee advice. always do your job, but never let that prevent you from doing the job that needs to be done. thank you. [applause] david: ok. jeff starr, you are on. project sapphire, if you please. jeff: new thinking begets new

thinking, and cooperative overtures sometimes result in return cooperation. and that is the story of sapphire. i think, for everybody in this room, that is the thinks we owed -- thanks we owe them. the nunn-lugar program created new thought, and it allowed us to self problems in new ways -- solve problems in new ways that had not been contemplated before. it was a gift that kept on giving. project sapphire involved the removal of 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, enough to make several dozen weapons. greater than hiroshima size. that was a material that was insecurely stored in kazakhstan. courage of those in -- context on --

kazakhstan and perhaps american thinking about cooperation. whether there should be weapons in kazakhstan. perhaps give them the courage to say let's take this relationship with the americans out for a spin and see what happens. they contacted bill and andy. in 1993, it took until january 1994 for ash carter to say, i want that uranium out in 30 days. 10 months later, it was out. but it was only out, because of the level of the interagency cooperation that was probably unprecedented, because we had not only the funding but the thinking. it allowed us to contemplate different solutions. cooperatively removing that uranium from kazakhstan that could not protect it given the resources at the time. they do not want to lose control

of it. the gift that kept on giving. sapphire led to the joint cooperative project to dismantle a biological weapons facility. that project lead them to say, can you keep doing this? preemptive acquisition kind of stuff? the answer was yes, and, every year for the next several years, there were one or two preemptive acquisitions. some of which became public. many of which did not. some were funded by nunn-lugar. principally because of jack beard. he never said to me, no it cannot be done. our joke was, we all love jack , because he kept us out of jail.

he never said, "it could not be done." he said, "let me figure out a way it can be done." it was the new thinking that led to a whole series of counter proliferation activities to begin. it continued on across nuclear materials, etc. thank you to the nunn-lugar program. thank you to our colleagues in kazakhstan for the opportunity. [applause] david: susan cook. susan: i cannot resist saying, i worked this program in either the national council staff or the office of the national secretary of defense through three administration. i joined one week after the legislation was signed and was told, "ok, get together in interagency group to figure out what to do next." it has been in my blood and

heart ever since. i will talk about when i was in osc in 1999. the umbrella agreement with russia was about to expire. i think it is lost history about why they were down for seven years. things had changed in russia and the united states. the program was not very popular in the congress, and there was a series of congressional restrictions on our authorization. on things like housing and defense conversion, and difficulties with funding on an annual basis. so, at our peril would we have changed the umbrella agreement greatly. because that would have been bad at home. the russians, on the other hand -- it was no longer the russian government of 1992. there were different constituencies. i looked at my russian

colleagues to tell a lot better what was going on. there were those in the russian government who did not like the tax exemptions or the liability protections or the privileges and immunities, the audits and the examinations. all of the things that were extremely important both to the administration and to congress. something else that i changed was -- we did not have a big interagency group. it was the very famous jack beard and i who pretty much worked the renewal negotiation. it was looking very bad, because we were at loggerheads. i had no flexibility, because of congress, and then my counterpart from the ministry of foreign affairs said, "stay

home. give us a couple of weeks." basically what happened was a coalition of the foreign ministry, the minister of defense, and i think it was the ministry of atomic energy at the time. those ministries with whom we had very good, productive projects, working relationships, and they really wanted to keep it going. and it was a very near thing. we actually had to change the hour of the expiration of the agreement, believe it or not, to get it into the wire. in under the wire. coalition, our partners, prevailed. and the umbrella agreement went

through a couple of more renewals. this time with some changes. thank you. david: we have two more. give us one highlight and some lessons, please. >> [speaking russian] esteemed friends. i am following very closely the discussion, and i would like to contribute to the discussion as well. in the beginnings of the 1990's and mid 1990's, i had some problems with implementation of the nunn-lugar program. this was part of the general staff working in the administrative defense of

russia. after i served in the military in russia, i had to address certain problems. problems in the state cooperation and the department of international cooperation which was responsible for the implementation of the nunn-lugar program. i had my own responsibilities and oversight of the implementation of the program, and i would like to use the remaining time to say the discussion is intense and there's not much time. i would like to make a proposal, mr. moderator. i believe, our conference, this present conference, must come up to the newosal presenters of the nunn-lugar regarding the need to rename the law adopted an hour passed in 1991. the law was called the reduction

of the soviet nuclear threat. let's make a proposal to address the congress with the proposal. the law on creation of the system of cooperation between russia and the united states and the nuclear area. i believe that would be a better match to the discussion that we have all been participating in in the last hour. everybody spoke to the fact that the main principles of the implementation of this document is about the cooperation between the russian federation and the united states of america, particularly in the nuclear area. the name of the title adopted in 1991 has been obsolete for quite a while.

i am just kidding actually, but still, in any case what is happening has nothing to do with the fact we were working on the reduction of the soviet nuclear threat as part of the 1991 law. i also would like to say something very important. i would like to express my gratitude not only to those assembled in this hall but also to those who are not here with but who participated in implementation of the law on the ground. military diplomats, military personnel, representatives of ministries and agencies, scientists, engineers, and workers. it is their efforts that brought about what we are referring to

as the implementation of the law , of the nunn-lugar program. if we fail to do that, i believe that we believe this hall unsatisfied. i am talking about hundreds of people on your part, and thousands of people on the part of the russian federation. that is what i want to say. thank you. [applause] david: thank you. dan, give us some highlights and some lessons. quickly, please. dan: as the last person standing between this panel and the next panel, i will be brief. i think it all goes back to what secretary perry and what senators nunn-lugar said at the beginning. the power of this idea was that it addressed a profound in -- and existential need.

nownow that the historic inevitability settled on it, it was an outrageous idea. i can remember with ash carter and bill perry came in and visited my boss at the national security council. it was not a "gimme" that this would happen. but it was a great thing that happened, and thank goodness it did. one anecdote, which summarizes many of the things that came up today. one, the power of unconventional thinking. number two, the power of unconventional relationships. we were talking about general bill burns, and how he started with the talk that came out with meetings between president bush and camp david at 1992. there were seven working groups. those were going great. there were seven working groups. i was at the national security council, and had two of them. the one i want to talk about is material control and accounting.

there was no protection in it yet. i do not know why, but there was not. we could not get anywhere. the whole time during the bush administration we tried and tried. kevlar blankets, material containers, rail containers. i could not get a new deal. i could not get anywhere. we were stuck. we went meeting after meeting, and there were bureaucratic impediments. we were dealing with foreign ministry at the time. finally, charlie curtis got into office. and people just kept saying, wait for charlie. wait for charlie. things will get better. and they did. charlie came over one morning to the white house where i was trying to get this thing off the done -- off the dime.

we had breakfast at the white house mess. charlie told me that sid hecker had been over. they had formed really good , personal connections. and there was a chemistry. scientist talking to scientist always differ. but maybe, just maybe if we plucked this out of the bureaucratic cul-de-sac it had gotten stuck in, and tried to do something very different in a lab-to-lab context, scientists talking to scientists, building some cooperation from the bottom up, that might sidestep some of the bureaucratic impediment and create constituencies in their system wanting to do scientific cooperation that scientists live and breathe for. that is what we did. with charlie support, we pushed it through the nsc. we got unstuck. the tons and tons of material that are now in much better protection, and the thousands of facilities whose security has

been upgraded, they owe it directly to the power of unconventional thinking and the power of personal relationships and the trust that develop that -- developed which goes back to bill perry's very first point about senator nunn's point. we need to be talking to our russian colleagues at again. -- colleagues again. the problems we face are just as grave as ever. [applause] david: thank you all for your patience. these have been to, along of panels. we are going to have -- been two , long panels. we are going to have a quick break before the next panel. having thought about this for many years and listen to you all, given the great uncertainty in the international sphere -- spirit today, i came away from this day thinking, it could've been a lot worse. thank god. thank you again. thank you. [applause]

>> on december 12, 1991, bush signedorge h w the soviet nuclear threats reduction act, also known as of the nunn-lugar act, beginning a formal process between the russians and the united states of cooperative storage, dismantling, and destruction of soviet era nuclear weapons. the, in commemoration of act's 25th anniversary, a government panel discusses the future of international cooperation and reduction of weapons of mass destruction. this hour-long program is hosted by the national security archive, the carnegie association, and the nuclear threat initiative. mr. blanton: ladies and gentlemen, we have put our final