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 o

general maslin has had surgery and could not be here. but this general has played a huge and constructive role in u.s. and russian relations and the management of the nuclear arsenal. he headed the russian strategic [indiscernible] also provided strong leadership [indiscernible] he will be accepting the award on behalf of general maslin. general maslin served in the soviet and russian ministries of defense for over 40 years. he was commander of the 12 main directorate russian general 1992-97 acting as the authority responsible for all aspects of munitions security. in 1993 when boris yeltsin ordered military forces into the parliamentary building, russia and former soviet republics were in a volatile state of upheaval. ever vigilant, the general conducted aggressive testing of the nuclear emergency response program throughout russia, ensuring any terrorist aggression would be countered by exhaustive safeguards and ironclad preparation. forabsolute accountability the testing, transport, storage, protection, dismantlement, and repatriation

i would mostly like to talk about the projects i work on with general muslims. -- general maslin. 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 been nuclear warheads. launched right into the 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. only start to dismantle and process, we take the warheads off and start them on their journey. it was everything having to do and warheads that general the 12 main director was 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. terriblyles were not difficult once we got the fuel separated from them. we could easily destroy those in a manner that the treaty could recognize. was a lot more complicated. the fuel was difficult for us to deal wi

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 is -- one is procedure and 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