British Prime Minister Tony Blair, shown last week, yesterday warned that Iran would be making a “very, very serious mistake” by underestimating international concerns over its nuclear program (Jim Macdiarmid/Getty Images). Evidence for Iran Nuclear Bomb Work Remains Hazy U.S. officials have acquired sophisticated drawings of a deep underground shaft in Iran that is suspected to be designed for an underground nuclear weapons test, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Feb. 7). “The diagram is consistent with a nuclear test-site schematic,” one senior U.S. source said, noting that the plan indicates a control team stationed 10 kilometers from the test site...Full Story

U.S. Hopes to Expand Nuclear Pit Production The Bush administration hopes have the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico producing 30 to 40 new plutonium cores annually by 2012, the Albuquerque Journal reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 6)...Full Story

Weapons Experts Replaced at U.S. State Department Career weapons experts at the U.S. State Department have been replaced by officials with less experience who are more in line with the administration’s views on diplomacy and treaties, Knight Ridder reported today (see GSN, Sept. 30, 2005)...Full Story

	Wednesday, February 8, 2006

Weapons Experts Replaced at U.S. State Department Career weapons experts at the U.S. State Department have been replaced by officials with less experience who are more in line with the administration’s views on diplomacy and treaties, Knight Ridder reported today (see GSN, Sept. 30, 2005). While a reorganization of the department’s international security and arms control bureaus was meant to prepare the department to deal with modern day threats, it has led to trouble and high turnover of WMD experts, according to documents and current and former officials. Four political appointees secretly conducted the reorganization. Only after personnel decisions had been made was a career agency expert permitted to join the panel. Frederick Fleitz, a CIA official who came to the State Department as a senior adviser to then-Undersecretary John Bolton, oversaw the group’s work. The changes were needed, according to Robert Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. “Reorganizations are never easy. They inevitably mean change,” Joseph said. “The reorganization ... was essential to better position us to further the president's strategy against WMD proliferation and (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s) emphasis on transformational diplomacy.” Other officials blasted the changes, saying they were made in violation of long-time management and personnel guidelines. They worry that Rice has been deprived of WMD expertise. For example, the agency’s leading expert on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has left the department. “We had a great group of people. They are highly knowledgeable experts,” said former Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf. “To the extent they now are leaving State Department employ, or U.S. government employ, it’s a real loss to [the] State Department. It’s a real loss to the government.” Global Security Institute Director Jonathan Granoff said the departure of so many weapons experts is especially troubling considering that the U.S.-Russian 1991 START I pact is due to expire in less than three years.  “Rather than nurture our experts, the administration seems to have brought in neophytes without a passion for progress in this field and, worse, undermined the international institutions that are most effective in stopping proliferation,” he said. Specialists within the agency have split into two camps. One advocates negotiating arms reduction, while the other believes the threat of force, sanctions and unilateral steps are the best way to discourage proliferation.  Rice, when she announced the changes at the agency, said more was needed to combat proliferation. “We must … go on the offensive against outlaw scientists, black-market arms dealers and rogue state proliferators,” she said. Officials, while acknowledging the need to reorganize WMD policy offices, said they worry that the agency’s current lack of expertise would hurt future administrations. Knight Ridder reported instances in which appointments made during the reorganization were highly politicized and hurt morale. For example, Thomas Lehrman, a White House appointee in charge of the new office of Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism, said in an e-mail message advertising a job opening that qualifications included loyalty to Bush administration policy. He recalled the message after being told that this was an improper qualification. Also, experts in the former Nonproliferation Bureau, a regular opponent of Bolton policy moves, were refused jobs when that office merged with the Arms Control Bureau. “Bolton had blood in his eyes for the Nonproliferation Bureau,” said a State Department official. Finally, an expert on the International Atomic Energy Agency was refused a position promised to him after returning from 2 1/2 years in Vienna. Instead, the position was offered to a more junior officer with views similar to Bolton’s, according to Knight Ridder. Five other more senior officials were passed over, according to a complaint document, for no reason “aside from intimations that they were not as ‘trusted’ politically by the political management level.” Mark Fitzpatrick, a nonproliferation expert who recently left the agency, said he is concerned about the “exodus” of specialists. “It seems about a dozen or so have left since the merger [of the Nonproliferation and Arms Control bureaus] came about, many out of frustration,” said Fitzpatrick, now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “I'm concerned that the ability of the merged bureaus to provide to Condoleezza Rice the same kind of high-quality advice they provided Colin Powell on the very dire proliferation issues facing the world will be diminished by the exodus” (Warren Strobel, Knight Ridder, Feb. 8). Back to top       Former Pentagon Investigator Says Possible WMD Bunkers in Iraq Never Checked After Invasion U.S. weapons inspectors failed to check several sealed underground bunkers in postwar southern Iraq that might have contained weapons of mass destruction, a former Pentagon special investigator said in a New York Sun report today (see GSN, Feb. 7). David Gaubatz, then with the U.S. Air Force Special Investigations Office, was assigned beginning in March 2003 to seek intelligence on unconventional weapons and to pass the information on to weapons inspectors.  Gaubatz from March to July 2003 visited three sites in and around the city of Nasiriyah and one near the port of Umm Qasr. In each case he was shown underground concrete bunkers in which entrance tunnels had been deliberately flooded. Sources told him the facilities contained biological and chemical weapons, and missiles whose ranges exceeded U.N. limits, according to the Sun.  Gaubatz filed reports with the group of U.S. weapons inspectors that would develop into the Iraq Survey Group. He said the inspectors conducted a cursory follow-up on only one of those leads. “I have no doubts the sites were never exploited by ISG. We agents begged and begged for weeks and months to get ISG to respond to the sites with the proper equipment,” Gaubatz told the Sun. He later wrote to more senior military intelligence officials but said the sites have yet to be fully evaluated. Inspectors told him that they lacked the necessary personnel and equipment to search the bunkers and that they were focusing their efforts on northern Iraq at the time. “The ISG team was not organized nor outfitted for this mission in my opinion and were only concerned to look in northern Iraq. They were not even on the ground during the first few weeks of the war, and this was the most critical time to go out and exploit sites,” he told the Sun. Some inspectors did make a brief trip to one of the sites, Gaubatz said, though without the equipment to open the bunker. “An adequate search would have required heavy equipment to uncover the concrete, and additional equipment to drain the water,” he said. Gaubatz said his superiors believed his sources to be “highly credible.” “The sources were deemed highly credible due to access and knowledge of the sites. Many of these sources … put their lives on the line to assist in identifying WMD. The sources would continuously ask us when the inspectors were going to come to the sites with heavy equipment to uncover the WMD,” he said. Gaubatz told the Sun that all the sites had similarities. “Everything was buried and underwater. They would drain canals and parts of the rivers. They would build tunnels underneath and they would let the water come back in,” he said. He said the tunnels in all four bunkers were wide enough for tractors and that homes near the sites were equipped with gas masks and other protective clothing (Eli Lake, New York Sun, Feb. 8). Back to top

Evidence for Iran Nuclear Bomb Work Remains Hazy U.S. officials have acquired sophisticated drawings of a deep underground shaft in Iran that is suspected to be designed for an underground nuclear weapons test, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Feb. 7). “The diagram is consistent with a nuclear test-site schematic,” one senior U.S. source said, noting that the plan indicates a control team stationed 10 kilometers from the test site. The drawings for the 400-meter tunnel with remote-controlled sensors to measure pressure and heat do not, however, explicitly indicate any relationship to Tehran’s nuclear program, according to U.S. and U.N. experts who have studied the documents. Other evidence is similarly vague, the Post reported. A laptop computer acquired in 2004 by U.S. intelligence from an Iranian citizen contains designs for a small-scale uranium conversion facility, as well as drawings on modifying Iranian missiles to accommodate a nuclear warhead. An imprisoned Pakistani arms dealer, meanwhile, has given uncorroborated testimony alleging that Tehran received several advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium. U.S. intelligence cannot prove the authenticity of the laptop documents (see GSN, Nov. 14, 2005). Regime opponents could have forged them to implicate the government, analysts said, or they could have been planted by the regime to deceive the West into believing that its program remains in its early stages. “There is always a chance this could be the biggest scam perpetrated on U.S. intelligence,” said one U.S. source. “But it’s such a large body of documents and such strong indications of nuclear weapons intent, and nothing seems so inconsistent.” U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte told Congress last week that “Iran, if it continues on its current path … will likely have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon within the next decade.” That assessment is more conservative than others in Washington, according to the Post. Some Bush administration officials have suggested that the CIA requires unrealistically high standards of proof due to previous intelligence errors. “Taking into account the assessments made by the intelligence community, and others, I just don’t have a lot of confidence in the assessments,” said a senior administration official (Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, Feb. 8). Iran has most of the necessary components for a nuclear bomb and lacks only some assembly knowledge, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday. Iran has the scientists, the electrical infrastructure, the raw materials and the machining equipment to build an atomic bomb, McCormack said, according to Agence France-Presse. “There are still certain techniques and pieces of know-how that we do not believe that they have — simply by the fact that they don’t have a nuclear weapon yet,” he said (Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, Feb. 7). British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday warned Iran not to ignore mounting international concern over its nuclear activities, AFP reported. “Iran would make a very, very serious mistake if it thinks the international community is going to allow it to develop nuclear weapons capability,” he said (Agence France-Presse II/Khaleej Times, Feb. 7). Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the recent International Atomic Energy Agency decision to report Iran’s nuclear activities to the Security Council allows for further diplomacy, AFP reported yesterday. “The dossier is not ‘referred.’ The notion here is one of reporting, of joint work with the Security Council on the Iranian issue,” Putin said in an interview posted on the Kremlin’s Web site. “In my view, this encourages a further search for ways to resolve this problem,” he said (Agence France-Presse III/IranMania.com, Feb. 7). Back to top       U.S. Hopes to Expand Nuclear Pit Production The Bush administration hopes have the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico producing 30 to 40 new plutonium cores annually by 2012, the Albuquerque Journal reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 6). The expansion in pit production is part of a plan to produce new weapons for the first time since the Cold War ended, according to the Journal. The program currently is a research effort, according to top officials, to find ways to build safer and more reliable weapons. However, the fiscal 2007 budget submitted by the White House to Congress this week for the first time includes money to fund programs to move weapons production forward. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the “Reliable Replacement Warhead” project was a priority. Funding for Los Alamos and the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico is down 2 percent in the budget. Senator Pete Domenici (R-N.M) said he does not expect this to lead to layoffs. The budget, coupled with statements from officials, indicates production of new weapons could begin by 2012. The plan, which still needs congressional approval, calls for the production of the pits that form the core of nuclear weapons. Los Alamos is set to produce 10 pits annually by 2008 to replace existing cores. The new spending plan boosts that number to between 30 and 40 by 2012. National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks recently said the production of new pits was “transformational.” An antiweapons advocate called the change in plans “radical.” “The emphasis is shifting from maintaining existing weapons to replacing all of them,” said Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group. Brooks cautioned that the plan is still in its early stages. “Remember, this is research, so we don't know whether we can do all the things we hoped we can do.” He added, however, that the plan “has a great deal of possibility for improving the long-term safety, security and reliability of the stockpile” (Fleck/Coleman, Albuquerque Journal, Feb. 7). Back to top       Russia Offers Uranium Enrichment to All Countries Russia has put forth an offer to enrich uranium on behalf of any country seeking a nuclear energy program, the Canadian Press reported today (see GSN, Feb. 6). President Vladimir Putin announced last week that Moscow would extend to all countries an offer like the one granted to Iran, under which uranium enrichment and radioactive waste disposal would be undertaken by Russia. That would help ensure that client nations would not enrich the material for weapons purposes. “We propose setting up a network of nuclear cycle centers for enriching uranium, and ensuring equal access for all who desire to share in the work of developing nuclear technology,” Putin said. “We’re talking about access without discrimination. … Russia is an obvious partner for resolving tasks of this kind, given the country’s advanced nuclear power engineering, its scientific base, skilled personnel and developed nuclear infrastructure,” he said. U.S. President George W. Bush has endorsed the plan, CP reported (Fred Weir, Canadian Press/Yahoo!News, Feb. 8). Back to top       South Korean Official Raps North on Financial Crimes South Korean Ambassador to the United States Lee Tae-sik said yesterday that North Korea should not use U.S. financial regulatory actions as an excuse to stall nuclear talks, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Feb. 7). “Pyongyang should make their hands clean on this matter by unequivocally turning away from such illicit behavior,” he said during a speech in Washington. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. envoy to the stalled six-nation nuclear negotiations, yesterday also called upon North Korea to return to the talks (Foster Klug, Associated Press, Feb. 8). Meanwhile, Japan and North Korea today ended five days of bilateral talks without an agreement on setting up diplomatic relations, AP reported. The two sides “discovered that there’s a big difference of opinion,” according to Koichi Haraguchi, who led the Japanese delegation in Beijing. The envoys discussed Pyongyang’s Cold War-era abductions of Japanese citizens, its nuclear and missile programs, and its demand that Tokyo pay reparations for Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, AP reported. Song Il Ho, Pyongyang’s top envoy to the talks, reiterated North Korea’s position that it would return to nuclear talks only if the United States ends its crackdown on the country’s alleged financial crimes. “We are ready to return to talks under one condition, and that is that the United States lift its sanctions,” Song said. “The United States won’t hear this from us. But if Japan tells the United States, if a friend tells a friend, they might listen” (Audra Ang, Associated Press/phillyBurbs.com, Feb. 8). Back to top       India’s Atomic Energy Chief Warns that U.S. Nuke Deal Could Compromise Indian Interests Indian Atomic Energy Commission Chief Anil Kakodkar warned yesterday that the planned Indo-U.S. nuclear cooperation deal could undermine his country’s strategic interests, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Feb. 6). “We cannot allow India's strategic interest to be determined by others,” he said, weeks before President George W. Bush is expected to visit India. The deal requires India to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities. Apparent U.S. efforts to have India classify its fast-breeder reactor program as civilian, blocking its use in military programs, faces opposition from Indian nuclear scientists. “Both from the point of view of maintaining long-term energy security and for maintaining a credible deterrent, the fast-breeder program just cannot be put on the civilian list. This would amount to getting shackled and India certainly cannot compromise,” Kakodkar said (Nirmala George, Associated Press/The Hindu, Feb. 8). Back to top       Japan to Join U.S. Global Nuclear Energy Partnership Japan plans to work with the U.S. Global Nuclear Energy Partnership aimed at expanding the use of civilian nuclear energy around the world, Kyodo News reported (see GSN, Feb. 7). Details of the partnership are expected to be worked out soon, sources close to the matter said. Officials in Tokyo said Japan could contribute to the project by working on technologies to reprocess fuel and for fast-breeder reactors, such as the prototype Monju reactor. The Japan Atomic Energy Agency said that researchers are working to develop wet and dry nuclear fuel reprocessing methods. During wet reprocessing, plutonium is mixed with neptunium and other radioactive elements to make it harder to extract plutonium that could be used in nuclear weapons. U.S. officials have also approached China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom about the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (Kyodo News, Feb. 8). Back to top       Deadly Blast Reported at Khan Nuke Lab in Pakistan An explosion yesterday at the Khan Research Laboratory in Pakistan killed a technician, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, Feb. 8, 2005). Only conventional explosives were involved in the incident at the nuclear research facility founded by disgraced scientist and atomic black market operator Abdul Qadeer Khan, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told AFP today. “The technician was handling normal, conventional material,” Sultan said. “It was an accident and the cause of the explosion is being looked into” (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 8). Back to top

Critics Question Boston Evacuation Plan Critics say an emergency evacuation plan in Boston could actually lead to the spread of a disease in case of troubles at a biological agent research facility planned for the city, the Boston Herald reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 3). The laboratory’s supporters have praised the plan. However, critics warn that  evacuation could lead people infected by an agent that escapes the facility to spread the disease outside of the neighborhood that houses the facility. “Why don’t we have a quarantine plan? Of course, it will be scary to be talking about that,” said Boston City Councilman Felix Arroyo. “I find it to be incredible.” Public health officials in Boston, who agree that evacuation is the wrong approach, admit they have no plan to combat a specific outbreak or to quarantine the area. “I can recall people talking about the lab and talking about evacuation in the unlikely event that something would happen at the lab. That would not be the first thing you would look at,” said Boston Public Health Commission spokesman Tom Lyons. Other city health officials contend a quarantine plan is not needed. They argue that the best way to treat a disaster is through quick containment and treatment within the facility. “I can’t imagine a situation where we would want to quarantine people around a lab,” said Boston public health official Anita Barry (Scott Van Voorhis, Boston Herald, Feb. 7). Back to top

Taiwan Debates U.S. Patriot Missile Purchase The Taiwanese Defense Ministry said yesterday that the country must purchase more Patriot antimissile systems from the United States to counter the threat from China, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, June 24, 2005). Opposition parties in Taiwan have blocked a $10.6 billion arms purchase from the United States, according to AFP. Beijing has at least 800 ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan, a number that is expected to continue increasing by 100 annually amidst the ongoing territorial dispute, according to the Defense Ministry. Based on drills conducted in 2005, Taiwan’s unfinished defenses would only be expected to stop two-thirds of incoming missiles, officials said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 7).     Back to top

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