good morning welcome to the hearing this morning and the statement that i am about to read would be entered for the record chairman skelton it's a little under the weather he couldn't be here but i want to welcome our witnesses and all are all committee members and you can meet a member of this great committee good morning i'd like to start by welcoming my colleague rep sent of john mchugh from new york to his first hearing us ranking member of this committee today and for your hard work on the commission dealing with the prevention of weapons of mass destruction proliferation and terrorism this committee was instrumental in the creation of the commission in the nine eleven bill and the commission's recent report could not be more timely this committee authorizes the bulk of the u s nonproliferation programs and our subcommittee on terrorism and unconventional threats chaired by threat reduction programs and activities have been understood resourced and remain to narrow in scope engagement with other countries and international regimes on w m d dress have been insufficient and the inner agency processes like the leadership coordination flexibility and innovation necessary to effectively address this threat this must change this committee has already taken a number of important steps on the united states you no risk in order to prioritize our efforts i look forward to the commission's recommendation in this regard and now let me use the my good friend the ranking member of this committee mr john mchugh thank you very much my good friend solomon ortiz and although the words he read were from the church the full committee i know he wishes me his personal best as well do you not record or show he does i need that later in the year but  chairman i have a very extensive statement and simply because this is a very very important issue and i would ask unanimous consent that that formal written statement be entered in its entirety the record and let me just try to summarize a bit first of all in spite of his absence here today obviously we wish chairman skelton quicken speedy recovery from what i understand is hopefully a relatively minor but very bothersome affliction but nevertheless we all owe him a great deal of gratitude for calling this hearing and providing what i think is an important forum for a new credibly important issue and in that regard i want to join with my good friend mr or ts and wishing our words of thanks and welcome to our panelists here today two of whom are what we still finally look at as congressional colleagues senator graham of course my good friend and former house member jim talent dr allison thank you as well for being here and fo placing your considerable talents and your intellect against what is one of the most pressing issues this nation faces as my good friend from texas miss ortiz noted this is a timely hearing the recent u s sanctions placed on individuals and private companies from europe and asia who are involved in the a q khan nucular proliferation network should remind us all of the willful tent of as i said this is not new for the last seven day years we've known the harsh reality that al qaeda seeks weapons of mass destruction to inflict the maximum amount of human suffering geopolitical disorder and economic damage we have remained on kneeling in our efforts to prevent al qaeda from planning and executing a successful attack in the united states however this statement is not made without caution despite our best efforts i concur with the commission that as they put it our margin of safety is shrinking not growing this week we mark the new administration as such we all have a new opportunity to work in a bipartisan fashion to develop a comprehensive and i hope concrete strategy to ensure we have a diverse set of tools to counter threats this strategy nonproliferation efforts but also look more broadly at all other efforts technology investments missile defenses emergency response capabilities and interagency international coordination efforts that could prevent and limit the damage caused by dead b m d proliferation and terrorism this commission's reports serve as a foundation for this approach there are many issues that lie before  russia's recent actions miscalculations that could trigger nucular confrontation between pakistan and india iran north korea the kinds of things that face us each and every day and must be confronted in new material ways for concluding i want to match another congressional commission the united states strategic commission established by this committee they are examining our strategic postes posture their recent interim report was issued in december and highlighted the need to maintain a secure reliable deterrence force for this foreseeable future but also design nuclear program that contributes to decreasing the global dangers of political ration i see a natural complement to these two bodies our distinguished panel here today and that of the u s strategic commission work could be instrumental in bringing together a bifurcated approach as it has been in the past for a better path to the future and gentlemen and dr allison i'd be interested in your thoughts on this on this possible eventuality again i commend you and your fellow commissioners and staff for your work to address these complex issues and mr chairman with that ideal  thank you sir we are very honored to have three distinguished witnesses before this committee today and they have done a great job and i hope we can learn a lot from you today and i guess this morning we'll start with you senator graham thank you so much for the work that you have done you and your members of your committee and members of your staff so we will be begin with your staff my statement whenever you're ready sir period of service in the senate but have now come to appreciate his intelligence and dedication to the security of this nation and i know that much of his wisdom came from his service on this committee and then graham allison who is a true national treasure i doubt that there are more people than the fingers on one hand who know as much about this subject as mr chairman and members you committed this you created this commission and we appreciate the opportunity that you have given us to serve our charge was to assess our current policies as they relate to the political ration of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism and then to make recommendations as to how we thought we could further secure  our nation you gave us six months to accomplish this significant task i'm pleased to report that our bipartisan commission appointed by the leadership of the congress was unanimous in the recommendations that we will be submitting to you today our full report is available in book form and i notice that you have those at your desk and i hope that you will have an opportunity to read further of our analysis and our recommendations of our report was conducted through a staff of more than two dozen professionals from the issues we conducted more than two hundred fifty interviews with the other officials and non governmental experts we held eight major commission hearings and one public  hearings we visited the sandia national laboratories in albuquerque and also met with officials in the united kingdom vienna at the international atomic energy agency and in russia we had planned to visit pakistan a country to which we give considerable emphasis and this report we were at the airport in kuwait waiting a flight to islamabad when we were informed that the hotel which we were going to spend the night to marry on i had just been destroyed by a suicide bomber that brought the significance of what we were doing into sharp very personal focus unlike some of the reports that we have heard in the recent past such as the nine eleven commission the iraq study commission there has been thanks to god no weapon of mass destruction used against u s interest or in the world by a terrorist to date therefore there is no trail of evidence of how that particular event evolved no attain jubal ability to th analyze and assess causation we are talking about event that has not yet occurred and which it is we think within our capability within your responsibility to take steps to mitigate the prospects that it will occur i report attempted to be as direct and as honest as possible and as i said these were the unanimous conclusions of our commission let me state three of our most significant conclusions one our margin of safety is shrinking not growing although the united states has done many things to try to increase our security we are not operating alone we are operating on a field against adversaries who in our judgment in conjunction with changes in technology have been moving at a pace faster than our efforts to control them second the commission believes that on the current trajectory it is more likely than not more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of the year two thousand and thirteen that is not only our assessment but the assessment of the united states intelligence community and third we are as we have concluded it is more likely that that attack will be with a biological weapon than with a nuclear weapon given the wider available b of biological materials and know how as we learn the world is at risk it is at risk because of a new era of clif ration of weapons of mass destruction the fast pace of development in the biological field nuclear proliferation a coming nucular energy renaissance and a nascent arms race nucular arms race in asia all conspire to increase the risk to the united states and the world while the mandate of the commission was to examine the full sweep of the challenges by the  nexus of terrorist activity and political ration to all forms of weapons of mass destruction chemical biological radiological and nuclear we opted to center the commission's findings on those two that we thought had the greatest likelihood of mass deaths biological and nuclear our report does not sugarcoat this threat but we are not helpless we believe that our recommendations if properly adopted will increase the margin of safety for america and the world it is my pleasure to introduce my colleague senator and congressman jim talent who will discuss those recommendations which will increase our margin of safety fake you mr chairman i think i'm sorry thank serve on this commission as the vice chairman that certainly could be no more difficult than getting the kind of consensus you often get here on the committee and then we often got when i served on it and then i found out you have nine very strong minded people who are experts in this field and trying to get them all they do the same thing is very to agree to one thing is difficult and senator graham did a great job in getting us there i know when i was in your position i want to get to the question time as quickly as possible i'm going to be brief for that reason and also because  going to talk about much of the part of our report that's in your jurisdiction i have a couple of comments about the threat and then about the bio recommendations and about pakistan and then i will i will y dr allison first of all we've had a lot of questions about why two thousand and thirteen well it's our best belief based on the interviews the review of the material travel around the world that  this is a near term threat not an intermediate term or long term threat and that's one of the things we want to emphasize we all know that this town tends to constantly defer the important in the name of doing the urgent and the point of our report is this is both important and urgent this is not something that may happen ten fifteen twenty twenty five years from now this is a near term threat and with everything else that you have to do and we know what you have to do we strongly we know that the terrorists want to get these weapons we know that they have tried to get these weapons and we know that they are sophisticated enough organizationally to develop the capabilities they don't have to be comes some new order of organization in order to get weapons of mass destruction particularly bio which is one of the reasons we're so concerned about that and we also know that their view of the world and strategically they view the world in many many respects better than we do is driving them in this direction they understand that for their purposes the world is really a nexus or a matrix of systems you know financial communications transportation on which we depend more than they do and the links of which are very vulnerable to attack and they also know that having no national base the traditional kinds of deterrents don't work against them they're also very sophisticated in the concept of asymmetric weapons which you all deal with all the time and it's very logical for them to want to step up the asymmetric weaponry at their disposal and their capabilities in that regard and the next logical step for them is to get weapons of mass destructions now are the report's recommendations organized in four areas bio nuclear  changing government culture in certain respects and then citizen first participation i was going to talk briefly about bio and pakistan we had some single country recommendations in pakistan was was the most significant of those in the bio area a big concern we have about bio is that it's going to be easier for them to develop the capability not only to attack with bio but then to repeat the attack then get the nuclear capability but as you know because of the bottleneck of nuclear materials it's hard for them to get enough to put together more than one bomb but once you isolate a pathogen and you're able to develop it and weaponize it it's relatively easy to develop more than one weapon and that gives them the capability to potentially hit the same city two or three times in a row as my concerns they might be able to kill an american city doing that because they just terrify people so they don't live there anymore is another reason we think they may be going in the direction of  now in terms of there's a number of things we need to do with bio the government our government regulates the high containment laboratories through three different agencies and a number of different regulatory schemes and we recommend unifying it with one agency and having one single set of regulations that everybody can understand and working with the life science community to create a greater culture of accountability and security within that community as already exists in the nuclear science community we note in our report that the nuclear age began with a nuclear explosion everybody in nuclear science got it you know this is a technology that if it's abused can be very destructive everybody in life science on the other hand is in it you know for the right purposes there they're all working very hard to develop new cures to make life better and they're just not as conscious of the danger that technology will be abused we believe that the very act of this congress passing a kind of regulatory reform that you did in the intel area for example although be much smaller is going to raise awareness within that community and that's going to be very helpful internationally and this is the piece that you all have director stiction over we need to expand our and apply it more to bio you've taken some good steps in that direction we've got to secure these materials and the scientists around the world better than we're doing again the government's been making progress you all been making progress the state department states and making progress but more needs to be done pakistan as we note it is an epicenter of everything that instability that may be penetrated by the terrorists and it's also involved in a tremendous competition with with india which raises the prospect of a nation state perhaps using nuclear weapons so that has to be a priority of american foreign policy and defense policy  in terms of your jurisdiction the military is doing a tremendous job working on eliminating safe havens and going after the terrorists in various areas in pakistan that needs to continue and also  know that the deal is appropriately talking in terms of using smart power or soft power to compliment the hard power already it's at its disposal and that is a very good thing we talk a lot about in the report about the need for the civilian agencies of national power the state department and the other agencies that possess various capabilities to go through the kind of examination and culture change that you all help shepherd the military through beginning in the late one nine hundred forty s and then through goldwater nic and one of the things we want to say to you all is you need to look and work with your counterparts in foreign affairs about whether d o d ought to develop this capability or whether d o d ought to help the department state and civilian agencies develop capability the danger is that because they need the capability to complement the traditional military power that they exercise and if the civilian agencies are slow in developing it that the department may just develop it because they need it so by default it will be resident in the department and maybe that's the right policy but maybe it isn't in the policy ought not to be made by default but we think would be great if the rest of the government looked at what's happened with the military look at what is happening with intel and pursue the same kind of culture change and we think pakistan is a great test case a great place to begin that because without the tools of smarter soft power we're not going to succeed in pakistan we believe that very strong  very much in this great honor to have an opportunity to appear before the committee again and it was a great honor to be chosen to serve on this commission with a great chairman and vice chairman let me try to i  submitted some brief comments for the record but let me try to summarize my points very briefly under three headings first some good news and secondly some bad news and then thirdly an inconvenient  question so the good news january first to put this in perspective january first says the was the seventeenth anniversary of the collapse of the soviet union january first seventeen years ago the soviet union disappeared emerged russia and fourteen newly independent states with about fifteen thousand nuclear weapons left outside of russia and about fifteen thousand weapons inside russia under conditions of chaos corruption confusion so the question how many of those thirty thousand nuclear weapons have been found loose somewhere in international markets in the seventeen years since then and the unbelievable answer is zero zero if you want to see how unbelievable it is go back and read the transcript of meet the press in december nine hundred ninety one when the question was asked of the been secretary of defense whose name was dick cheney what's to happen to the nuclear weapons in the soviet union if the soviet union unravels and he said quote if they have about thirty thousand nuclear weapons and they're ninety nine percent effective in controlling them which is more than you could expect that would leave three hundred weapons loose and he said with the confusion and chaos of the time it's hard to imagine fed ex would do better than that so how is that happened i would say a whole lot of factors but among those factors a crucial element has been the strong support of this committee and the congress for what became known lugar and the cooperative threat reduction program success always has a thousand fathers and mothers and if to morrow we found a dozen weapons somewhere in the world nobody that's worked on the program that were loose nobody who's worked on the program would be shocked but i think we markedly as a combination of great work by the russians including the twelfth the most lots of a mansion a day of actions by americans or the rice then funded by this committee and a big chunk of grace and good fortune in any case something that was almost unbelievable that would have changed our world if it had happened didn't happen so i would say the good news is this is not something about we should about which we should be fatalistic this is something about which we've actually focused on it before we've done some things those things of that effect such point once the bad news as senator graham has already said a major finding bottom line of this report is that the likelihood of a successful double indeed terrorist attack over the period ahead is growing not shrinking that's seems unfair and the senator talent is as have certainly been doing more things you've funded more programs more people have been more active so how can it be that the problem is getting worse and we say there are two factors that i mentioned in my testimony first an adverse trend line in science and technology is really limitless sleep at vance seeing and enabling more and more people with the capacity to kill massively in a form that only states could have done previously so that's the trend line that's just there externally and secondly ineffective policies ineffective policies that leave north korea with ten bombs worth of plutonium rather than two at the beginning of this century iran with five thousand centrifuges rather than zero at the beginning of this century pakistan having tripled its arsenal as the state became more war at risk so the bad news is the likelihood we believe and this was nine  quite diverse republicans and democrats on the commission unanimously agreed that the likelihood of an attack has been growing not shrinking so the inconvenient question finally that i've been troubled about lately so this is not the commission report but my own reflection as i've been thinking about this after as all of us have have watched the collapse of the financial system which this time last year people were assuring us was stable and successful i think most of us have taken have pause from time to time to say do we really understand the systemic risk in global systems on which we dependent i certainly have been thinking about that and if i ask myself is the global nuclear order more stable or less stable than the global financial order was this time a year ago or two years ago it looks to be like in the same zone and therefore to be extremely troublesome i'll stop with that thank you so much this is scary to put it one way and i know that the commission's report highlighted the need for increase at the tension on regional type of strategy does the commission recommend range the for pakistan for you ron for korea with these big news new strategies that maybe have not been tried before and maybe you can elaborate a little bit on that if you will  chairman thank you one of the things that the commission attempted to do was to not micromanage how these policies should be carried out they're going to be very able people now in positions of responsibility in the congress and in the executive branch and it is your challenge to view the facts as they are in time and make tactical judgments so our recommendations are what we hope were at the strategic level primarily focusing on what goals we wish to accomplish in the case of north korea and iran our statement is that the goal of the united states policy should be the elimination of their nuclear program a ability to become weaponized and then we made a series of of general suggestions of how to get to that objective that we should be erred to engage directly with north korea and iran that in that engagement we should have both incentives and disincentives to offer we should not take off the table at any point the use of force in the event that diplomacy fails we think it is very important that neither of those states in the case of north korea are able to continue to expand their weapons program which is dr allison said eight years ago had two bombs and today has the capability of ten and in the case of aranda had zero nuclear capability eight years ago and today is on the verge of enough material to make its first bomb if either of those two countries were to go nucular  one they would in and of themselves be threatening north korea would be is seen as a see significant threat just to our allies south korea and  japan it also would likely trigger a regional escalation of nuclear capabilities in the middle east if iran goes nuclear it is almost inevitable that egypt turkey saudi arabia will seriously consider and likely attempt to acquire nuclear capability so that the world will become a much more destabilized and dangerous place if that occurs in the case of pakistan and let me say the obvious none of these recommendations are easy if they were easy they would have already been accomplished but in the case of pakistan it is the intersection of every bad thing that you would want in terms of the likelihood of a weapon of mass destruction falling into the hands of a terrorist we think that we have have got to fundamentally change our approach to pakistan to one of beginning to focus on building the institutions that will stabilize the country and begin to drain off some of the in the t that is currently being events towards the united states and western   part a big part of pakistan's danger is its sixty year for war relationship with india india and pakistan as well as  china are all rapidly increasing their nuclear arsenals soon they could well be the third fourth and fifth largest nuclear states in the world so to solve pakistan you've got to look regionally i personally think that the pending appointment if it is not already occurred of richard holbrooke to be the invoice to that region of the world is a very positive development and that he will take that broad perspective of what we need to do to begin to stabilize pakistan and initiate policy these that will reduce its current center role as a site for weapons of mass destruction implicit ration i'll just conclude with the un happy statement that virtually every person intelligence military political who has studied this issue has come to the conclusion that the most likely place that the next terrorist attack will be launched will be from the bottom that those uncontrolled territories between pakistan and afghanistan again underscoring the central of the pakistan terms of our efforts to avoid this global catastrophe mr chairman as senator graham said we don't want to get really into the tactics on the ground in foreign policy because presidents have to have discretion to respond to  and also there were some areas where frankly we just really couldn't get a consensus in terms of tactics that iran and north korea were that but we anticipate direct engagement by the new administration and said look if you do that your goal should be elimination of the entire  nuclear weapon program in the entirety you should negotiate from a position of strength and be prepared to use direct action and i'm a believer in dr allison may want to talk about this he talks a lot about the importance of having credible significant carrots and credible significant st because to me it's just common sense if you want somebody to do something you've had to give them good things if they do it and make them understand bad things will happen if they don't and that's probably the best chance we have to consistently follow that policy over time with regard to pakistan we recommend continuing to eliminate the safe havens which we are doing expanding arse to basically what are basically c t r efforts to secure the nuclear and vial materials which we've done some of the need to do a lot more and that we gauge actively tools to defeat the extremist ideology and here again we referring to the tools of soft power and i think in these terms i want presidents to have options so when you're the new president's considering what to do about pakistan it would be great if he had the option of saying oh let's use our resident capability of effectively communicating messages about our intentions  to the people of pakistan so as to cut off terrorist recruiting there and i'm really glad we have that capability resident in the x agency and i think that the department can be either develop that capability or be a huge help and as it can this committee in assisting the department of state in developing that capability also you know building local economic and grassroots institutions which requires the same kind of capabilities which you'd like to have something  allison just briefly one of the strong lines in the report i think probably written by chairman graham is that if you map of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism all roads intersect in pakistan i would say that's a big take away secondly to agree with senator talent we in part because we couldn't agree among ourselves and in part because we didn't want to be micromanaging retreated to what's the normal commission style and sometimes even congressional style which is stating ambitious objectives and then turning it over to somebody else to figure out how to do it and i think the hard and unpleasant fact is that the hand that the new administration will inherit with respect to north korea is a country that has ten bombs with the plutonium and this conducted the test so it's perfectly appropriate to say north korea should eliminate these and that should be our objective but it is where it is so facts on the ground have advents in the case of iran our objective should be that iran would eliminate all of its enrichment activity but unfortunately iran has crossed already ten red lines that we said they couldn't cross troubling thing for me is that it's essentially tripled its arsenal of nuclear weapons over this period as the state has become increasingly fragile and shaky and yes of course they should be they should have fewer nuclear weapons and they should be stable over the holbrooke i would say you know good luck we should we should notice that just the history moves on and once it's moved on our opportunity to intervene often is among shrunken options that are less attractive than what we would have wished or hoped or maybe even would have been available if we had acted earlier you know and i just have one more it short question for you i think that in my personal opinion we focus in two wars that we're fighting now and there was a tendency by some not doing those countries were who or identified as being terrorists or groups that were terrorist do you think that we have done enough diplomatically to we do more to do we engage those countries to see if we can win them over what you idea and then i'll yield to my good friend from new york one of our most fundamental recommendations and it certainly falls into the category dr allison just described of where we had defied a big problem in a goal recognizing the enormous difficulty of achieving my assessment we have been fighting the war on terror by fighting the symptoms of terror the suicide bomber the people who blew up the buildings on nine eleven what we've got to start doing is dealing with the root causes of terror why are so many tens of millions of people prepared apparently to send their sons and daughters to commit suicide on behalf of an extremist cause what is within our capability of trying to reduce that in mctee so that our children and grandchildren don't live in a world of this enormous hatred i think that that is an issue that is worthy of the best minds in the united states congress to work with the administration to try to determine what is a strategy now i personally think it while it's extremely difficult it's not an impossible dream on a smaller scale but something that mr chairman i imagine you have experienced is as have i given  where we come from sixty years ago our relations in latin america were truly awful provides president states tried to make a twelve stop visit to latin america in the fifty's and was so abused in the first two stops that he turned the plane around and came back to washington now while our relationships in the hemisphere are not perfect they are dramatically better than they were and that didn't just happen by accident we and our neighbors did some things that improve the relations one of the things for instance was thousands of young people from latin america decided rather than staying home or going to europe they would come to the united states to get their education and so now the president of columbia happens to be a graduate of the kennedy school so he knows america not by by a two dimensional cardboard cutout image but by the flesh and blood of the people that he has actually dealt with i cite that is as a as an example of a major challenge that we i think can take pride at the progress that we've made and i hope that the people who are sitting in your chairs two generations from now will be able to say that we have made some significant progress in improving our relations in the part of the world from which many of our most significant threats are now and again gentlemen thank you so much for being here such an extraordinarily important topic dr allison i heard your comments about the nuclear arsenal in pakistan  i'm curious what is your assessment of the command to control the security of that arsenal right now i would suggest that the committee would appropriately look at the national intelligence estimate and you want to ask that in a closed setting to folks from the intelligence community but i think from the public record what has been said and what i believe and what we say in the report is that s assistance as well as pakistan's own efforts leave the nuclear arsenal itself in better shape than it was say number of years ago especially before the a q khan episodes with more question marks about the nuclear weapons usable material in the laboratories at some facilities like the facility that was the director of that's for the technical systems and for the personal systems in which the army plays the crucial role but the the counterpart to that which i think just you can get to by logic is if the state itself becomes shaky or even unstable or perhaps even comes apart those systems don't magically control stuff the systems mostly are incorporated in people and i've i've told several times at the commission i've been extremely interested in this question for a long time and have talked to move sheriff about it three or four times on separate occasions and we had him as a visitor at harvard for a couple of days and he said don't worry everything is under a hundred hundred percent control not conceivable that sumption something good be lost and then one of these occasions he had just two weeks before come within a second and a half of being assassinated and the prevention of the assassination was only possible by some technical assistance from the us government so i said to him how likely is it that your new we a weapons are more secure than the president of the country let's let's take that a step further because that i agree with you while you can assess the command and control those weapons stockpiles now and assess them to be relatively secure they really are dependent upon the security and stability of the government what we hear from pakistan is their actions in the fata have the potential of undermining the stability of the central government and i as we've seen this aggressive and then less aggressive posture in part that's been driven by domestic politics as policies are here to what extent can we count on the pakistani government to rid the fog of those threats that cause this commission to say all roads lead to pakistan or all roads of potential  without disrupting that balance that would cause the fall of that government and then down the chain call into question the security of the stockpile i would say for my nickel you're absolutely on the and when one looks at the complexity of pakistan and the fragility of the political system i mean as as one of my friends who knows pakistan very well says there's only one load bearing institution in pakistan and that's the army so the political system is extremely fragile the differences among people are quite large the populations views about the war on terror and even the activities in the fog is that this is doing americans a favor that's not the universal view but that's the majority view so trying to balance on the one believe without on the other hand contributing to the instability in pakistan is that has been the dilemma in the policy for some period of time now as chairman graham said and the commission debated this at some considerable length for quite a long time again now this is just from what the newspapers report for quite a long time the u s did not attack al qaeda in ungoverned pakistan and only last summer did the predator program become active again if we read the newspapers and since then they have been quite a lot of attacks including a number of al qaeda operatives killed including one of my favorite fellow  name hot tub who was the head of their nuclear and bio program so is this stressful for for pakistani politics and the society in which you know one countries operating militarily and inside another country without it approval yes indeed it is extremely on the other hand if the alternative is to allow the reconstitution of headquarters and training camps for al qaeda excuse me that's what happened in afghanistan before nine eleven and for which we say shame on us so i i think that balance is an extremely difficult and i think that the new the new president of pakistan you know sort of is struggling with that every day as is the american ambassador as is whoever's going to try to formulate american policy in the the next phase but if those attacks if those attacks are happening by s policy you would agree we have to be extraordinarily careful not to cause the downfall of this relatively stable government least for the moment absolutely and and it's i think again american press reports it and it has the reverberations in pakistani politics that you that you see just one last question for any of the panelist i remember henry kissinger was somewhat excruciating during his career was said that the potential of the force of the united states military has to be kept on the table in defending the oil fields which were critical to our economy and our way of life and without getting back into that debate as i read the commission's report the ultimate potential of military force must be reserved against iran and north korea  unfortunately i couldn't agree more and i say unfortunately because that's obviously the place we'd prefer not to go however i'd be i'd be interested in your gentlemen's assessment of how other important nations in that equation particularly russia at all might view that kind of recommendation if i could use your question to talk about that and the issue of russia generally between russian a united states we control over ninety five percent of the nuclear material on earth so a positive relationship on this issue of security of nuclear material and hopefully a strengthened relationship on security of biological material is critical we visited russia in september of last year i was concerned that our visit would be terminated because we couldn't get visas to go into russia this was shortly after the invasion of georgia tensions were high between our two countries we did get the says then i was concerned that we would meet a very hostile group of russians quite to the contrary  the recurring theme was yes we have some serious issues between us georgia nato expansion missile defen but that is going to be the pattern when two large countries are living in the same global space but we understand that there is one thing that we have in common and that is a responsibility to our people and to the world to protect all this nuclear material that comes under our control and they reiterated we are as committed to this  we were prior to this current set of disagreements and that statement was confirmed by our embassy and by our united states department of energy scientific personnel who are in russia whose purpose it is to oversee what the russians are doing relative to nuclear security in our report we made a recommendation that we needed to communicate to the rest of the world that this relationship on nuclear security had not been breached and we made several suggestions of how we might do that one of the suggestions which from a personal experience that i had had in pakistan as chairman of the senate intelligence committee when we met with representatives of the pakistani joint command and i asked the question what controls do you and the indians have in place to avoid an accidental nucular launch the answer was virtually none there was no and is no equivalent of the red phone that was symbolic of our efforts during the cold war with the soviet union so one of our recommendations is that russia and the united states together could serve a very valuable function for the for the world to work with pakistan and india and try to encourage them to adopt those kinds of fail safe and mistake containment policies that worked so well for us for the better part of the forty years so i think russia is a is a very critical part of this equation and we need to continue to work to see that whatever disputes we may have that they don't leak out and in fact our common as a result of the bratislava agreement which was between president bush and president putin in february of zero five so just the beginning of president bush's second term they developed a recipe in which the two presidents took personal responsibility for their nuclear terrorism threat at the top of the agenda they agreed on a work plan for securing to win to a defined level called comprehensive upgrades all  well seventy five percent of the new russian nuclear weapons and material which were all the ones they would let us work on everything except for the jewel boxes that they worked on mostly themselves people were i responsibility for this issue including sam bodman for the u s and his russian counterpart and they had to report to the two presidents every six months and how they were doing so with all of the back and forth in russia what then happened and i would say it's a great good news story in december secretary bodman reported and president bush then announced that all the weapons and materials which are about seventy five percent of russian weapons and materials in the work plan had been completed over that period of time so i that was that's part of the n s a activity in particular that this committee has supported and examined and overseen and funded or as what the rise and i would say  another part of a good news story as an as an example thank you basically are similar to ours and those who at least we suspect have objectives that are not so much ours and the traditional tools we have diplomacy public assistance military power the international regime as it's now constituted i think if we use those tools effectively and consistently they're probably good enough in dealing with a first class of countries that basically want what we want at the end of the day but we may just have difficulty dealing with them and that's most of the countries including russia in the context of this kind of problem because they really don't want a proliferation of these materials we think you're going to have some regimes which may have more aggressive objectives or just may be very very difficult to predict like the north koreans or the iranians and i the burden of our report is that it's clear in dealing with those governments we have got to expand the options in the capabilities that any good president has at his or her disposal to be able to deal with those countries i mean the diplomacy is as traditionally constituted foreign assistance i mean it's fine it just doesn't do the trick and so for example we suggest lengthening the i a e a better funding better technology because it's being overwhelmed a range of penalties that  effectively shift the burden of proof for an n p t violation so that could so that countries like this have to show the international community that they're complying instead of playing some kind of perry mason game over years  where they have a pretense of complying and we accept the pretense because it's hard not to and then what we talked about before developing these capabilities so that a president has the option of saying in a place like pakistan well look let's do something about how we're viewed in pakistan so by helping build local institutions of democracy and economics and good public relations campaigns like we all like you all have to conduct every two years if you want to be here right i mean develop those capabilities so that pakistan pakistani government can be seen as helping us without becoming less stable to the reporters at this game is about in part increasing resident capabilities so that presidents have a everyone else we will now recognize people in the order that they were here at the gavel and we will strictly enforce the five minute rule dr snyder for markets on five minutes and of course those of us who are not the chairman and ranking member sometimes wish that that tradition changed but you know we're all supporting a tradition i want to appreciate you all being here it's great to see you all  they gave a professorship at harvard which i have the great honor to be the chair that i have the honor to by i think i had to memorize the name of the congressman if i could say this is an example of the role did not dwell very much on why you did not discuss chemical weapons you talk about the available i think you did probably most detail here today develop billeted of of nuclear weapons even a smaller nuclear weapons attack and the consequences that may cause so we we did not mean to denigrate the importance of chemical or radiological or other possible weapons of mass destruction we felt we could be of the greatest service by focusing on these two areas that we thought were the most likely to be able to result in massive   and that's the beginning of a of an international bank of nuclear material and then when the rods are used russia will take them back so essentially russia is leasing the nuclear material to iran which we think goes a long way to pass find the concerns about the liberation in the inappropriate areas carol thanks and  dr allison you gave a good discussion of the dissolution of the soviet union and the potential availability of nuclear weapons general leavitt before this committee several years ago told us that there were about eighty of the suitcase bombs developed by the soviet union that were loose somewhere that's also your general understanding of this is it's hard to give a short answer but th a topic i've been extremely interested in i served as assistant secretary of defense in the first term of the clinton administration when with thanks to the lugar on the cooperative threat reduction program that you all we were dealing with this i remember when lebed made this comment i have tried to trace this story down i actually in the book that i wrote in two thousand and four called nuclear terrorism the ultimate preventable for so that they particularly the ones produced for the k g b most of the weapons were collected and destroyed there may be some of those weapons continue to be missing but the unbelievable good news is we've been looking for him pretty hard and we haven't found them in seventeen years and each year as it goes by it seems to me more and more likely that we may have succeeded in doing something that i think we couldn't conceivably concede succeed in doing so i'm i'm schizophrenia so that's one potential source of a nuclear weapon for a non state  and just one more thing i'm scares me that there was an occasion that again i think we report in the commission in two thousand and four it's either in our report or in the nine eleven commission report into in two thousand and three or four in which there were serious discussions occurring among al qaeda types about buying four of these weapons which weapons were never found do we know the origin the destination and the cargo of all of the ships in the north atlantic shipping lanes no sir ok i understand that you can buy us god launcher on the world open market  scud launcher i think that's true that they are available on the world open market so now a terrorist can potentially find a weapon a nuclear weapon he can get himself a tramp steamer and he can have a scud launcher on deck and if he throws a tarp over it you don't know whether it's baled hay or a scud launcher underneath it you can't see through that then this thing like that from space so now you're a terrorist and you have this nuclear weapon off our shore  do we have a certainly could we have a certainly take out that missile if he fired at us today i think that none of the missile defense systems discussed do very well against  cruise missiles so i think the average citizen doesn't understand that they think we are protected thank you for your answer we certainly are not protected i think they're probably taking one out is very very small so now you're a terrorist out there with this weapon what you going to do with it you can do two things with it one try to drop it on the york city but gee you don't have a very good launcher there and you don't have much precision you might miss the other thing you could do with it is launch it extra atmospheric lead produce an e m p lay down which of those even if you could hit new york city which of those would provide the most harm to our country i think of a certainty the e m p laid out because it could take out the whole northeast which would be katrina at least an order of magnitude larger i'm very much concerned members of the the commission that we have essentially no ability to protect ourselves against such an attack or to recover in any seemly way from such an attack am i wrong i the no you're not wrong but if i could put it in perspective just for a second if it if i imagine a terrorists with a nuclear bomb let's say gets one of leverage suitcase bombs and he asked himself  how can i do the most damage to the u s so this is mr that osama bin laden so he's got to think about how do i get this weapon to the target and how do i explode the number of ways in which illegal things come to new york city or washington or los angeles every day i have a chapter actually in my book which i'll send you about this which is let me count the weights ok every way that illegal drugs come to your city that's i sleep the same way a bomb could go one of my colleagues says who's been at the chancellor at u c l a if you have any doubt about terrorists ability to bring a bomb to an american city remember they could always hide it in a bale of marijuana which we know comes to american city so the most likely track is the same way that illegal people and the illegal drugs and other really go i them come to american cities the terrorists the likelihood that the terrorists not only gets this bomb but also a missile which is now another hurdle it's not impossible but other sail and especially a missile that's an i c b m so you've got to get to the atmosphere return address your thank you gentleman from maryland now recognizes the gentleman from washington state mr smith thank you mr chairman thank you gentlemen for your work and for this presentation we have a lot of programs in that you took a look and said you know that's not really working that's not helping that's an area that we can shut down and put the resources in a different direction and second what are the one or two areas and you mention about a dozen different ideas in a number of different departments from the homeland security defense threat reduction agency a lot of places but what are the one or two is saying that's where we're getting the most bang for our buck so i am well back from mike from let me try that again two questions are one what are the areas where we're spending money we shouldn't be it isn't really working and two what are the one or two areas where you go this is really work because the bottom line here is there's no magic solution to this problem i mean when you think about the number of biological  weapons that are out there number of people who are working on them we cannot wrap our arms completely around this problem either on the biological or the nuclear side but there are some things that are working better than others i'm sure and would be helpful for us in the committee to know you know if you can the only one place to put it here's the place to put it is it's really making a difference one of the things that to this committee recognized when it passed the same bill that contained our commission was that there isn't anybody who has the responsibility of answering the two questions that you have just asked and your directive was that there be a person in the white house whose sole responsibility was the issue of weapons of mass aeration that is position which has gone unfilled in large part over a debate as to whether that position should be senate confirmed or  as our traditional white house staff directly responsible solely to the president we think and one of our recommendations is that position needs to be created and it needs to be filled and i'm pleased to say that candidate barack obama indicated his support for that proposition when that is in place when that person is in place we should have someone who can look specifically at the question now in answer your question i would say that one area that cries out for greater attention is the biological area we've been focused largely on nucular and i looked at the authorization list from this committee and it it's a big list almost two billion dollars heavily oriented towards the nuclear side of the equation our conclusion was the greater threat is biological and is there a particular place right now that's doing biological work there are agencies entity where we should be focusing those resources well there are lots of places which are currently doing it and that may be both part of the solution and part of the problem is the lack of clarity of accountability for this effort  i don't think it is it is appropriate for us to be telling the next president or telling the congress which agency is the most competent to do it but i would say you ought to decide on somebody senator i think it is appropriate for you i mean you spent six months studying this and you know you're very very smart the applying it perfectly appropriate for you to say this this agency works better not to report the conclusion you couldn't get to that's fine but it seems to me like right now you're the guys who would know best well you know i think the they this is essentially a science issue and therefore i would personally be inclined to try to put it into the agencies such as the report that attack an attack is underway here in the washington d c area for instance there probably are twenty five or more hospitals if each one of those hospitals had five or six people come in over a twenty four hour period with a particular rather exotic symptom they might think well six people happened to get sick but if they knew that the same number had come up in twenty four other places they might say this is more than just a series of coincidences something systemic is happening we don't think we have the capability and i believe that an agency like the c classified saying they're planning something now that's going to happen in twenty thousand and thirteen but it was our evaluation if you look at the acceleration of the availability of this material if you look at what we do know about their intentions and the increasing priority that they're given giving to this that that the probability rises above fifty fifty i think within the next five years and obviously it's it's a estimate based on you know the experience we had in the material we were we've reviewed but it's an it's an estimate and a belief that is reflected pretty comprehensively within the intelligence community as as the as comments a couple weeks after we should the report indicate and i don't want to press you on this i'm just trying for my own understanding but there was basically some calculus that whatever that calculus might have been to get twenty thirteen as opposed to twenty eleven or twenty fifteen i would take is that a fair statement you know it's not it wasn't so precise that we could have said four years or six years yeah i mean it's just a got you have to pick a point and we we knew it was near more likely in two thousand and fifteen than in two thousand and thirteen or was that because the trends the trends are not going in the right direction so unless they're reversed which we think it's very possible to do or less there are changes either because of some conscious policy or something happens that's a break for us then we're not going in the right direction so yeah i do think the it increases now it's i think what's hard to say about that at any  and to me the wildcard in this people say why haven't you been attacked and i think we've made a lot of progress in the intel community because i've been talking about resident capabilities i think those capabilities are growing in that community and i don't i my hope is that they'll that this trend this growing capability will increase or is the rate of growth will get faster and faster so to answer mr bartlett's question what's our defense against the terrorists do they doing this it's true we don't have the passive defense but we're getting better and better at finding out that that's the plan and getting them before they can do it and i don't know how fast that capability will grow nor their capability or our capability but i think whatever it is this complex mixture of good and effective carrots and sticks t hat you were talking about at some point time if you guys come back on january twenty second two thousand and seventeen and we haven't had an attack we'll say we had a good mix as opposed to not have a good mix take that same calculus back to january twenty second two thousand and one if you would that same calculus what would you picked as a date when you might of had an assumption that we might have had a weapons of mass destruction attack did you ever look at that particular calculus if you did what would that have been and we certainly didn't formally i think we might have a got i don't know that i'd even want to hazard a guess because we didn't look at that systematically and we have tried to be you know you walk a line with this sort of thing between you want to be very direct never say anything that you don't believe but at the same time not speculate too much because in a subject like this that the data cause a bunch of speculation and comments and consequences that may be negative so i don't know that i'd want to hazard a guess but dr allison might i mean he's been studying this for a long time i mean how what happened picking more likely than the other fifty one percent as opposed to forty two percent or similarly for the time frame so i think in in january of two thousand and one people we've been studying terrorism and we've been the center that i run at harvard we had published four books on this subject were predicting that there would be a major terrorist attack on the american home one that was not uncommon view in some parts of the u intelligence community but was certainly not the broad consensus view and actually when i had been secretary or assistant secretary of defense i had written a memo one hundred horribles in which a nine eleven like attack with airplanes was just above the halfway mark so there's a lot but a lot of things worse than that in the period since we also know that at least one biological terrorist attack on the new york subway years i've led many congressional delegations working our area jurisdiction we've got the nucular security administration the n s a we've got missile defense and certainly the last couple of trips we've taken i think have been  very informative certainly going to pakistan in september where we met with general kiani and general kidwai who are nominally and specifically in charge of the army and the and the nuclear weapons complex  pakistan and to direct my comments to my great colleague the ranking member we have a lot of work to do we have done a lot certainly in early two thousand when india and pakistan came to blows over kashmir the united states directly intervened with our friends at the at n s a to make sure that they had the kind of nonproliferation and other things that we have in the united states to assure that their stockpile would be safe but there's nothing we can do about the political instability in pakistan and ultimately that is the way we safeguard these weapons is to make sure that that country has political stability and no one can assure certainly in the short term that it will in december i lead another congressional delegation decide to russia where we have an enormously complicated relationship as i said at the time it especially in the intervening time since georgia you can't go back to business as usual but we have business to do and this is a very limiting hearing we have a lot of different critical issues to work on but what i want to specifically ask the members of the commission is that start the start treaty which you know it expires at the end of two thousand and nine has  enormously valuable in the verification process and with the kind of relationship we have with russia right now which is not the best but with a new administration that promises more engagement what you recommend is something that i've recommended which stand start for the short term what i'm really interested in understanding is would you say that we just push start forward as start is should we work to do what we call sometimes a better start or  start where are those areas that you think we should concentrate on and secondly if you can briefly touch on the question of the comprehensive test ban treaty which i have advocated for a long time that we ratify and can you please please just describe what you think the benefits of ratifying nancy t t t would be thank as from my history as an old cold warrior so i would say even though there's a lot of course some of the some of the elements of the verification system may have been outmoded and we may be able to move on i would t keeping it more or less is better and especially if one worries about scenarios in which our relationship with the russians may be worse rather than better with respect to going beyond start and sort i think i would think moving to some another significant step to some number like fifteen hundred or even a thousand would make good sense in the next round of start plus and with respect to t i think the debate that got aired over that in the in the senate needs to be reexamined because the mechanisms for verifying that people are complying with the have improved significantly and i think when people look at him they would judge as i believe that there's a strong view of this is not a commission view but a broad view that c v t would actually briefly about what you think we can do to gain international consensus to increase their funding give them a bigger mission and more teeth well first of the united states needs to be certain that it meeting its obligations i at one time was chair of the nucular subcommittee of the senate environment and public works committee which has jurisdiction over things like the nuclear regulatory commission and we had paid our dues to  the years that that is now been overcome but one of the tendencies that the international media has gotten into is that rather than deal with the base budget  we do all these special assessments whenever there's a new problem that's a very unstable financing for an organization that has to make a long term commitment so you've in which we've gone about funding and how the united states can lead the international community in strengthening both of those thank you thank you dear thanks miss mrs tauscher the chair now recognizes the gentleman from south carolina mr wilson thank you m allison as a fellow cold warrior i appreciate your referencing the seventeen years of success and nonproliferation with the with russia and the fourteen now independent states and so but my concern and you'll reference it is biological terrorism given the information in the report should pharmaceutical companies sharing toxins such is botulinum with iranian scientist and rainy and universities reconsider their relationships and further should the united states do more to discover a relationship between pharmaceutical companies and iranian researchers i guess the transmission of materials and scientific knowledge but given the reality of what's happening they are not sufficient to the challenge and if i could add to this this would be responsive to a question mr smith had i was going to answer but the time ran out the bio area here in this report i think is the low lowest hanging fruit in the report for the decide i probably would prefer a d h s s except i don't have confidence in d h s ability to do anything but i mean if they could do something this is probably something they ought to do and we need changes within that research community and their approaches sort of thing which is the thing that you 're mentioning as well mr smith also mentioned what don't we need we recommend collapsing the staff of the n s c in the h s c among other things because we think that they're all they're generating now is meetings with these tools staff and when you mention regulations with these regulations include borrowing from suitable companies from doing business in the united states alone as they have a relationship as currently exist in iran we don't have that specific recommendation but one of the reasons why i point out before i think legislation as opposed to get of action in this is so important is because i think this will be a big piece of legislation i think a lot of things will be available for a lot of considerations you know what might we do in a lot of areas to make different agencies sensitive to these concerns and the very fact that congress takes this in hand and legislate on it is going to make all the different agencies foreign and domestic aware that this needs to be a priority but no we don't specifically recommend that and the bylaw biological weapons convention of one hundred seventy two does it have sufficient safeguards against providing toxins to hostile nations strengthening we make some recommendations as to how we think the direction that that strengthening should take but it is not serving our interest a world in which  biological advancement is moving at flank speed with a forty year old instrument to control it to weaken its to weaken countries don't pay attention to it anyway thank you mr chairman thank you gentlemen for your service to our country both in this endeavor and prior to it we're very grateful to you i'd like to focus on the area of fissile material in secured or unsecured storage areas and also the issue of blending down and converting to l e u which is discussed i think on page fifty eight of the report and in page fifty eight in the is supporting appendix you make reference to the baker cutler review process  two thousand and one and there is a discussion of the need to upgrade that review now given the new dynamics that we face if this committee were to lay out a set of criteria or benchmarks for a new baker cutler review what question of his extensive expertise but i would say that my opinion number one is to dramatically increase the focus on biological i said cutler commission did it brought focus to the issue of nuclear security something analogous to that that would give specific focus to the issue of biological  security thank you i had the great honor to serve on the baker cutler commission and i think it did with howard baker and lloyd cutler a terrific job  one of the things that it emphasized is that if if highly enriched uranium is blended down to low enriched uranium it can be made into a fuel rod used in a civilian nuclear reactor and in it effectively burned up and most people don't realize but if we take the lights here of the electricity that's powering our lights today here in the u s for nuclear produces about twenty percent the electricity half of all that electricity is low enriched uranium rods from russia that used to be highly enriched uranium some of which were part of bombs or other which would could be made into bombs so there's been this deal for five hundred tons e u to get blended down we say in the report and your reference brief if we should it incentivize another there's another three hundred tons of excess h e u sitting there getting it blended down in russia or blended down and back into the markets seems to me to be a very good place to go with respect to the nuclear piece and i think wherever there's highly enriched uranium or plutonium that's the stuff from which people can  wherever that highly enriched uranium becomes low enriched uranium it can't be made into a bomb i would say the logic of the case we've both seen working in the deal that currently operates  in two thousand and thirteen as the report says and could be extended in should be thank you and we would very very very interested in your suggestions for the biological baker cutler review the senator mention as to what questions we might ask what criteria we might put in the statute to require that review to be properly focused on our talent that i think we recommend probably in this order the kind of domestic regulatory reform we're talking about so we establish a model internationally and show we're taking a lead then we recommend calling an international conference of the major bio science powers to begin putting in place the kind of conference a regime that we already have in the nuclear area the big strategic change we want with bigger cutler is moving russia from our relationship from a donor recipient relationship to a partnership relationship that strategically is what we think needs to happen so we can extend the probable do you think that change will be five years from today will happen well senator graham is really one of our russia experts it was our opinion in talking with them that whatever the issues we have another area and we have other issues that they do want to cooperate with us in this that they see this as consistent with their national  believe that as russia has become economically stronger they are unsettled by donor recipient relationship and by their own national pride and now with the capability to match that pride they're ready to be approached about a partnership rather than a philanthropy thank you very chair thank you gentlemen general reckon the gentleman months to two years or twenty four months this report is dated december second which is a month and a half ago can i conclude from that that your range now would be four and a half months to twenty two and a half months yes ok thank you my longer question is you also state on the next page and a recommendation number five that such engagement with both iran and north korea but i want to concentrate on iran because they're in a different posture the north korea obviously not having already gone nuclear where direct intervention becomes much more problematic but in the case of iran and north korea you say such an gauge meant must be backed by the credible threat of direct action in the event that diplomacy fails what can you elaborate on what you mean by credible threat of direct action and how important is it is this to happen before a iran goes nuclear earlier the the the consequences of iran going and of north korea continuing to add to its warehouse of nuclear materials is unacceptable unacceptable and the risk that they singularly would represent an ounce and unacceptable and the consequences within the regions which they live the rapid escalation of the number of weaponized nucular states and so are we we suggest a strategy which a layered strategy starting with  difficult but necessary step to avoid the other alternative which is a new arena in north korea with enough material to not only launch an attack these already but in terms of a biological attack can you identify the perhaps the single greatest thing that we could do in preventing a biological attack outside of interagency that president obama should designate a white house principal adviser for w m d blue for ration terrorism and restructuring the national security council and homeland security council which i agree with but what do you believe should be the obviously want to try to push those rings out as far as possible the first would be the alignment of biological sensors i think most people would be surprised and disappointed to learn that handle and create incentives within the life science community to keep a handle on the potential misuse of dual use technology that you study this you know that the high containment laboratories some of them are not regulated at all if they don't receive federal funds and they don't have they don't deal with agents on the select agent list and not regulated at all those that are regulated by three different agencies and ag if it's a it's an animal science type lab a lot of those animal pathogens can be turned into pathogens that can be used against people so their regular by three different agencies different kinds of regulatory requirements get them under one agency probably d h s s or  the labs have safety protocols and security protocols let's combine those so we have one laboratory security protocol which is uniformly followed let's get into the curriculum when scientists are going through school that look security is important and do some common sense things get a nobel prize laureate to chair a commission and speak out about the importance of being security conscious when the life science community and then organize international bio science powers and try and get them to do the same thing that we really i have not done what we need to do in this area you mentioned sensors we made an executive decision the chairman did and i agreed with him that we would not go heavily into consequence management because the problem in this kind of report is saying something without trying to say everything right now we did so we didn't get we had testimony in new york about the sensors and i agree personally that that we need more of that because the quicker we going to stablish there's an attack the better we can manage the consequence of it and maybe get after abuse so i completely agree we didn't get heavily into that the one area we did say was that we've got to get on the ball in dealing with anthrax we don't have an adequate procedure for getting the ship out to people and you can imagine the panic that's that's going to happen if people realize they've got the living in a city where there was an anthrax dispersal and they got forty eight hours to get the separate and right now we're mailing it to them i mean so we have issues but we did not get comprehensively in the consequence management here thanks a gentleman now recognizes the gentleman actors we agree with your evaluation that that the use of a bio weapon is more likely than the use of a nuclear weapon alarm always careful because you know the nuclear weapon they're trying to get to and either a very feasible for them we didn't get into missile defense on the because it really is it's not it wasn't the center of what our mandate was i always was a supporter of missile defense mike and i always thought it was a more useful tool in dealing with rogue nation states though than dealing with terrorists not that it wouldn't have some use for that but simply because they're more likely to use the existence of a nuclear missile on a missile delivery system either actually use it or use it as leverage in some kind of international confrontation and that the missile defense would diffuse it but i think for the reasons that dr allison indicated earlier the terrorists have a wider range of options that they can use some weapon a personal view that's not the commission's view it seems to me that we are in the area of missile defense approaching the world as it was during the cold war the soviet union had no compunction of having its name and signature on a missile that it might launch against the united states a terrorist who is other than so lunatic that they would be institutionalized would like to be somewhat clandestine in their form of attack  and therefore i think it's much more likely that they will attack in subtle ways that do not immediately identify who's responsible and thus as we look at the likelihood of of a range of occurrences and begin to allocate our resources i personally would like to see is put more resources on those things that would hopefully detect the non missile delivery  system because that's the one that we're most likely to in reality have to confront that's my position not the commission's  position i agree with senator graham's personal position that the commission didn't take it a a view on it because since we were discussing earlier there's one big hurdle for terrorists to get or make a nuclear bomb then secondly to get a missile is a whole nother exercise third to get a bomb that can be weaponized so that it fits as the warhead of a missile that is rocket science there's a third and then fourth if i'm the terrorists and i'm attacking you with a missile the crosshairs of the launch site appear in an american target within us a minute attractive gentlemen your back is just twenty seconds around if you're iran and you're considering aggression in the mideast and you have the missile on a missile delivery system that's a hedge against defeating whatever conventional action you may be chairman this was a great report and what needs to be done and i'm sure the door to the new administration is already open for it will take much pushing since some of the recommendations are similar but the conundrum as you kind of put out is how to make it happen and so i only had two questions one international one is on your domestic aspects of your report and senator the reason for that is for you please i was struck by what you said during the testimony today that you cannot solve the problems of pakistan within pakistan's borders you must look regionally to solve pakistan's problems in this political rationing issue how then do you sit back and i know you only had six months but we had some very good functional recommendations here however even when we dealt with let's say pakistan in the report it was still a functional counterproliferation regime approach when you looked at anything within the region or even worldwide could you comment about how well can my answer is i don't think you can do it effectively just focusing on a single nation state as an example the issue of kashmir that has been a thorn in the indian pakistani relationship since those two nations were created out of the old english indian empire it's one of the classic cases of kicking the can down the road with the expectation that somehow the problem it is going to become less severe the reality is that in almost all instances it becomes more severe and the consequence is more ominous and more universal  so i would if i were going to advise the new envoy mr holbrooke one of the first places i would focus my attention be on how to begin to mitigate that controversy because as long as it's in its current state going to be bleeding scab between those two countries i would also put focus on what i suggested the u s and russia already together to try to encourage those two countries to develop some protocols that will take them a little bit on a less of a hair trigger use of  in the event of a of a conflict my second question has do domestically and it touches upon your answer and center if you didn't mind throughout today we heard the word safeguards verification accounting counting missing labs lab personnel etc and to some degree you can only do so much if you don't have the right information and yet the study step back and although my first question to do with how do you really look at politicization in the absence of regional goals is your recommendation by and large intelligence community i know in doing your short shrift here is you know what we've up rooted and you even quote general hayden it every eighteen months to look at see how they're doing and sticking him back in let's kind of leave him alone for a while my question really comes if that's the right issue you know you talk about pakistan if i could go back there seventy thousand people involved in the nucular industry in pakistan a thousand or more scientists two thousand a core but that talent is coming from the universities which is the most radical time they've ever had add in their universities how do we know who's in those labs and what they're doing even though we have safeguards of what they've already produced and my question comes really to you because you were all denied from my understanding access to the intelligence community in some regards for example according to mr henry sokolski a member of your commission you were not permitted to have access well actually got a single classified briefing on north korea and the same on iran and you were denied the access of how russia is assisting iran how can you be certain that your recommendation to leave the intelligence community by and large alone when information and knowledge is what it's all about in the future is the right one when you yourself didn't quite gain potentially the access to the intelligence to make that recommendation to us but as someone who spent a lot of my eighteen years in the u information and that he or she is going to be the recipient of the largest and the most us subtle qualitative intelligence but i felt that  we had adequate access for our purposes i did not feel that our ability to make the recommendations that we did was constrained by an absence of access to intelligence second is there are a variety of ways in which the intelligence community can reform one of which is what happened in two thousand  which was a massive congressional restructuring of the basic architecture of the intelligence community i think now we've got some very good people who have been in place like admiral mcconnell  reforms to the to the next year thanks to your thanks a gentleman here now recognizes gentleman from arizona mr price well thank you mr chairman thank you all the members of the panel here i think that the subject did you speak about today something that perhaps  point senator talent i consider your voice one of the great voices on missile defense in the country and i actually believe that it's a pertinent issue here today because i believe missile defense has the ability to devalue nuclear programs to the extent that maybe they don't occur which is how a lot of these other potential nuclear proliferation items the genesis of where they would come from and i think that we're making some pretty serious mistakes related to iran in making sure that our missile defense  it can be a real encouragement but with that said i was struck by mr bartlett's a scenario where someone off of our shore would either launch either a scud missile or something like that whether it was an e m p attack or directly on our country and dr allison i'm not convinced that terrorists would be that cerned about their identity being known at that point because they could sink just a lot of things and most the terrorists on the airplanes weren't too concerned that we might know their name after the deed was done so my question is really is this i understand that the biological threat was emphasized and i completely agree with it but i'm focusing for a moment on the nuclear issue because i somehow have got this crazy notion in my mind that terrorists would like to see one of our cities in nuclear flames or some type of of e m p attack just for the spectacular nature and with that said i'm not sure that to focus on iran your own reports is just how sufficient highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb is ominously short it ranges from only six months to two years i guess the bottom line is this how much time do we have related to iran gaining a nuclear capability which they could give to terrorists how much time do we have to to ascertain their capability and we'll anything short of either a direct military intervention or the conviction in their minds that that will occur be enough to dissuade them and i'll start with you senator talent if there's time we don't have a lot of time i think the report reflects that the threat of direct action has to be on the table and the inference from that is that without the belief that that  credible belief that that will be used that the diplomatic various diplomatic initiatives won't work and i think that's based on an inference about iranian intentions when i said at the beginning of the hearing these groups are trying to acquire these weapons for a reason because in the context of their goals and the globalized world this isn't a asymmetric weapon of enormous power for them and to the extent that you can diffuse the effectiveness of the weapon however you do it and i would agree with you that missile defense is a key thing we don't address that in the report they sent you diffuse the effectiveness of the weapon you want to mind the reasons for trying to get the weapons and make it less likely that they'll do it so i certainly agree with your analysis in that regard and this is our feeling regarding iran without going into the tactics of of how could be done or the likelihood of being able to accomplish it probably has enough low enrich uranium and if not today in a month or two months which if it were run back through the natanz centrifuges could produce enough highly enriched uranium for its first bomb so they've already got into that so what we should rightly worry about is a covert thoughts that we don't know about and can identify which is doing the same thing because how likely if you were the manager of  iranian nuclear program is it that you would put all your eggs in one basket under the klieg lights of international inspection i think not very good what is your recommendation that we do about it one hundred days of military options one of the things for sure you can't destroy the targets if you can identify so trying to get to where when in a negotiation in which you've got lots of carrots and lots of sticks making as credible as possible that those include a military option even though it's not a very good option is obviously applied to support senator talent i particularly appreciate your comments today on the use of soft power and the need for greater focus on that in our time going forward not least because i spent a considerable amount of time working with the u s agency for international development in both iraq and afghanistan on democratic and economic development and i agree with the findings in the report that pakistan is indeed a nexus of  threats and that to a large degree that threat will be centered in these federally administered tribal areas of pakistan what i would like to ask you senator and and the other panelists if you wish to comment is can you please give us your assessment after going through this process of both the capability and the inclination of the new government in pakistan to work with us and be helpful in perhaps taking a more proactive look at those fatah areas in terms of applying soft power to try to neutralize these threats officially of course they have the in terms of using soft power to threats that's a different issue  i think one of the things we've got to do with soft power and the tools of smart power soft power is to is to create a greater sense within this the pakistani government for us and other governments and someone to circumstances that these kinds of tools are very helpful and one of the goals of the use of soft power would be to communicate the intention that this is a good thing that's going to help reinforce them and their government and it lead to better relationship so that's one of the that's one of the mindsets we have to create i don't think it's there yet i don't think because i just don't think we've been effective in doing this and you know the and you've had personal experience with this we've had to use these tools or tried to use them in bosnia we've had to use them in  iraq we need them in afghanistan now we need them in pakistan at what point are we going to decide this is a capability we have to have organically someplace that presidents can deploy effectively and quickly like they deploy the capabilities of this committee oversees routinely through all three of the services my sense is that the the new government in pakistan very much wants to create a new beginning for the country with one of its goals is to keep the country unified i think one of the real at least a possibility is a splintering apart pakistan and with those northwest territories being likely the first to secede from the nation part of the reason is the fact that they feel in that area that they have not received the kind of of attention in schools hospitals economic development that other parts of the country have so i believe that the the new government is going to make a special effort to demonstrate that it has value to those parts of the country in order to tamp down  secessionist aspirations now what is going to be the capability of the government to do that that's yet to be tested very very telling and they want to focus again on pakistan you do speak about some positive things going on there you speak to president saddam remarks after the marriott bombing in islamabad at the war on terrorism is a war you also speak to the tribal leaders uniting organizing against al qaeda both in the fatah and the end of v f p one thing that you left out that i'm curious about and that is the feelings of the pakistani army general kiani and what general kiani feelings are about this effort about our efforts there to counter terrorism the area to try to secure those tribal regions i see that as a critical link with this obviously there's always this dynamic there between the government and the army i want to know where do you believe general kiani is with this and as you know general home a day or two sometimes has a little bit different feelings in general can he can you give us some of your overview about how you see that dynamic coming along and what where that leads pakistan in this effort desire to be subservient to the civilian government and function within the democratic framework but we've had one small task when the civilian government said they would stand the head of the intelligence agency to india to help with by investigation and then the military rescinded the the right of the definitely the weight of democracy and protecting it is going to be one of the several key questions as to the future of pakistan i agree with an entirely that the  made i think that k m e in terms of his history is had a reasonable relationship with the us and i think what's hard to appreciate the turbulence the cross currents of the environment in which they're operating if you were to wake up some general in pakistan in the middle of the night and say what's going on in afghanistan they think what's going on in afghanistan is negative for pakistan and it has something to do with americans in the indians being in surrounding them so if you listen to the noises after the mum one of the terrorists whom they had captured so i would say that the i feel very uncomfortable about the extent to which they they and we inherit the same  unstable situation like that where they're worried about staying in power personally or their personal fortunes they're not spending a lot of time on the long term efforts to secure nuclear material they're just thinking about surviving day to day and i think that's a huge part of the problem one quick follow up question are there things that the u s can do to try to encourage general kiani in a productive way to sort of mirror the efforts there at least present so dar indicated a direction he'd like to see things go well i think that part of that is for the united states not to be as dicks fixated on relations with the military  as it has been in the past and that's not just a comment for the last eight years it goes back much further than that that we've got to give more recognition to the civilian government range of agents would you think might be used and what would be the degree of danger amongst those particular choices i think most of the experts would say that today the answer would be  available it's the one that has been a weaponized to the greatest degree now anthrax has a number of problems one of which is affecting the nation it's thankfully the second problem is anthrax is not communicable person to person so it's its ability to multiply is much less our concern and we talk about in the report is  that there are a lot of of some cases new but in others old pathogens that are being regenerated for instance in one thousand nine hundred eighteen there was an influenza attack that killed up to forty million people worldwide that influenza has been extinct for most of the last seventy years it's just been recreated in a laboratory if that were to get out with with the reality that we have almost no anecdotes today to that strain of influenza it could kill a lot more than forty million people so today it's is very concerned about being attacked and that's part of the reason that we've had such good cooperation is not just all a matter of their good feeling towards us they recognize their self interest but securely some of the incidents that have occurred in chechnya and the fact that they have a massive non ethnic russian population immediately to their south that is a concern but given the way they have dealt with biological very weak security and then much less willingness to involve not just the united states but the international community in efforts to enhance that security would tend to lead me to believe that they don't put as high a priority on the possibility of a biological attack as our report does   the states that were most concerned about the concept of mutually assured destruction of them whatsoever and especially in terms of how they might actually be trying to control these weapons a very very good question and if we take north korea which i would say is the most troublesome for me because kim jong il has demonstrated that he would sell and build a nuclear reactor in syria when we've told him you can't conceivably do that every adequate nuclear forensics capability so that we could credibly identify his fingerprints on that bomb and if we were prepared then to explain to him that a bomb that was made in north korea even if it was delivered in a boat by osama bin laden would be treated by us precisely as if it had been put on a missile and shot against los angeles i think he's got the idea in his head that if he were to launch a missile with a nuclear weapon against los angeles north korea would be a race from the map that's mehad with respect to identifiable sources the question is could we extend that idea in the nuclear terrorist space i've been a strong advocate in senator connie mack smale room in the early ninety's and getting a ride the elevator with you and you knowing the mascot of my high school benjamin buccaneer i've always been a big fan of yours so my question is basically just a follow up with  some of the things that have been touched on earlier with regard to an issue on fortunately that wasn't discussed directly in your report and that with missile defense you testified earlier that pakistan and world and if we have any obligations there with regard to keeping the global community safe first mr congressman i want to congratulate you for your election that you're going to be representing a wonderful part of our state in america and i know that your constituents are in good hands congratulations and it's an honor to try to respond to your first very good  the the reality is that the imbalance of population with with india having over a billion people in pakistan about one hundred fifty million plus or minus has created on the pakistani side the military doctrine that they have to go nucular quickly because they cannot defend themselves against a land attack so i don't think that the existence of of  missile defense as we know it today would be much of a constraint i think what we've got to do is to work on the relationships between those two countries and try to get them to back down on the hair trigger nature of their current military posture because pakistan will have some justifiable basis for greater confidence that they're not going to be overwhelmed larger strategic reality that implicates the overall work of this committee the stabilizing nature of american power and influence the extent that the world believes with some confidence that the united states is capable of taking the lead you know with other nations of dealing swiftly and effectively with major threats to the international order it stabilizes the world whether well that's their missile defense or some other tool and to the extent that they begin to lose that confidence we have stabilization which is part of the danger reason why we're afraid of a nuclear cascade now let's switch to a different venue with north korea and possession of nuclear weapons what are the japanese do if you're the leader of japan of course they have a history of not nuclear tradition you have to consider whether you need to develop a nuclear deterrent on your own well what's the reason they haven't part of his their tradition and part of his their confidence that the united states  american power if you will see capable of dealing with that in some productive fashion so one good way to look at this and maybe try and achieve a constructive kinds of agreement is to say the question of missile defense i'm a strong supporter is an operational question what what capability do we need to help achieve something that strategically we all believe we have to sustain which is the confidence in american leadership in power around the world i agree with you i think missile defense is a useful and flexible tool particularly when dealing with nation states brought up earlier and that's the role of soft power smart power particularly in in pakistan and in the federally administered tribal areas and i didn't see you know i read your recommendations regarding additional support for education and commerce efforts in particularly in that portion of the country but i didn't see a lot of confidence or faith in the current government in pakistan to be able to impact that on the ground i wonder if you where do we get the ball rolling there how do you how do you start that process of you know we're at three percent literacy for women in that region of the country you think there's no place to go but up from here but how do you get that i think first in terms of the u s role for the united states decide that's important to do which is not a posture that i believe we have been in historically in our relations with  pakistan we have with the host nation and with other members the international community attack these kinds of problems elsewhere in the world with some considerable success it's not going to be easy to do it in that area of pakistan in large part because the security is so fractious but the fact that it's hard doesn't mean that it's not important and in this instance we think urgent to make the very best effort that we can in the ideal world it would be  a very significant refinement if not an entirely new platform a very significant upgrade of the traditional tools of diplomacy and foreign assistance which are effective in some contexts but frankly just not in others and i also see it as a more targeted tool so i think i would ask i would maybe restate your question if i could to say ok let's say we've determined that improving literacy in pakistan is an important way of messaging america's but nine intentions what we need is a capability for a president be able to say right now here's the poll numbers in this in the area of about american tensions which is like now six months from now i want it to be three times what it is now just we might say this to one of our political consultants right now i want the capability i want that capability for the president be able to say that and do that and maybe that includes improving literacy or maybe it's health care maybe what we do is figure out what the people in that area want the most and try and be helpful in delivering that to them but you see how this is more targeted in the context of a more of a direct american goal and integrating the rest of foreign policy and the problem is where as if you need littoral combat capability and you know you target that tell the navy that they figure what they need they get the capability we don't have that mechanism in the civilian agencies to do this so presidents are left with we can recommend these things while obama's got to figure out how to try and do it and right now i just don't think we have the capability to implement his directive in that regard so he holds the bag for something you really don't have any do i have a second question that's on a mark different subject and i'll direct this to dr allison and i was very intrigued by the discussion regarding the lack of protocols between india and pakistan  should those countries find themselves at odds and it occurred to me our nation has gone to great lengths over time to make sure that our nuclear assets are secure from the sense that just basically from very basic things like an accidental or unplanned ignition and we do that through our technology and to great success and obviously the russians have done the same thing judging from at least the lack of unplanned ignition i'm curious do india and pakistan have the same do they have the technical capabilities in place today to make sure that there's not something as basic as an unplanned thank you very much mr chairman when i go back to the first question that was asked by the chairman i understand the commission didn't want to bind the incoming now the new president with particular recommendations as it related to iran and north korea the counter that obviously is we are in a sense looking to you for guidance on how best to to deal with that issue so without binding anyone my question is and perhaps a dr allison this is  do you what are the carrots we know what the sticks are essentially what are the carrots that you think we should be using in dealing with north korea and iran i gather that your that all of your  recommendations that we should be using various carrots and sticks seems to imply that you do believe in direct dealings with iran so the question is what specific carrots do you suggest and do you did they did the commission unanimously agree that direct talks with iran based on success with some success with north korea is appropriate the commission did not have a consensus on this actually we had some quite strongly different views there were some people who strongly supported the view of the bush administration in the first term what i would say john bolton's views which are the solution to the problem in north korea and iran is regime change and the only problem is we don't know how to do that but any case that's our objective and that's the problem we should work on we should isolate them we should not to go see it with them and if they do things in the meantime that we don't like like for example go from having two bombs worth of plutonium to ten bombs we should blame them for that so that's why i'm not giving a i think the most charitable interpretation that view which you might gather i disagree with that there's an alternative which says this is a lousy regime it's a horrible group of people they do start their own people the north korean regime but in any case a north korean regime that has two bombs worth of plutonium and no test he's hugely better than one that has ten bombs and is conducted a test as one of my colleagues likes to say you know to challenge him to conduct the first test with two bombs and then tell him that you can't do that again so two two bombs and ten bombs and a test or two totally different worlds what bush an error that is a totally different threat than what he's leaving to to his successor so  the in the north korean case if we're prepared to live with a miserable miserable regime but nonetheless not to threaten regime change to the regime and when we're able to persuade the chinese to exercise leverage because the only people that have really powerful leverage with the with the north koreans are the chinese i'd say that's our best hope for trying to get that rolled back and at this stage i would say it's not a very great hope in the iranian case again what is it that the supreme ayatollah most is most concerned about in iran it's the preservation of the regime that's his responsibility what is it that we say we want to do change the regime now actually in the second term as the negotiations developed a bit we backed off of that someone but i would say the combination of carrots and sticks for a rand would stop iran's short of a nuclear bomb stop iran short of highly enriched uranium how much further can i get them back well again it depends on how much i can give and how much i can threaten but i think that hand is going to be extremely difficult when they had zero centrifuges it was plausible that you might stop them with zero centrifuges when they had one cascade or two it's possible you might stop them with that at this stage i worry that even if they were to a race in the pants they already have the know how and what i worry about is the covert accounts not the one that exists so i would say the iranian case is is quite difficult but it would include i believe if we're going to be successful acknowledging that a regime that we don't like we're going to live with because a lousy iranian regime with no bombs is terrible but it's a lot better than that same regime with nuclear bombs this chair any time remain just very very forty seconds what country should we be most concerned about in terms of the b terrorism threat the other words where are the safeguards that you suggest we need most lacking what countries pakistan would again be at the top of the list but with the biological it's becoming a very rapidly expanding set of countries for instance india malaysia indonesia brazil are all cuba developing substantial biological capabilities that's why i recommendation is that one of the immediate steps that the new administration should take would capability to start from the premise that we all are at risk the world is a risk by this and that we have a common responsibility to try to take those steps that will begin senator graham it's a pleasure to be with you again after years of being apart and i am honored that my first question you hearing would be directed to yourself these are relatively straightforward if you'll bear with me i understand from your testimony and is it in fact the position of the commission that the threat of biological and chemical warfare attacks against united states from rogue nations or individual terrorists is a higher threat than those of concentrated my understanding i correct the press to the world have witnessed the expenditure of tens of billions if not hundreds of billions of dollars on a anti ballistic missile nuclear defense shield that has come under several names from star wars to its current environment both in fixed position defenses of evolution islands and as the navy and air forces versions for mobiles would you agree that we have expended if not hundreds at least tens of billions of dollars in that effort that's that's a statement of fact so is there any situation that your commission is aware of by which the current emphasis on strategic ballistic missile defense as it occurs today and we are spending money on today can address the potentially minute threat of chemical or biological terrorist attack as you have seen and studied in your six months of this commission is the are the two matched up in any way at all that one could defend against the other specifically for instance anthrax  the answer is i guess it is technically feasible that a missile could have on its nose a biological is it probably in your  opinion is it i would think that it would be unlikely that the the biological weapon which we think is the more likely to be delivered would be delivered  on a missile beginning from the fact that the group that we're most concerned about are the terrorists and i for them access to a reliable delivery system through missile is highly unlikely in that the power of this body is publicly seen as being largely control of national treasure the power of the purse we are in command of nothing except a small portion of the authority of the budget do you believe it is appropriate that as a body we examine or re examine the national occasion of funds to the strategic missile defense initiatives to more accurately match the threats that you have described here today as i said to an earlier question i think that we need to have at some point in the federal government congress or the executive branch capability of looking at our threat assessing what it's going to take to mitigate or eliminate those threats and allocating resources against some sense of prioritization putting the most effort on those that are the most likely dr allison you embody quite literally decades of experience in this subject and we are going to be spending tens of billions of dollars during my two year term here missile defense do you believe that money could be better spent in protecting us against a biological threats that you have discussed here today  i believe that nuclear terrorist threats and biological terrorist threats are greater threats to america than is the delivery of a war by a missile against america so in the hierarchy of threats i have no question in my mind that terrorist attacks not using missiles are a greater threat than missile attacks but there's a second question which is  how much money should we spend on defense altogether and i tend to be small c conservative so i'm pretty much want to cover all the bets but in terms of priorities i would focus on the greater threats to us and i think a current situation in which we spend i think the current missile defense budget is nine or ten billion dollars on missile defense annually and we spend a small percentage of that on higher ranking threats doesn't make if you did that would you use it to focus on biological threats or to focus on the traditional concerns we've had over nuclear weapons and radiological dirty things of that nature is goal if we are asked to extend beyond submitting the report is going to be educational we believe the american public needs to understand the implications of what we think the risk assessments are and the need to urgently move to the steps that we have outlined to reduce  that risk so our principal activities would be things like we're doing today responding to requests by individuals and committees of the congress on this issue we also have and will do briefings of the appropriate new executive officials who have responsibility on this matter and will respond to requests from  universities and other groups who would like to learn more we think that last point is physically important in light of what senator talent is emphasized and that is the importance of developing within the scientific and academic community this culture of security for biological materials that is inadequate today could i add one word congressman to that  i gree of everything the that senator graham said and we would do all this with respect to the broad range of recommendations in the report we tend to emphasize because one of our goals is to raise a visit visibility in that area because we think it hasn't been nomics is that part of your purpose to go to try to begin some process for self restraint on their process the answer is yes and we wouldn't be doing this alone as an example there are now some twenty research universities which have come together to encourage this greater sense of common purpose and the of particularly biological materials it's being chaired by the president the pennsylvania state university graham spangler and we would work with groups like that  supporting their efforts as well as groups similarly who are involved in other aspects of our efforts the book that we have published that i believe you have the whatever royalties come from that book are going to go to a found an american foundation which is working with the education and healthcare systems in pakistan we think that's the kind of thing that we would like to be able to continue to support we've had a program in the past different names now for different jordan names as well acronyms but  great concern when the soviet union collapsed that there would be thousands of scientists from it's a large industry that would drift off into the hands of  bad when we were in russia in september we asked about that question and they said and our effort which was to provide alternative employment for those scientists they said in the nucular area they thought had been highly successful and frankly now that russia was recovering and has more economic capability its own our program is beginning to retreat with victory there has not been a similar effort on the biological side that would be an area that we would hope to encourage because we think the way that terrorists are likely to the come biologically capable is not when the terrorist becomes a biologist but when the biologist becomes a terrorist and brings their expertise  the to the table of destruction we went to vector together some years ago you probably have been so many times you've forgotten that particular trip but i remember looking over the shoulder of one of the bow just there in the words and i'm sure there will be no great appreciation to you and your fellow commissioners a typically to our two former congressional colleagues i hope we can have the opportunity particularly in a classified setting to submit some questions that in my mind arose during the discussion and then an editorial comment in closing i would say when we talk about ballistic missile defense or the likelihood of chemical versus biological we better to the acting chairman gentleman from south carolina mr brett two quick questions in raising the level of attention to the biological threat which you tended to be back burn it in the past i don't think you you and secondly we've spent about the same amount of money on all of these programs even though the content of what we've been spending for change from year to year about four hundred million dollars for non league are altogether  probably around two billion dollars like this is adequate particularly in light of your newfound concern for biological weapons are we spending enough here in my my  assessment the answer is no and to areas i will not repeat the biological but i will return to an earlier question we have been underfunding our international agency on the nuclear side and that is the international atomic energy agency and have been providing much of the funding in a very unstable set of of small project funding we need to re evaluate what we're what we want the i a e a to be able to do for our benefit and what the resources are going to be required to do that and then we need to lead the international community to provide those resources briefly i agree if the answer is no i think  i could recommend i would say president obama in the campaign said that he was going to develop a plan over the first four years of his administration to assure that on the nuclear front all weapons at all materials everywhere in the world was locked down to a satisfactory standard i would suggest you might challenge the administration to come forth with that plan and a strategy for accomplishing it and saying money is not the constraint tell us what money you need for those purposes i don't think it's a lot more money but i think it's somewhat more money i think secondly the flexibility to use the money in particular ways they should be challenged to say if there's some constraint that thank you very much mr congressman on behalf of the three of us and the other members of the commission we express our deep gratitude for the opportunity to present this report to such an important  committee of the congress