On May 15th-16th, the Center hosted the inaugural session of its Nuclear Defense Working Group. This was the first of several meetings to be held through 2008 in which a dozen experts in relevant technology, policy, and operational areas will meet to review U.S. efforts to prevent and/or defend against clandestine nuclear attack, and to help bring about better congruence between those executive branch efforts and the oversight responsibility of the Congress. Dr. Richard Wagner, former senior official at Los Alamos National Laboratory, will chair the Center's Nuclear Defense Working Group (NDWG).
The Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) agreed recently to cooperate with CSP by providing the Working Group with a series of briefings on its investment and deployment strategies, technology development, performance metrics, and strategic communications. The NDWG charter is broad and may serve as a vehicle for improved understanding among the DNDO, other agencies, and the Congress of what is needed in those efforts. The support for the NDWG is provided by a grant from a private foundation, thus assuring independence and an honest-broker status of the NDWG.
Project leadership will produce a series of papers based on the conclusions of these discussions, which will focus on topics such as long-term commitments to Transformational R&D, reinvigoration of the national nuclear laboratories, and institutionalizing net assessment for the combating smuggled nuclear weapons mission. The Center's findings will be shared, as appropriate, with Congressional leaders and senior staff, as well as top decisionmakers in the Executive Branch, through members of the NWDG and through the Center's project leadership.
For more information on Center's Nuclear Defense Working Group, please contact Alex Douville, Director of Policy Studies, at 202-872-9800 or via e-mail.
Related CSP Efforts
Beginning in May 2004, the Center organized a series of off-the-record roundtables with senior leadership from the White House, the national labs, the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security, and the private sector to solve a bureaucratic impasse across the executive branch that was stalling a defense against our single greatest threat-smuggled nuclear weapons.
As part of these efforts, CSP formed its Nuclear Defense Steering Committee (NDSC), chaired by Norman Augustine, which developed recommendations to create a modern-day "mini Manhattan Project" to marshal the nation's efforts for defending against smuggled nuclear weapons. After consultations with the NDSC, Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Loy proposed establishing the new Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) to the White House in January 2005.
The NDSC uncovered critical shortcomings in the new proposal. To address these concerns and share recommendations with Executive Branch leadership, the NDSC met with Vice President Cheney and his staff at the White House in the early months of 2005.
In meeting with the Vice President, the NDSC raised specific concerns about the DNDO-such as whether it will move quickly enough and whether DNDO will adequately integrate the capabilities of all of the departments and agencies needed for a global defense. The NDSC explained that without adequate freedom from bureaucratic layers, DNDO would fail to achieve its goals. We also recommended to the Vice President and his staff that a national approach must be elevated above bureaucracies, ideally with explicit Presidential support. The Vice President suggested the Center submit a position paper outlining organizational recommendations to help strengthen DNDO.
On March 16, 2005, Secretary Chertoff issued an internal memorandum establishing the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office as a national effort. One month later, the President issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive 14 to create DNDO's authorities. The office-reporting to the Homeland Security Secretary - coordinates nuclear detection R&D, develops deployment strategies, and spearheads next-generation technologies to defend against the smuggled nuclear threat with a 2007 budget of almost $500 million.
