Richard thank you. Lets begin. I want to welcome everyone to hudson. My name is richard price. Today, we are honored to talk about an important report and an important subject, that is congressional efforts to oversee the u. S. Nuclear security efforts. We are specifically going to talk about a report, copies of which are outside, by the partnerships to secure america and the Arms Control Association, blueprints for a new generation. I want to particularly welcome the cspan audience for joining us. To make everything easier, if people could silence any cell phones you have now, that would be helpful. The report and other work we have been doing with partnerships to secure america and the Arms Control Association has been continuing over years. It is an independent project, but we collaborated with these two organizations, doing two events on the hill, congressional briefings on the Nuclear Threat and tools of the trade, how do we encounter the threat, and Global Security architecture . Both the report and the presentations we gave in congress were supportive of the supported by the john and katherine Macarthur Foundation. Weenda for today is will have three presentations that will discuss the importance of congressional Nuclear Oversight in general, the key findings and recommendations of reports summarizing and assessing them and discussions about what more needs to be done, what initiatives we could pursue as we go further. Our first speaker will be the chairman of the board of directors at partnership for secure america, which is a nonprofit founded by former representative lee hamilton. It calls for advance on bipartisanship on Critical National security and Foreign Policy challenges since january 2008. He has also been a private consultant at aks consulting. Before that, he was Deputy Assistant secretary of state for nuclear operations, and has had a lot of impressive positions before that. Kingston reef, the director of disarmament and Threat Reduction policy at the arms control organization. Afterwards, the speakers his work focuses on nuclear disarmament, which prevents Nuclear Terrorism and other issues. It is a Nonpartisan Organization dedicated to effective arms policy. One of his expertises is the legislator progress and congressional actions on this issue. He is very smart, a former marshall scholar and media commentator. Independent of the two organizations that have cowritten the report, we have have a guest with an extensive career on energy policy. She is currently the member of the board of the Defense Nuclear facility safety board, and this is an independent organization in the executive branch that is responsible for Public Health and safety issues in the departments and nuclear facilities. Before that, she worked in various national labs, in the department of energy, and served on the National Security council. Her views are solely her own, no official endorsement by the border the u. S. Government, and in fact, all of us as independent think tanks, we are not taking an institutional position on these issues. We just want to contribute to a discussion today on what we consider to be a really important topic. Thank you, nancy. Do you want to go ahead . I am a little out of breath because we hustled down here, sorry. I got stuck in traffic and apologize for being late. Two things before i Start Talking about the report. I want to introduce, we have two other fellow members of the partnership for america, rachel and jack. Wave your hand. I want to point about for the work that they have done. The second thing i want to mention, in supremely great timing this morning, as some of us know that congressman panetta introduced a piece of legislation that is derivative of our study, one of our ifommendations which would, it is enacted, passed and enacted, would ask and require the gao to give the congressman a report on budget and spending in both nationalized Domestic Nuclear security programs, for greater security. This is one of the recommendations in the report, and both of those members are of the Nuclear Security working group on a bipartisan piece of legislation. What im going to do is just talk about the study that we did, why we did it, how we did it, and what sort of generalization, what principle findings we derive from it. When i say we, i mean the actual survey that we did excuse me among Congressional Staff. Well, the way we started on this issue, we wanted to get some greater clarity about what is Nuclear Security . What is the Nuclear Security issue area . We thought we would see with the whole of congress thinks about this issue, what its Knowledge Base is, how it feels about it, what its priorities are and so forth. The reason we wanted to focus on congress is because congress has a bit of history, bipartisan cases, of coming up with good, interesting initiatives that have not only moved this legislation, but other legislation. The cooperative reduction act and other Bipartisan Legislation that was passed in the early 1990s. So congress is an important player as coequal branch of the government and more. What we did was set out to focus our attention on Congressional Staff. Congressional staff, in part, because Congressional Staff are more accessible, they are more assembleable is that a word . They are willing to produce a paper this more than the members are, and Congressional Staff plane Important Role in the entire legislative process. In terms of advice to members, in terms of writing legislation, coming up with ideas, being on top of legislation and so forth. I think no other country in the world rivals the role, as far as i know, that staff play in our legislative process. I know ive talked to members, legislators around the world marvel at the role they play in our legislative process. Partnership for america, we have sort of a running start on some of this. How did we do this . Our database composed of three different components, and i will give you numbers on them. The first part of the database. We actually did facetoface, personal interviews with about 20 Congressional Staffers. Most of whom are what we call a directly involved or heavily involved on this issue in Nuclear Security. These were personal interviews in their offices, personal interviews have the advantage of being able to get clarity on some of the responses, a followup or things like that. That was one subset of the data that we were able to gather on it. The second was, we did a digital sent out a survey to Congressional Staff and received 107 responses on that. It is not exactly what we call a random sample, but a large sample, giving us some credibility in making inferences from those data. These were directed at staffers who have some broad engagement on Foreign Policy, National Security, Homeland Security, intelligence. That sort of thing. We had two groups of individuals, which is about 127 samples, if you want to call it, 127 data sources. The third part of this methodology was to have a small focus group. Kingston and i were there. We invited another 10 or so staffers, i think it was, to dinner always nice to have dinner and to simply sort of go over them, go over with them what we thought our findings were and have a discussion with these staffers. Most of whom had not participated in the survey itself. Some of them did, some of them didnt. This was a way to enrich our understanding of the data we were able to collect and to give us some more texture, i think. So those three components are key of the core methodology. The data was collected some time ago. I think it was the fall and winter of 20172018, so it was obviously before last years midterm elections, which changed the composition of congress in a remarkable way. It was before the Nuclear Posture review was released, so anyway, before that was released. There are a number of findings that we have in the report, let me talk about four or five of them that were the most interesting to us and hopefully to you. What did we learn . The first thing we learn is probably the most important thing we learned, and the least surprising to those of us who have either been on the hill for i spent 16 years in the backe, some time ago, before the sinking of the battleship maine. Some understanding of the hill and things that take place up there. So this is the first important thing i think we learned. We asked the question to elicit some responses. The question, when someone raises the issue of Nuclear Security in congress or talks about the threat of Nuclear Security, what comes to mind . Our findings provoked a variable scattergram of responses. The single largest response we developed a word cloud for from the report. We take all the words in the responses elicited, according to their frequency, the words would appear larger and so forth. That word cloud, what we saw, basically, in response to this, there was no consensus on what this issue area of Nuclear Security is or was at that point. There was no disagreement, there was no understanding i might point out what this term, what this issue area was. Most of the responses any of the responses, i should say, were that Nuclear Security was statebased threats. That is to say, many staffers pointed to the north Korea Nuclear program. Russia, china, some sprinkling of pakistan and other countries in there. That actors. There was some discussion of Nuclear Terrorism in those responses, and so forth. So basically, Congressional Staffers viewed Nuclear Security as threats enacted by other states. Not as defined by the way, in the questionnaire, both the interviews and in the digital questionnaire that we sent out, iaead this standard definition of Nuclear Security, securing Nuclear Materials and the facilities that house them, basically. The generic definition. I do not know if those responses are an artifact of that time, but the emphasis in that period of time was around the north Korean Nuclear program and others. So there was a disorientation. There wasnt a focus on nuclear iturity as people view it, was more statebased threats. That was not a surprise to me, but it was a very important finding. There was misunderstanding about this particular issue area. The second major finding was derived from the first, and that is that staffers that we interviewed in this sample tended to view the issue of Nuclear Security according to their work requirements. Where you stand depends upon where you sit, that phrase we use often in academic literature. That is to say, many of the staffers who work on defense or defenserelated issues, on defenserelated terms. Armed services, defense appropriations were some of the examples that we had, they focus more on command and control, Weapons Development and the like. Those of the staff who worked on energy or energyrelated issues, the Energy Committees and appropriations, etc. , tended to see the issue along energy terms, as you might expect. Nuclear storage, waste management, sabotage. That sort of Nuclear Energy. Those that focused on the more traditional Foreign Policy areas, the Senate Foreign relations committee, tended to see it more in traditional terms of proliferation, new start, the iaea, things like that. The responses to this question tended to break down along internal institutional lines, depending upon what the work requirements of these individual staffers we talked about. There were Common Concerns about funding the cut across all of the work requirement issue areas. Another finding, very quickly, is that those staff who had more years of experience, and people we describe as more directly engaged on the issue tended to give this issue area a higher priority in the realm of our Foreign Policy and National Security than those with less experience on the hill. Again, not particularly surprising, but now we have an empirical base to say that is true. Our findings suggest, as we come back to this, there needs to be more crosscutting contact and communication, working together on the hill, across these areas, cross committees, caucuses, and so on. Another finding very quickly i want to get through this fast another finding pertains to the sources of information that staff utilize on understanding the Nuclear Security issue. We asked the question, to whom do you look when you want to more fully understand Nuclear Security issues . The crs and nongovernment organizations and think tanks were cited as the most reliable sources for most of the staff. Those staffers who we called more directly engaged more directly on the issue on a much more frequent basis, tending to lean towards think tanks and ngos for insights, while those we described as less directly engaged turned to the crs congressional resource service, or other sources such as executive staff, the media, personal staff, and the like. There was some skepticism about reliance on the executive branch and on the media. Another interesting finding was how staff assessed the role of congress as a whole. Their own Work Environment in which they work as an institution for dealing with the Nuclear Security issue. We asked two questions. The first one was, how much of an impact do you think congress can have on this issue area . Nuclear security . Then we had a followup question, how much impact do you think congress should have on improving u. S. And global Nuclear Security programs . And the issue of Nuclear Security . The results were somewhat intriguing, having worked on the hill. The staff tended to say that congress should have more more staff said congress should have a greater impact and influence on policy and programs on Nuclear Security than they said congress can have. There is some disappointment over what congress can do and there was some hope and expectation of what congress should be doing than they were doing. This might suggest that congress is underperforming on this issue, at least in the sample that we took. So many staffers doubted that congress could take a larger role, despite the fact there are historical examples. We interpret this to the fact that there was a loss of expertise, there has been a loss of expertise among members and staff on the hill, and at the time that we interviewed, there was no Major Nuclear terrorist incident that galvanized interest and attention. And there was very little constituent interest among the constituents of congress. By the way, on these issues, we found, much to our interest, that there were very little differences between democrats and republican staffers. No big significant difference between the house and the senate. Perhaps the size of the sample might be a reason for that. We asked the staffers about constituents very quickly, and we found very quickly that among the constituents, most constituents, this is not a high priority, not a big concern, not of interest to members. There are some exceptions for members who had a car plant in their district or state, or a Nuclear Facility of some sort or some other thing that might engender greater interest. But basically, not much constituent concern. And this issue gets lost in the flood of so many other things, if there is not something to catalyze interest. We also finally asked deciding standpoints for congressional leadership, we wanted to know what knowledge they had about the past as predictors of the present and future, and what they might do legislatively. The staff mentioned a few current members, some members who are part of the Nuclear Security working group and the congress that has been created, response amongt those with longer tenures, more than eight years in service, was the reduction program, which is a bipartisan piece of those two guys have been nominated at least six times for a Nobel Peace Prize but never got it, for their effort. It was the marquee that staff mentioned to us. We also asked whether there were gaps in domestic and Nuclear Security programs given the threat terrorism had posed in virtually all of them said of course, but we cant come to agreement on what steps those might be. We created this