Transcripts For CSPAN2 Hudson Institute Discussion On Nuclea

Hudson. My name is richard weitz, and the director of the center for political director of the center for political and military analysis here at hudson. Today we are honored to talk about an important report and the port 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 Arms Control Association on empowering congress a nuclear authority, blueprints for a new generation. I want to take the welcome the cspan audience for joining us. To make everything easier, if people could silence any cell phones you might have now, that would be very helpful. The report and either work we have been doing with partnerships to secure america and Arms Control Association has been over a year, and independent project over collaborated with these organizations last you doing through events on hill, congressional briefings on the Nuclear Threat, the tools of the trade. That is, how do we identify an account of the threat, and Global Security nuclear architecture. Both the report and the presentations we gave in congress were generously supported by the Macarthur Foundation. The agenda for today is, we will have three presentations that will discuss the importance of congressional Nuclear Oversight in general, the key findings and recommendations of the report, summarizing and assessing them, and then a discussion about what more needs to be done, what might be good initiatives of the study or we pursue as a go further. Our first speaker will be Andrew Semmel who is chairman of the board of directors of partner to secure america which is a nonprofit out by former u. S. Representative lee hamilton and yes, senator warren rudman. Since january 2008 he has also been a private consultant at aks consulting. Before that he was Deputy Assistant secretary of state for Nuclear Nonproliferation and the Departments Bureau of nonproliferation, and then he had me position before then. Afterwards, the next big will be kingston reif, director of disarmament and Threat Reduction policy at the Arms Control Association. And Arms Control Association is a national nonpartisan Membership Organization dedicated to promoting understanding policy. One of his expertise is very fitting for the day is that as a legislative process and congressional actions on these issues. Hes very smart, being a formr marshall scholar and a frequent beaty, to do. Then, independent of the to the conversations of the report we have as a guest respondent, an expert, joyce connery, a Defense Nuclear facilities safety board member. This is an independent organization within the executive branch that is responsible for recommendations and advice to the Public Health and safety issues in the Energy Department, nuclear facilities. Before that she worked in various National Labs and and the department of energy and served on the National Security council. Her views are sold her own with no official support or endorsement by the board of u. S. Government and and, in fact, af us as independent think tanks we are not taking institutional position on these issues. We just want to contribute to a debate on what we consider to be a important topic. You want to go ahead . Im a little out of breath because we hustled down here. Sorry, i got stuck in traffic and apologize being late. Thanks, richard. Two things before i i Start Talking about the report. I want to introduce, we have to make other fellow members of the partnership for a secure america, rachel and went to mention jack. Jack was a project director just wave your hand. You can join in on some of the discussion as we get into it. Want to point about for the work theyve done. The second and want to mention is in supremely great timing this morning, as i think some of us know that congressman panetta and fleishman introduce a bipartisan piece of legislation that is a derivative of our study, really one of our recommendations called Nuclear Security nonproliferation accounting act which would, if its acted, past and enacted it would rocard gao to give congress an annual report on the budget and spending on Nuclear Security and domestic, both international and domestic nucleus could programs. This is one of the recommendations of the report and both those members of the Nuclear Security working group in the house of representatives, bipartisan piece of legislation. What im going to do is just talk about get my voice talking about the study we did and why we did it, how we did it, and what sort of generalization, what kind of principal findings that we derive from it. When i say we, i mean the actual survey we did excuse me among Congressional Staff. Heres some water for you. The way we started on this issue, we wanted to get some greater clarity on what is Nuclear Security, what is the Nuclear Security issue area. We thought we would see particularly how congress thinks about this issue, what is Knowledge Base is, how it feels about it, what his priorities are and so forth. The reason i want to focus on congress is because congress has a little bit of a history of bipartisan history in some cases of actually coming up with good initiatives, interesting initiatives that have moved not by this legislation but other legislation, the one we oversight is a cooperative reduction act and socalled nunnlugar legislation that was passed in the early 1990s. So congress is an important player, coequal branch of the government, and more. What we did was we set out to focus our attention on Congressional Staff, Congressional Staff in part because Congressional Staff are more accessible, we can get them willing to participate then more than members are. They play an Important Role in the entire legislative process in terms of their advice to members, in terms of writing legislation, coming up with ideas, staying on top of legislation so forth. I think no of the country and will rivals the role and of whh staff as far as i know, staff place in a legislative process. I know i talked to members legislative and other countries and they marvel at the role of our Congressional Staff in the legislative process. In terms of the partnership for a secure america we have an established record of being able to mobilize Congressional Staff on a number of the program soviet a running start on some of this. How did we do this . Our database is composed of three different components, and ill give you the numbers on them. The first part of the database is we did facetoface personal interviews with about 20 Congressional Staffers, most of whom are what we call directly involved are 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, maybe a follow up with things like that. This was one sort of some set level of the data that were able to gather on it. Second was we did a digital, set out a survey to Congressional Staff and received 107 responses on that. Its not exactly how would call a random sample but its a large sample, gives us some credibility in making inferences from those data. These were directed at staffers who had some broad engagement on Foreign Policy, National Security, Homeland Security, intelligence, that sort of thing. So we had those two groups of individuals, and then we had, which total about 127 samples, if you want to call it, data sources. The third part of this sort of methodology was to have a small focus group. Teens can and i would do. We invited another ten ten or o staffers i think it was, and to simply sort of go over them, go over with them but we thought our findings were, and have discussion with the 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 that we were able to collect and to give us more texture, i think. So those three components are they key of our methodology. The data was collected some time ago, and i think it was the fall and winter of 201718, so it was obviously before last years mitchard elections, which changed the composition of congress in a remarkable way. It was before the Nuclear Posture review was released, so its been nearly anyways, before that was released. Let me talk about, there were a number of findings that we had in the report. Let me talk about four or five of them that i think were very interesting, 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 either been on the hill, i just than 16 years in the senate, and have some time ago, obviously back before the thinking of the battleship maine. [laughing] but some understanding of the hill. This is a first important thing that i think we learn. We asked the question first of all, elicit some responsibility question was, when someone raises the issue of Nuclear Security in congress or talks about the threat of Nuclear Security, what comes to your mind. Our findings provoked a veritable scattergram of responses. The single largest response, we develop a word cloud, its in the report, in which we take all the words of the respondents that were elicited, and according to their frequency, the words would appear larger and so forth. So that word cloud, what we saw basically in response to this is there was no consensus of what this issue area, Nuclear Security is a was at that point. And that there was considerable there was no disagreement, no understanding or i might point out what this term, what this issue area was. Most other responses, many of the responses i should say pointed towards that the Nuclear Security was statebased threats. That is to say, many staffers pointed to north Korea Nuclear program, russia, china. There was some sprinkling of pakistan and other countries in there. The bad actors. There was some discussion of Nuclear Terrorism in those responses and so forth and so on. So basically Congressional Staff tended to view Nuclear Security more in terms of threats emanating from other states, not as defined by the way, in the questioner, both the interviews and in the digital questioner that we set out, we had the standard iaea definition of Nuclear Security, securing Nuclear Materials and the facilities that house them, in generic definition. I dont know whether those responses respond back to top of emphasis in that. Time was around north Korean Nuclear program and others. There was a disorientation. It wasnt a focus on Nuclear Security as people do with this issue, understand it. It was more statebased threats, and so that was not a surprise to me but it was i think a favorite important finding. Theres misunderstanding, in other words, about this particular issue area. Second major finding is 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 the work requirements. You know, where you stand depends on where you sit type of affirmation. That is to say, one, if these staffers work on defense or defenserelated issues, defenserelated terms, Armed Services, defense appropriations were part of the sample that we had, they focus more on things like commandandcontrol, Weapons Development and the like. Those of the sample who worked on energy or energyrelated issues, the Energy Committees and energy and water appropriations, et cetera, tended to see the solution on energy terms. Nuclear safety storage, waste management, sabotage, Nuclear Energy of course. Those who focus on more traditional Foreign Policy errors, the House Foreign Affairs committee, Senate Foreign Relations Committee tended to see more in traditional terms of proliferation, new s. T. A. R. T. , iaea, things like that. So the responses to this question tended to break down along the internal institutional lines, depending upon what the work requirements of the individual staffers that we talked about. There was some Common Concerns that funding that cuts across all of these work requirement issue areas. Another finding very quickly is those staff with more years of experience, been on the hill longer obviously, people we described as more, people we described as more directly on the issue tended to give this issue area a higher priority in the realm of Foreign Policy and National Security than those with less expert on you. Again, nothing surprising but it was nonetheless now we have an empirical base to say thats true. Our findings suggest, we can come back to this, there really needs to be more crosscutting contact in communication with s naked on the hill across these three different issue areas, committees, caucuses, and so. Another finding very quickly want to get through this task in another study finding pertainse sources of information that staff utilize in understanding the nucleus could issue. We asked, to whom to look when you want to be more fully, what to more fully understand Nuclear Security issues . The crs and nongovernmental organizations and think tanks were cited as the most fuller, most reliable sources for most of the staff. Those staffers who recalled more directly engage on the issue on a much more frequent basis tend to lean more towards ink tanks and ngos for insight, while those we discovered is less directly engaged turn to crs and Congressional Research service or other sources such as executive branch, the needy, committees of jurisdiction, personal staff and the like. I might point out there was some skepticism if your work anil or a work on it right now, 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 which they work. As institutional data with nucleus could issue. Again we asked two related questions. The first one was, how much of an impact do you think congress can have on this issue area, Nuclear Security . Then a followup question, how much impact do you think congress should have on improving u. S. And global Nuclear Security programs . And issue of Nuclear Security. The results were somewhat i find intriguing, having worked on the hill. The staff tended to say that congress should have, take of those who are highly engaged, with great impact and influence on policy programs, on Nuclear Security then they said that congress can have. So that was some disappointment what congress can do and there was some hope and expectation that congress should be doing more than they were, in fact, doing. This might suggest congress is underperforming on this issue, at least from the sample that we took. Many staffers doubted whether congress could take a lead role in some of these issues, despite the fact that our historical examples, the nunnlugar legislation i mentioned being the example. We interpret this in part to the fact that so a lot of expertise, a loss of expertise among members, among staff on hill and that at the time were interviewed was no Major Nuclear terrorist incident at galvanized interest and attention. And that theres 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 low differences between democrats and republican staffers. No big significant difference between house and the senate, perhaps the size of the sample, whatever it might be, but thats what we found. We asked the staffers about constituents very quickly, and we found