Guest Post by Nick Roth

For the last twenty years, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) “contract and project management” program has been a charter member of the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) list of government programs at high risk for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.

Late last week GAO ensured that the contract and project management program would remain on the list when it released a report describing how incredibly poor DOE has been at estimating the cost of their programs…

In a report titled “Actions Needed to Develop High-Quality Cost Estimates for Construction and Environmental Cleanup Projects,” GAO looked at DOE’s process for estimating the cost of major projects. The report focused on four specific projects, including the massive Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) proposed as part of DOE’s plan to increase it’s capacity to build new nuclear weapons. For those of you keeping score at home, the UPF was one of the items that Senator Kyl included on his “nuclear weapons Christmas wish list” in a letter sent to the President in December.

Report Highlights

Below are the Top 5 Most Important, Amusing, and “WTF?!” Report Findings/ Highlights:

1. DOE has not had a policy that establishes standards for estimating the cost of projects for over a decade.

2. GAO does not consider any of the cost estimates for the UPF to be fully or even mostly credible, well documented, accurate, or comprehensive.

3. Eight of DOE’s twelve major construction projects have exceeded their initial cost estimates by a total of nearly $14 billion. Nine of the ten major environmental cleanup projects related to nuclear weapons production experienced cost increases and need an additional $25 billion to $42 billion to be completed.

4. A DOE contractor conducted a risk analysis which estimated with 95% certainty that the UPF could be constructed for $2.3 billion. Later, DOE “experts” reviewing the project thought it would require significantly more funding and added more than a $1 billion “allowance” to the project. Also, DOE has no way of knowing whether any of these cost estimates are even remotely accurate.

5. Cost estimators for the UPF did not collect evidence to support cost projections contained in their estimate. For instance, the cost estimates did not include “costs associated with developing technologies that are critical to the facility’s function but were not yet mature enough to be included in such a facility.”

The report recommends that DOE:

1. Ensure its new policy and guide fully reflect cost-estimating best practices, including by requiring independent cost estimates for its major projects.

2. Create a centralized, independent cost-estimating capability within the department.

3. Conduct independent cost estimates for those major projects that have not received one.

Future Options to Study

GAO is to be commended for highlighting DOE’s slipshod accounting practices.  GAO should also conduct a study of what accountability measures can be put in place when DOE programs go way over budget.  One model to consider is how the Department of Defense (DOD) deals with significant cost overruns in their weapons procurement process.

DOD is now legally required to submit Select Acquisition Reports, or “SARs,” updating Congress on the status of their acquisition programs, including estimated Life Cycle Costs. According to the Nunn-McCurdy amendment to the 1982 Defense Authorization Bill, if a DOD procurement program has a cost overrun of more than 15%, DOD has to inform Congress. If a program has a cost overrun of more than 25%, the Secretary of Defense is required to appear before Congress and meet certain certification requirements; otherwise the program is terminated. DOE needs to be held to the same standard of accountability both before AND after they do their cost estimates.

Nick Roth is the Program Director for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA).  The views expressed in this post are Nick’s and do not necessarily represent those of ANA.

Editors note: Click here for John’s comments on the Doomsday Clock published yesterday in Global Security Newswire.Click here for John’s radio interview yesterday on the Doomsday Clock on Wisconsin Public Radio.

Who says that nuclear scientists can’t tell time?

Yesterday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the doomsday clock one minute further from midnight.

That movement signals that the world is in slightly better shape than a year ago, a little less likely to meet the doomsday of a nuclear holocaust or destruction of the planet by global warming.

The Bulletin issued a statement yesterday saying:

We are poised to bend the arc of history toward a world free of nuclear weapons. For the first time since atomic bombs were dropped in 1945, leaders of nuclear weapons states are cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making material. And for the first time ever, industrialized and developing countries alike are pledging to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render our planet nearly uninhabitable.

In fact, the movement of the Doomsday clock away from zero is appropriate in light of developments in 2009, and could have been moved even further if the decision were based solely on nuclear weapons issues.

Maybe two minutes more away from midnight.

The Copenhagen summit on global warming was widely seen as a baby step forward with governments unable to agree on mandatory limits for greenhouse gasses.

On the other hand, there has been significant progress on nuclear weapons issues in the past year, starting with President Obama’s seminal speech on nuclear issues at Prague last April.  

After little official focus on Cold War-aftermath issues by the previous two Presidents, the U.S. government has now renewed a focus on the 23,000 nuclear weapons remaining across the globe and the danger that some of these weapons could get in the hands of terrorists.  

The President followed the rhetoric with specific actions, including securing approval for his long-term goal of a world free of nuclear weapons by the U.N. Security Council, launching new negotiations with Russia on a nuclear reductions treaty, pledging vigorous action for ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, planning a Global Nuclear Security Summit in April 2010 and other steps.  

Where to next?  

We will know a lot more in six months if the steps produce successful conclusions and there is a productive Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference later this year.

The first of occasional postings
Guest Post by Afghanistan Ag Man

On December 1 of last year, President Barack Obama spoke to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on the future of American military operations in Afghanistan.  In the course of outlining the resources that would be required to implement a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy, the President stated:

We will work with our partners, the UN, and the Afghan people to pursue a more effective civilian strategy, so that the government can take advantage of improved security…we will also focus our assistance in areas — such as agriculture — that can make an immediate impact in the lives of the Afghan people.

It is due to these lines in the speech that I am here in Afghanistan today. As an agricultural advisor from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), I have been assigned to a province in the mountains of the Hindu Kush in Eastern Afghanistan.

Ultimately, I hope to use these blog  posts as an outlet to tell the stories of local Afghans and the troops that I live with, as well as my own story as an average American farmer that is now part of a civilian-military (re)development strategy in Afghanistan.  

My identity and location will remain anonymous to protect not only myself, but also the Americans and Afghans that I am working with. I will, however, try wholeheartedly to report as completely and factually as possible…

For the next year, I will be embedded with the men and women of the US military as they go on their patrols and conduct missions in my provincial area of responsibility. I am, however, just one of the several hundred U.S. Government employees (primarily from the Department of State, US Agency for International Development, and USDA) sent here to Afghanistan to serve in various capacities, including as Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) and District Support Team (DST) members; Afghan minister/ministry mentors; technical experts in the fields of governance, rule of law, agriculture, and irrigation; and civilian counterparts and advisors to our military leaders at the brigade, battalion, and platoon levels.

To better access the local population, I have been placed on an outpost in a remote area of the province and will be travelling from district to district to better assess the agricultural situation of each village. Life out here is pretty basic, but the guys I live alongside are honestly the best “co-workers” I could ask for. My integration into my unit has been surprisingly quick.  I neither expected nor have been granted special treatment. I celebrated Christmas by taking inventory of ammunition in a mortar pit; carried equipment to the tops of mountains to survey a valley (and I assure you, these are not hills, but mountains!); “conquered” a burned-out Soviet tank (an explanation will come in a following post); and waded through a river on a New Year’s Eve night mission.

In addition to my role as a member of a military unit, the Obama administration’s new strategy tasked me with the job of “reinforcing positive [Afghan] action” throughout the populace of my designated province. To this end, it will be necessary to go “outside the wire” each day to conduct missions. Such missions include shuras (i.e. consultations) with village representatives and elders, discussions with local farmers on crop yields and technical improvements, and project site assessments to gauge the progress of agricultural and irrigation improvements.

Each day’s mission usually starts out with encouraging words from our fearless lieutenant that it is only “a short walk–a few clicks (i.e. kilometers) at the most.” As I have found out, our missions continually evolve and these “few clicks” could include anything from scaling a mountain, to traversing fields after dark because a key leader engagement (KLE) (i.e. a meeting with key leaders or representatives of a village that speak on behalf of that community) was delayed, to spending long hours keeping watch over old Soviet minefields until a team arrives to deal with them.

A willingness to be flexible is, therefore, key to surviving a tour in Afghanistan. I live in an environment that has no weekends and that runs on military time, which I am still trying to get used to. A typical workday starts at about 0600 and does not end until 0000 (i.e. midnight). My normal morning routine of reading the New York Times has been replaced by reading mission briefs and security reports. As I fall asleep at night, I think about the possibility of an apiculture (i.e. beekeeping) training session for local farmers or the consequences of a check dam series (i.e. a series of small, somewhat temporary dams that slow down rivers and create pools of water) on a stretch of a particular river.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I have never had an occupation that has brought so much satisfaction and exhaustion so early on. I look forward to getting up each day, working alongside American soldiers and Afghan interpreters, and doing my part to help stabilize the country so that we can ultimately leave. From my vantage point, the military has embraced the necessity of a civilian effort to complement their military efforts. For example, on occasions when I am not out on patrol with my base unit, I often return to dinner conversations with them that contain enthusiastic reports of their meetings with farmers that need to meet me or of potential agricultural projects to assess. I am often referred to the villagers as “an agriculture guy that is really smart and can help you with your crops” – a humbling moniker that I hope to live up to.

The Cable’s Josh Rogin and Global Security Newswire’s Elaine Grossman confirm what we’ve known for some time: verification, specifically telemetry, is delaying completion of the New START agreement.  

START I defined “telemetric information” as “information that originates on board a missile during its flight test that is broadcast or recorded for subsequent recovery.” It required both parties “to make on-board technical measurements during each flight test of an ICBM or SLBM; to broadcast this information using unencrypted telemetry, with limited exceptions; and to exchange copies of telemetry tapes acceleration profiles, and interpretive data from all flight-tests.”

The Russians are arguing that they should no longer be required to share (and broadcast unencrypted?) telemetric information because they are building new missiles while we are not.  The Obama administration is under pressure to retain START I’s provisions on telemetry in part because, as Travis notes, “certain [mostly Republican] senators will go nuts without access to the data.”  

I think there are a couple of things to keep in mind as we think about this issue – and verification more broadly…  

The first is that the U.S. has not negotiated a meaningful arms control agreement since the early 1990s.  As a colleague on the Hill put it to me, telemetry is “complicated, and very technical, and both sides are very short on people who remember how to construct this sort of a verification regime.”  This lack of expertise has undoubtedly slowed things down.

The second (and more important) point is that people who continue to attack the Obama administration on verification need to understand that while New START will draw upon much of what was in START I, the new treaty will contain new limits and rules.  This has important implications for how the U.S. and Russia go about determining what is and what is not necessary for effective verification.  As one arms control expert put it recently:

And so the verification provisions really need to be driven by the actual limitations that you agree to, and to the extent that you have different limitations than were in the START treaty, and I think in some ways this new agreement is going to be simpler than the START treaty.  That may impose, in some ways, less demanding verification requirements.  And that gives the side the opportunity, then, to eliminate the inspections if they make no contribution to the overall understanding of the other side’s compliance with the treaty.

Thus, while our intelligence community would probably prefer to retain such provisions as continuous monitoring at Votkinsk and the exchange of telemetry, they may not be necessary to verify Russia’s compliance with the new treaty – to say nothing about the fact that we have other ways of making up for the loss of much of the information provided by these provisions in any event.

For example, START I stated that “telemetric information…assists in verification of Treaty provisions concerning, for example, throw-weight and the number of reentry vehicles.”  Given that New START is likely to have new provisions on throw-weight (in fact it might not have any provisions on throw-weight because we don’t really care about it anymore) and new counting rules for delivery vehicles and warheads, we should be able to live with “simpler” and “less demanding” provisions on telemetry.

Of course, Jon Kyl and company don’t really care about this distinction; they want to score political points.  How else to explain the fact that when the Bush administration was in office, Republicans couldn’t have cared less about verification?  

In the most recent issue of Newsweek, Sharon Begley argues that Iran’s nuclear program has become an issue of national pride akin to Palestinian claims to Jerusalem. According to Begley, for many Iranians the nuclear program now constitutes a “sacred value” and trumps rational cost-benefit analysis, creating a barrier to further diplomatic engagement.

Begley’s argument is based on a new experiment by Morteza Dehghani, Douglas Medin and colleagues in the December issue of the journal Judgment and Decision Making. The study asked 72 young (average age, 28), Iranian, college graduates if Iran should give up its nuclear program. Twenty-two percent chose “I think this definitely needs to happen,” while 15 percent chose “I do not object to this,” and 52 percent chose “this is acceptable only if the benefits of stopping the program are great enough.” Good news, right? Not according to Begley.

Begley focuses on the 11 percent who chose “this shouldn’t be done no matter how great the benefits are.” This is the group for whom, according to the study, the nuclear program seems to constitute a sacred value.

Though the percentage seems small, Begley argues that “it is likely that more ordinary Iranians than educated, English-speaking Iranians—those surveyed for the study—view the nukes as a sacred value, suggesting that the 11 percent is an underestimate.”

Assuming this hypothesis is correct; it suggests a bleak outlook for current nuclear negotiations. But do they draw the rights conclusions from their experiment? Or are they overplaying the views of a fringe population that often exists at the margins of survery experiments?

Leaders of Iran’s Green Movement (which is arguably more engaged than the 11 percent of Iranians Begley speaks of and is made up of, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of Iranians) have repeatedly articulated their opposition to nuclear weapons, though they seem to favor a peaceful nuclear program for Iran.

Unfortunately, Dehghani et. al.’s experiment did not seek to ascertain whether Iranians also view nuclear weapons as a sacred value. For the purposes of negotiation, which is Begley’s main focus, this is a crucial distinction. All material incentives are not off the table, as Begley would have us believe, if 11 percent of Iranians view only peaceful nuclear enrichment – not nuclear weapons – as a sacred value.

Moreover, let’s not forget that twenty-two percent of those surveyed believe that Iran should “definitely” give up its nuclear program. Although “even a minority, if it is committed enough, can carry the day” it looks as if Begley’s minority is outnumbered in almost every way.