Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

There has rightly already been a lot of great commentary excoriating Mitt Romney for his absolutely outlandish op-ed on New START in yesterday’s WaPo.  I really laughed out loud when I read the reference to putting ICBMs on bombers.  To my kn…

Time and time again, politicians, pundits, and security experts have painted the terrifying picture of a mushroom cloud looming over the vaporized remains of an American city.  If you look at the budget for missile defense (DoD has requested approximately $10 billion for FY 2011) you’d think that the most likely attack on the United States would come via a ballistic missile, given that what the U.S. spends on missile defense greatly exceeds combined spending on domestic and international maritime and port of entry interdiction efforts and nuclear detection activities.

The dirty little secret of domestic nuclear defense, however, is that should the US ever come under nuclear attack, odds are that it will not come from a missile launch.  Instead, a nuclear device or dirty bomb is likely to be delivered from a non-missile source, such as a container entering a U.S. port..  On June 30, witnesses at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs revealed that the US remains woefully vulnerable to this kind of threat…

The committee heard from three witnesses:

•    Eugene E. Aloise
Director, Natural Resources and Environment Division
U.S. Government Accountability Office

•    Micah D. Lowenthal, Ph.D.
Director, Nuclear Security and Nuclear Facility Safety Program, Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board
National Research Council of the National Academies

•    Dana A. Shea, Ph.D.
Specialist in Science and Technology Policy; Resources, Science, and Industry Divsion; Congressional Research Service
Library of Congress

The purpose of the hearing was to examine the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO), a little-known agency established in 2005 within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detect nuclear smuggling operations (the hearing coincided with the release of a GAO report on the issue).  The office is charged with creating an overarching system of domestic nuclear detection involving the Departments of Defense, Energy, and State (as well as others), a mandate that has met with some success.  About two-thirds of the more than 2,100 radiation portal monitors planned for by the DHS have been deployed at points of entry around the US.  Today, nearly all cargo containers transported by vehicles across our borders are scanned for nuclear materials, as are almost 100% of all containers coming through our seaports.

However, according to the GAO report, only a small percentage of rail and air cargo is ever scanned, and DHS has also failed to meet its scanning and inspection goals for commercial air cargo, baggage, and passengers.  Indeed, as Committee Chairman Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman noted, “As I look back and look at where we are now…the threat of nuclear terrorist attack on the United States is growing faster than our ability to prevent a nuclear terrorist attack.”  The witnesses confirmed this conclusion, placing the blame squarely on the DNDO.

A January 2009 GAO study, for instance, recommended that DHS address critical gaps in nuclear detection identified by the DNDO, especially un-policed border areas, commercial aviation, and small sea vessels operating outside of large ports, as soon as possible.  DNDO has since taken no action on these issues.  Instead of focusing on expanding coverage, since 2006 DNDO spent $234 million dollars (out of a possible $2 billion allocated) on developing advanced spectroscopic portal (ASP) radiation detection monitors, an upgrade over the current monitors that both Mr. Aloise and Dr. Lowenthal described as being a marginal improvement at best.  In addition, all three witnesses criticized the DNDO for failing to create a strategic plan to address the domestic nuclear threat (originally called for by the GAO in 2002), leading to a lack of cohesion between departments and wasted time and tax dollars.

When pressed by Sen. Lieberman for his opinion, Mr. Aloise said that had the DNDO focused on coverage instead of technological upgrades, closing gaps in protection would have been achievable: “There’s certainly ways, if given the resources and analysis, you could do it.  So yes, we believe it can be done.”

Even the DNDO seems to have realized that its current direction is the wrong one, having requested an additional $13 million for another round of studies to produce a new master plan.  Officials from DHS were invited to the hearing, but were apparently not prepared to testify. Another hearing has been scheduled for July 21.

“The time,” said a clearly frustrated Lieberman, “for multi-year ‘studies’ is over; the time for urgent action really is now.”

After weeks of intense debate, the House passed an approximately $80 billion emergency supplemental appropriations bill last night that will lend an additional $33 billion to the wars in Afghanistan in Iraq.

In the end, the vote to advance the nearly $60 billion Senate-passed measure came under a vote on the rule, an obscure process used to allow the House to vote to set the terms for debate on the bill, but not on the underlying bill.  Inside the rule, the bill was deemed passed after the rule passed.  The vote was close, but eeked by at 215-210.  The budget resolution (that isn’t really a budget resolution) was included within the self-executing rule.

The House then took up five separate amendments.

(after the jump)

The first includes a $1 billion youth summer jobs program and a settlement of the Cobell v. Salazar and Pigford v. Vilsack class action lawsuits, among other things.

The bulk of the House’s $20 billion addition, however, comes from the second amendment which includes:

•    $10 billion for an Education Jobs Fund that will prevent impending local teacher layoffs
•    $4.95 billion to address the current year shortfall in the Pell Grant Program
•    $701 million for border security
•    $304 million for the Gulf Coast oil spill (the Senate bill carried $162 million)
•    $50 million for The Emergency Food Assistance Program
•    $163 million to improve elementary and secondary schools on DoD installations
•    $180 million in loan guarantees, split evenly between nuclear and renewable energy programs
•    $16.5 million for the replacement of the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood.
•    $538 million to strengthen waste, fraud and abuse prevention and enforcement for Medicaid, Medicare and the IRS.

The spending in the amendment is entirely offset by cuts.  One of these cuts, though, sparked an immediate reaction from the White House.  In an unusually public clash with Democratic allies, the President has promised to veto the bill if a proposed $800 million cut from programs such as the Race to the Top grant initiative is adopted.

The final three votes were largely symbolic and focused primarily on Afghanistan.

The first, with no named sponsor, would eliminate military funding for Afghanistan from the bill, but received only 25 votes.  The second would call for the money to go only toward a withdrawal.  This amendment garnered significantly more votes, with 100 ayes and 321 noes.

The third, sponsored by Reps. David Obey (D-Wis.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.), received 162 votes.  The bill would require a new National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan by January 31, 2011, and a plan by April 4, 2011, on the redeployment of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, including a timeframe for the completion of the redeployment.

While none of these three Afghanistan amendments ultimately passed, they send a powerful message about the country’s growing impatience with the war.

At 6:15 this evening, in the East Room of the White House, President Obama will sign into law “the toughest ever unilateral US sanctions against the Islamic republic” that nobody believes will work.

The Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act was passed last week by overwhelming margins in both the House and Senate: 408-8 and 99-0, respectively.  

Despite Congress’ denial of exemptions for cooperating countries sought by the administration, reactions from the White House have been mostly positive.  In a statement released Friday, Secretary Clinton welcomed the passage of the legislation, saying that both she and President Obama support the “broad aims” of the Congressional action.

While the final measure does contain significant human rights and development initiatives that should not be discounted, they do little to offset the fact that the people of Iran, not the regime, are most sensitive to broad sanctions such as those passed by Congress.

Update 7/2/10: Remarks by the President at the signing can be found here.