Russo-American Nuclear Cities
Timmerman, Kenneth R.
RUSSO-AMERICAN NUCLEAR CITIES KENNETH R. TIMMERMAN 22 July 1999 • The American Spectator Ince 1994, the Clinton administration has been spending taxpayer dollars to employ Russian...
...A DOE official who worked extensively with the Russians on efforts to convert their nuclear weapons and missile industries to civilian ends deems the programs a resounding failure...
...Instead, we're just making contractors rich...
...That is just a fantasy," says Lomacky...
...Yet White House officials desperately sought to spare the firm from sanctions...
...TAS has learned that one Russian lab director warned the director of DOE's Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP) project in Moscow in November 1996 that U.S...
...officials in Moscow warned the auditors that "care should be taken in transferring funds to any project in Russia lest the money be swallowed up in a bankrupt financial institution...
...With ISTC, each U.S...
...manager is responsible for as many as 6o Russian projects...
...However, he said, "these talks did not lead to anything and were halted when talks reached more concrete matters...
...government awareness that the institute is currently developing new biological weapons for the Russian military, including a new strain of German measles that creates AIDS-like symptoms in a matter of days...
...taxpayer investments in Russia since 1992 have been misdirected, because they did nothing to convert military production to viable civilian projects," he says...
...counterparts acknowledged that U.S...
...Lomacky and others are highly critical of the State Department director of the ISTC program, career bureaucrat Anne Harrington...
...Since then, she has presided over policies that advanced the career of former KGB Director Yevgeni Primakov, turned a blind eye to Russia's nuclear and missile transfers to Iran, and supported President Boris Yeltsin at the expense of democratic reformers, plying him with political favors and cash that went directly into offshore bank accounts...
...She claimed they were the only Russian enterprise that had mastered the technology needed to maintain the containment of the Chernobyl reactors, and had to be protected, whatever the cost...
...But while individual programs can be corrected, the administration's approach toward the collapse of Russia remains fragmented, fraught with bureaucratic infighting, and lacking any strategic vision...
...Weldon believe we should continue to engage the Russians, and that the "gross mishandling" of the nonproliferation programs can be corrected...
...None of this is commercially viable...
...THE WHITE HOUSE ARGUED AGAINST 26 July 1999 • The American Spectator...
...This is a project that is so secret that only the upper levels of the Russian government know about it," Weldon said...
...As part of the Nuclear Cities Initiative, U.S...
...In a meeting with the auditors outside the closed city, Sarov officials acknowledged that "it will be difficult to attract commercial partners to a city located behind a fence...
...The SS-27 is not the only troubling nuclear weapons project that appears to have taken priority over the Russian economy...
...taxpayer money have direct military applications...
...It's not going to be loo percent successful...
...You need direct project management by U.S...
...Work at Yamantau continues day and night, even now...
...We have been lucky so far, but the Clinton administration's piecemeal response to the momentous challenge created by the end of the Cold War will face far greater scrutiny after the first nuclear terrorist bomb goes off on Main Street, and Americans realize SANCTIONS...
...Vector's programs are still "too sensitive to discuss," say former officials, who voice concern that the State Department has provided general support funds which Vector can use for whatever purpose it chooses...
...She sees this as her power base...
...The American Spectator • July 1999 anti-nuclear academic: In 1993 she became National Security Council director for Russia and the other Soviet successor states...
...The grand scheme is, if you give Russian scientists enough money, they will stop doing what they were doing before, which was designing weapons...
...A senior State Department official involved in managing ISTC defends Harrington and her management of the projects, and insists that U.S...
...And yet, she is micromanaging the entire program," Lomacky says...
...Instead of pumping in money to keep Russian nuclear labs and other weapons design institutes open, the former DOE official argues that the U.S...
...But we are far better off having the contact than not...
...Curt Weldon (R-Penn...
...Russian lab directors complained to the GAO auditors that it was "unrealistic to expect that nuclear scientists trained under the Soviet system can easily make the transition to a market-based economy," while their U.S...
...But our job is nonproliferation...
...funds to subsidize new weapons development...
...There is no way I can guarantee that just by paying money to a Russian scientist he is not going to help Iran or Iraq," Lehman tells TAS...
...taxpayers currently spend $700 million per year on programs aimed at enhancing nuclear security in Russia that have simply failed to solve the problem...
...should foster "patient capital" (as opposed to venture capital) for long-term investments in new, state-ofthe-art civilian factories in Russia, designed from the ground up to produce marketable goods...
...Department of State, under a parallel program known as the International Science and Technology Centers (ISTC...
...industry, and you need an overall strategy, as during the Marshall Plan...
...The American Spectator • July 1999 Obolensk, a sister organization, to Vector, located in the Moscow suburbs, is also receiving ISTC grants and is developing a genetically enhanced variant of Anthrax resistant to all known vaccinations—the ultimate in biological warfare...
...It's important to encourage the Russians to work together with outside scientists on civilian projects...
...She has no technical background, and she is not a manager...
...The State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector, was founded in the 1970's to carry out top-secret research into deadly viral weapons...
...That is expensive, but it provides some element of transparency...
...Missile plants are making lawn chairs...
...They are actually providing U.S...
...It means that they are thinking about having a successful first strike capability...
...Two weeks later, on February 1, the Ministry of Atomic Energy announced that a group of 4o Iranians was arriving in Russia that month for a 13-month training program in nuclear reactor operations...
...A Vector researcher went to Iran on a contract approved by the Russian government, the GAO discovered, at the same time that Vector was receiving U.S...
...This requires us to devise a careful oversight and monitoring program...
...MONEY TO BUILD NUCLEAR AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS, FOR ITSELF AND SUCH ROGUE STATES AS LIBYA AND IRAN...
...industry, and no effort to create an environment where the Russians have an economic interest in the outcome...
...Smallpox has killed 500 million people this century alone, making it the deadliest disease known to man...
...Even worse: Some of the U.S.-funded scientists and institutes are developing weapons for Iran and Libya...
...Others accuse Harrington of seeking to become the "vicar" of U.S...
...But Rose Gottemoeller is not just any KENNETH R. TIMMERMAN is a contributing editor for Reader's Digest and a frequent contributor to The American Spectator...
...will not be the first to use nuclear weapons...
...Nor were NKIET's Iranian contracts its only dubious foreign dalliance...
...And according to Alibek, who published a chilling insider's account of Russia's secret biological weapons programs earlier this year (Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World, Random House, $24.95), Vector scientists have recently succeeded in introducing a gene from Ebola into the smallpox virus to create "a smallpox-Ebola weapon...
...One source is clear: the U.S...
...There has been inadequate oversight, a lack of direct involvement by U.S...
...We need to get our scientists into those Russian labs, not write the Russians a blank check so they can do whatever they want...
...The majority of U.S...
...The ISTC was planning to fund a TSAGI project involving new aircraft designs aimed at improving wake vortex disturbance, a phenomenon which can cause small planes to crash when they cross the wake of a larger aircraft...
...TSAGI contracted in early 1997 to build a wind tunnel, at the Shahid Hemat missile plant outside of Tehran, which is being used by Iranian and Russian missile designers to refine the Shahab-3 missile...
...nuclear scientist managing one Russian project," a former U.S...
...Most of the time, the ISTC doesEven this official acknowledges that most ISTC monitoring is conducted by Russian employees working out of ISTC 's Moscow headquarters, giving rise to accusations of collusion...
...This is a Russian-led effort to `rightsize' their nuclear complex and use the valuable skills of their scientists and engineers to promote economic development and new enterprises—to turn the scientific and technological expertise that resides in their premier weapons facilities toward peaceful uses," Richardson said...
...The Scientific Research and Design Institute of Power Technology (NKIET) was also receiving ISTC funds...
...The underground complex is so big the Russians had to build two entire, 6o,000person cities, known as Beloretsk 15&16, just to support the workers building it down below...
...who claims to have raised Yamantau at every meeting he has had with the Russian government over the past four years...
...that has a maneuverable nuclear re-entry vehicle to allow it to defeat anti-ballistic interceptors...
...taxpayer largesse, in order to ensure that weapons designers do not enter classified U.S...
...The problem is that with enough utopianism, you can commit the very crime you're trying to prevent...
...taxpayer grants, ostensibly to develop new vaccines...
...Even the CIA doesn't know for sure...
...taxpayer money was being funneled into Russia's most dreaded biological weapons facilities, and that, given the way the U.S...
...recession," says the CBO...
...It is the only strategic missile in the world—including the U.S...
...foreign aid programs to Russia, counting her success by the amount of U.S...
...Heading the Nuclear Cities program at DOE is Assistant Secretary of Energy Rose Gottemoeller, the same official who fired the department's head of security programs because she suspected him of leaking information to Congress on the disastrous state of security at DOE nuclear storage plants and at the national labs ("Nuclear Security Meltdown," TAS, June 1999...
...Although these sites are ostensibly closed to outsiders, Iranian visitors have in the last five years been spotted at some of Russia's most sensitive weapons labs, including Vector and Obolensk, where scientists have genetically engineered human and animal viruses to produce the most deadly biological weapons known to mankind...
...laser, or another directed-energy weapon...
...Once the U.S...
...For offering such criticisms, the official was removed from dealing with Russia and placed into administrative limbo by his superiors...
...As chairman of the ISTC board, former Bush administration arms control expert Ron Lehman, acknowledges that the administration's nonproliferation efforts in Russia walk a fine line between aiding Russian weapons programs and shutting them down...
...These institutes are definitely beyond the pale," said Zachary Davis, a nuclear analyst for the Congressional Research Service...
...According to Yuri Solomonom, general constructor at the Moscow Institute of Heat Technology, which designed it, the SS-27 was conceived to "effectively penetrate" the antimissile systems "of any state," and could be converted to a multiple warhead missile if Russia discards START II...
...nuclear labs are "not the place to raise venture capital and develop markets for products because a laboratory does not have that kind of expertise...
...I can not emphasize enough how important it is to us all that economic hardship not drive Russian nuclear weapons scientists into employment in places like Iran and North Korea...
...For all that, administration critics RUSSIAN INSTITUTE HAD such as Rep...
...that it could have been prevented...
...24 July 1999 • The American Spectator such projects dry up, the tank factories and missile plants will go back to making tanks and missiles...
...Since 1993, the Clinton administration's misguided nonproliferation programs have pumped more than $2.5 billion into Russia's military-industrial sector...
...Lomacky and others involved in the programs who asked not to be named cited poor management and careerism as impediments to meeting the administration's nonproliferation goals...
...These funds were awarded Vector despite U.S...
...ENTER BILL RICHARDSON When he unveiled the $600 million Nuclear Cities Initiative last September in Vienna at a joint press conference with Russian Minister of Atomic Energy Yevgeni Adamov, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson praised the Russians for their willingness to open ten previously closed nuclear cities...
...Sizable quantities of fissile materials in Russia remain unprotected...
...The GAO found that NKIET had provided training to Libya on light-water reactors, prior to the IPP contract award in 1996...
...no effective export control system or enforcement mechanism exists to ensure that stolen materials or warheads are not smuggled out of the country...
...Even Russian lab directors are complaining that in its naive approach to proliferation, the Clinton administration is making dangerous mistakes...
...Given all new labs and a new charter by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, Vector "weaponized" new strains of smallpox at a time when the World Health Organization declared the disease eradicated worldwide...
...Temporary employment does little to reach the goal of the nonproliferation programs mandated by Congress, which is to help the Russians make the shift from designing and building new weapons to designing and building commercially viable products...
...intelligence officer who has tracked both programs tells TAS...
...It is extremely destabilizing...
...So much for dancing...
...Meanwhile, the collapse of the Russian banking system / has ruled out any support from Russian private companies to defense conversion, the original goal of the U.S...
...A follow-on missile, the Shahab-4, is also being developed with Russian assistance, and will be able to target U.S...
...has only 7 million doses of smallpox vaccine, putting major U.S...
...According to Ken Alibek, a Russian defector who was deputy director of Vector's parent organization, Biopreparat, the U.S...
...But a recent review by the General Accounting Office (GAO) found that some of the money has helped the Russians develop better nuclear weapons, missiles, and biological weapons—and that many civilian projects financed with U.S...
...nuclear scientists are being asked to train their Russian counterparts in Western business techniques and management skills—clearly, not their strong suit...
...Since 1991, the Russians have pumped more than $6 billion into building a gigantic underground military complex, designed to withstand a direct nuclear blast, at Yamantau Mountain in the Urals...
...government funds for 1 THE D EPARTMENTS OF ENERGY AND STATE HAVE FUNDED A RUSSIAN INSTITUTE BUILDING BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS THAT INCLUDE A STRAIN OF GERMAN MEASLES WITH AIDS-LIKE SYMPTOMS...
...So we engage the institutes that are the most likely targets of countries seeking to acquire missile, biological, and nuclear weapons technology...
...It also said the Department of Energy (DOE), which will oversee the program, should more vigilantly check the backgrounds of Russian scientists slated to benefit from U.S...
...Despite this, GAO reported that DOE officials were calling the program a success "because it has at least temporarily employed thousands of weapons scientists at about 170 institutes and organizations throughout Russia and other Newly Independent States...
...had structured the programs, there was nothing he could do to stop it...
...The DOE has accepted the GAO's criticism and has pledged to correct the deficiencies the government auditors found in the IPP program...
...Before Alibek defected from Russia in 1992, Vector also developed a new form of the Ebola virus known as Marburg-U, a disease which liquefies the victim's internal organs and causes the pores of the skin to ooze blood from internal bleeding...
...They are not the only Russian grant recipients working on questionable projects...
...Where do the Russians get all the money for such mega-projects...
...On May 24 of this year, the World Health Organization voted not to destroy the remaining world stockpiles of smallpox, which in theory are held only at Vector and in Atlanta, Georgia, for fear the Russians may have transferred them to rogue states for use as weapons...
...And they didn't even dance all night...
...Theories abound as to what the site might house—a secret nuclear weapons production plant, an ABM site, a giant ground-based 23 RUSSIA IS USIN G U.S...
...If our job were science, we'd be working with the Russian Academy of Science," the official says...
...As it is, the same people who were designing bombs in the Soviet era are still there...
...Although she has no hands-on managerial experience, Gottemoeller inherits a program crippled by poor management and lack of oversight, which seems destined to have precisely the opposite effect of its stated intention of helping wean Russia away from nuclear weapons...
...NATO bases in Europe...
...nonproliferation goals, and feels the gains of working with the Russians far outweigh the risks of providing limited subsidies to Russian weapons research...
...Gottemoeller has urged the U.S...
...Of the seven Russian institutes hit with White House sanctions in January for selling missile-related equipment and technology to Iran, most were recipients of ISTC grants, a State Department official supervising the program acknowledges...
...Our objective ought not to be maintaining the nuclear cities, but creating opportunities for these people to do other things somewhere else...
...There should be a joint oversight committee, with Russian and American scientists, to select the programs that do the most good," says Weldon...
...The reinforced underground bunkers take up 400 square miles, "an area as large as Washington, D.C...
...inside the Beltway," Weldon said...
...Since the sanctions, we have suspended any new contracts with these entities," the official says...
...taxpayer dollars to fund proliferation...
...taxpayer aid she can personally distribute...
...Other institutes whose ISTC-funded projects have been put on hold include NPO Trud, which sold liquid fuel booster technology to Iran, the Moscow Aviation Institute, and the Baltic State Technical University, where Iranian missile designers were being trained...
...In a separate review of the Russian programs, released this May, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) pointed out that U.S...
...We are not doing the real work of stabilizing those weapons of mass destruction Russia still has...
...25 FUNDING PROLIFERATION TO ENHANCE CAREERS Critics of the State Department's ISTC program include Oles Lomacky, an American who served as Executive Director of ISTC in Moscow from 1995 to 1997 "The purpose of these programs is very noble, but the difference between our intent and our actions is night and day...
...AND THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS TO GIVE IT MILLIONS MORE...
...Deputy Atomic Energy Minister Bulat Nigmatulin acknowledged that NKIET had held talks with Iran, aimed at building heavy-water and light-water reactors...
...The notion that the national labs canhelp the Russians to commercialize their nuclear weapons technology is absurd," says former Pentagon official Henry Sokolski...
...The DOE's stated aim is to help the Russians to develop viable commercial projects that will attract Russian and foreign investment capital...
...cities at the mercy of any large-scale terrorist attack...
...For God's sake, if you're going to give them money, you need to make sure you know what they're doing...
...The program will also provide "support systems for depression, women's rights, language training, and job retraining," according to the GAO...
...Russia's latest missile, the Topol-M (SS-27), went into service last December...
...Lehman insists that the programs are taking a "hard-nosed view" toward U.S...
...facilities and do not use U.S...
...Now, lots more is on the way...
...to abandon its long-standing policy of strategic ambiguity by declaring publicly that the U.S...
...At least with the IPP programs, which are managed by the labs, you have one U.S...
...The GAO's own investigators were denied entry to Sarov (formerly known as Azarmas-16, one of Russia's two nuclear weapons design institutes) earlier this year...
...The GAO concluded in February that the Nuclear Cities Initiative is "likely to be a subsidy program for Russia for many years rather than a stimulus for economic development," and recommended that it be scaled back...
...RUSSO-AMERICAN NUCLEAR CITIES KENNETH R. TIMMERMAN 22 July 1999 • The American Spectator Ince 1994, the Clinton administration has been spending taxpayer dollars to employ Russian nuclear scientists and weapons designers in civilian projects, with the laudable goal of seeking to prevent them from selling their talents to rogue states such as Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Libya...
...monitoring teams have stayed on-site at troublesome institutes — including Vector—for as long as four months at a time...
...Nigmatulin then used a Clintonian defense to explain why NKIET should not be punished: "If a wife dances with another man the whole night and nothing happens in the end, I don't understand why the husband would be upset and jealous," he said...
...As it is, we're taking tank factories and trying to get them to make tennis shoes...
...But that was not what the Russians promised at all, according to a GAO audit...
...The labs have no notions of commerce...
...In her academic writings, Ms...
...and thousands of weapons scientists and nuclear workers are facing economic hardship because of budget cuts and UND THAT A AUDITORS FO n't have a clue...
...Successfully test-fired in July 1998, the Shahab-3 gives Iran the capability for the first time of reaching Israel with a nuclear weapon...
...programs...
...Of the 400 Russian projects managed by the Depaitinent of Energy since 1994, none "can be classified as long-term commercial successes, and only a few have met with limited success," the GAO auditors found...
...The Russians have refused to provide any credible explanation for the purpose of this site," says Rep...
...Rose Gottemoeller argued that NKIET was the only game in town," a source privy to the administration's arguments tells TAS...
...Worldwide smallpox vaccination was halted nearly twenty years ago, leaving most of the world's population with no immunity—and thus, easy victims of a Third World biological attack...
...Vector's state-of-the-art production facility near the Siberian town of Koltsovo continues to receive funds from IPP and the U.S...
...One of the entities was TSAGI, also known as the Aerohydrodynamic Institute...
...FIRST-STRIKE ZO7n Despite the collapse of the Russian economy, the Russian government continues to develop new nuclear submarines and new missiles...
...Despite these warnings, the Clinton administration now proposes to spend an additional $600 million to launch a massive public works project in ten Russian "nuclear cities...
...TRAINED THE LIBYANS TO MAKE LIGHT-WATER REACTORS...
Vol. 32 • July 1999 • No. 7
