WhirledView

Nonproliferation People

by CKR

This was the first Carnegie Nonproliferation Conference I've attended. It's hard to know where to start. My brain has been in overload for the last few days.

We're in DC, along with New York the epitome of East Coast sophistication and cool. I know. I grew up in all that. So I'm having some reservations about the bloggish let-it-all-hang-out approach. Above all, cool means never saying how impressed you are to meet people. You knew them and their betters all along. But I was impressed and very pleased to be able to talk to so many people I've seen on television and otherwise heard of.

The nonproliferation community is small compared to other groups I've been associated with. The American Chemical Society's twice-yearly meetings draw tens of thousands of attendees. This meeting was 850 people, and, according to those who've been here before, that's a lot. It's small enough that anyone can talk to anyone else, including the talking heads from television and bylines from the newspapers. That includes some MSM writers I like to read and link to. I even had extended conversations with some of them. Totally inadvertently, I sat down next to Mark Hibbs at Monday's lunch. Goes to show that luck can be better than planning.

The Men of Rufrad Sat and Sat: A Fable

By PLS

Rufrad was a temporary settlement of tents and huts on a very dry plain. Cattle couldn’t live there, and even goats didn’t last long under that relentless sun. In fact, the people of Rufrad survived only because outsiders sent them food—bags of rice and wheat, sacks of lentils and beans, cases of powdered milk. All in all, it was boring if nutritious diet, so the women did what they could to make it palatable.

These women were amazing. They and their daughters trudged long distances across a parched earth under that hot sun to fetch odd bits of firewood and enough water for drinking and bathing as well as cooking. And then they cooked. At mealtimes, assuming the Marauders had let the supply trucks through, which wasn’t always the case, there was hot food for the men and the children and, once the men were burping with satisfaction, for themselves. Actually, no one was fat in Rufrad, but the women were the skinniest.

With no animals to herd and rainfall too scanty to get any farming under way, the men had little to do. However, by stretching faded old wrappers over sticks they appropriated from the firewood stash, they managed to make little verandahs where they could sit together in the shade. They gathered there to chew khat and recall the good old days in their home villages before the Marauders had driven them out. The stories often made them sad, but the khat helped them to feel better.

Sometimes a reporter or anthropologist would arrive with the sacks of grain. The people of Rufrad were always courteous to such outsiders whose heart-rending reports, they knew, helped to keep them alive. The women were usually too busy to talk much, but the men did their best to display a semblance of the hospitality that had been integral to their former lives. After the women brought glasses of precious water, the men launched into long tales of the good old days when they had fertile land and real houses—and respect.

Much as they relished the pleasure of reliving the past, however, the men also knew that the best way to cultivate sympathy was to emphasize the worst of the bad times, too.

“My brother’s wife was raped on the way to the well. He had to put her aside, poor fellow.”

From the Carnegie Conference

by CKR

Well, it's becoming quite clear that I'm taking in far too much information to be able to write something useful here. Lots of good stuff, including meeting people I've known electronically and by reputation only.

There are 850 attendees, Jessica Tuchman Matthews said at lunch, and one of my tablemates noted the increase in numbers from previous years. This is a very good indication that more and more institutions are spending time and money on these issues.

The most striking of the presentations so far was the lunch talk by Margaret Beckett, British Foreign Secretary. What she said seemed to me to be newsworthy enough that you may see it in the MSM (Glenn Kessler of the WaPo was one of the people I said hello to). Basically, she gave a very strong commitment to nuclear disarmament by the UK government; I'll have specifics later.

More insights on the US-India nuclear deal, and lots of good thoughts for what I think will be the capstone post in my latest nuclear series. But I'm not sure when I'll have time. Maybe on Wednesday and Thursday. Maybe even some sightseeing too.

The Carnegie Nonproliferation Conference

by CKR

I'm in Washington, DC, to attend the Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference.

I'm hoping to talk to some interesting people, and maybe liveblog some of the sessions. Just got to make sure that the wireless is working and all that. And maybe meet some interesting people I already know from the intertubes.

I'll try to post as much as I can, but I'll be staying with friends the whole time I'm traveling, and you know how they can be about spending time with this little electronic box.

Just Wondering

by CKR

So there has been another security breach attributed to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. But this one isn’t getting the same attention as earlier ones: Wen Ho Lee (apparently not a spy, btw) and a young archivist whose boyfriend was a druggie.

There have been security breaches in other parts of the government, but they didn’t get the attention that Los Alamos did; laptops for sale in the Kabul bazaar with military stuff, Department of Energy and FBI laptops gone missing. The stories seldom tell us, of course, what the secrets were, so it’s possible that the secrets for sale in Kabul had passed their “use by” date and that the DOE was trafficking in stuff that Enron doesn’t want us to know, not nuclear weapons design data.

But this one seems to involve “top-secret restricted data,” which, if the media are using that term correctly, seems to be nuclear weapons design data. The person involved, who “inadvertently” transmitted the data by e-mail, is named in very few of the stories. He seems to be a person who commonly flies under the radar. Let’s google Harold P. Smith and see what we find: not much. He seems to be a visiting professor at Berkeley and a member of the board of the private company that now runs Los Alamos under a contract to the Department of Energy.

So is it that the left-coast University of California has been properly subdued by the defense contractors and no longer needs to be flogged? Is it that this leaker has many more friends in high places than that junior archivist or the Chinese computer jock?

Why does a board member need nuclear weapons design data? Why was it being e-mailed among members of the board? Could it have anything to do with their (successful) bid to manage Livermore too?

Scooter Libby and others in the Office of the Vice President claimed they didn’t know that it was secret that Valerie Plame was an undercover agent. Smith claimed he didn’t know that this data was secret, either. As I recall, classified stuff used to have big red markings on each page. Is it the red color or the words that these folks don’t understand? Or is it the passing along by word of mouth that’s confusing?

It was human error, says Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. I guess that makes it okay, a good reason for the Department to have covered it up while prosecuting that junior archivist. Keep that in mind the next time you receive an e-mail about how to make a bomb. (Thought that ci.al. stuff was something else, hm?)

Solstice Blogging

by CKR

Today is the solstice. I hate the idea of the days becoming shorter now, but we have some good weather ahead for a while.

Our spring was unusually cool and wet, but just in the past few days we've changed over to more normal June weather - hot and dry.

With the heat, the cicadas are buzzing, seemingly more than most years. The photo is of one that landed near me the other day; a bit blurry, but the glassy wings show up well.

I don't know if these are part of the famous Brood XIII across the Midwest; I've tried googling, but I don't find much on New Mexico. From this page, I suspect that I'm hearing (and seeing) members of the Okanagana genus.

I'm seeing more Dalmatian toadflax and pink wild snapdragons, now that I'm aware of them. Seems like we are less likely to notice what we don't know.

The good news on the insect front is that miller moths seem to be below their possible maximums. I've had a few wedged in their usual unlikely places, but not many. They're a dirty brown color, leave lots of scales around if you get near enough to touch them, and deposit brown spots everywhere. (Feces? Semen? Ick!) I'm hoping they're not just delayed by the cool weather.

What Went Wrong? The Passport Mess Hits Senate Foreign Relations

By PHK

(Note: for practical suggestions on navigating the passport application process, please see our tips page.)

Highlights from a Jam-Packed, Emotional Hearing, June 19

In a jam-packed room on June 19, heavy-hitters on the International Operations Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took on State Department representative Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs Maura Harty in an emotional, probing hearing about the continuing crisis over US passport issuance delays. This bipartisan effort chaired by Subcommittee Chair Bill Nelson (D) of Tampa, Florida was broadcast on C-Span 3. For those of us with computers but no televised access to the station, it was possible to watch online. For anyone following or caught up in this saga, the nearly two hours spent was well worth it.

All Senators were careful to praise the passport office employees for their hard work and continued diligence and to acknowledge Harty as a well respected, competent career diplomat. Given this 'mini-Katrina' at the State Department, the Bush administration should count whatever lucky stars it may still have that Harty is a career diplomat with an excellent reputation as a manager and not a political hack who can't manage her way out of a paper bag and that her staff has been performing yeomen's work under very difficult circumstances for the past six months.

"Morale is horrible at State and people are leaving in droves" - Voinovich

Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio), however, did point out that while Colin Powell and Richard Armitage had done a good job of managing the State Department during W's first term, that he had warned Secretary Condoleezza Rice and the new Deputy Secretary John Negroponte that "someone had better pay attention to management at State because morale is horrible and people are leaving in droves."

There were also a number of overriding concerns about government competency or incompetency - not only about how the State Department could have underestimated the increased passport volume so badly and responded to it so sluggishly - but as importantly whether the US government will be capable of dealing with much expanded documentation requirements that will accompany the increased identity checks of immigrants if a new immigration bill is enacted as well as the looming ballooning of passport applications for land and sea travel to Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and Bermuda beginning 2008. Furthermore, Senators were concerned whether State would be able to handle adequately the increased passport load come October 1, 2007 when the air travel "temporary waiver" for the Western Hemisphere Initiative ends.

(Note: It is clear that Congress is going to mandate postponement of the land/sea requirement until July 2009 despite DHS Czar Michael Chertoff's continuing insistence that it go into effect January 2008.)

Some highlights from the June 19 hearing:

- There are currently 500,000 passport applications that have been in the system for more than 3 months. The State Department is able to issue about 1.5 million passports per month and now has 3 million applications pending completion.

- The initial staffing and facilities predictions for the Western Hemisphere Initiative were based on a 2005 study State outsourced to the 'trusted and well known' Bearing Point, Inc. The study was based on figures drawn from governmental and non-governmental sources. (WV Note: Bearing Point is well known all right. It is one of those infamous centipede contractors with numerous USAID contracts in Iraq as well as a $2 million one to administer the process of administering US policy in Iraq for the State Department).

- Based on BP's study, the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs grossly underestimated how quickly Americans would react to the new passport requirements and failed to take into consideration Americans using passports for domestic identity purposes as opposed to foreign travel. (WV Note: was that latter question asked in the study? Did State think it would be a consideration when working with BP in designing the study? And did State consider factoring in the possibility that some people are renewing their passports a little early to avoid the "stranded at the gate" syndrome reported in the papers so did not indicate specific travel plans on their application although they do plan to travel abroad in the future?) Harty also blamed State's media "campaign" announcing the new requirements as another factor for the increased volume. (WV Note: doesn't seem as if much of the major media picked up on the story even semi-big time until late May when the situation went from bad to worse although some local and regional media outlets had reported on the story earlier.)

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on Passport Overload: First Thoughts

by CKR

It’s nice to see the Congress is operating the way it should be, now that the committee chairmen belong to the other party than the President’s. That means that issues like the passport application overload are dealt with in a timely way.

Even under a same-party situation, this hearing might have come up. Every senator who spoke was clearly irritated at the amount of time and effort passports are requiring from his staff, displacing other issues.

Every senator also spoke well of the people on the line, the workers who are getting the passports out. That’s consistent with the reports we’re getting on WhirledView. The senators made it clear that it is the management of the response to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative that they are concerned about.

Senator Bill Nelson (D – FL) chaired the meeting. His concerns included projections of demand resulting from the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, how the $60 fee for expediting passports is to be refunded, and the performance of the contractors.

Nelson bulldogged his issues. Maura Harty, the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Consular affairs, didn’t always have the answers that Nelson was looking for. At one point, he insisted that she send one of her aides out to get a number that he wanted.

What Americans Think about the US Nuclear Stockpile

by CKR

My last post on this subject meandered. To summarize it, all the nuclear nations but the United States and Russia have stockpiles of several tens to several hundreds of nuclear weapons, while the United States and Russia have stockpiles in the thousands. They have agreed to decrease those stockpiles to about two thousand each by 2012, which means they will each have totals of about six thousand nuclear weapons in various stages of readiness. It is hard to see what so many weapons are needed for, other than a first strike against each other. Meanwhile, the US nuclear complex is barely able to produce new nuclear weapons and is disassembling existing weapons far too slowly to reach the 2012 goal. The Department of Energy would like to build a modernized weapons complex by 2030, but it will need guidance on the size of the stockpile in order to plan that complex.

The House Appropriations Committee is now insisting on a rationale for the US nuclear arsenal before it will vote on appropriations for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). The Senate is expected to follow suit.

The US nuclear weapons arsenal grew out of the initial perceived race with Nazi Germany for the bomb, followed by hectic competition with the Soviet Union. But that competition ended in the late eighties.

When Peekaboo Isn’t a Game

By PLS

Every baby plays peekaboo with delight, and older kids love to hide. They hunch inside closets. They crawl under dining room tables. They love stories built around invisibility-granting rings and cloaks. They love magic, too: the presto chango! of making things appear and disappear. So babies and kids love to fool and be fooled, even when they aren’t totally fooled, which makes them feel smart. A definition of being smart: knowing how things work.

Religion specializes in the invisible, too. Adults are comforted by sensed but unseen divinities that offer solace where nothing but woe is apparent. By and large, however, believers don’t laugh with delight when religious mysteries are unmasked. Hence, the bitterness of the intelligent design vs. Darwinism fight. At a certain point, people seem to lose their appetite for knowing how things work. Maybe the stakes are too high.

I don’t believe in mystical convergences but coincidences certainly do happen. On Saturday, for instance, after a long demanding hike, I was ready for a little couch potatoing, so I settled into my pillows and watched the dullest, lamest 007 I’ve ever seen. Still, Die Another Day featured a terrific silvery car that could be disappeared and reappeared with the click of a remote.

And then, on Tuesday, I was reading in the Science Section of the New York Times of an experiment in which

a beam of microwave light split in two as it flowed around a specially designed cylinder and then almost seamlessly merged back together on the other side. That meant that an object placed inside the cylinder was effectively invisible. No light waves bounced off the object, and someone looking at it would have seen only what was behind it.

Unfortunately, magic addicts, this “metamaterial” cloak wasn’t “perfect.” According to Duke University engineers, observers would have seen “some distortion,” plus “some shadowing” and some “reflection.” Also the trick works with just one wavelength of light so far. Having the process work simultaneously with a wide spectrum of light on a complex set of ordinary materials is not envisioned in anything like the near future.

Nevertheless: fascinating. And best of all: perfectly consistent with the mundane laws of nature. We could have a lot of fun listing all the things we’d like to not-see. A whole new sub-genre of light bulb jokes—or (groan) mother-in-law jokes, for example. But we could also make a long list of things that shouldn’t ever be concealed from us.

When it comes to government, another important adult activity, what’s there but not visible can hurt us badly, so I like to know how things political work. Yet (I don’t understand this) many people don’t care to learn how the legislative salami is made or what unsavory additives may be introduced in the shadows of the cloakroom.