NEGATIVE/NUCLEAR/PROLIFERATION

NEW EFFORTS AGAINST NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION WILL FAIL

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The bureaucratic feeding frenzy is on. Government agencies--always out to increase their budgets and functions--are attempting to grab their share of an expanding pot of money allocated to battling this threat. Even the Commerce, Treasury and Agriculture departments are getting into the act. But citizens should not equate expanding government involvement with an effective response to proliferation. At the news conference releasing the report, leading members of the commission reportedly emphasized the need to rein in the government's woefully chaotic counterproliferation efforts. In fact, there are so many agencies involved that the Congress and the executive branch do not even know how much money is being spent on counterproliferation. The panel argued, "the result is not only inefficiency and duplication but also potentially catastrophic delay" in dealing with the implications of proliferation. In plain language that means more bureaucratic involvement might be counterproductive to a rapid response to an attack on the United States with weapons of mass destruction.

SECONDARY PROLIFERATION MAKES IT VERY DIFFICULT TO MONITOR THE PROLIFERATION PROCESS

ROBERT WALL February 12, 2001 Aviation Week & Space Technology SECTION: WORLD NEWS & ANALYSIS; Vol. 154, No. 7; Pg. 30 HEADLINE: CIA Details Proliferation Concerns, Other Threats //VT2002acsln

These new forms of proliferation are making it difficult for intelligence officials to monitor ongoing activities. Furthermore, Tenet indicated, the motives underlying the foreign assistance aren't always easy to understand, making it more difficult to predict where technical aid is going.

The potential consequence of these developments was laid out by Wilson. ''[S]ome technological surprises will undoubtedly occur,'' he told senators. ''But we cannot be very specific about what technologies will 'show up,' in what quantities, in the hands of which adversaries, or how those technologies may be applied in innovative ways.''