WASHINGTON -- A former U.S. official's concept for expanding intelligence functions at the International Atomic Energy Agency is garnering some interest but appears unlikely to be implemented anytime soon, according to several nonproliferation experts (see GSN, April 2).
(Jun. 22) -
One former U.S. official believes that the International Atomic Energy Agency needs stronger intelligence capabilities to battle nuclear smuggling operations, such as the network once led by former top Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, shown in February (Farooq Naeem/Getty Images).
Intelligence issues were not on the agenda at an IAEA Board of Governors meeting last week in Vienna, Austria, and do not appear high on the Obama administration priority list for revamping the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
Still, a lukewarm reception has not deterred Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who until January headed the Energy Department's intelligence branch. He argues that the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency must build its own intelligence unit if terrorists are to be prevented from acquiring a weapon of mass destruction.
The concern driving his proposal is that al-Qaeda operatives or other violent extremists might gain access to materials that would allow them to construct a "dirty bomb" or perhaps even a full-up nuclear weapon.
An ad hoc process of intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination by a small number of IAEA member states has been inadequate for stanching black market activity in nuclear materials, Mowatt-Larssen argued in an interview last week.
"We're not doing very well working alone," he told Global Security Newswire, referring to nations pursuing disparate efforts to eliminate nuclear smuggling. "States are not taking ownership of the problem. There's not a lot of effort on it. And part of the reason for that is it's a stateless kind of problem."
Weapon-usable material has gone missing in at least 19 incidents over the past 15 years, Mowatt-Larsen said. Countries have rarely reported losing track of nuclear materials, though, so the discovery and seizure of bomb-making components on the loose has been largely left to chance.
"In almost all cases, if not all cases ... they were revealed purely through serendipitous seizure, through customs or police action," he said. "They weren't revealed through, say, proactive intelligence or going out and looking for what might be out there."
"That's very alarming," Mowatt-Larssen added, "because it suggests, at least, that the problem might be larger than we understand it to be."
Likely the most egregious example of recent failures is the case of former top Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who led a clandestine nuclear network until it was discovered roughly five years ago. Even today, officials are uncertain whether some secret remnants of the Khan network might remain in place (see GSN, June 17).
In April, Mowatt-Larssen joined two other proliferation experts in calling for tighter international controls aimed at stemming the illicit spread of nuclear materials and know-how (see GSN, April 8).
First Steps
Now a senior fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Mowatt-Larssen offers two-pronged counsel to nations concerned about the potential for nuclear terrorism: First, he said last week, "recognize the limitations of what you do and commit to greater collaboration on a collective or international level."
Second, "don't keep criticizing the IAEA [weakness] in pursuing its role when we haven't enabled it to be all it can be, [but] try to help in this regard, specifically with resources and capability and authority. They may need to do more," he said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency promotes the peaceful use of nuclear energy for electricity, medical and scientific purposes. At the same time, in its higher profile role, the agency uses international inspections to ensure that countries comply with their commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to forgo the development or production of atomic weapons.
As it stands, the international nuclear agency's Safeguards Information Management directorate has two small units that offer intelligence functions -- one that analyzes open-source intelligence and another that assesses imagery, according to a source familiar with IAEA functions, who asked not to be named.
A third team "is supposed to investigate illegal trafficking, [but] there are no technical people on this unit and they have produced no usable results in years," this source said.
"They are, in fact, doing some really good work," said Mowatt-Larssen said of the IAEA intelligence staff. That said, "it's one thing having some people ... just doing some work on it, but the intelligence world's approach to that is highly disciplined, rigorous and professional."
Mowatt-Larssen envisions building on the existing organizational structure to create a more productive IAEA intelligence unit numbering no more than a dozen investigators. The existing agency analysis staff is about twice that size, but lacks the professional intelligence background that Mowatt-Larssen believes necessary for cracking the nuclear underworld.
A small, new team would undertake "a very focused collection effort: Only collect what you really need to collect and that you can't get from states [and] on only the biggest problems."
Like the existing IAEA staff, an overhauled intelligence group would limit its approach to open-source methods, rather than clandestine spy activities, he said. In discouraging an IAEA use of covert operations, Mowatt-Larssen hopes to mitigate potential concerns on the part of member nations wary of creating an international spy organization that might learn and expose state secrets.
Cautious Interest
The idea of beefing up IAEA intelligence capacity is beginning to attract some U.S. government interest.
"Perhaps it is time to take a look at that [idea] and see whether it's possible to go further," a senior State Department official said in an April interview. "But it would have to be done extremely carefully."
The senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said one issue would be anticipating how to handle the "normal leakage problems that happen in any international organization."
Worries about exposing secrets exist even when using standard open-source, data-collection techniques developed by investigative journalists or business investigators, intelligence officials say. An effective IAEA intelligence unit would likely seek to protect confidential whistleblowers and conceal specifically how it unearthed information about nuclear smuggling.
Taking on such a task could require a significant change in IAEA approach, according to some observers.
"The agency ... has no security culture," said the source familiar with IAEA processes. "Busy employees at all levels take [highly confidential] information home at night to work on, because they are dedicated, and read it on the train on the way to work because there is no time in the office. [It] is not a secure environment."
Moreover, the source added, personnel choices must be made carefully to ensure there is no conflict of interest.
"The agency recently moved an Iranian national to a position where he had access to all daily information about inspections in Iran," this source said. "This indicates a lack of sophistication and states might be reluctant to share information in this culture."
"The particulars have to be worked out, but I think it's a great idea," Andrew Semmel said of Mowatt-Larssen's concept in a telephone interview last week. He is a former Bush administration State Department appointee specializing in nuclear nonproliferation policy and negotiations.
"The more the IAEA is able to do intelligence, the better it's going to do its job," Semmel told GSN. "The question is: What are the boundaries?"
Key Mandates
In its central watchdog function -- assuring that non-nuclear-weapon states limit their atomic energy activities to peaceful uses -- the international agency typically focuses on nation-states such as Iran and North Korea, rather than terrorists or other non-state actors.
Iran is widely believed to be on the cusp of developing a nuclear-weapon capability and North Korea is flagrantly resisting international efforts to eliminate its nuclear arms and missile technology development efforts.
Concerns are rising that the agency lacks the tools necessary to succeed even in its most basic functions. Based on such worries, President Barack Obama has called for a doubling of the IAEA budget over the next four years, and increasing the annual U.S. share to roughly $225 million (see GSN, June 17).
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei last week had sharp words for other member states that oppose his request for a roughly 11 percent increase in the agency's regular annual budget. Antagonists include U.S. allies France, Germany and the United Kingdom, along with some developing nations, according to one official in Vienna.
Mowatt-Larssen estimated that expanding the IAEA intelligence mandate would cost less than $10 million a year.
He would not recommend that the revamped unit take on the thorny challenge of nation-state compliance, but instead bite off a more limited part of the nuclear proliferation problem, at least at the outset.
Mowatt-Larssen advises that an IAEA intelligence unit concentrate on the somewhat less politically complicated issue of the nuclear black market, which many nation-states agree poses a collective menace.
Some critics worry, though, that giving the nuclear agency additional responsibilities would be a mistake when IAEA officials continue to struggle with performing their more fundamental tasks.
Beefing up IAEA intelligence capabilities is "on the list" of desirable ways to strengthen the agency, "but it can't be at the top," according to Henry Sokolski, who heads the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.
"If they have scarce resources, they have to focus on their primary mission first, which is to be sure that they can actually safeguard as much [dangerous] nuclear material as possible," he said of the nuclear agency. "And here we know they are falling behind."
Sokolski pointed to recommendations, issued late last year, aimed at strengthening the IAEA ability to implement its own inspection goals.
The congressionally mandated Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, headed by former Senators Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Jim Talent (R-Mo.), endorsed "strengthening the International Atomic Energy Agency, including identifying the limitations to its safeguarding capabilities, and providing the agency with the resources and authorities needed to meet its current and expanding mandate."
The sitting panel, of which Sokolski is a member, also questioned whether the inspection goals, if attained, would be sufficient to ensure "timely warning" of new nuclear-weapon capabilities (see GSN, Dec. 2, 2008).
Like Sokolski, the source familiar with IAEA processes voiced doubt that the agency is in a position to take on new functions.
"Rolf seriously overestimates the depth and professional character of the IAEA," said this source. "He should, instead, look for a new organization with a different mission that can [act independently of] the IAEA and create some real competition and analysis."
Preventing a 'Mushroom Cloud'
Mowatt-Larssen, who spent three years heading DOE intelligence after a 23-year career as a CIA officer, sees it a bit differently. To him, improving IAEA intelligence is key to achieving the agency's most essential missions.
"I would love to have a debate with someone who said that Job No. 1 isn't stopping a mushroom cloud from occurring," Mowatt-Larssen said. "Yes, it's important to stop countries from pursuing clandestine nuclear programs, [using] safeguards.
"But that's really a means to another end, isn't it?" he said. "The thing we're trying to prevent [is] the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe. And where is the nuclear catastrophe more profound than if a terrorist group tries to obtain and detonate a weapon?"
Mowatt-Larssen has also proposed that an IAEA undercover intelligence team penetrate the black market and "obtain sufficient nuclear material for a bomb. The successful completion of such a task might help highlight the dangers and galvanize in the international community to act," he wrote in April.
Beyond that, the procurement of such material by a watchdog organization means "you take it off the market so [terrorists] can't" acquire it, he said last week. "You've just dramatically and drastically changed the situation that would result in a mushroom cloud if terrorists end up there before you do. How could that not be a good thing?"
In other forums, the Harvard scholar has also advocated that such a team go on to test border controls by attempting to smuggle the material into the United States.
However, Sokolski speculated that public revelations of any such test would "cause policy hysteria [and] distract us from allocating resources in a useful way."
"It would be swine flu on steroids," he said, referring to a rising sense of public alarm that developed amid reports of an H1N1 virus outbreak this spring.
Mindful of the potential that such an experiment might provoke public or congressional overreaction, Mowatt-Larssen said he has put aside the idea of a sting operation, for now.
"I find that to kind of get way ahead of ourselves," he said. "I'm not advocating that [operation] in the first stages of anything."
However, Mowatt-Larssen is adamant that this aspect of his proposal would be crucial to undertake at some point down the road. In fact, he would still "do this tomorrow, if I could," he said.
The real point of launching an "Armageddon test," as he calls it, is for the U.S. public to "have that discussion" about the risks of nuclear terrorism "before it's forced on us by events," said Mowatt-Larssen, referring to the possibility of an actual nuclear attack.
"I'm not afraid of that [discussion] at all, because we are a little bit oblivious to the vulnerabilities we face," he said. "What we're talking about [is] preventing the catastrophe."