The GAO just a released a “report”:http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0943.pdf with some hot PSI action. Essentially, it says that the administration has failed to implement past GAO recommendations regarding the initiative.
Based on a quick glance of the report, I think these two sentences sum up the critique pretty well:
bq. [N]one of the agencies [DoS,DoD, law enforcement agencies] has established performance indicators to measure the results of PSI activities. Consistent with internal controls, establishing clear PSI policies and procedures and indicators to measure results will help the agencies better organize their PSI activities.
I’m finally getting around to posting a tidbit I found a while back in Tyler Drumheller’s _On the Brink: An Insider’s Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence_.
I am referring to the assertion that, when Drumheller was a CIA operative in South Africa, his sources
bq. provided incontrovertible evidence that the apartheid government had in fact tested a nuclear bomb in the south Atlantic in 1979, and that they had developed a delivery system with assistance from the Israelis.
I really wish Drumheller had provided more detail about this evidence, which sounds a lot more concrete than the “Vela satellite evidence.”:http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/index.htm Obviously, a debate still rages about South Africa’s alleged test and cooperation with the Israelis, so more information would be welcome.
Over at “his place,”:http://djysrv.blogspot.com/ Dan Yurman posts a continuous stream of news items, mostly about nuclear energy, via Twitter. It’s definitely worth a look-see.
Or you can do what I do and “follow”:http://twitter.com/djysrv his Twitter feed directly. Needless to say, I read his blog as well.
The BBC has a “great story”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7720049.stm about the 1968 crash of a nuclear-armed B-52 bomber in Greenland. The BBC says that
The high explosives surrounding the four nuclear weapons had detonated but without setting off the actual nuclear devices, which had not been armed by the crew.
The Pentagon maintained that all four weapons had been “destroyed.”
That sounded familiar to me, but according to the piece,
*declassified documents obtained by the BBC* under the US Freedom of Information Act, parts of which remain classified, reveal a much darker story, which has been confirmed by individuals involved in the clear-up and those who have had access to details since.
The documents *make clear that within weeks of the incident, investigators piecing together the fragments realised that only three of the weapons could be accounted for.*
Even by the end of January, *one document talks of a blackened section of ice which had re-frozen with shroud lines from a weapon parachute. “Speculate something melted through ice such as burning primary or secondary,”* the document reads, the primary or secondary referring to parts of the weapon.
The U.S. conducted a search for the weapon, but never found it.
The Beeb also has what it says is a “declassified USFG video”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7720671.stm of the operation to clean up the debris from the crash. And there’s “another video”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7720655.stm of an interview with two of the pilots from the mission in question.
A submarine-wonk-colleague and I were just speculating this morning that yesterday’s “Russian sub accident that took the lives of 20 people”:http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jfn6BiK-75B0F4qtfZgNe12N18jw occured on one of the “Project 971/Akula class”:http://www.nti.org/db/submarines/russia/index.html boats.
And indeed. Though the Russians are yet to release additional information on the incident, the Indian press seems certain that it was the “Akula boat meant for India”:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Accident_on_Russian_submarine_meant_for_India_kills_20/articleshow/3690965.cms. I wrote about “that boat, the INS Chakra,”:http://www.wmdinsights.com/I21/I21_SA1_QuestionsPersist.htm some time ago.
I have neglected to mention that Peter’s book was the subject “of a review essay”:http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21670 by Samantha Power in the _New York Review_ a couple months back. Read, if you haven’t already.
A colleague passed along “a WNN story”:http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_A_look_at_the_future_of_nuclear_power_0311082.html on the topic. Apparently “Carlton Stoiber”:http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoonist/profile.cfm/StoibC put forward this “pyramid superstructure [that] has the advantages of operating experience and seismic safety.”
During last week’s public lecture at the Monterey Institute, the amazing “Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin”:http://www.pircenter.org/english/members/dvorkin.htm told an anecdote, which meant to underline that the Soviets perceived cheating in strategic arms control as shameful.
At some point during the SALT negotiations, Soviet military experts supposedly told Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev that they knew of several potential loopholes (legal or technical, beats me), which could be exploited. Leonid Ilyich supposedly responded by saying:
bq. _Obmanyvat’ ne razreshu!_
Basically, he said that *cheating by his own people was something he would not put up with* (or, up with which he would not put, if you want the funny in there).
And I apologize beforehand to non-Russian speakers, but this classic impersonation of Brezhnev (if you imagine the style of delivery, it makes the anecdote more funny) by the duo from the show “Gorodok”:http://gorodok.tv/ was something I couldn’t resist sharing. (The silly plot is as follows. _Brezhnev, hungover after a night out with “Erich Honecker”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1676/honeckers-bunker, is giving out awards to “life savers” — a firefighter, a surgeon… When he comes up to the guy in the red sweater, it turns out that this last candidate for a medal is no lifesaver in the traditional sense — he sells beer someplace nearby. And since Brezhnev’s still feeling the impact of last night’s intense “discussions” about schnaps after the ones about the vodka…_)
Anya is blogging “much substance”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2078/bolton-esque-sanctions-on-russias-rosoboronexport over at ACW, which means I get to post charts like the one below:
