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[ music starts ]
Jeanne Meserve: Located about 12 miles from the United States
Capitol is this non-descript government building.
Inside is one of the most important government agencies
you have probably never heard of. But the work they do here
and overseas is so important the very fate of the nation
rests in their hands. They do a job that allows for
no margin of error. Ever.
Today, we will learn about these people and the work they do
as we explore the complex, fascinating and very rarely seen
world of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency,
known as DTRA.
[ explosion ]
Meserve: Ken Myers is the current director of DTRA,
the fourth since its founding in 1998.
He is also director of the Strategic Command's Center
for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Basically, DTRA is charged with safeguarding the nation
from WMD threats,
while the SCC synchronizes defense efforts worldwide.
Also located in this building is the Standing Joint Force
Headquarters for Elimination, which provides steady-state
and crisis operationally focused WMD elimination
support to combatant commands.
So three entities all combating
weapons of mass destruction on a global scale.
But what weapons are they protecting us from?
In other words, what is the biggest threat facing us today?
Director Ken Myers: I don't think there's any question -
terrorism intersecting with weapons of mass destruction.
You know, during the Cold War, we were worried about
nation states, we were worried about huge stockpiles of
nuclear, chemical and biological threats,
and there's no question that's still a threat.
We are facing those still today.
But the harder thing for us to track, for us to address
is single terrorists or small organizations that are able
to acquire weapons of mass destruction,
whether they be samples of diseases,
whether they be small quantities of nuclear
or chemical material, and being able to weaponize them
and then use them against the American people.
Meserve: Is that a more difficult threat
to address in some ways?
Meyers: I think so. It's smaller. They're harder to
track. They're harder to find.
When we're talking about weapons and materials of mass
destruction, we're not talking about huge factories
and facilities creating material or weapons.
Sometimes it's a small laboratory
that could fit inside a bathroom.
Sometimes it's a disease that could be
extracted from an animal or from a human
that might be suffering from it.
These types of things can be grown. They can be nurtured.
They can be used against Americans,
against U.S. men and women in uniform around the world,
and thus, it's much harder to track.
And we always talk about it in terms of erecting
lines of defense, and what we've discovered over many, many years
is it's much easier, much more efficient,
much more effective to address these threats as far away
from American soil as possible.
Dr. Elizabeth George: Well this is an SS-18 missile.
As you know, we [fades out].
Meserve: Also a part of DTRA is the Cooperative Threat
Reduction Program, led by its Director, Dr. Elizabeth George.
George: So the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program is
interested in reducing the threat from chemical, biological
and nuclear weapons. And so we focus on eliminating
the infrastructure that is associated with the production
of those WMD weapons as well as any other related
infrastructure. We also work to prevent the acquisition of WMD
materials. For example, we secure sites to make them
impenetrable to terrorists and that sort of thing;
people who'd want to misuse those.
We started off working in the former Soviet Union,
and now we've expanded the program to the Middle East
and South Asia, and Africa.
So our reach is much broader now than it originally was.
So we have Country Managers that are responsible for
pieces of work within specific countries,
and they are the ones who sometimes go off for
several months at a time and really work with
their counterparts and build strong relationships.
Meserve: The Cooperative Threat Reduction program is the result
of legislation passed by Congress in the early 90's.
Commonly known as the Nunn-Lugar Program, it grew out of a
unique friendship between two senators of opposite parties;
Sam Nunn of Georgia and Richard Lugar of Indiana.
What is not commonly known is how the program started.
Senator Richard Lugar: The Russians said, in essence,
"We're broke. We have lost really any ability to pay our
troops, and they're deserting, many of them are.
And you folks in the United States have spent trillions
of dollars trying to contain these missiles that have
warheads on them, six or eight multiple re-entry vehicles,
and you're going to be out of luck too because if we can't
keep security in our country, we have no idea what might happen
in terms of accidents or people stealing
materials off the base and so forth."
So we asked, "Well, what do you want?"
and they said, "We want your money, a lot of it.
We want technicians who can help provide security to begin with,
and then begin to take down these missiles
and the warheads and so forth."
Meserve: Senator Nunn, who now heads the nonprofit,
Nuclear Threat Initiative, also reflected on the achievements
of this historic legislation.
Senator Sam Nunn: So the best way to protect Americans at home
is to make sure that nuclear material abroad is safe and
secure and eventually destroyed.
And we - we basically passed the first legislation that dealt
with domestic attacks and domestic terrorism.
And the names Nunn and Lugar have become known
in many places around the world where they're
thinking about security not simply because we
passed a piece of legislation.
It's because the men and women in DTRA
and their counterparts in Russia and Kazakhstan
and Belarus and Ukraine and other places
have been out there on the front line making it work.
Five years ago I used to say in speeches there were 40 countries
that had weapons-usable nuclear material.
Now we can say there are 26. So have we gotten to a safe point?
No. We never will. But we have really made progress.
Meserve: Surprising to many, however, is that the Nunn-Lugar
Program is no longer limited to nuclear weapons.
Andy Weber, the Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological
Defense Programs, explains.
You have overseen the expansion of Nunn-Lugar Programs into
other parts of the world, including Africa,
Southeast Asia. Why those places?
Asst. Secretary Andy Weber: Well, it's the confluence of
active terrorism. In East Africa, we have the Al-Shabaab
Terrorist Group, which is affiliated with Al-Qaeda,
just conducted a horrific attack at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi.
These terrorist networks are global, and the supply side
for weapons of mass destruction resides in dual-use
laboratories, in veterinary laboratories in Uganda or
Pakistan or Vietnam. So in order to prevent it,
we're working together in full partnership with these countries
to improve awareness, to improve security, to train them
in biological safety. So it's that experience they have
actually working in the field that I think
gives them enormous credibility.
Meserve: As the Director of Operations, Readiness and
Exercises, Ronnie Faircloth has first-hand experience
working on the program initiated by the two senators.
Ronnie Faircloth: So we were working in Russia, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Ukraine; in reducing their SSBNs,
their heavy bombers, their ICBMs,
and their infrastructure that supported those.
And we either eliminated them through our own destructive
means or they were moved back to Russia
where it came under their counting rules there
under the START and now the New START Treaty.
Over 8,000 strategic nuclear weapons are no longer
pointed at us through the efforts of this agency
and our partners around the world. That's significant.
Meserve: So what's it like to be responsible for verifying that
the Russians are in compliance with our arms control treaties?
We asked Bill Voigt, the agency's Deputy Director of
On-Site Inspections, who told us about one particular incident.
Bill Voigt: You're north of the Arctic Circle, where the
Russians keep their submarine launch ballistic missiles,
the ones that are in reserve, not on submarines.
They're packed into these tunnels that have been
drilled into the side of mountains.
So we're walking down through there single file,
and I had an experienced inspector,
and he was trying to identify the difference between
one type of missile and another type of missile
to a new Inspector, and he had a - he had a lead pencil,
mechanical pencil. So he pointed to the *** on this missile
and when he reached over again, he struck the ***,
and that sound just echoed all through the tunnel.
I was at the back of the line and I heard it,
and more importantly, the national escort who came up from
Moscow with us and the base commander,
who owns the missiles, he heard it.
"That's it. The inspection's over. Get out of my tunnels.
You know, you'll never work in this town again. Go."
And he threw us out of the tunnel.
We pause the inspection for a couple hours.
They call back to Moscow.
It was explained that we apologized.
It was totally an accident.
And we had to go through the tunnels without any -
- any metal out. So we actually didn't even write
in our notebooks until we got back.
Meserve: When a crisis situation develops, and it involves a
nuclear, chemical or biological hazard,
our military and our allies turn to DTRA to find solutions.
Whether it's a chemical spill from a train accident here
in the U.S., or a nuclear meltdown overseas,
our military and other first responders call DTRA.
But where does the call go?
Meet Ron Meris, the Branch Chief for Technical Reachback.
In this specialized area, crisis calls are handled 24/7
by his team of subject matter experts,
as we saw in this training exercise.
Dispatcher: 10-56, ambulance needed. What's your ETA?
First Responder: ETA three minutes.
[helicopter flying, telephone ringing]
Rachel: Reachback, this is Rachel.
Okay, let me put you on speakerphone.
Guys, we have an IMAAC. Go ahead, sir.
Donald Dickert: We have a train derailment outside Brooke Army
Medical Center. I do not know exactly what's on it,
but I expect chlorine.
Rachel: Do you know how much?
Dickert: Four to five cars completely either derailed.
Not sure about the rest as far as damage.
Rachel: Do you have an
approximate time of the incident?
Dickert: About 30 minutes prior to now.
Rachel: Sir, can I have your name?
Dickert: Donald Dickert, Senior Watch Officer, DHS, NOC.
Rachel: So we have four to five cars derailed
outside the Brooke Army Medical Center.
Where is that located again?
Dickert: San Antonio, Texas on Fort Sam Houston.
WMD Expert 1: You have the location, Brendan?
Rachel: We will give you a call back and we'll start modeling
this right away. Dickert: Thank you.
WMD Expert 1: Okay Katie, you got GIS?
Gina and you have the presentation.
The weather is about, winds from the southeast, blowing to the
northeast. Actually they're pretty strong, 20 knots.
You're going to get a pretty narrow plume.
WMD Expert 2: Eagle two is about maybe six kilometers.
Rachel: Hello Watch Officer, this is Rachel from Reachback.
We have an initial plume.
The Eagle 2 is going six kilometers to the northwest.
WMD Expert 1: Okay, chlorine, one tanker breached.
How much chlorine did you put out, Brendan?
It's under IMAAC. Okay, so we're setting up for a teleconference
in about twenty minutes.
Rachel: Great, thank you. We should have our
initial product out shortly. You're welcome. Bye.
Meserve: A case where DTRA's Reachback team was heavily
utilized was when a tsunami struck a nuclear reactor
on the eastern coast of Japan in early 2011.
Ron Meris: Who knew that Fukushima was going to happen
due to a earthquake and a tsunami.
So what do we need for that?
We needed some type of hydrologist to understand
the water itself. We needed also nuclear physicists,
not just nuclear weapons specialists. We needed nuclear
reactor specialists. We have those on-team, we were able
to get those experts to actually concentrate on solving the
immediate needs for answering the questions for that.
Myers: It wasn't just the nuclear threat on land.
It wasn't just the nuclear reactor.
All of that nuclear material was spilling into the ocean,
and it was spreading around the Pacific Ocean.
And the United States Navy was potentially at threat
because the last thing you want to do is take a carrier strike
force through a large nuclear contaminated area.
So there were some very interesting moments
where we were in direct contact with the United States Navy
recommending paths to stay out of
nuclear contaminated area.
There are a lot of people around here who boast that
they were driving the carriers, they were driving the cruisers
and destroyers to keep them out of harm's way.
Meris: And it's really hard to explain to people exactly what
Technical Reachback does, except for one thing, and that goes as
follows. Whatever it is, we're doing it right
because people want us.
Meserve: Research and development is another
important component of DTRA - especially when it comes to
predicting the effects of weapons of mass destruction.
One of the longest-serving members of the research team
is Dr. Ed Conrad, a nuclear physicist and a consultant.
He is one of the few people who witnessed the test explosion
of hydrogen bombs on Bikini Atoll back in the 1950's.
We asked him what that was like.
Dr. Ed Conrad: Terrifying. And if one has seen such a test,
the intensity of the flash, the - you could feel the blast
from many, many miles away,
made it quite a memorable experience;
not pleasant, not distasteful, but impressive.
And it made one very much aware of
what the power is behind these weapons.
Meserve: Two long-standing members of DTRA's science team
are Joan Pierre, Director of the Basic and Applied
Sciences Department, and Doug Bruder,
Director of Research and Development.
Joan Pierre: What we do is we bring what I call
intellectual capital, especialy from the universities, to DTRA.
We are very much operationally oriented in the modern era,
and I think it is quite apparent that the pace at which
science and technology has evolved plays a great role
in terms of making sure that our warfighters
have the best tools available to them to counter
the weapons of mass destruction.
Bruder: One of the key advantages we have of DTRA
in the spectrum of research that we provide is really how small
we are. We do basic research, applied research, and
advanced research all in the same building
under the same roof, even on the same floor.
If you look at the services and how they have to translate their
technologies along the maturity spectrum,
quite often they're in different buildings
or even different cities with different organizations,
and that can create seams.
Us being small, it can be the very same people
working very near each other on the same floor space
that can translate this technology right from
the university into the industry and then perhaps
the larger procurement industry that'll ultimately
support the military customer.
Meserve: Countering weapons of mass destruction is critical to
the security of any nation. And you quickly learn
when you visit here is that it's a daunting, difficult
and never-ending issue. Which left us with one last question
for DTRA director, Ken Myers: What keeps you up at night?
Myers: Terrorist organizations, like al Qaeda, al Shabaab,
or organizations who might not be on our radar screen now,
successfully acquiring nuclear, chemical or biological weapons
and materials and using those weapons and materials
on the American people. Now that's also why 2,000 people
come to work every single day, to ensure that doesn't happen.
They do it here. They do it at 17 locations around the world.
The thing that's difficult is we have to be perfect every time.
The terrorist organizations only have to get it right once;
we have to be perfect all the time.
Thankfully up to now we have been,
and I'm confident we will continue to be.
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