October 26, 2004: Bush Arms Control Official Does Not Believe Loose Russian Nukes Threaten US Security

John Bolton, a neoconservative and the Bush administration’s chief official in charge of arms reduction, says he does not believe that the unsecured nuclear weapons and items of nuclear technology belonging to the former Soviet Union pose any threat to US security. Three years earlier, a commission reported that Russian and other Eastern European “loose nukes” posed the single greatest danger to the US. “I don’t believe that at this point, or for some number of years, there’s been a significant risk of a Russian nuclear weapon getting into terrorist hands,” Bolton says. “I say that in part because of all the money we’ve spent… but also because the Russians themselves are completely aware that the most likely consequence of losing control of one of their own nuclear weapons is that it will be used in Russia.” [Washington Post, 10/26/2004] In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write, “This assessment flew in the face of all available evidence regarding what had and had not been accomplished in Russia.” Only 54 percent of former Soviet facilities containing nuclear materials are under satisfactory security measures. The US has no idea how many Russian tactical nuclear weapons exist, where they are stored, or how well they are guarded, if they are guarded at all. Scoblic will write, “These are the weapons that nuclear experts calculate terrorists would most likely steal because their smaller size makes them easier to transport and conceal.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 209]