A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last December offers stinging criticism of the Department of Energy’s management of its Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP). The criticism and the fact that some of these facilities are sources of technology and expertise for Russia’s construction of an Iranian nuclear power plant at Bushehr has led some lawmakers to question whether the program indirectly provides aid to Iran’s nuclear program.
The IPP is supposed to provide former weapons scientists in the former Soviet Union with funding and engage them in collaborative projects with U.S. laboratories to convert their expertise into nonmilitary employment. Contrary to those goals, the GAO report notes that more than half of the scientists employed in the program did not have experience with weapons of mass destruction or were too young to have worked on Soviet-era programs. The GAO also questions whether there was proper accounting for 2,790 private sector jobs that the program claims to have created, saying that it could not verify their existence in 48 of the 50 projects the Energy Department is maintaining. The department relies too much on “good faith” reporting, according to the report, and lacks proper procedures to ensure against fraud.
At a Feb. 7 hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman defended the IPP and stated that the programs “are not enhancing...the Iranian nuclear program.” Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the committee chairman, questioned him on whether U.S. funds could be transferred to projects involving Bushehr if the Energy Department did not have close oversight over their expenditure, but Bodman noted that the programs were “pay for performance in nature” and that scientists would not be paid without delivering a product.
When Dingell pressed him further on whether the funds went to an institute’s overhead or toward particular contracts, Bodman admitted he did not know. He promised to look into the matter further by forwarding the committee’s questions to Bill Ostendorff, the principal deputy administrator at the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
At the same hearing, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) questioned whether the work of the IPP violated an amendment he and former Rep. Chris Cox (R-Calif.) had made to the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The legislation prohibits the direct or indirect transfer of nuclear technology or assistance to countries that sponsor terrorism. Bodman replied that he did not know but was directing Ostendorff to fully examine IPP’s legality.
The GAO report notes that there was also no comprehensive exit strategy and no benchmarks for institutes to “graduate” from the program once U.S. nonproliferation goals have been achieved. It also describes how the Energy Department was expanding the IPP to help scientists in Iraq and Libya without explicit congressional authorization to work outside the former Soviet Union. It found that, in certain cases, this shift in emphasis was hurting the programs for which it was originally designed. Finally, it calls on the department to improve and streamline its review processes for paying former Soviet weapons scientists and to implement long-delayed programs so that the $30 million in unspent funds already allocated to the program could be expended.
In February, the Bush administration requested $24 million for the IPP in fiscal year 2009 after Congress appropriated it $31 million for the current fiscal year. Now lawmakers await answers on the program from the Energy Department. The report recommends that the department conduct a comprehensive reassessment to guide Congress in determining whether it should continue funding the IPP in its current form. If lawmakers decide to do so, the GAO further advises that the United States should share more of the costs with Russia, which is now less in need of assistance due to a stronger economy and more likely to become an equal partner for similar projects in future.