E-mail a friendSam Nunn
airdate October 14, 2005
Sam Nunn is CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), an organization that works to strengthen global security. Nunn previously served 24 years as a U.S. senator from Georgia and first entered politics serving in the Georgia House of Representatives. He's continued to function in the public policy arena with his work at Georgia Tech and as board chair of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. NTI recently released Last Best Chance, a docudrama that underscores the nuclear weapons threat.
Sam Nunn
Tavis: For nearly twenty-five years, Sam Nunn was a highly respected member of the U.S. Senate from his home state of Georgia. He is now the co-chairman and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit group aimed at reducing threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The NTI is behind a thought-provoking new film called "Last Best Chance", a sobering look at the all too real threat of nuclear terrorism. The film premiers October 17 on HBO. Sam Nunn joins us tonight from Washington. Senator Nunn, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Sam Nunn: Thank you, Tavis. Good to be with you.
Tavis: Glad to have you. Speaking of senators, didn't I just see Fred Thompson, a former Tennessee senator, in that clip?
Nunn: Fred is the President of the United States. He was a good senator and he's certainly a terrific actor and has done a great job as President in this film.
Tavis: Tell me about the film and why you decided to get behind a project like this.
Nunn: Tavis, you know much better than I that people get their news now from television and, of course, movies play a huge part in both shaping public opinion and our culture. So we wanted to be able to communicate the dangers facing America, the dangers facing the world, and we wanted also to be able to communicate the fact that we can do something about it, that nuclear terrorism is really right at the top of the security list and a really very important security problem, but that catastrophic nuclear terrorism is not inevitable. There are a number of things that we can do about it. We're in a race between cooperation and catastrophe and we're, at best, walking and we're afraid the terrorists are running. So that's what this is all about.
Tavis: When you say that nuclear terrorism is at the top of the list of security concerns, whose list respectfully are you talking about? Do you honestly believe that it is at the top of the list of the Homeland Security Department?
Nunn: Well, it should be at the top of the list not only of the Homeland Security Department, but the Department of Energy, the Department of State and the Department of Defense and the President of the United States in the White House. Both President Bush and Senator John Kerry said on one of their first debates in the election year that this was the number one challenge facing America, the number one security challenge, so both political parties agree. The problem is, there's a vast difference between the words and the deeds and we've got to have a lot more in the nature of deeds and we've got to do a lot of this with other countries.
Tavis: What accounts for that disparity, to your earlier point, if the terrorists are racing and we are walking and yet you say that it is the number one threat and Bush and Kerry both said it was the number one threat? There's a disconnect here somewhere.
Nunn: You're right. There is a disconnect and we hope that public opinion will begin to understand this and insist that these issues be put on the front burner. We have highly enriched uranium in over forty countries around the globe. Highly enriched uranium is the raw material of catastrophic terrorism. Every bit of that highly enriched uranium must be secured and, hopefully, we can develop a global account of understanding to begin to de-legitimize highly enriched uranium and to begin to blend it down and have alternative fuel uses and alternative resource uses around the globe.
If we continue to engage in commerce with highly enriched uranium, if it continues to be in places that are not properly secure, then inevitably at some point we're going to meet disaster, but that is not something that is inevitable. We can avoid it, but it's going to take a lot of action and a lot of cooperation, starting with the United States and Russia, but also involving countries around the globe.
Tavis, about three years ago, the G8, the biggest eight industrial countries led by the United States, Russia and Canada, adopted a resolution at the conference in Canada, the G8 Conference, that said they were going to match what we call the Nunn-Luger money which is legislation that Senator Luger and I sponsored in 1991, getting weapons and materials under the right kind of safeguards and security, working with the Russians and the other members of the former Soviet Union.
The G8 said they were going to match this pledge, this Nunn-Luger money, every year to the tune of about a billion dollars, which would double the overall effort. Those pledges have not been turned into programs and the words have not been turned into deeds. So this is not simply a U.S. leadership challenge. It's a leadership challenge for the world.
Tavis: Let me ask you to talk more, if you will right quick here, about how serious the threat is. I mean, I think the movie "Last Best Chance" makes the case in a theatrical performance, if you will, but talk to me right now here about how serious the threat really is.
Nunn: Well, this movie is fiction, but it's based on fact, so we think it really accurately portrays the seriousness of this issue. If we had a nuclear weapon go off in an American city, it would basically not only be a terrible disaster for the people involved, for the people affected by radiation, for the overall population of that whole region, but it would also I think greatly erode the confidence needed to sustain a global economy because people would assume that, if there was one nuclear weapon and the government couldn't stop one, then there would probably be other nuclear weapons. I think that would be the working assumption and I think every would-be group of terrorists or people who are nuts out there would threaten and make believe they had one even if they didn't. So it would, I think, severely disrupt the world economy as well as being a real tragedy.
In addition to a nuclear explosion -- and this would be a crude weapon. It wouldn't necessarily be a weapon that would be used in a military inventory, but it could be carried in an SUV or a light aircraft. It could be stored in someone's basement. There could be threats to explode another nuclear weapon that would disrupt not only America, but the other countries in the world. So these are real dangers not only with an explosion, but also radiological weapons. We've got the chance of a dirty bomb. That means not a nuclear explosion, but radiation that is basically part of a conventional explosion, but would have nuclear fallout. That is also a serious problem. So we've got to develop a culture not only in this country, not only in Russia, but around the globe, that protects nuclear material from cradle to grave.
I'm a believer in nuclear power and I think we have to increase our nuclear power, but we're not going to be able to utilize nuclear power in any kind of real effort to clean up our environment unless we have a culture that protects nuclear material. Because if you have a nuclear incident, then it would be very hard for the nuclear power industry to continue to, as they plan to do now, expand in places like India and China and other places where they really need additional energy and where, from an environmental point of view as well as an economic point of view, nuclear power is one of those real alternatives to the problems we have with lack of clean air in a lot of these regions. So we've all got a huge stake. It's not just a security take, although that's at the top of the list. It's also an environmental stake and an economic stake.
Tavis: You suggested earlier that a successful nuclear attack on this country or anyplace in the world would erode confidence in this global environment that we live in. Speaking of eroding confidence, I'll tell you what I think erodes confidence. It's when the government can't get to the Gulf Coast fast enough and have a plan in place to save the lives of its own citizens for a hurricane that we knew was coming two or three days before it got here.
Nunn: Absolutely.
Tavis: Since you said absolutely, I assume you agree. So tell me how is it you think we can build confidence in the American public that we could handle the impact of a dirty bomb, a biological weapon, a nuclear attack, if we can't handle a hurricane that we knew was coming?
Nunn: I think it's awfully hard to inspire confidence right now, but we've got to work on it and something has got to be done. The Homeland Security Department has not to improve. FEMA has got to greatly improve. There's got to be a much better link between FEMA and our military. Our military, our National Guard resources, have to be able to react to natural disasters. There's got to be a lot more coordination between the state, federal and local governments. We've got to have a lot more communication capability in being able to talk to each other in a crisis.
Local, state and federal officials have to have what the military call "situational awareness". In New Orleans, a lot of people in leadership positions did not know what was going on. So all of these things have to be improved and I think this tells us that we are not prepared not only for the floods that came in New Orleans and the tragedy there, but we're not prepared for a radiological, let alone a nuclear type incident.
But on the nuclear side, the way to avoid this is to protect nuclear materials at their source. Once those nuclear materials, highly enriched uranium or plutonium, once that leaves their source, that material, then every step of the way, our job gets more difficult. The terrorists would be perpetrators of a nuclear incident and their job gets easier. So protecting nuclear materials at the source is the most effective and efficient way to deal with this problem. We haven't mentioned biological and chemical, but that's on the agenda too along with radiological. All of these things have got to be dealt with in terms of consequence management. The best way is, of course, to avoid it, but if we can't avoid it, we certainly have to improve our ability to deal with it.
Tavis: The movie is "Last Best Chance". It premiers Monday, October 17 on HBO. It stars, speaking of senators, a former senator from Tennessee, a fine actor, Fred Dalton Thompson. Senator Nunn, nice to have you on the program. Thanks for your insight. I appreciate it.
Nunn: Thank you very much, Tavis. Hope people watch the movie and I hope we all take a lesson from it and from the message.
Tavis: We're glad to have you on.
Nunn: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Up next on this program, actor Jeff Daniels. Stay with us.
Back to October 14, 2005