Classified GAO reports. I knew they existed, but this is one is one that ought to be declassified, at least summary form:
Nonproliferation: Better Controls Needed to Plan and Manage Proliferation Security Initiative Activities. GAO-06-937C. September 28, 2006.
About the only thing I know are two recommendations, as described in H.R. 1:
(A) The Department of Defense and the Department of State should establish clear PSI roles and responsibilities, policies and procedures, interagency communication mechanisms, documentation requirements, and indicators to measure program results.
(B) The Department of Defense and the Department of State should develop a strategy to work with PSI-participating countries to resolve issues that are impediments to conducting successful PSI interdictions.
I am not surprised the issue of metrics is proving nettlesome—Bush Administration officials can’t even agree on whether the interdiction of the BBC China was the most important PSI operation or was merely conducted within the “framework” of PSI. A year and a half ago, I tried to do my best at guessing the 11 “successful” operations that SECSTATE Rice attributed to PSI.
The bill, H.R. 1, also suggests getting a Security Council resolution to affirm the legality of PSI (not a bad idea) and creating a multilateral organization to implement the treaty (a more complicated case to make).
Not surprisingly, the black helicopter crowd has decided that these ideas constitute “placing PSI under UN control”—which suggest either limited reading comprehension, a total disregard for the facts, or both.
Anyway, someone with neither defect could learn a lot about PSI from Jofi Joseph’s June 2004 article in Arms Control Today, Sharon Squassoni’s September 2006 CRS Report, and various fact sheets, interviews and articles written by Wade Boese.