Arms Control Wonk

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Trial Balloon Notification 1: Nuclear Weapons Spending

DOE Director for Policy Planning John Harvey said: “Anything’s possible” when asked about rumors the Administration might attempt to fund a series of controversial nuclear weapons programs out of the Defense budget in order to bypass opposition from the House…

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North Korea: So Don't Talk…See if We Care

I was catching up on reading State Department transcripts and ran across this response from spokesperson Richard Boucher to a question regarding the stalled six-party talks. Given that North Korea is free to continue working on its nuclear weapons programs,…

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Iran's Bomb

After an e-mail exchange, reader JP sends along an interview that Yossi Melman of Ha’aretz conducted with Shahram Chubin (left) of the Geneva Center for Security Policy. Chubin makes the case that Iran’s nuclear policy remains inchoate, loosely organized around…

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A Real Ballistic Missile Defense

As you probably already know, the Missile Defense Agency’s Integrated Flight Test (IFT)-13C failed today. I’ve got a post on the subject, Performance Anxiety: Missile Defense Booster Fails to Rise to the Occassion, over on DefenseTech.org. That post notes that…

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Performance Anxiety: MDA Booster Fails to Rise to the Occassion

Integrated Flight Test (IFT)-13C was aborted “after the interceptor missile experienced an anomaly shortly before it was to be launched.” The target, perhaps representing a North Korean ICBM hurtling toward a U.S. city, performed flawlessly. Let’s be clear: This test…

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Mapping the Intelligence Budget

In the debate over the National Intelligence Director, news stories often report that the Secretary of Defense “currently controls up to 80 percent of the estimated 40-billion-dollar intelligence budget.” This estimate is either asserted, phrased in the passive voice or…

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Comments

I am thinking over the whole “comments” policy. Comments on the topic of comments are welcome.

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Richelson on MISTY

The National Security Archive has posted the passage about MISTY from Jeffrey Richelson’s The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, (Boulder: Westview Press, 2002).

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The Job Is A Real Downer

AFP has a remarkable file photograph of Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, listening to Mohamed ElBaradei, at a press conference last month—during the period Washington was attempting to enlist him to challenge ElBaradei for the IAEA’s top job. Downer’s face…

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Paris Negotiations Update 17: Tussels in Brussels

Iran and the EU-3, meeting in Brussels, agreed to a new round of negotiations, Reuters reports. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office has a statement by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. “We are now able to move forward to a…