Combating Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Recommendation 5.16: The Director of Central Intelligence should task theNonproliferation Center, working with the ADCI/Collection, to prepare a multi-yearplan to enhance the technical capability for proliferation-related intelligencecollection and to develop new technology for sampling and analysis that willprovide faster and more accurate information on activities at suspect facilities.Each type of weapon of mass destruction has a different cycle of development, production,and storage, along with corresponding signatures that can be detected by technicalintelligence collection. The technical intelligence associated with nuclear weaponsactivities is unique and considerable capability exists within the Intelligence Community (inlarge part in DoD and the DOE laboratories) to detect nuclear signatures. There is lesscapability to detect signatures of chemical and biological agents. There is an urgent needto improve this capability, especially for environmental sampling and analysis of suspectchemical- and biological-weapons activity. The capability that presently exists isfragmented among the CIA, the Army, and DOE laboratories.Recommendation 5.17: The National Director for Combating Proliferation and theDirector of Central Intelligence should develop a process for resolving disputesregarding the use of proliferation-related intelligence.During the Cold War, intelligence was primarily focused on Soviet military plans andcapabilities in preparation for a war that never came. In contrast, proliferation-relatedintelligence is used every day in an ongoing battle to stop the spread of weapons of massdestruction. Intelligence is used as the basis for denying an export license, imposingsanctions, demarching a foreign government, influencing members of internationalorganizations, or undertaking law-enforcement activities. Each of these actions posessome risk to the sources or methods used to acquire the information. At the same time,intelligence is of no value if it cannot be used. Balancing the benefits of these various usesof intelligence against the risk that such use may frustrate future intelligence collectionefforts must often be done on a case-by-case basis. Clear policy objectives and a thoroughunderstanding of the potential risks should inform these determinations. At present, thereis no established process for ensuring consistent consideration of these factors.71