In my opinion, there's no better report writing collective than the Government Accountability Office. Their subtle, legalese way of saying 'Umm, you guys are pretty fucked up right here' is unmatched. A December 2007 report, entitled 'Nuclear Nonproliferation: DOE's Program to Assist Weapons Scientists in Russia and Other Countries Needs to be Reassessed' turns the heat up on the Department of Energy.
The DOE established the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP) program in 1994 to find employment for wayward WMD scientists in order to keep them from using their knowledge in support of less-than-desirable activities. To the GAO's dismay, it appears that some of the salaries being supported by the program are for scientists born in the last 30 years, leading them to believe that the program is actually being used to hire new talent, rather than phase it out.
DOE has overstated accomplishments for the 2 critical measures it uses to assess the IPP program’s progress and performance—the number of WMD scientists receiving DOE support and the number of long-term, private sector jobs created. First, according to our analysis of 97 IPP projects involving about 6,450 scientists for whom we had complete payment information, more than half of the scientists paid by the program never claimed to have WMD experience. Furthermore, instead of supporting Soviet-era WMD scientists as a way of minimizing proliferation risks, officials at 10 nuclear and biological institutes in Russia and Ukraine told us that IPP program funds help them attract, recruit, and retain younger scientists and contribute to the continued operation of their facilities. This is contrary to the original intent of the program, which was to reduce the proliferation risk posed by Soviet-era weapons scientists. For example, about 972 of the scientists paid for work on these 97 projects were born in 1970 or later, making them too young to have contributed to Soviet-era WMD efforts. Second, although DOE asserts that through April 2007, the IPP program had helped create 2,790 long-term, private sector jobs in Russia and other countries, we were unable to substantiate the existence of many of these jobs in our review of 48 of the 50 projects DOE considers to be commercial successes.
Full report here.
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