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The President will create a position, reporting directly to the President, with ultimate authority and responsibility for safeguarding our nation from the danger of nuclear terrorism...
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The single most effective and critical step our country can take in preventing nuclear terrorism -- even more important than increasing budgets -- is to have the President of the United States place preventing nuclear terrorism at the top of his priority list on a weekly basis, and focus his will and energy on this issue.
Lack of authority.
Lack of accountability.
Bureaucratic logjams and stonewalling.
Unhappily, these are some of the biggest problems in securing "loose nukes" and reducing civilian plutonium production across the globe. Overcoming them can only be accomplished by the President or someone with his direct authority.
For example... (from "Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action,")1
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- "How would one explain that the amount of material secured in the two years following the 9/11 attacks was actually less than the amount of material secured in the two years before-because disputes over access to sensitive sites and other bureaucratic obstacles had been allowed to fester, without presidential intervention to resolve them?" 2
- "How would one explain that more than two years after the 9/11 attacks, and more than two years after the general in charge of guarding Russia's nuclear warhead storage sites acknowledged that terrorists were carrying out reconnaissance at them, half of the equipment the United States had purchased for a "quick fix" of security at these sites nearly four years before was still sitting in warehouses -because of similar disputes that had also been allowed to linger unresolved?" 3
- How would one explain that the destruction of thousands of bombs' worth of excess weapons plutonium was delayed for years due to a dispute over technicalities (accident liability provisions) in a U.S-Russia agreement - and that still to date almost none of the excess weapons plutonium has been eliminated?
- "There is literally no one in the U.S. government with full-time responsibility for leading the many efforts in several Cabinet departments related to keeping nuclear weapons and materials out of terrorist hands. There is no one in charge of prioritizing these efforts, overcoming obstacles to progress, eliminating gaps and overlaps, and keeping them on the front burner at the White House every day."
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It is critical that the leader of our country, the President, take action know. Of course, there are many concerns of any President. That is why it is essential he appoint someone to spearhead the efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism. The President should declare loud and clear:
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"I am appointing someone with the sole job of securing nuclear weapons and materials to prevent nuclear terrorism, and finding and fixing every obstacle that slows them down. They will be able to walk into my office whenever there is a decision I need to make to move these efforts forward. I am prepared to spend what it takes to ensure that inadequate budgets do not slow down this effort. I will not tolerate any delay. I will hold everyone involved accountable for the progress they make -- and I will fire anyone who I find slowing down this effort."4
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1 M. Bunn and A. Wier, Securing the Bomb; An Agenda for Action (Washington, D.C.: Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, 2004), pg. 5-6. 
2 From footnote 16 of Securing the Bomb: An Agenda for Action (2004) referenced above: According to the Department of Energy's official data, 7% of the roughly 600 tons of potentially vulnerable nuclear material in the former Soviet Union received comprehensive security and accounting upgrades in the two fiscal years following the 9/11 attacks, while 9% of this material had received such upgrades in the two years before. DOE, FY 2005 Detailed Budget Justifications-Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, op. cit., p. 446; DOE, FY 2004 Detailed Budget Justifications-Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (Washington, D.C.: DOE, February 12, 2003; available at http://www.mbe.doe.gov/budget/04budget/content/defnn/nn.pdf as of April 29, 2004), p. 624; DOE, FY 2003 Detailed Budget Justifications-Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (Washington, D.C.: DOE, February 2002).
3 See Warhead Security: The Saga of the Slow 'Quick Fix', Nuclear Threat Initiative, p. 52.
4 M. Bunn and A. Weir, pg. 101.
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