Report: U.S. Money Helps Recruit Weapons Scientists in Russia, Ukraine

Quote:

---

[I]nstead 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.

---

Published in Wired Magazine, http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/0...-us-money.html

GAO report it refers to is titled, "DOE’s Program to Assist Weapons Scientists in Russia and Other Countries Needs to Be Reassessed"
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08189.pdf