 Welcome everybody. I'm Sharon Squisoni. I direct the proliferation prevention program here at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I'm so glad all of you could join us today. I'm going to make a few administrative notes before we launch into the discussion. We are on the record today. This is being webcast and we're on a c-span. I'm not sure whether it's live. For that reason, please turn the ringers off your cell phones. Everybody do that now. We're not taking questions from the internet, but if you're entrepreneurial like some of my friends, you know my email address, you can send me a question if you really want to. I'm not going to give everybody my email address here now, but we have a big audience. I'm sure we're going to cover a lot of ground in the Q&A session. The format for today's panel has changed a little bit. Our government speakers, there are a lot of meetings, a lot of crises out there, so Laura Holgate is going to speak first. She has to leave early, so we're going to take a few minutes after she speaks to take some questions and then we'll proceed with the rest of the panel. On questions, I'm going to ask that you identify yourself and your affiliation, refrain please from long comments and pose an actual question. I always ask myself, what do I really want to know from these guys? We have three of the most knowledgeable people in the U.S. government here on destroying serious chemical weapons, so take advantage of that opportunity. I always forget to thank my staff afterwards, so let me do this now. Bobby Kim, my program coordinator, Shawna Russo, our intern, plus Catherine Love and Elena Bikina from External Relations, plus all the people in the government who have made this possible, the staff at State Defense and NSC, who make sure my speakers show up. And for transparency purposes, no foreign government has funded this program today. In fact, no government has, wait a minute, in fact no one has funded this event today. So if you've had a coffee or something, I'm joking, you know, you can leave a dollar by the door. Seriously, the U.S. government approached me to host this because sometimes policymakers like to use public fora for getting their messages across because we're experts at hosting these kinds of events. And I agreed because it's a good news story, it's a fascinating story, and it's really important to learn lessons about how to do this. How do you take a country's WMD arsenal and, you know, destroy the vast majority of it, really decrease that threat? What circumstances made this possible? What would we do differently in the future? Okay, so our event here today on destroying Syria's chemical weapons is timely for at least two reasons. We're approaching the anniversary of Syria's joining the Chemical Weapons Convention. So it's great to get a readout on what's happened since they did join the CWC, what's been accomplished in this year. And as I'm sure everyone's anticipating, Syria may figure prominently tonight in President Obama's primetime speech about combating the terrorist group ISIS, which has been active in Iraq and Syria. We are far from peace and security in Syria, but at least one menace no longer looms. So I'm going to turn to my speakers to let them tell the story, but first let me briefly introduce them. First we'll have Laura Holgate, who is the Senior Director for WMD Terrorism and Threat Reduction on the U.S. National Security Council. She joined there in 2009. Laura has many hats. She's the Sue Sherpa for the Nuclear Security Summits, and before that she was a Vice President with the Nuclear Threat Initiative. She has a long, illustrious career. We won't go into that. You all have everybody's bios on the back of the agenda. Following Laura, we'll hear from Tom Countryman, who's the Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation at the State Department. Tom is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, and he has a lot of regional experience, Middle East, Near East and South Asia and South Central Europe. He also served as the PDAS for those of you who know what that is, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Palm Mill Affairs, and as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs. Following Tom, we'll hear from Jennifer Smith, who is the Director of the Threat Reduction Program Oversight in DOD. Andy Weber, who was originally on the agenda, had another important meeting that he could not dodge. He'll be joining us a little bit later, so those of you can approach him after the session. Jenny has been responsible for the nuclear, chem and bioprograms under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, including the elimination of chem weapons in Libya and Syria. So, without further ado, I will give you Laura Holgate. Thanks so much, Sharon, and thanks to CSIS for convening this panel discussion. I apologize. I will have to be leaving a little bit early. And as I look around the audience, I also owe a few of you an advance apology, because some of you have heard a speech very much like this before in a couple of other forests, so don't think I'm not capable of being creative, but the story is the story. And I also see a couple of interagency colleagues among you and why you are here to hear me tell about what you know and who you lived. I'm not entirely sure, but I hope you'll find some interesting ways to communicate and share your own experiences during the conversation that follows. We have just marked two milestones that bookend an unprecedented period in WMD threat reduction. Last month saw two big moments, the one-year anniversary of Syrian President Assad's brutal Syrian attack on his own people in a Damascus suburb. And we saw the completion of the elimination of the most dangerous part of Assad's chemical arsenal aboard a U.S. ship in the Mediterranean. A year ago, any of us would have been called crazy had we predicted the circuitous path between these two remarkable events, that the U.S. and Russia would have concluded a framework for the removal and elimination of the Syrian chemical weapons program, that it would have been incorporated weeks later into a binding resolution of the Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and in the UN Security Council, that Syria would have exceeded to the CWC, that the equipment and most of the facilities used to make Syria's deadly arsenal had been dismantled, and that the regime's 1,300 tons of declared chemical agent and related materials had been removed from Syria or destroyed on site. These accomplishments represent major victories for the people of Syria, for Syria's neighbors, and for the international legal and normative regime against chemical weapons and their use. In the year leading up to the Damascus attack, we were engaged in concentric circles of fretting. We were fretting at least weekly around my interagency, my real and virtual interagency policy committee table, and more often than that in deputies and principals committee meetings in the sit-room. We were fretting with our P3 partners, and eventually we added Canada and Germany to a slightly larger fretting circle. We fretted in separate conversations with Russia, with Israel, with Jordan, and with Turkey. Some people called this planning. And because we didn't feel that our traditional partners and potential victims in Europe were adequately live to the threat and the need for response, we created a series of meetings first held in Prague to fret with an even wider circle of partners. By comparison to what we were fretting about then, our problems today are so much more manageable. We were fretting then about intentional CW attacks on Turkey or Jordan, or attacks on rebels near borders that accidentally spilled out of Syrian territory. We were fretting about how to get samples out of Syria and into the hands of credible testing labs so the U.S. was not the only voice claiming instances of use. We were fretting about the theft of weapons or chemicals by rebels or accidental attacks by rebels on CW sites and whether it was more dangerous to reveal those sites to the rebels or to keep them hidden. We were fretting about terrorist access to weapons, materials, and experts and clandestine removal across borders, and we still worry about that but in a different way. We were fretting about how to secure the chemical stocks if Syria began to dissolve and how to destroy chemicals and precursors to keep them out of the hands of anyone who might use them in the chaos of a disintegrating state. There were not very many good answers to these kinds of questions. But now we understand these are non-events, the dogs that didn't bark, and most of them will never bark again thanks to the agreements reached last fall and the enormous international effort to make sure that those agreements were carried out. We should not lose sight of how much less complicated is the larger Syria problem with the significant diminishment of the wide range of the chemical threats we faced only a year ago. Israel's decision to stop distribution of gas masks to its population is a dramatic reflection of this new reality. So what have we learned? Taking Sharon's point about the model that this might provide, a few cliches and catchphrases to offer. First of all, like the Boy Scouts say, be prepared. That litany of fretting that I mentioned earlier ended up bearing fruit even though none of the truly dire fears came to pass. The quiet consultations with Russia led by the National Security Council and the Russian Security Council proved invaluable in creating a common understanding and a personal familiarity that became the basis of the September 2013 Elimination Framework. The engagements with Syria's neighbors and European partners about threat assessments and consequence management provided the basis for support across regions for our positions and proposals in the OPCW Executive Committee and the UN Security Council. And the identification of partner capacities contributed to the assembly of a multinational flotilla in support of the maritime removal and destruction operations. The second cliche is make do with what you've got, which is in some ways a corollary of being prepared. And the story of the field deployable hydrolysis system that you will hear from Jenny in a few moments is truly an amazing contribution to the success of the Syrian operation without which the Syria story might have turned out much differently. My visit to the MV Cape Ray was among the most impressive and upbeat of all my WMD tourism experiences and I thank the Pentagon for having what we needed when we needed it. Another critical tool in our toolkit is the OPCW and its international credibility and expertise. While Syria is generating lots of firsts in the Hague, we would be inventing the OPCW if we didn't already have it. Similarly, the arrangement established between the UN and the OPCW over a decade ago that defined how they were to support each other, smooth the path to the UN-led investigation of use by Dr. Selstrom last summer and to the creation of the UN OPCW joint mission so ably led by Sigrid Kog whose courage, tenacity, and deft diplomatic touch have been essential to the success that we've had in reducing the global regional and internal threats posed by Syria's chemical weapons arsenal. But this lesson of make do with what you got also applies to Assad. The regime's use of chemical weapons bears no resemblance to the CW concept that drove its development and acquisition. Assad's chemical arsenal was designed to be used in a strategic attack against its neighbors, creating truly massive casualties, but his CW experts took the components of that arsenal and improvised small-scale devices for use against insurgents. The chlorine barrel bombs are another example of such improvisation. He is also making do. The third point is I'll get by with a little help from my friends. And I'll leave the bulk of this story to Tom to describe the enormous and incredibly skillful and productive diplomatic effort that has underpinned this entire activity. But without the Danes, the Norwegians, the Italians, the Spaniards, the Finns, the Germans, the UK, without China and Russia, we would not be where we are on the removal effort. Numerous other countries have contributed funds and expertise. Others have stepped up their own readiness to detect or respond to a CW attack or release. The world and the Syrian people are safer as a result. There is no clearer example of this administration's leadership in working with other countries and with multinational institutions to achieve common security goals. Fourth lesson is you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. I honestly believe that the credible threat of military action that caused Russia to force Syria to the table last fall and that caused Assad to understand that his strategic fail-safe had become an existential burden. Deterrence, in fact, worked based on the combination of military plans and capabilities combined with diplomatic skill. After that, however, we paced a problem of compelence, which is very different from deterrence, in terms of the final act of the removal drama. And it turns out that the military tools aren't very good in making somebody do something that they don't wish to do. Here is where the force of international norms and structures really matters, as well as the availability of threat reduction tools and techniques. The compelling forces we were able to apply to Syria to get it to move its materials were Russia's impatience, the course of criticism from the EC and the UN Security Council, and the quiet, cajoling, and problem-solving of the UN OPCW joint mission. These compliance tools didn't exist a year ago, and they are the reason we are as far as we are. Fifth lesson is believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see. We continue to have concerns about the discrepancies between our knowledge of the Syrian CW program and the declarations submitted by the Syrian government. Some of these could be explainable by the speed with which Syria was required to submit its declarations compared with the years some countries take to prepare their CWC submissions. But others, less benign explanations, are also of concern. Our concerns include accountancy of materials, undeclared agents and munitions, undeclared sites, and programmatic inconsistencies. I do want to mention here the critical support of our intelligence community, the level of support, timeliness, technical death, and most importantly, information that enables action has been beyond amazing. I've never worked more closely with our intelligence community on anything and they have delivered. Sixth point, he's bad to the bone. CW use does not occur in a vacuum. We can't lose sight of the ongoing struggles and devastation of the Syrian people and the burdens on the neighbors who are absorbing the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. Chemical weapons are only one of the insults perpetrated on the Syrian people by the Assad regime. The regime's use of these awful weapons needs to be understood in the broader context of indiscriminate killing, denial of humanitarian assistance, and flaunting of the will of the United Nations and the international community. Sixth point, or maybe seventh I've lost track, who watches the watchers? Even with the enormous progress we've already made in eliminating Syria's chemical weapons program, I do worry about the lessons being learned by others. One big lesson learned, I hope, is that if you use chemical weapons, the international community comes and takes it away from you. That's not a bad consequence of use. Fortunately, there aren't that many states with CW programs left and so that lesson in fact has a very limited audience. More worrying are the lessons that might be internalized by non-state actors. We've never really seen CW used in an insurgency before, and as far as we can tell, it's not all that effective from a military point of view. In most of the instances of use, the August 21st attack being the significant exception, the casualties were quite low. There was no apparent effect on the armed opposition groups in terms of morale, tactics, or ability to hold territory. Despite this, we've seen an uptick of interest in CW among terrorist groups, some associated with fighters in Syria. Do they believe these weapons will be useful? Do they believe the international community will disarm them? Does the heightened visibility of chemical weapons over the last year attract attention or ambition that was not already there? Does the improvised nature of the weapons used by the regime lower the perceived barriers to acquisition or use by terrorists? These are questions we need to keep asking. And we need to think about how to affect the answers that terrorists may be coming to. I hope they see what we see, the feckless and ineffectual lashing out of a dying regime, but we don't really know. My last cliche should by now be easy to predict, and ain't over till it's over. And until it is, you can count on me and Tom and Jenny and the rest of the amazing people involved in this mission in the United States and around the world to do everything in our power to eliminate the threat of Syria's chemical weapons. Thank you. So should we do some questions now? That's what you think. All right, for Laura, for those of you who would like an opportunity to pose some questions now, because Laura's got to leave early for another meeting, I will open the floor. So Dan, just a second. Bobby, do we have microphones? Thanks, Laura. Dan Horner. Sorry, Dan Horner from Honest Control today. You said it ain't over till it's over, so I want to ask about one of the parts that isn't over, which is the chemical weapons production facilities and the destruction of those facilities. First of all, there were a lot of comment from the U.S. about the failure to reach an agreement on that, and I don't think there's been a lot since then, so if you could just sort of talk about that. And in particular, the agreement of the decision from the EC, OPCW Executive Council leaves a lot of flexibility in terms of timelines, talks about circumstances that might be beyond serious control and need to reassess. If you could comment on that, given the previous problems about Syria's adherence to timetables, is that giving, are you comfortable with that amount of leeway? Thanks. Well, we have come to an agreement on both the methodology and the timeline for the destruction, and I say we, I mean the international community, it's an agreement with the Executive Council of the OPCW or with the OPCW's secretariat itself. Tom, is it, by the end of the year, is that right in terms of the timeline? And there's technical meetings ongoing with the joint mission in terms of contracting and the methodologies involved and exactly when the inspectors will be where to observe part of the destruction. So that seems to be in hand. We'll obviously continue to keep an eye on it, but what was agreed to was, the Syrian government was part of that agreement, so we have every intention of holding them to those commitments. All right, do we have other questions from the audience? Over here, Sean. A gentleman in the second row. Good afternoon. I'm Venkat Rao and I work for Parsons Corporation. We are the contractors on the record supporting the Syria Chemical Weapons Elimination Program. One question is, what do you see as a future trend in future engagements that might involve similar situations? Is Syria the model for the future in terms of how we will engage similar future scenarios, or is this just a one-time and get done with the type of, what's the prevailing kind of conclusion on that? Thank you. Thank you. The good news is that Syria is sui generis in terms of its status of being outside the treaty and yet having a significant, although and until recently clandestine program, the good news is there are not a lot of other models like that. Certainly we are pressing for universalization of the Chemical Weapons Convention, and to the degree that requires destruction of extant arsenals. I think we've always understood that the threat reduction toolkit, diverse and flexible as it is, can be a part of bringing that kind of outcome about. But those conversations are still in our future. We certainly hope that we will see additional countries recognize the value of being part of the CWC community. We'll look at those who are not part of the CWC community and say this is not a group I want to hang out with. And so we're hopeful for that. And if threat reduction components turn out to be part of that solution, I know Jenny and her friends will be eager to help. And I should point out that something that happened in the middle of Syria process and therefore got almost no attention was the Libyan completion of their chemical weapons compliance effort on destructions. And I know you know that, but not everyone in this room and certainly the larger public awareness was not part of that, was kind of lost track of that because of its quiet success. It had none of the drama, none of the perils of Pauline that we experienced with the Syrian project. And so, but it certainly when you look at the current political unrest within Libya is another reason to heave size of relief. And that's another area where Jenny personally was quite responsible for that positive outcome. Question up front here. Thank you very much. Thank you for an excellent presentation. My name is Ulrich Schmid. I'm from the Danish Embassy. Thank you for a nice, very, very professional cooperation. I would like to hear or just go right to the point. What about possible non-declared material inside Syria? What is the way forward on that? And maybe in a broader disarmament context, what can we learn from this case? Thank you very much. In terms of the ongoing omissions and discrepancies, the OPCW's technical secretariat is leading a series of conversations with the Syrian government to try to resolve open questions. They're making regular reports on their progress with that. And there has been some progress to the Executive Council. We are continuing to have frank conversations, both in the Executive Council and with the technical secretariat about our views as is your government and a few others. And so we're eager to see the resolution. Some of the omissions, it's purely a matter of logic. If you actually understand how chemical weapons are made, just looking at the declaration, there's some gaps. There's some lack of explanation. And so it's not a matter of secrecy as much as it is a matter of logic. And so we are eager to have the Syrians fill in those logical gaps to make sure that they have actually fully complied with their commitments under the CWC and under the Security Council. Other questions from the audience? We're not going to grill you until 3.40. We won't, but thank you. Thank you very much. Hi, I'm Paul Schenkman with US News and World Report. Can you talk a bit? You had just talked about the role that the Syrian government has played throughout this process. But there is a civil war still going on in the country. I wonder if any accommodations have been made for what happens if the Syrian government is overthrown or at least loses control of beyond what it currently controls. I'm not sure what you mean by accommodations. Obviously there will be some successor process in that context and there will be some determination of who is the legal government of Syria if that were to happen. Obviously in everyone's interest that that happened in a structured way, not in a chaotic way. The impacts of a chaotic transition though now are significantly lower in the context of the chemical weapons given that 1,300 tons are now gone. A chaotic transition was something that we worried very much about over a year ago and that we, from a chemical point of view, is much less of a concern now. But I think we have to look to the standards of international law in terms of who is the legal representative of the people of Syria and what are their ongoing responsibilities vis-à-vis their treaty requirements. Other questions? I'm going to take the prerogative to ask you one. Way back when, Iraq, the first time around, after we went in we learned quite a few things about WMD procurement by interviewing folks, by just going through records and looking at that. I know that this is a very different situation with Syria because it's not a country that's defeated in war. But is there anything that we can learn about how Syria conducted this chemical weapons program in the midst of, fairly, I mean the chemical weapons convention has a lot of member states, parties to it, right? And there are restrictions on selling chemicals and dual use things, precursors. Are we learning anything about how they managed to operate within the confines of other members of the treaty who presumably were following the rules? Some, and their declaration requires them to identify sources of dual use imports, sources of specialized equipment. It requires them to characterize the nature and the facilities associated with the R&D and the production. So the declaration process actually does shed a fair amount of light on that. And that's one of the reasons we believe that it's so important that the declarations process be carried out fully and effectively. And well, those won't be made public. Those are considered confidential. No, those are OPCW classified documents. Okay. If we have no further questions for Laura, I'm going to excuse her from class today. But join me in thanking Laura for her time today. So thanks, Laura. And I now invite Tom Countryman to take the podium. Nothing left to say. First, thank you very much, Sharon, for this opportunity. I've told a number of you before that after more than 30 years in the State Department, I've never enjoyed a job as much as I do now heading up the Bureau of International Security and Non-Proliferation. And a major reason is the incredible diversity and quality of our employees. And because we have about the best employees in Washington, we also have the best alumni. And I'm very pleased to count Sharon among them when she worked in the previous Non-Proliferation Bureau or predecessor. I'll try to be brief in order not to repeat some of the points that Laura made, but perhaps to expand upon some of them in the same way. What are the lessons learned? What are the keys to success and the limits to our success in this endeavor? So first, expanding on the notion of be prepared, the diplomacy that resulted in the agreement between the United States and Russia did not spring out of nowhere. It was based in a long process, not only of interagency consideration within Washington, but of careful and creative diplomacy, including with the Russians. Now keep in mind that prior to a year ago, and continuing right up to today, the United States and the Russian Federation don't agree on virtually any aspect of the civil war in Syria, not the diagnosis and certainly not the prescription. Except for one point, we agreed that the existence of 1,000 tons or more of chemical weapons in Syria was a threat not only to the Syrian people, not only to the neighbors of Syria, but to the United States, to the Russian Federation and to friends throughout the region and around the world. And it was that shared concern that helped to produce the diplomatic agreement reached in Geneva last year. And so we did not let our disagreement about what was happening in Syria prevent us from working together on a common program to eliminate a threat that we each perceived. Prior to Secretary Kerry's meeting in Geneva a year ago, there were several meetings between Russian and American experts chaired by the National Security Council of both nations, in which we discussed and exchanged information about the magnitude, the type of the Syrian chemical weapons program and discussed also the practical solutions that could be achieved to neutralize that program if the conditions permitted. As a consequence of those discussions, we had when we arrived in Geneva a year ago a solid basis upon which to have not a political but a very practical discussion about the elimination of this program. I had the honor to chair one of two working groups in Geneva. The other was chaired by our ambassador to OPCW Bob Mikulak and he worked with his Russian counterpart very efficiently on drafting a document that essentially became the OPCW decision adopted two weeks later. My group focused on setting an actual plan and a timeline for the removal of these weapons from Syria and their destruction. And this was not as difficult as you might think because of those prior discussions. It did not become a political argument. It was rather a fairly straightforward process of agreeing that the fastest practicable timetable for removal of those weapons would be about nine months. That is about the middle of 2014 and that's what we agreed on. And despite great skepticism at the time that that was a realistic timetable. In fact, we came very near to meeting it despite Syria's recalcitrance and delay in removing the weapons. The hardest work, of course, was done by Secretary Kerry and Minister Lavrov as they sought to tie this agreement about chemical weapons to the much larger question of Syria and the next steps that we would attempt to take together. And those were the most difficult and intense conversations in Geneva. So the first point is we had a solid diplomatic framework well before the use of chemical weapons by the regime last August and well before we sat down together in Geneva. Second point I would emphasize is that it is pressure that afforded us the leverage to bring Syria to this decision to sign the CWC and remove its weapons. And that leverage depended upon the credible threat of the use of force. There was, as you recall a year ago, a fierce debate in the Congress as there is a fierce debate in the Congress on any idea the President has about whether or not to approve the use of force. The fact is that the Syrians found it credible. The Russians found it credible. And as a consequence, we have achieved something that was not, I think, considered possible prior to the meeting in Geneva. I think it demonstrates strength and I flatly disagree with those who think that the Iraq model in 2003 was a demonstration of strength. Rather, in the case of Syria without firing a single shot, we removed a thousand tons, more than a thousand tons, of weapons of mass destruction. Compare it to Iraq where at a thousand times the cost and an infinitely higher human cost, we removed zero tons of WMD. Third, I would say just to build a little bit on Laura's point and to preview something that Jenny will say, a coordinated interagency approach has been essential to accomplishing this within the timetable that we devised. All the years I've spent in Washington, I have never seen an administration in which routine communication and coordination across the agencies of the executive branch has been so strong. That was true not only on this issue, not only on the non-proliferation issues that perhaps by their nature are less controversial, but across the board on all the foreign policy issues that we work on. At times the interagency structure can be overly bureaucratic and slow, but the fact that it is communicative and that it enables people not just at the top level, but at the working level to establish common expectations and common policy objectives. And I think that's never been on better display at least in my experience than in what we've done on Syrian chemical weapons over the last few years. And I give particular credit to the Department of Defense, which looked ahead, anticipated that there could be a scenario under which we would have an opportunity to remove and destroy these weapons and began thinking ahead of scenarios and what bureaucratic, legal, financial, technical obstacles would have to be addressed if we were to take advantage of that opportunity. They involved the rest of the interagency including the State Department in that effort and I think the happy result I'll leave to Jenny to describe. Fourth, as Laura promised, I want to give strong credit to an effective and generous international division of labor. The United States contributed heavily to this effort diplomatically, technically and yes, financially, but we were far from alone. We accomplish more in this world when we build coalitions. We know that and this case is absolutely no different. In fact, it is an excellent example of international cooperation. I would start the list of course with the OPCW winner of a Nobel Peace Prize last year and which had the expertise in-house and the determination and leadership to accomplish a mission that nobody in the Hague ever thought they would be asked to do. They did it with courage under difficult circumstances and they did it with the incredibly effective assistance of a United Nations support group headed by Sigrid Kogg who led this OPCW UN joint mission. It was extraordinary work by both organizations. A number of countries stepped forward to put money behind their dedication to non-proliferation principles and I would cite especially those that contributed not just financially but also logistically. That includes Denmark and Norway who provided the cargo ships in the naval escorts that escorted them and who kept these ships on station many months longer than they had projected at a greater expense because of delaying tactics by the Syrian government. Partners in the Mediterranean, especially Italy, Spain and Cyprus provided important logistical support to the operation. The United Kingdom, Germany and Finland stepped forward at national expense to provide for the destruction of chemicals on land after they had been neutralized at sea aboard the Cape Ray and a number of countries and I can't list them all but I'll cite especially Japan, Canada and the European Union as a group were exceptionally generous in cash contributions to the OPCW's destruction fund. We could talk some more if you'd like in the question and answer period about some of the challenges but the fact is that the challenges were secondary to the really strong readiness of partners across the world to make this mission a success. The final point on what we've learned is that verification and inspection is still crucial to assure the ultimate success of this project. We are strongly in support of the OPCW's efforts to verify the accuracy of Syria's original declaration. There has never been a cause to assume that a statement by the Syrian regime is true. You would be wiser to put your money on the opposite. But the OPCW has an important role to play in terms of assuring that the standards of the CWC have been met. They're going about that in a systematic way and we are happy together with a number of other members of the OPCW to be supporting that effort. We approach this effort with our eyes wide open. We will insist upon full verification before we would entertain any notion of closing the books on this issue. Let me just note that we understand also that although we have accomplished something important, the removal we hope soon to be verified, the complete removal of an entire class of WMD from a country, it's a significant achievement. But we also know that within the setting of Syria's civil war, which has been marked by unprecedented brutality and inhumanity on the part of the regime, we may have made a significant contribution to reducing the risk for Syrian citizens and for those outside Syria. But in face of the full arsenal of brutal methods adopted by the regime, we've had only a marginal impact on helping to save Syrian civilians. Their suffering continues, our work continues, and we don't mean at all. To say that this has been the decisive turning point in the Syrian civil war. So while we celebrate something, we consider a success not of the U.S. but of the international community. Of course, our enthusiasm is dampened by the continuing tragedy that the Syrian people face. Thanks, and I look forward to your questions. Thanks, Tom. Now we'll hear from Jenny Smith. Thank you for the introduction. I can assure you that Assistant Secretary Weber is very disappointed to miss the beginning of this event. He asked me to deliver the remarks in his stead, in part due to my involvement on this effort, and in part because he thought this might be a good professional development opportunity. We'll see. The Department of Defense has a great deal of experience eliminating chemical weapons. As many of you know, we've destroyed 90% of our domestic stockpile. And we have worked closely with Russia, Albania, and Libya through the Non-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction, or CTR program, to help destroy theirs. As we began looking at the evolving threat presented by the Syrian chemical weapons, we understood that this scenario would be quite different from those we'd faced previously. The security environment would be the least permissive we had encountered. Syria was not a typical partner for our Cooperative Threat Reduction program. And the chemicals were stored in geographically dispersed locations throughout Syria. We had to be especially creative when thinking about what the potential solutions might be. One instrumental creative thinker was U.S. Senator Richard Luger, who actually in August of 2012 recommended that the United States and Russian Federation work together toward the elimination of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile. As was mentioned, senior leaders began a quiet dialogue with Russia on chemical weapons destruction issues, and over the course of a year, experts from both countries developed what was called, then, the universal matrix, which identified the processes, personnel, and equipment that would be needed to eliminate any cash of chemical weapons. This collaboration between often uneasy partners laid groundwork that helped build the trust needed to respond quickly after the Secretary of State, John Kerry, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov finalized the U.S.-Russia framework for the elimination of Syria's chemical weapons. Had we not heeded the ideas of the visionary leaders, I'm certain we would not have completed the destruction of the most dangerous of Syria's declared chemicals less than a year after Syria acceded to the convention. Our willingness to think big, if you will, and to believe that the international community would work with us was well worth it. While political leaders were paving the way for cooperation, the Department of Defense was taking stock of its chemical weapons destruction capabilities. In late 2012, while working with Libya to determine the appropriate technology for eliminating their chemical weapons stockpile, we identified one especially critical capability gap that would limit our options if the international community had a chance to destroy Syria's stockpile. No country had an easily transportable technology that could rapidly destroy large quantities of bulk liquid agent or weapons. The existing systems that were out there were designed for the destruction of munitions. Required significant supporting infrastructure or required a significant amount of time to transport, set up, and systemize before destruction operations could commence. If we wanted to substantively contribute to the global effort to eliminate Syria's threat, the Syrian threat, we had to take some calculated risks and help develop the toolbox. In early 2013, the Department of Defense embarked upon the development of a hydrolysis system that was geography and user-independent. At the time, we did not know where or when we might use the system, so it was important to maximize our options. Our Department of Defense experts developed the field-deployable hydrolysis system, the FDHS, in less than six months. The rapid development of this new system would not have been possible without the persistent interagency senior leader engagement. The fact that the U.S. was able to offer the FDHS played a major role in convincing Russia, the United Nations, and the OPCW to support the concept of removal of the chemical weapons from Syria. At the time the FDHS development began, I certainly know nobody envisioned that it would be on a maritime vessel. Our willingness to be agile and flexible in our approach meant that we were able to devise a solution when other options ceased to be viable. The ability to improvise and adapt to the changing diplomatic, security, and logistical realities was critical to our success. In particular, the flexibility of the Nunn-Lugar CTR program was invaluable. Initially that program is developed to assist in securing and destroying former Soviet Union's WMD, and the program now has been expanded to reduce the threat of WMD globally. CTR's role in the Libyan and Syrian chemical weapons elimination efforts demonstrates its ability to evolve to address the threats of today and tomorrow. CTR has been the primary source of funding, program management, and implementation oversight, providing technical expertise and equipment for the removal and for the destruction operations aboard the Cape Ray. In late November 2013, our government offered the OPCW the use of the FDHS, along with associated support for the destruction of Syria's priority one chemicals at sea aboard the Cape Ray. After a series of delays in the Syrian removal effort, the Cape Ray received these chemicals on July 2nd. A short seven weeks later, on August 18th, neutralization operations aboard the Cape Ray concluded. Thanks to the close cooperation we had with the OPCW, Finland, the Finnish company EchoCam, and Germany, we were able to complete the safe offloading of all of the chemicals at all of the effluent in Finland and Germany just this past Friday. Though this is an important achievement, we cannot afford to rest. Questions about Syria's chemical weapons program, we must continue to work to resolve. Additionally, we must look forward to think about what the Syria mission means for the future. We view Libya as practice for Syria, which we hope will serve as practice for other nations in the future. We need always to anticipate the next challenge and weigh the risks of inaction. Where would we be now if we hadn't assumed some risks in the planning and preparing for Syria? Thank you. Look forward to your questions. Yes, you may add one point. Thank you. I'm sorry to take the floor again. Thank you, Jenny. There's one point that I skipped over in trying to be brief, but I think it's important that the cooperation between the United States and the Russian Federation was not limited to the agreement in Geneva. In fact, the Russian Federation proved the primary source of advice and channel of pressure from the international community to the Syrian regime. And while we continued to disagree about a number of issues in Syria and a number of issues related to the origin of Syria's chemical weapons program and whether or not the regime used chemical weapons, the fact is that the Russians kept up their end of the deal in terms of continuing to press Syria for full removal of the chemicals. And while we have a number of even more difficult issues with the Russian Federation today, I think in listing all of those who worked hard to make this result, it's important that Russia also be listed. Thanks. Can I just start off with a question for you both? So this whole scenario, it's kind of like a... I see a movie, you know, in the background. You take these chemicals, you put them out on sea, you destroy them. What would have happened if we had not been able... I mean, basically we were neutralizing this agent in international waters. So we didn't have all of the... Well, there was some public opposition. But it wasn't as great as if we had to ship this to a particular country and do it on land. So one thing is, I don't know if you can talk about what were the options you were considering before this FDHS, field deployed FDHS was possible. And what would have happened if you didn't... I mean, I know that's just pure speculation, but I could see this as a kind of nightmare scenario, right? As a matter of fact, at one point I thought, God, that ship's just going to travel around the med and it's never going to be able to stop anywhere. So can you talk a little bit about that? I will. And now that Assistant Secretary Weber has joined us, we can always pick on him for this. In short, destruction on land would have been the preferred option for a number of reasons. We probably still would have used the same field deployable hydrolysis system technology. One of the primary candidates that initially was very interested was Albania. And I'm deeply grateful to the government of Albania for being willing to consider this. It faced the same kind of public pressure that any of our democracies would have faced on this issue. And though I think I'm disappointed that the public pressure caused the government to withdraw the offer, the offer I still admire the fact that they explored it so deeply. The number of other countries in Europe were interested in doing this. They, I think, anticipated the same kind of public reaction that Albania experienced. And as a consequence, we did not go as far in discussion with other countries. I think some of them sought to compensate for that by being extra generous in the destruction effort. And we appreciate that because in the end it worked. So the first option certainly was destruction on land with the same hydrolysis system. There were other options as well that could have been, that I still believe would be feasible technically that were available to us, including incineration rather than simply, rather than the two-step hydrolysis and incineration. So I'm not, I don't think it was a very close thing. I think we had more than one option. And I think that the option that was chosen was executed brilliantly by the Department of Defense. Sure. One of the, I think, immediate actions that we undertook was to really look at the different chemicals that were listed in the declaration and just crosswalk those with what's the appropriate technology. And in destruction of chemicals traditionally come across neutralization and incineration as the two primary methods. And so these were actually unique applications of both in this scenario, in that the FDHS was utilizing the neutralization technology. But incineration was actually used. That's what is being done presently in Germany and in Finland. And so the creative application was in fact leveraging some of the commercial industrial facilities to perform an elimination role under the verification of OPCW. And so that was quite nice because as we were looking at were there any quickly transportable incineration options. It was most quick to use one that already existed. And so taking that approach with and through the OPCW process was an interesting application of technology that otherwise would have been a fairly large brick and mortar program. If the audience will bear with me, I have one more question to ask. Well, I have a lot of questions, but I'll stop at this one question. I was struck, Tom, as you were speaking about the international collaboration. In my experience, especially with WMD, maybe nuclear is a tougher area. But wow, that's really hard to come by, that international collaboration. And so you have to ask, is it because countries were shocked that Assad and or rebel groups had actually used chemical weapons? Was it a reaction to that? Was it because nobody had anything to lose except maybe the Russians and the Iranians in their diplomatic relations with Syria? Is it because the country was at war? I mean, what are the big picture elements that helped countries say, yes, we want to do this and we're going to put money into it and effort and we're going to do this quickly? I think each government might have a slightly different answer, but I think the common threads are first the widespread sense of revulsion, that the regime would use a weapon designed for strategic use in a life and death situation for the regime, would use it in this limited way in a way that left more than a thousand civilians including children, women, noncombatants dead. I think the world's outrage was real and was justified. Secondly, that there was an opportunity here that does not come along frequently and that required rapid action. You could go back to the days of UNSCOM and their investigations in Iraq from 1991 until about 1999 and you could wish in hindsight that the world had offered the same kind of support for the special commission in Iraq rather than making Iraq a political football and the Security Council and elsewhere. And I think we would have been spared a lot of misery in Iraq if the world had been as united at that point. Having an opportunity that had a definite expiration date, this had to be done rapidly and it had to be done under the conditions of a raging civil war, I think helped to mobilize the international community. I think one more point which is not necessarily as near the surface. To a great extent the Syrian conflict has underlined the near complete lack of utility of chemical weapons as a strategic deterrent. The conflicts that the Middle East region faces today are primarily below the state level. They are not questions of deterring an enemy against an all out surprise attack with WMD. And for these purposes of fighting an insurgency, fighting to overthrow a brutal regime, dealing with fanatic brutal opponents, chemical weapons as it do not have a strategic value. And I think when the world saw the opportunity to add one more state to the list of those who have renounced chemical weapons, there was an eagerness to join in. That's how I would put it. It was still, it was not exactly spontaneous or automatic. It took a great deal of work by a number of diplomats in many venues. Alright, thank you. I would like to open the floor to your questions. Yes? Greg Tillman, Arms Control Association. I wondered if you could look forward at the next steps in chemical weapons, arms control worldwide, based on the Syrian experience. How will you use Syria in trying to gain universality? And which country is your biggest worry or biggest target in the next step? Briefly, I guess we could have an interesting discussion as to whether Syria was a target in a plan or a next step in a plan or was it an opportunity that arose under horrendous conditions. What happens next? There are only now a handful of countries that have not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention for a variety of reasons. The United States continues to advocate strongly that all states that have not signed and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention should do so. Should not be seen as a bargaining chip for something else. It should simply proceed. We'll continue that diplomatic push. I don't expect that there will or should be another opportunity to threaten the use of force against a non-signatory of the Chemical Weapons Convention. I'm Glenn Schweitzer, the National Research Council. Could you comment on the size of the chemical engineering workforce, the support of the effort, and what's happened to that workforce? Within Syria. Yes, the Syrian workforce. Actually, there's some analyst somewhere in the U.S. government who knows that, but I don't off the top of my head. The one comment I would add to that is this is one of the parts that made this such a non-traditional partner for a CTR, because traditionally our efforts are aimed at not just addressing the chemicals and the infrastructure, but also that element of the human capital and the human relationship, and that just was not part of the current activities. That's absolutely correct. It is the case that the United States, primarily through non-Lugar but other programs as well, have a huge role in redirecting WMD scientists in the former Soviet Union into happier pursuits. We've done the same in Iraq. We've done a little bit in Libya, have more to do. We look forward to doing it in Syria when the conditions allow it. This gentleman first, and then the young lady. Thank you. My name is Stefan Buchwald from the German Embassy. I'd like to pick up on two of the issues we've heard today. Laura has talked about discrepancies. We know about the declaration gap, the different issues that are still open and not defined. At the same time, Tom, you've talked about the very close and diplomatic relation and cooperation with the Russian side. I'd like you to elaborate a bit on how we're going to take this forward. You and us, together as an international community, is the cooperation with the Russian side instrumental in taking it forward when it comes to sort of finding out more about these undeclared stockpiles of CW, and will this actually take us forward? Thank you. I'm not sure I described U.S.-Russian cooperation as close. It was intensive, and it was ultimately effective. Will it continue past the stage of removal to the stage of verification? It is our intent to do so, and the Russians have made clear it is their intent to do so. There's a lot of work ahead. And if the challenge is to teach an old dog a new trick, teach the Syrian regime how to try telling the truth the first time, there may be better instructors than the Kremlin. However, we will continue to pursue it with the Russians. It depends not only on the Russians at this point, of course, but upon the international community to sustain a focus for the United Nations Security Council, which has asserted and will maintain a particular role here for the OPCW, which in its decision of last September asserted under the CWC particular powers that exceed normal operating procedure for the CWC. If all of those are met and the world keeps its eyes focused on this, I think we'll succeed and certainly Russian diplomatic help, I think, will enable it to happen faster. This young lady in the green. Hi, I'm Pooja Modi with the Federation of American Scientists. I kind of wanted to look forward a little and ask, how do you think other countries or leaders who are thinking of using chemical weapons will view the outcome of Syria's chemical weapon use? You know, the lack of immediate international military response or the lack of any substantial repercussions for Assad, he essentially got what he wanted by using chemical weapons and maintaining power. So is Syria's fate really a deterrent or have we set some sort of precedent that this is as bad as it's going to get? The international community is going to take away your chemical weapons, but as a leader or as a country, if you do this, there's not really any substantial consequence. I don't understand how we got what he wanted by killing a thousand of his own people. In addition to 200,000, he'd already killed. He has further gained the hatred of his own people, the opprobrium of the international community. He's lost something that he counted on and justified in his own mind and to his own partners in the regime as an essential strategic deterrent. For someone who rules on the basis of fear, he's lost whatever little bit of fear he was able to instill in the population of Israel. Israel as a state militarily is more secure as a result. He did not gain legitimacy from the United States and it remains clear that there is no long-term peaceful solution in Syria that includes the continuation of the Assad dynasty. So I don't see what he's gained and I can imagine other world leaders stupid enough to draw the wrong lessons and stupid enough to use chemical weapons against their own people. There are such leaders in the world, but even they ought not to be encouraged by this example. Hi, Paul Shanklin from US News again. Just to expand on that last question, can you expand a bit more on how Assad has not gained any kind of legitimacy from the US? Presumably if he is not forcibly removed from power, we will continue going back to him to negotiate any further processes like this. And whether or not he lost any legitimacy officially, I wonder if you think that our going to him as a part of this process affected morale, the spirit of the opposition working in Syria? Well, I don't quite follow you because I don't know when we went to him, as you say. We negotiated with the Russians. The Russians pressured Syria to give this up a goal that is very much in the Russian interest. Will we go to him again? You ask for a similar process. I don't know what that similar process would be. Being one of a handful of states that may have chemical weapons is a fairly unique circumstance. Was the opposition disappointed that there was no bombing of Syria as a result of this violation? Yes, they were disappointed. They've expressed their disappointment clearly. They hoped, of course, that a retaliation for use of these weapons would lead to a sustained US military engagement, despite the fact that the President said clearly that there would be a strong but not unlimited response. So are they disappointed? Yes. But I don't understand the logic that says that he's now in a stronger position than if he had never used these weapons. I don't get it. I think the point is that he's still in power. If the option, if he had come back last year and said, no, no, I didn't use chemical weapons, I'm not going to give him up, that there would have been some movement to more forcibly remove him from power. So I think that's the way some people view this scenario. It's like, well, he used chemical weapons. That was really bad, but then he gave him up so he's still in power. And we know the Assad regime, its primary objective is to remain in power. Absolutely. The scenario you're comparing it to, yes, he's still in power. We never said that the consequence of using chemical weapons is that you will be forced to give up power. Did some people hope that would happen? Yes. Did we have the capability to do that through a limited number of airstrikes? No. Should we have turned down the Russian interest in getting all those chemical weapons removed and instead insisted on a goal that we did not have the means to achieve his immediate removal from power? I think that's a little bit absurd. So yeah, I am as aggravated as anyone that one of the most reprehensible dictators in the world is still in power. But to completely misconstrue what we sought to achieve in ending the existence of this dangerous WMD program and to equate it with the immediate termination of his regime, it's not just unrealistic, it's absurd. All right. Other questions from the audience right here in front? Hi, Elaine Ceasley from Morgan Strategic Processes. The FDHS is a success story for technology transfer, taking a technology from research and development into a fieldable system. And this was done in an extremely short amount of time. Any thoughts on what made that a success and sharing how to share these actions with other government agencies that are currently experiencing challenges with technology transfer? That's an excellent question. With regard to the technology transfer piece, we did not actually transfer the technology to a different government or a different end user just to clarify that one point. But in terms of the rapid acquisition process and the development of the technology, what contributed to that was actually senior leadership taking risks. This was very unusual, I think, in terms of the timeline. The other part was being able to draw upon the subject matter expertise that we had organically within the department from the experience from the domestic chem demo program. And so some, I think, ingenious folks within the department and some leaders that were willing to take a risk on them is a lesson that everyone should learn. And I think that was one of the key components of the success. One of the things that was important in order to do that is to be able to assemble the right and fulsome crowd of leaders who have equities. And so I can certainly tell you that in the Pentagon, as we were looking at some of this, the audience at the senior level within the department was quite diverse. There were multiple offices who very quickly identified any impediments or challenges and with the aim of how do we resolve them, how do we get to yes. And so that spirit of creativity and that risk tolerance, I think, is the exact right recipe. Okay. Other questions? Let me pose one in the interim. What did all this cost? What did the destruction of so far cost? What was the U.S. portion of that? And then what do we still need to do? We still need to destroy their production facilities. Is that true? And how is that going to be funded? So the cost for the destruction operation, the bill at least that had come to the cooperative threat reduction amounts to approximately 160 million. And so that supported not just the destruction but that also included some of the equipment and materials that enabled the removal process. The activities that remain, as we mentioned, with the delivery of the effluent on Friday is simply the demobilization and return of the Cape Ray. And so everything is going quite well. We expect to be well within our costs there. In terms of that 160 million that I mentioned did not include an initial investment of I believe it was approximately $10 million in the R&D and the development of the technology itself. And the other part of this is that that's purely the U.S. CTR component. There was quite a bit more in looking at the entirety of the destruction efforts, particularly with regard to the OPCW and UN trust funds that were set up and by which there were multiple donors. I don't recall the numbers off the top of my head of what those accounts amounted to, but the destruction of the precursors and the effluent will go on for a few more months. And so the total cost right now is probably a bit difficult to calculate. It's difficult to calculate. It's probably less, the total expended by everybody else on this effort is probably less than the total that the U.S. has expended but not dramatically. So if that gives you a ballpark figure. Sure. Okay. Other questions? Andy Weber has joined us fresh from the Pentagon. Is there anything you would like to add to this group? You're welcome to come and sit up here next to me. Thank you. Thank you, Sharon. Jenny did a great job. I know. Fantastic career. I know. Sorry, I couldn't join you earlier, but there are a few lessons. The rapid technology development or application. It wasn't actually a new technology. What was different was that it was transportable and it was designed to be what I called geography and user independent. In other words, we didn't know when we invested in this capability that was essentially contained within two standard connexes, shipping containers. Based in part on our experience earlier destroying Libya's 517 mustard filled artillery shells. We didn't know who would be operating this equipment and we didn't know where it would be operated in Syria at the sites. By Syrians, by some multinational entity coalition, perhaps even driving the chemicals to Jordan or another neighboring country. These were all considered and then Secretary Countryman mentioned some of our diplomatic outreach to countries like Albania, but there were other countries. But the point was we had a flexible capability. And in the end we mounted it on a ship, but it was the fact that we had that capability and we had it ready that allowed us to convince the international community. And that we had done the math, frankly, that it was feasible to remove the chemicals from Syria. Because initially everybody thought we would have to do it in Syria in the middle of a civil war. And we had done the math based on exquisite intelligence. The intelligence community deserves tremendous credit for watching the Syrian CW program for decades. We actually based on the intelligence tailored the capability to the Syrian stockpile. Because we knew it was in bulk liquid, primarily not stored in filled munitions, which would have required a different technology. But we did the math, we figured roughly 200 truckloads. When you first think 1,300 tons, it sounds impossible to move. But based on what we knew about the containers and just doing the math, it became a doable approach to remove the weapons. And our confidence in that, the fact that we had this ready capability, and we briefed it to the Russians in our private dialogue that had gone on for nearly a year, which developed what was called the universal matrix. It was incorporated into the Kerry-Lavrov agreement. We already had the detailed plan developed. I visited Moscow with Senator Luger on his last trip to Russia as a U.S. senator in August of 2012. So that's over two years ago. And we talked to the Russians about working together to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpile. And several weeks later, the White House and the Russian Security Council established a working group that together combined our assessments and then developed this detailed plan for deploying the Syrian stockpile. So it was a case where because we had a capability, we were able to lead the international community in the direction of removal. And I think that is such an important part of the success. The other piece is because we have, within the U.S. government, Laura Holgate is not here, but we have the WMD Zarina. This is what she does. We have Tom Countryman's office. This is what he does. We have offices in the Pentagon that only focus on countering weapons of mass destruction. So we were working on this problem starting in 2011. We had done a lot of thinking, a lot of planning, development of options. And as a result of that forethought and practical investment in actual capabilities that we could provide to support this international effort, here we are a year after the agreement was signed in Geneva and we're done. And if you look back at the press, there's a long and notable list of people who basically said it was impossible. That's my comment. Well, I'm going to turn to you and I want a WMD Free Zone in the Middle East. So I hope you're working on the other parts of the equation, too, the bio and the new. Well, Sharon, I remember you had a meeting at CSIS in April or May of 2013 on this with Director General Azumchou. And we talked about this and we talked about the Syria challenge. And again, because your focus on nonproliferation, you were working that before the massive use of chemical weapons in August of 2013 in Syria. And we had been quietly working with the OPCW and Director General Azumchou's team long before this became a big public issue. Any further questions for any of our panelists or half panelists? No, then I'm going to declare this a success story. And please join me in thanking our panelists and thanks for joining us today.