 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to CSIS. My name is Andy Cuchins. I'm director of the Russian Eurasia program here, and it's really a special, special privilege and honor to welcome you here and to serve as the host for this really unique event. And I want to first thank the Embassy of Kazakhstan and the NSA, the NSA being the National Security Archive. I couldn't resist that one, Tom. It was just, it was teed up, it was so easy, but I'm sure you've heard that many times before. To talk about Project Sapphire and its significance, for those of you that don't know, this was a 1994 covert operation of the U.S. government in cooperation with Kazakhstan to reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation as part of the Cooperation Threat Reduction Program, or more familiarly known as the Nun Lugar Program. A warehouse at the Ulba Metallurgical Plant outside Ust Kamenegorsk housed 1,322 pounds, about 600 kilos of weapons grade enriched uranium to fuel Alpha-class submarines. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the fuel was not so well documented and secured and the danger of being sold for use in the construction of nuclear weapons. And this is the 20th anniversary of that successful operation, which was part of the most successful U.S. assistance program since the Marshall Program, that being the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, the Nun Lugar Program. And in fact, this month, November 2014, marks the 23rd anniversary of the passing of that landmark piece of legislation. It's kind of an interesting story. We had hoped to show a video of then Secretary of Defense, Bill Perry, commenting and talking about Project Sapphire and its significance. And unfortunately, for technological reasons, we're not able to show the video this evening. But it took me to reviewing the really important book that he and Ash Carter wrote, published in 1999, Preventive Defense. And where Secretary Perry actually was at Stanford at that time when I was there at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. And the key phrase that he uses to describe CTR the Nun Lugar Program is defense by other means. And I think that's a really very, very significant and deep concept for us to think about and it's what this story will bring us here to today. But it was also interesting to read the section, there's a chapter two of the book, it's about Project Sapphire and the CTR Program. And it was on November 19th that Bill Perry and Ash Carter came to Washington and they briefed Senator Nunn, who's here with us this evening as well, and Senator Lugar about the program and their aides. The piece of legislation apparently was written on November 22nd within two days of the briefing and the legislation was passed on November 28th, nine days later. That's when Washington worked. And here are today two statesmen who made Washington work by partisanship on important security issues. So it's really a thrill for me to welcome you all here and now I'd like to turn the floor over to the distinguished Ambassador from Kazakhstan, Kairat Umarov, your Excellency. Thank you Andy for this warm introduction and for hosting all of us today. It's a pleasure to welcome you all here on this important occasion to commemorate the Project Surprise 20th anniversary. It's indeed a special day for all of us and especially Kazakhstan, for U.S.-Kazakhstan cooperation, but I think also for the global security. I just want to start by acknowledging the presence of some of our outstanding friends I haven't seen Bill Courtney, but he should be somewhere here, who was the first U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan. We have Jackson McDonald here, who worked at that time with Bill Courtney at the Embassy in Almaty. Dr. Jeffrey Starr, who actually was the leader of the secret tiger team, all of them played an instrumental role in the U.S.-Kazakhstan landmark project against nuclear proliferation. Thank you all for joining us today. Tell you frankly, in preparation of this event, we thought of inviting Secretary Perry to come and be here with us tonight. And Mr. Kajans has already mentioned that there is good video, which was so nicely... Speaking about this project so far, about the successful completion of it, we wanted to show it tonight, but unfortunately it was a technical problem. We couldn't get Secretary Perry as well because of his health reasons, but actually probably tonight we can hear some more names, who were very much involved with this secretive operation. I was told that Ash Carter and Dan Poneman are away from the town, and I wish, of course, they could also join us today. I'm also very delighted to welcome my great friend Andy Weber, who since his diplomatic assignment in Kazakhstan in 1993 has held several important positions, including recently assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, biological defense programs. His current job is indeed no less challenging and yet no less noble. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think projects of fire in Kazakhstan actually played a great role in your life and career. A couple of years ago, during one of my first visits in my previous capacity as deputy foreign minister at our meeting here in Washington, Andy gave me a book, Fresh from the Press, which the same year was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. An extraordinary story beautifully researched, elegantly told, whose author I'm delighted to welcome here tonight. Thank you, David Hoffman, for being part of this evening, and the book was called That Hand. I hope that your book will become a scenario for Hollywood blockbuster sometime in the future. I want to especially thank Laura Holgate for joining us tonight. Laura was one of the... was on the original team with Ash Carter, who conceived the cooperative threat reduction program. She's been working on it ever since, and today leads those efforts at the White House. Laura has just recently hosted a very productive nuclear security summit, Sherpa meeting, and I want to stress that Kazakhstan is committed to being a good contributor to making 2016's Chicago Summit a success. My special thanks also go to the NSA, National Security Archive. It's director Tim Blanton and our good friend Dr. Svitlana Sobranske. Thank you for helping organizing this event. Next spring, Kazakhstan's ministries of foreign affairs and energy in cooperation with the National Security Archive plan to host a four-day critical oral history conference to commemorate the 20th anniversary since the last piece of Soviet nuclear weapons left the territory of Kazakhstan. We'll look forward to working with you on this event as well. Dear ladies and gentlemen, you probably ask yourself why Kazakhstan embassy is organizing this event tonight. And my answer is that people in Kazakhstan deeply care about national security and nuclear nonproliferation. We did a lot in this sphere. We closed the nuclear testing site. We joined the NPT as a non-nuclear state. We get rid of fourth largest nuclear arsenal voluntarily, shortly after achieving independence. We are the ones who are creating a Central Asia nuclear weapons free zone in our part of the world. We're part of many other important developments in that particular sphere. And I think Kazakhstan has convincingly demonstrated to the international community that a peaceful foreign policy, openness and cooperation and not possession of WMD or the threat of use of its use are essential to security and prosperity. I myself, I was very much involved in the first anti-nuclear movement which was called Nevada CMA before joining the Foreign Service and I was very much involved in closing the nuclear testing site. So Kazakhstan stands very firmly against nuclear testing and I know firsthand experience of talking to people and seeing people suffering from this devastating and very hazardous impact of nuclear testing. So we think that that fight should continue being fought. This critical judgment paved the way for 22 years of, I mean our cooperation, 22 years of close and strategic cooperation between Kazakhstan and the United States based on trust and shared values. The solid base of cooperation between our countries has led to a long list of successes from project sapphire to project ground hop to cleaning the Deglin Mountain Kazakhstan and the United States are leading the way in innovative cooperation on nuclear security. Dear friends, we believe that Nan Luger program, the cornerstone of US-Kazakhstan cooperation provides a good platform for global cooperation to reduce weapons and nuclear materials. So today it's both a privilege and pleasure to introduce, I thought one of the authors but today we have both of the authors of the cooperative threat reduction program. The honorable Senator Dick Luger and Senator Sam Nan. An internationally respected statesman Senator Luger and Senator Nan served with great distinction in the United States Congress for many years. Notably Senator Luger was the chairman of the influential Senate committee on foreign relations and Kazakhstan is grateful for your support in non-proliferation and disarmament issue. Thank you Senator for your foresight and for your leadership in advancing the vision for a safer world. Both senators are active today after retirement Senator Nan today is leading quite an active international efforts NGO called Nuclear Threat Reduction Initiative with which we have several good events and they were part of the security summit as well. Senator Luger after retirement created a Richard Luger Institute which is sustaining his great passions for creating a world with fewer nuclear dangers while at the same time promoting food security for the world's poor and needy. Ladies and gentlemen please welcome with your applause the honorable Richard Luger, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the great friend of Kazakhstan. Mr. Ambassador this is a very exciting evening for all of us but I just simply want to say that it's especially exciting to be with my partners Sam Nunn and to have an opportunity really to reminisce just a bit before we get to the serious parts of our program this evening. At the time that the Nan Luger Act came into being the Soviet Union was breaking up and later Kazakhstan gained its independence. A few months after that Sam Nunn and I decided to visit Almaty and were received ultimately by President Azerbaijan the first opportunity we had had to meet the President. There were many things to talk about including the residents for our ambassador who would come to represent our country there and in a more serious vein we talked about nuclear weapons and I must say that Sam was here to audit this evening my recollections that President Azerbaijan on the one hand I think saw the desirability of being to wind down some of the problems there. The difficulties in terms of relations with Russia just the technical aspects of maintenance and all the infrastructure involved were going to be very very troublesome. At the same time my recollection is he wanted to know what is Ukraine going to do which was an interesting question it's often stated perhaps correctly that your country had the fourth largest member and or what have you of nuclear weapons Ukraine was either fourth or fifth in the batting order so let me just say that makes life very simple Sam and I tried to solve that for him. We want to see the President of Ukraine President Kravchuk just after the election in our country in 1992 and proposed that we knew he wanted to get rid of his nuclear weapons had difficulties in the rata of people who wanted to hang on to indicate the importance of Ukraine in the world and so he made a proposal of money in the United States might be able to provide through the non-nuclear program or wherever else we might be able to get it. He was very excited about that and this led then to a decision on his part that he had led to some decision making in Astana likewise. But in any event Sam and I had privilege of returning to see the President of your country several occasions in the glorious new capital as it was built one time in the summertime another time when it was 20 degrees below zero. Unbelievable but nevertheless all the part of our non-nuclear diplomacy and all the part of your country and moving forward and so I was so pleased when I heard this 20th anniversary of Project Sapphire was going to be celebrated tonight I went of course to David Hoffman's chapter 21 to check out to make certain we remembered all the details I had seen Andy Webber not too long ago once again moved from the Defense Department to the State Department doing the Lord's work fighting Ebola or whatever else it is they're fighting over there and Andy is simply indefatigable as his career progresses they're so grateful and Laura Hoagate really a veteran of the trail and so many of our trips traveling with us when she was not there she was communicating so we were on the right track asked the right questions I say to everyone involved in this ceremony tonight this 20th anniversary I have no power to you it's a great evening thank you very much thank you very much I'm Tom Blanton I'm the director of the National Security Archive the other NSA the tiny NSA but it's a such an honor and a privilege for me to be here I was supposed to take a few minutes to do introductions but in fact three of our panelists and Senator Luger's appreciation of all three of our panelists I really won't take much time I would love to we're going to hear from David Hoffman the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the Dead Hand to give us the context of the time the end of the Cold War the collapsing Soviet Union the threat of nuclear weapons and then the legacy of that arms race then we're going to turn to Andy Weber who was on the ground as a young diplomat in Kazakhstan who actually discovers this uranium half a ton or so and to give us the view from the ground he called himself a field hand for Jeff Starr the head of cooperative threat reduction at that moment but I think Andy has an extraordinary story then we'll turn to Laura Holgate who at that moment was in the Pentagon working with Ash Carter but has also the long view of the 20 some odd years of extraordinary progress and I just want to point you to the National Security Archive website because this video that you've heard about where Secretary Perry announces the discovery and the securing of the uranium is embedded you just have to scroll down one screen from when you log on to NSarchive.org you'll see the video you can click and hear Secretary Perry was in a press conference with the Secretary of Energy State announcing this extraordinary success and giving the credit to the Nunn-Lugar program you'll also, if you go on down you'll see what the documents fetishist at the National Security Archive really do because we posted also a series of the declassified documents related to Project Sapphire including Ambassador Courtney's wonderful cable about the meeting between Senator Lugar Senator Naim and President Nazarbayev in November 1992 in a discussion you can now go back read it for yourself and see the level of discussion and commitment by the Republic of Kazakhstan to the cause of nuclear nonproliferation so check out the website you'll also see wonderful pictures of a very young he doesn't seem to age very much Andy Weber in his lab coat you'll see pictures of the C5As landing at the airport they had to use a jet engine I'm told to clear the snow and ice in the runways in one case but we'll get to some of those stories but let me just turn it to David Hoffman who's been our guru and guide on this extraordinary research project as we attempt to really excavate and bring to public notice one of the greatest underappreciated success stories of American farm policy in our lifetimes and it's still going on David Thanks Tom I'd like to say that as we sit here tonight and think about this as a great success story it's very easy to forget that none Luger almost didn't happen and I want to take you back to that time 23 years ago to those autumn months when the Soviet Union was coming apart and remind everybody that at that time there were many people in Washington who thought that it was just fine the Soviet Union came apart and was not an alarming development there was a mindset that our adversary was collapsing and that would be good for us there was an assistant secretary of defense at the time who said we've spent 50 years trying to bankrupt these people and now it's happened let them go into freefall and there was a former national security advisor to a president who said I thought there was a positive benefit in the breakup of command and control over strategic nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union to several other republics well this attitude we won, don't do anything didn't make sense to a small number of people and two of them are here with us tonight Senators Luger and Senator Nunn and I would like to remind you that neither of them were new to this topic their work in arms control for many years their concern about nuclear dangers had made contacts with Soviet officials they had been there, they had visited they understood the dangers and when Senator Nunn was in Moscow right after the failed August coup attempt and looked Gorbachev in the eye and said did you lose control of the nuclear suitcase there was silence and when Senator Nunn came home thinking about what he had seen on the streets of Moscow chaos, paralysis he thought I need to do something about this and that was a moment when a lot of Washington didn't want to do something about this Senator Nunn went to the Les Aspen and said we need to do something about this Les was Chairman of House Armed Services they came up with a bill that had some of what Aspen wanted humanitarian aid, it had some of what Senator Nunn wanted aid to help secure nuclear materials they took it to the floor the bill flopped Senator Nunn refused to say no, picked himself up tried again brought experts to Washington and this was a particularly interesting moment after the first bill failed Senator Nunn met in Washington with two Soviet officials from the Institute in Moscow Andre Kukoshin and Sergei Rogov and they came and had a breakfast which Senator Lugar was invited to and at this breakfast they said senators we want you to know there's a volatile, dangerous situation in Moscow Senator Lugar later told my colleague Don Oberdorfer that that particular moment was a very alarming conversation and a few days later Ash Carter came down and told the senators never before has a nuclear power disintegrated and eventually after listening to this bringing in other senators a little bit of a groundswell started to develop but believe me this was not something that the president was talking about the country was looking inward people were breathing a sigh of relief these senators were undeterred they got the bill passed and Senator Lugar in endorsing Senator Nunn's bill took to the floor and said nuclear weapons do not simply fade away they must be disabled dismantled and destroyed I want to just remind you all of this because none Lugar today seems like a natural and indeed it was a visionary response to what had happened in the world but it wasn't a sure thing and as we think about what we will do next time we should remember this was a gamble with history it helped Russia and the former Soviet republics deal with a horrible inheritance but it took courage and it took vision and it took a fair amount of stubbornness to get it off the ground and to get it started amen let me turn to Andy Weber to just give us the view young diplomat Kazakhstan but with some really interesting pieces of information that you then developed and then what did it look like and then how did that develop to Project Sapphire well thank you Tom it's humbling to be here this evening with the founders of the Nunn Lugar program and I was just a field hand at that time and I also re-read David Hoffman's chapter last night and the Wall Street Journal article that he quoted that said U.S. Embassy Almaty made for diplomats who find Paris a bore and indeed that was me and the next day I volunteered to serve there and what an exciting time it was a brand new country and they were trying to figure out what do we do and I joined right out of the Nevada SMA anti-nuclear movement and so many people made such a difference and many many of my colleagues and partners are here this evening what what really was the genius of the Nunn Lugar program and in hindsight as David said it looks like a no-brainer of course we removed to Tennessee and blended down 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium that was the obvious thing to do but Jeff Stark can tell you that there were really bitter feuds at the National Security Council as to whether this was the right thing to do and after we first reported that we had been approached about the existence of this 600 kilograms of H.E.U. there was a lot of skepticism and a lot of people thought it was a scam and indeed at the time there were all kinds of scams circulating and it wasn't really until that very very cold snowy day Senator Lugar referred to minus 20 but I remember some days that were minus 40 really crisp when we visited at the invitation Jeff who upon independence made a decision that Kazakhstan was going to be free of weapons of mass destruction and he didn't just say it he made it happen and he found in the United States thanks to the Nunn Lugar program a natural partner for that but we visited the site with Elwood gift from the Y-12 Oak Ridge laboratory we saw and took samples and analyzed on site and took some samples back to the United States 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium at this factory in Uzkmenogorsk Kazakhstan in assorted stainless steel buckets in pipes and it was almost banal that there were just these chunks of metal spaced apart so they wouldn't reach a critical mass and but when we returned to Almaty and Bill Courtney who was also a bold and fearless leader in Jackson McDonnell we reported back to Washington that indeed there were about 600 kilograms of 90 percent enriched at 235 some of it about 126 kilograms or uranium metal form directly usable and he said and this was true he said it was protected by a good padlock and I remember it well it was in antique stores with the big key indeed and there was a female guard apparently they were more reliable than the male guards because they didn't drink as much but and Jeff will attest to this that certainly got Washington's attention it wasn't just conjecture it wasn't just the factory director who was sharing this information for whatever reason it was real and that mobilized Washington and the technical expertise and it took time but by that fall right before winter really hit hard and I remember that evening like it was yesterday driving in the lead car of a secure convoy from the Lusk Menegorsk factory out to the airfield where the C-5s the first C-5 was going to land to load up and transport for that long flight back to the United States the Highlander's uranium and we were sliding on black ice and we had these big trucks loaded up with pallets and barrels of HEU sliding around and I just couldn't imagine having to report to Washington that one of them had slid off a bridge right into the Yurtush River but thankfully in that part of the world people know how to drive even on black ice and we made it to the airfield and sent that HEU on its way to Tennessee but it was an incredible experience and what I didn't know at the time was that this was a big boost to the Nunn-Lugar program there were a lot of skeptics and it really set a good precedent and Laura will talk more about this but for the whole concept of removal and elimination not just in place but in this case removing it from the country and we had some follow-on operations that were based on that similar model and indeed right through the nuclear security summits just recently some HEU was removed from Kharkiv Ukraine but it was definitely the best years of my life I loved living in Kazakhstan beautiful country as Jackson McDonald remembers we played hard and we worked hard hiking the mountains were heavenly like Tian Shan the heavenly mountains hunting and the hunting trip that Vitaly Mete the factory director invited me on was just an incredible moment in my life and I suppose we can say the rest is history it's not quite history yet and I was just thinking as you were remarking on the removal as a strategy that and we should circle back to this the little matter of say Syrian chemical weapons because talk about the parallels to today and the challenges of today but I'll ask you about that but let's turn to Laura and just maybe segue us from the time of sapphire to today's challenge well I have to say this is the project sapphire was one of the most exciting and meaningful projects I'd ever been associated with even though I wasn't on the ground you know watching the sparks fly as the testing went on with the although I heard about it but having been in on the ground floor of the Nun Luger program I can tell you that even in 94 the Nun Luger program was still fresh when we were sitting up at Harvard kind of envisioning what the context of the Nun Luger program might be certainly removing 25 bombs worth of HEU from Kazakhstan was not really what we had thought of but you know thanks to the vision of two gentlemen who have given me a life's work if I can put it that way that to create a flexibility and a capacity and and the tools to do this kind of job when the time came and when it became very clear that that was the answer that that was really exciting and I remember sitting in the very back as a very baby special assistant to assistant secretary Carter at the time and I remember the press conference at the Pentagon with secretary of defense Bill Perry and secretary of energy Hays Will Leary and I they were just so proud the two of them and I was sitting in the sideline being very proud with them to bring word of this major success to the world and that had been kept secret I mean honestly you can remember sorry Tom that we could keep a secret in those days there's still some secrets Laura we're working on that though and thank God we did because Lord knows what would have happened if someone had gotten there before that famous night on the black ice and I still remember this is a technology time stamp I remember taping it remember videotapes I remember taping that press conference for my family because it was right before Thanksgiving and I was going home to see my family and I was going to be you say this is why I'm in Washington mom and dad this is this is what I came to do and to be even just a fly on the wall which is really all I was at that time it was just so exciting and even then you could see how important it was and I remember secretary Perry I mean Andrew you mentioned it earlier at the press conference he called this defense by other means in a big way I mean this was not what we even thought of and added we put this bomb grade nuclear material forever out of the reach of potential black marketeers terrorists or a new nuclear regime and I just want to remind this 25 bombs worth however you want to count it 600 kilograms, 1300 pounds that is a lot of nuclear material and think how different the world would be if that had gone missing somehow into the gray zones of ungoverned areas into the black market of nuclear materials into the tans of terrorists into a major world capital when you're thinking about 25 bombs I mean that's not just the one bomb that goes off and then everybody figures it out I mean that gives a terrorist capability to say okay there were in one city I've now got 24 more which one do you want next and you're going to do what I ask and that just the the thought of that quality that volume of material being out of control is just really something we have to take quite seriously as a measure of the success but looking to what came after I mean this was there were so many lessons embedded in Project Sapphire and Andy hinted at the very first one that I really am so taken by is the impact of technical experts working together the very talented team from Y-12 and Oak Ridge National Lab their you know arm in arm shoulder to shoulder glove box to glove box with their Kazakhstan counterparts to package this material to make it safe to transport is just that paved the way for dozens and dozens and dozens of expert level interactions over the next 20 years that followed and hopefully the 20 years that follow from where we are now I mean there's so much that can get done when the technical experts get together do their thing, make the world safer and that's really one of to me the most meaningful human level lessons in Project Sapphire the other thing I will say and many of you know I've been involved in a lot of transportation of nuclear materials it all comes down to the containers and I remember there was some pretty hairy container issues associated with this you mean you couldn't ship them in the long tubes so you had to put them in something and then since it was going on a US military aircraft it had to meet US Department of Transportation standards and you know no matter what's happening maintaining and implementing container activities are the saviors of our nuclear world because we can't do anything about moving materials if you can't move it safely and if you don't have a vessel to put it in I think another lesson learned is yes you can't keep a secret sometimes when you need to and that's an okay thing but then when you bring it out into the public it also gives you an opportunity to teach the world what's really happened and to help gain the support and as David said you know really build up the recognition of how flexible and how important this cooperative threat reduction tool was to the country and to our national security Jeff Star who's been mentioned at who's knee I learned so much in this process will tell you that the complexity of this kind of a program requires focused interagency effort and problem solving and as I sit at the White House now and we do this every day around my interagency tables who's going to do this, who's going to solve that problem who's going to take this legal issue off the table who's going to manage that funding problem who's going to reach out to make that diplomatic connect who's got the technical realm the technical wherewithal to make that piece go and you mentioned it Tom but the serious CW piece is in many ways the child of Sapphire in the sense of proving that interagency can work together that the U.S. government has the tools and the ingenuity and thanks to Senator Nunn and Senator Lugar we have the resources and the legal basis to do this kind of stuff but it takes a process and it takes an interagency interaction and that's Sapphire couldn't have happened if we hadn't had that it's been a proof of concept frankly for dozens of subsequent shipments I mean five tons of weapons usable material has been returned to the U.S. or Russia for disposition and in many cases for reuse as nuclear for peaceful uses and in fact the project Sapphire material was burned in power plants in the west for nuclear energy and I can't think of no better use of weapons weapons usable material than to power you know heat and light and electricity for economic development and saving lives but this was just the beginning and we didn't know until about ten years later how much this removal for disposal was going to be a key theme of U.S. nuclear security activities but it truly has and really the Sapphire was the granddaddy of it all the only country that's going to surpass that anytime soon is Japan and the pledge that they made at the Nuclear Security Summit in March to remove a half a ton of nuclear materials from the United States for disposal so I'm sorry your record may be surpassed but I can't think of a better record to break frankly than this one we talked about movies this did inspire a movie there was a book called One Point Safe that some people may recall and that got turned into a movie called Peacemaker obviously there was no one playing Andy or no one playing me in that movie okay movie needs to be done again yeah exactly this time with a more handsome lead well I don't know we had George Clooney and Nicole Kidman Clooney and Kidman how can we top that but they weren't playing us oh that's the problem but you know these popular culture components do make up part of our national narrative about what it means to be safe what a good story and how do the good guys win and so you know this was certainly a case where the good guys won I want to say I mean I joke a lot but in some ways this project was very on a personal level the starting point for 20 plus years of working with Andy we first met on that 94th trip of ash to Kazakhstan and we had a little fight over a envelope of information that turned out to be about project sapphire I said no Andy I've got the clearances no you don't I have to give this directly to the assistant secretary I'm like ok fine but we got over that very quickly he took me up to the top of the mountain outside of Almaty and we made up and it's been a wonderful partnership Andy whether it's it's been nun Luger pieces you know soviet bioscientists Syria CW and now I'm going to talk about health security and Ebola and so from a very personal story if you and I hadn't had a sapphire to bring us together Andy I think the world would be a much worse place given what we've been able to do and on a national level I just really want to emphasize and you know Ambassador Amar I've mentioned it I mean this is really the launch point of an incredible enduring partnership between US and Kazakhstan on non-proliferation issues such as like removal of the BN-350 fuel the NTI project to blend down additional amount of HEU that was found to be in Kazakhstan Deglin Mountain and I am confident much more to come and so Ambassador Amar I continue to pledge my support which will work with you and your country to help bring future evidence of nuclear security and non-proliferation success that's a phenomenal note I want to just take this moment because we had not expected Senator Nunn to be with us and I want to just ask if you would Sam I don't know if you're willing just come step up and maybe do a comment I could see that you were blushing modestly in the front row there and I don't want to put you on the spot but I just wanted to say a thank you to you press the button right down at the bottom I say I'm the only Democrat in Washington DC that will let a Republican speak totally for me and Dick Luga Dick Luga has my proxy anywhere he speaks on any subject he speaks on well it's a fascinating evening and of course Kazakhstan has been absolutely superb and you got to ask what would the world be like now without President Nazarbayev and the decisions he made the leadership he's offered the country's leadership what would the world be like now if Ukraine still had nuclear weapons and materials this would be a different world so we're talking about things that as David said I think he's absolutely right it didn't have to happen this way it happened because of the efforts of an awful lot of people so I tip my hat to all those in the field Andy, Laura you might as well be in the field you're right back here doing it Laura also has had a huge role to play in the Syrian disposition of the chemical weapons big success stories so you know the the road not taken never gets written about David did a great job of it in the dead hand but very seldom do people recognize the catastrophes that are avoided you basically usually have a situation where you have a catastrophe and you ask what is it we wish we had done to prevent this from happening this is one of those occasions we visualize the possible catastrophe and we went ahead and said let's do it now rather than waiting until it happens so we don't know all the things we've avoided but we do know that it's taken an awful lot of wonderful people with a lot of hard work United States people, Department of Energy huge credit, Department of Defense huge credit, Kazakhstan huge credit and other countries around the globe thank you thank you very much let me just bring the conversation back to David to give us your take on this long view because not only did you write the Bible on Sapphire that chapter we all went back to and read yesterday to make sure we know what we were talking about we've posted it by the way in our posting with David's permission so that everybody else can read the text it's a phenomenal eloquent job but David also has written co-written the story of the Mounted Success which takes place what almost 20 years 15 years after Sapphire and I don't know if you want to give us a little bit of that long view and some comment maybe on what Laura and Andy were saying you know we are celebrating the beginning Project Sapphire was sort of the original Kickstarter you know it got things going but a lot happened after that and I tried myself sometimes to make an inventory and it's quite remarkable I remember in the mid-90s stumbling around in Russia and the former Soviet Union seeing some of these things happen and wonder you know would these projects ever actually materialize but when you think about it first of all the spirit of cooperation in Kazakhstan the Deglin Mountain effort which was only revealed last year which was kept secret for 17 years so it was a long tripartite effort to remove the plutonium from semi-politinsk is another great example of how this cooperative threat reduction program worked and not just a quick you know C5A this was a long complicated difficult process 10 years working in those mountains of semi-politinsk that barren step of Kazakhstan suddenly somebody found another piece of highly enriched material in a metal box buried in a tunnel what do we do trying to make a quick thumbnail list in addition to Deglin Mountain 70% of the buildings in the former Soviet Union that had fissile material were at least made more secure over this two decades not all of it was consolidated it's still widely spread but at least those locks have been changed and there aren't any more of those antique padlocks also Project Sapphire served as a model for removing highly enriched uranium from research reactors in other locations in many other places not only the former Soviet block we haven't mentioned it but the International Science and Technology Center which was created with as part of NONLUGAR to deal with the problem of weapon scientists and to get them directed towards civilian work was a big success of this program when we think that just the uranium was the danger we should remember thousands and thousands of weapon scientists who were destitute and wanted the respect of scientific work to do after the Cold War the anthrax factory at Stepanagorsk which Andy Weber helped unveil and destroy is gone and no longer a threat to the world including giant fermenters to make anthrax on Vazra's Denya Island 11 grave sites of anthrax were remediated discovered and removed and they're no longer sitting there waiting for someone to dig them up on the step of Russia-Southern border I went with the senators a couple of years ago to see this giant factory built near Shuchet to neutralize thousands and thousands of pounds of chemical weapons and that project which many of us doubted for many years whatever succeed actually has also succeeded in getting rid of the chemical weapons in Syria that know-how was valuable at the Mayak chemical compound in the city of Ozersk in Russia today there was a massive fortified Fort Knox which the United States built with Nunn Luger money of 309 million dollars to store excess Russian fissile materials and I visited it also on the trip with them and this thing has walls 21 feet thick that supposedly even nothing could blow up so that that fissile material inside is safe and this list goes on and on and I just would like to say that you know this wasn't easy it was never easy for a prosperous country like ours in many ways we did come out on top at the end of this long confrontation with the Soviet Union there was a lot of psychology involved in going to a place and say yes we're going to help you we're going to extend a hand that as we think about future crises and what we can learn from Project Sapphire and from Nunn Luger we should draw some lessons about whether we have a reusable history here and if we have another situation a hostile environment dangerous materials big uncertainties people who feel defeated or at least humiliated we should use the history of Nunn Luger in this last 20 year period to be better at it to be good at it next time I think I've heard some lessons from Laura those amazing lessons from David Andy what are your long term lessons I read in an interview you gave about the Ebola threat you said look one of my takeaways from the years 18 years at the Pentagon and threat reduction last five years assistant secretary you said look the key here is the international response what are we going to do is that well I think about Sapphire and I think about Syria and the people who really led on the Syria successful chemical weapons removal and destruction cut their teeth on Nunn Luger it was Laura it was Liz Sherwood Randall it was Ash Carter as deputy secretary I remember going to a meeting in the spring of 2013 that deputy secretary of defense Ash Carter shared and we were talking about potential military strikes on Syria to deal with the chemical weapons problem and we went around the table and offered our different views and I said perhaps we should work with Russia and load the chemical weapons on trucks and drive them out of Syria and the generals around the table and I think I had two heads but but Ash Carter who was chairing the meeting he wrote that down and indeed that's really what happened it was loaded up by Syrians the people who knew how to handle chemical weapons and containers were an issue and containers were an issue and the department of defense cooperative threat reduction program provided the containers to Syria for loading those and trucks and forklifts and cranes all those technical issues those practical issues that you have to deal with and the international coalition 30 countries UN special mission the OPCW the Nobel Prize winning OPCW it was the technical arm of the UN for that operation United States are partners like the United Kingdom and I see Martin Reynolds here in the audience contributed in kind Norway Denmark with their vessels Russian and Chinese naval vessels provided security off the port of Latakia it was truly an international effort and for Ebola we now have over 35 countries that have contributed funding experts and we need more healthcare workers from around the world get this biological crisis under control and funds to UN organizations there's a special multi-partner trust fund that has been established Kazakhstan has contributed to the UN trust fund it has to be an international effort because as President Obama says no one country can deal with these threats on its own and indeed the model of working together is the right one and it works you mentioned the word Russia what are the takeaways from Nunn Luger for US Russia talk about one of the greatest difficulties facing our relations today it's a tough patch in our relations because of the aggressive actions that the Putin regime has taken in Ukraine I will say in the Syria project right up through the summer months and months after the invasion of Crimea and the other aggressive actions across the border and eastern Ukraine our cooperation with Russia was firewalled and Rose Godemuler was in frequent two, three times a week sometimes daily contact with her counterpart talking about the practical issues of removing Syria's chemical weapons so there's 20 plus years of history of working together with Russia the Deglan project was a trilateral project in a third country in Kazakhstan the Russian nuclear weapons testers and designers who had done the experiments that left the plutonium behind in these tunnels and boreholes and coal the containers at the semi-politic test site provided their knowledge, technical expertise to make that project a success so in spite of the political difficulties that Russia is having with the rest of the world today I think we have this legacy of practical, technical cooperation solving global problems and we'll get back to that you know, Tom, I would just add when you think back about all the work that was done yes, we benefited from it the world was safer, we were safer but you know, Russian people were safer I remember kicking around one of these chemical weapons facilities near Penza south of Moscow and people in this local village had lived next to this giant storehouse of chemical weapons for years and years and they were very eager for this program this joint program to come and get rid of that stuff we did that and I don't think that we should look at this current frictions with Russia as some kind of commentary on the program because this program was in the interest of both countries and it is as much today as it was when we started it despite the relationship and frankly, given a lot of other things that broke down Nunlugur was resilient through a lot of rough patches because I think many Russian scientists government officials mill generals realized that it was in their interest and that's continuing the conversations that Andy referenced between undersecretary Godemuler and her Russian counterpart Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov explicitly said we are going to protect this conversation about how do we deal with this problem from the bigger pieces of our upset in the relationships we have explicitly carved out as guidance within the US government that work on reducing threats across the WMD space work in these areas work on non-proliferation clearly the P5 plus 1 conversations are continuing that this is an area to be preserved and protected and as Dave says it is being preserved and protected because they see it in their interest I think there is a danger however in conflating this rough patch that's the right word to use with a broader trend in US Russia threat reduction cooperation where the Russians have been saying for three or four or five years now we want to get out of this assistance model and move to something that is more related to how peers work together how two senior partners interact as equals and when Americans pay hundreds of millions of dollars to buy gear and install it and then go back and inspect it and go back and look and make sure the US taxpayer got their dollars worth which they have in spades as the Russians have too that creates a relationship that the Russians have been uncomfortable with now for years and that we developed a whole new agreement last fall I mean last summer well before the Crimea situation developed and the Ukraine situation developed that put us on a different legal posture and put paid to some of the areas of cooperation where in fact it had been successfully concluded and Russia said we got it, we'll take it from here whether it's chemical destruction or whether it's strategic arms eliminations and some activities that the Russians said okay we got this now and we should celebrate that moment but suddenly because that's happening and coming to kind of a milestone moment with the end of 2014 which had been identified by the Russians you know for a long time as a moment when several contracts will be coming to a close it's being misunderstood as a reaction to the Ukrainian situation as the end of cooperation and that nothing could be further from the truth we have a lot to do with the Russians and the Russians have a lot to do with us and I'll be in Moscow later this week to have exactly those conversations let me just ask this because we're celebrating an enormous success and yet maybe the one of the most interesting interviews I ever had related to Nunn Luger was with a veteran of the White House in the 1990s who said everybody talks about how great it is but here are the 10 things we did completely wrong during Nunn Luger starting with the whole by-American provision that was part of the congressional process that led to incredible hassles and let me just ask you Andy was there anything wrong on Project Sapphire or was it an unblemished spectacular celebrated after 20 years bringing us all together for a reunion or was there anything that we could have done better well from my perspective on the ground serving and living in Kazakhstan the only thing we did wrong was it took over a year from the time we knew that this massive quantity of weapons usable uranium was there to the time it was actually removed and I would have hoped that we could have been faster and more agile but other than that the operation itself was flawless and I can't think of anything we did wrong there's something about it something we did right and that we need to do right in other cases is we did right by Kazakhstan I mean this was not a quid pro quo in the sense of here's dollars and here's uranium but there was an understanding that there were mission spaces that we were going to work on together as a result of the work that had been done with Sapphire and I was in a lot of those negotiations and we've been naming names tonight and one of the key keepers of the scorecard of more or less around the same time as Sapphire we agreed we would work on the following 12, 20 whatever it was projects and we did it took some time everybody's learning lessons and we had some bi-american issues and some of that stuff we wanted to provide radios for the fast boats we were going to help patrol some of the Kazakhstan coastline and guess what American radios don't talk with Kazakhstan base stations so we got we have to figure this stuff out but ultimately we did and I think that paved the way towards the additional work we were going to be a good partner we were going to be with them for the long haul this was not a transactional thing and that wasn't just about the nun-lugar it was about the broader parts of the relationship the economic development the human to human the people work that was done the cultural work, the educational work the business work, all the stuff that populates this incredible relationship we have with Kazakhstan and so I think that's another important lesson these projects are not one and done these projects sit in a context of prior relationship execution and future engagement and we need to understand how to do all of those pieces well to make the opportunity for future such sapphires David do you want to pitch in on this? I would just add that as Americans we sometimes tend to be very precise we want to know exactly every penny we have a government we expect to perform perfectly but when you get involved in mitigating threats like this it's a very rough process you know you ask if we had things wrong well we sent five C5As we got two of them on the ground and thank god they got back we built the whole facility in Russia at one point to destroy an environmentally safe way the very toxic rocket fuel and the whole facility was built and then we said okay bring in the rocket fuel in the Russian and said no we actually gave it to the space agency they're using it to shoot off rocket this kind of thing happened over and over again we put in special portal monitors and scanners and Obninsk to look at whether they were handling the nuclear fuel properly and then we went back one day and looked and everything was abandoned this happened repeatedly but you know we shouldn't create an expectation of perfection because when you go out on one of these missions to solve a problem and certainly if we have to do it again in another hostile environment we're going to be rough edged and we should realize you do this to try to mitigate the threat and to demand some kind of perfection for the GAO is a mistake Andy you want to have a comment? I know I couldn't agree more we have to weigh the risk of doing nothing against the risk of perhaps misspending or not having penny by penny accountability of every year's penny that goes into this effort these efforts are cheap this is an ounce of prevention and I remember briefing Deputy Secretary Carter on the plan to remove serious chemical weapons and he said how much is this going to cost us and I said less than 200 million dollars he said that's a lot cheaper than a military strike would be and I said and where are you going to get the money and I said I'm going to ask the Deputy Secretary of Defense for it and he said oh okay and it worked and it came in at what about 160 million cheap cheap preventive defense let me open it up to questions we're at this point in the program where I know the audience full of experts and veterans and students of these matters and we would welcome your questions the young man in the back and then I'll call on you and then others just we have a microphone just identify yourself the young man right there just identify yourself and then maybe pose your question to one of the panelists good evening my name is Ethan Marin and by the way thank you so much for coming out to speak tonight it's truly a privilege to hear about this bit of history which reduced the odds of myself and everyone else you know being blown up on a nuclear attack I'm sure we all appreciate that my question pertains to going back to 1994 the Soviet Union's recently collapsed the State of Independent Republic of Kazakhstan is brand new no one really knows what it's going to be like how it'll shake out was there a hope that this sort of engagement through cooperative threat reduction you mentioned some of the other spin-offs or touched on some of the other spin-offs in other areas of security policy that were probably assisted by this was there a hope that this would also aid in democratization and development of civil rights of civil liberties in Kazakhstan because sadly that hasn't really happened for that matter do you think it's on the other hand perhaps simply unwise to hope for that sort of thing that arms reduction talks need to be narrowly confined to the sphere of nuclear security precisely so authoritarian states won't feel threatened by this sort of engagement I welcome the panel's thoughts thank you thank you step up I'll go first I think this is a subject that each of us will have different views about so only speaking for myself I think history shows us that no country exists in a vacuum and none of the various difficult problems that are faced after huge change like the collapse of the Soviet Union can be isolated from each other so I think when a country opens itself up like Kazakhstan did and said we're going to cooperate with the west and by the way we're going to denuclearize and give up our nuclear weapons and this is where we're going sure there have been serious problems with human rights and democracy in Kazakhstan but in my view they don't exist in isolation from the problem of denuclearization and demilitarization and deciding that you want a country without nuclear weapons people see everything in front of them and they don't isolate those things, they affect each other but it's not as if they affect each other easily or magically overnight sometimes these kinds of changes establishing democracy free markets and a country without nuclear weapons might be the work of a generation and I think that we oftentimes get hung up on why isn't everything happening all at once right now please it doesn't work that way I would just say as an American we've been working on our democracy project for not too much over 200 years and we've made a lot of progress but if you look at the situation in this town these days we still have work to do but I had the chance to seek Kazakhstan at its birth and then to visit over the next 23 years and the progress that country has made is phenomenal and I salute Kazakhstan and its leadership for making so much progress in what is really not a very long time I'd just like to point well yes amen to that but I think there's a risk of over conditioning some of this assistance and we see this temptation on the hill these countries are not perfect these are the ways that we might wish to see them and therefore we're going to withhold our collaboration with them to secure material or to destroy chemical weapons or to prevent bioterrorism what a pennywise and pound foolish bargain that is those are things that are worth doing in and of themselves and in fact if you have questions about democracy or governance or those kinds of issues all the more reason you do not want these institutions and these governments to have access to weapons of mass destruction so to me it cuts either way you look at it that's the right answer is we need to work to reduce these threats whatever the nature of the government is and because that's good for us it's good for them it's good for the world and these conditionality concepts that come up every three or four years kind of in a cycle only put our security in the back seat in a way that is not constructive for the country and for the world thank you yes sir right here on the aisle my name is Peter Harpreet I'm wondering if there's any unfinished business about the agreements because I've heard rumblings from Kazakhs that some of the details haven't been fulfilled on part of the United States too much I wonder if you could address that and second if we have the opportunity to do this again in North Korea with a smaller window of opportunity other than pre-positioning the proper containers in South Korea can you mention a few other things that we need to know is there in fact a manual sitting on the shelf now telling us how to do this in perhaps a much quicker manner great questions David you want to well I think part of the project that we're working on the oral history project is to try and help create that manual look at the lessons over time it'll take longer it doesn't exist yet but I think we've already as a result of these discussions started to think for example if you did have a crisis and you did have to go in what lessons have we learned about dealing with Russians after the collapse that we could apply what lessons have we learned about the question of the actual materials the scientists the physical nature of things yeah and is there unfinished business as far as I know yeah there still is unfinished business well I know from my own reporting and I think I've wrote this that the Deglin Mountain project took 17 years but it's still not finished there still is work to be done to remediate that part of Kazakhstan and the Kazakhs are eager to have that work done I'm sure when it gets next so and you know that was not something that easily just popped up in front of us the United States actually sealed off more than a hundred of those tunnels that were used at semi-politins for nuclear testing and everybody thought well at least we won't have anybody going in there it was an early effort and then the metal scavengers and thieves began digging behind the plugs that we had put in and going in there and metal was showing up for sale in scavenging markets that radioactivity in it where did that come from so I think part of the question of unfinished businesses we need to be sensitive to when copper starts to show up in a metals market that's radioactive where did that come from detection and surveillance well just on the North Korean question it's the one thing that I've learned from working with the Pentagon and in the Pentagon is there's always a plan there's a shelf, there's a book on the shelf the question is are we refining it are we exercising it and the answer is yes and every time we exercise it we find a flaw or 20 and so it's the planners will tell you it's not the planning, it's not the plan it's the planning and so what I can tell you is that the US government and in cooperation with our South Korean allies take very seriously the threat reduction opportunities that we might hope for in that resolution of that region's challenges and the chemical weapons convention works we have 190 states parties there are only 6 that haven't ratified and I think between now and the 100th anniversary of the use of chemical weapons in World War 1 April 21st we can get many of those 6 to exceed I think the DPRK is going to be the last holdout but let's have a capability ready to go to destroy to safely destroy North Korea's chemical weapons and maybe build it and across the border and have it ready that was a big lesson in Syria we invested in the winter of 2012 in what's what we now call the field deployable hydrolysis system to destroy Syria's chemical weapons and it was built to fit into shipping containers and we didn't know where it would be used who would use it we ended up mounting it on a on a vessel and doing this in the Mediterranean Sea but we were prepared to waste some money to have a capability ready should the opportunity present and in December of 2012 January of 2013 nobody thought we would have an opportunity to methodically safely and in an environmentally sound way destroy Syria's chemical weapons I should say nobody except maybe the Nobel Prize Committee because in December of 2012 they awarded the OPCW with that prize but having that capability preposition ready to go I think is essential yes sir here in this row and then I'll get you in the back front right here just to the left and then I'll give this gentleman first and then I'll go in the front row and then in the back Franklin Yao the question is for David you mentioned that there were some radiation portal monitors which were abandoned and could you elaborate a little on that where were these radiation portal monitors why were they abandoned how often did you find this phenomenon is it still going on today I don't know about today but this was something I witnessed because I visited this particular facility south of Moscow it was one of the very first Soviet nuclear facilities a lot of the investment was made in equipment to keep track of what was going on there fuel rods video cameras portal monitors and everything but over time the United States left that equipment we left the instructions we left the training but people who were there they did it for a while and then Russia had an economic crisis the ruble collapsed suddenly people were not being paid and guess what they didn't show up at the portal monitors and they didn't come back and everything was vacant so there's a human dimension to this often forgotten in the focus on fissile material and that's just one example of why we need to be prepared in a lot of different ways not just with containers but thinking about people okay so was this like in an airport and was this in the 1990s this was a nuclear research facility south of Moscow let's take one question here and then we have the question in the back but that's all we'll have time for we're just in our last five minutes no Jeff let me come here we need to give the microphone to Jeff Starr who was commander of the Tiger team here in Washington that ran sapphire for whom Andy was a field agent and it's a real honor to have you he was a great hire too great hire as I was thinking about sapphire listening to the comments tonight I was thinking about probably 150 different anecdotes that with a little more time we could talk about sapphire was dramatic it was chaotic it was a project of a great uncertainty of risk we didn't know how much risk there was very little in sapphire went right the first time and through repeated efforts things got to be right that was true it took the US government three months or so from the time that Ambassador Courtney and Andy found out about the uranium for Washington to get mobilized and I remember the instructions I had from Ash Carter informing the Tiger team I want this stuff out in one month set of weeks it was in like January 2014 after an NSC meeting and of course it took 11 months for this material to come out and a lot of that had to do with all of the adaptations that had to go on inside of Washington inside the US adapting non-lugar funds to this purpose and just figuring out all of the details about how to get this sorry I think we just had a gentleman faint thank you folks in the audience I think he just thank you very much Jeff Star you okay anyway to bring my comments to conclusion I was just reflecting that if you were to turn sapphire into a TV series we would give Madam Secretary and burn notice quite a run for the money but the victory of sapphire to me really was at a national level in Kazakhstan in the US imagine we've talked a little bit tonight about what the environment was in Kazakhstan from a brand new independent country that had long been dominated by Moscow as part of the Soviet Union and suddenly it's independent they have to make their own decisions and figure out what's on their territory what resources they have mobilizing those resources etc there had been many good conversations between the US government in Kazakhstan and the US Senator Lugar Senator Nunn Ambassador Courtney had a fascinating series of comment the discussions with President Nazarbayev about nuclear weapons nuclear deterrence the value and risk of keeping nuclear weapons and I've always thought and wondered what caused the Kazakhstanis to say let's give this relationship with the Americans what the Americans really can do for us in Kazakhstan and for our relationship with the Americans I can only imagine that the Kazakhstanis didn't really know how this was going to turn out when through some kind of unusual means word was transmitted to the Americans that there was this stash of weapons grade high-fingered uranium I mean it's Andy's comment that about a third of the kilograms of weapons grade HAU was in pure metal form no processing was required to turn that material into nuclear weapons and so it was very dangerous in terms of its vulnerability but the Kazakhstanis had to make a very courageous decision to try out these Americans are they able to make good on their word in terms of the relationship they want to have with us can they do this and this was something that the Americans then could not have done by themselves today they probably could but at that time the answer was no and so this was a victory for Kazakhstanis foresight Kazakhstanis decision making it was a defining moment in a sense for Kazakhstan we talk about some of the follow on projects I remember being in Almaty in June of 1995 after sapphire was over and we were at a reception the Kazakhstani official came up to Andy to me and said the sapphire thing worked out I'm paraphrasing but the sapphire thing worked out pretty well we have another problem now it's at this place called Stepnagorsk do you think you can help us with that and and so I guess we passed the audition with sapphire from the American perspective this was a victory too because the Americans had never thought about doing this kind of thing and I can assure you nothing went right the first time in our internal deliberations about what to do, how to do it, whether to do it should we go to the Russians for permission I mean there were very deep divisions on many many questions all of which ultimately got worked out and so for the US it was also a defining moment in putting on the agenda of making legitimate this idea of preemptive acquisition cooperative in this case there was no this was not a hostile environment it was a challenging environment sometimes but not a hostile environment like you would face and potentially in Syria or North Korean environment and so this was a big victory for the US in terms of a defining moment and I think that there are some lessons there to keep in mind but in all of our discussions among a principally American audience about all the cool things that happen in sapphire I do want to pay tribute to our Kazakhstan colleagues for their foresight and courage they showed, they displayed in coming to the Americans and taking this relationship out for a spin we're at the end of our time for questions and so I appreciate your patience in the back I would just encourage you at the end to come grab one of the panelists that you wanted to direct a question to but right now we need to Andy the introduction for our concluding speaker or would you like me to for this is our our script okay our host and I will be pressed into service I appreciate it so the principal deputy assistant secretary Richard Hoagland is going to give some concluding remarks and I would welcome you to the podium please join us I will keep this short Ambassador Umarov Kyrod you've been at this from before the beginning and you must be so proud to celebrate this anniversary I salute you Senator Nunn who is here Senator Lugar distinguished senator from my home state of Indiana you've played such an important role in history and we salute you CSIS I want to thank you for making this important evening possible this is one of those anniversaries that often flies under the radar and this one might too it won't be a headline tomorrow in the newspapers but it will long be remembered in history because it is so important I think I'm probably a little bit of the US quiet guy of Central Asia sort of the zealot of Central Asia in US diplomacy because I've been there since 1993 living in the region working in the region watching things happen sometimes helping things happen but more often than not being the fly on the wall and so I am ever more grateful this evening I ask to give short concluding remarks to pay tribute to the relationship that has developed from the beginning over 23 years with Republic of Kazakhstan Kazakhstan is new member of the community of nations at that time through its decision to carry out Project Sapphire earned respect from around the world for its commitment to strengthening global security and support for international norms which it does to this day since then Kazakhstan has been at the forefront of nuclear non-proliferation efforts and a major force in the multilateral institutions that underpin those efforts and nuclear non-proliferation cooperation remains a seminal pillar of the US Kazakhstan strategic partnership we deeply appreciate Kazakhstan's ongoing participation in the nuclear security summit process which is a priority for President Obama the summits have been an important venue in helping to secure vulnerable nuclear material worldwide and Kazakhstan's contributions in this regard have been inestimable for example Kazakhstan shut down the BN-350 nuclear reactor on the Caspian Sea and shipped its spent fuel to secure storage down blended 33 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from its institute of nuclear physics to low enriched uranium and secured weapons usable nuclear material at the semi-politins test site through upgraded physical protection for the BN-350 event which was really, truly seminal I was there at the dedication ceremony outside Kurchatov snow sweeping across the stepp and I was deeply proud and deeply moved to be privileged to represent my country in partnership with Kazakhstan at that historic event we're also proud of our growing partnership on science and technology and anticipate deepening our collaboration with Kazakhstan through the International Science and Technology Center which Kazakhstan will host at Nazarbayev University in Astana at the beginning of 2015 ISTC has played a pivotal role in the prevention of WMD expertise proliferation over the past two decades and Kazakhstan's leadership in hosting the center will be critical to the continued success of that organization Kazakhstan is also working with the United States on another priority issue in his April 2009 Prague speech Obama called for the creation of a bank of low enriched uranium under the International Atomic Energy Agency hospices as part of a new framework for civil nuclear cooperation the fuel bank will provide an emergency backup source of reactor fuel in the event of that in the event that the international market cannot meet a country's needs and will thereby support the expansion of peaceful nuclear energy without increasing the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation we support the LEU bank in Kazakhstan and we appreciate Kazakhstan's offer to host it today Kazakhstan is a leader in the region and we recognize that it continues to set high goals and is taking on a larger leadership role on the global stage step by step year by year the United States and Kazakhstan have an ambitious agenda together to address the challenges of the 21st century whether it's preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons or building an open and inclusive trade network linking Central and South Asia with China and Europe this is a great expansion from Project Sapphire 20 years ago but our broadening cooperation will help us all to achieve these goals once again I salute our strong relationship with Kazakhstan our strong relationship with the president of Kazakhstan and what has been achieved in the last 20 years plus thank you thank you all very much Andy a last word I just want to say thank you to everybody I'll go in a reverse order to Richard Hoagland for his concluding remarks to our really insightful panelists David Hoffman Laura Holgate Andy Weber and their fearless leader Tom Blanton from the National Security Archive really fantastic discussion I want to thank also Senator Lugar for his remarks Senator Nunn now in absentia and especially Ambassador Kairat Umarov from the embassy of Kazakhstan this has been a really unique evening and I've learned a lot and I think there's a lot for us to think about for the future and thank you everybody for your contributions and thank you all for coming and sharing this evening with us thank you everybody