Pete Domenici: “Let me go through three or four things that we are doing, and point out to the Senate and in a roundabout way respond to…”

“Let me go through three or four things that we are doing, and point out to the Senate and in a roundabout way respond to one of your questions. Some people are going to say that this is foreign aid. Right? This is not foreign aid as I see it. Let me cite a couple of these things we are doing and let us see what kind of aid it is: Materials protection control and accounting. What have we done and what are we going to do with the money? The Department of Energy has already secured nuclear materials at 35 facilities in the former Soviet Union. Those security systems include cameras, gates, portal monitors, tagging devices to track nuclear materials. And in January when our Vice President met, six more sites were added to the list which the DOE will have access to secure these materials. Because these sites were only agreed upon in January, funds were not included in the President's budget request. We are including them here. And, obviously, that is another $15 million for that entire program. Then there is a lab-to-lab program. It was developed informally. But because the Soviet nuclear scientists trusted the scientists of our nuclear laboratories in some very strange way they would rather deal with those who made the bombs while they were making the bombs than they would with a bunch of politicians or a bunch of State Department people. And all of a sudden the lab-to-lab relationship grew into something that is very fundamental. They are working together.…”