Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
1/23/2015
New House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said this week that he is opposed to one of the biggest recommendations made by the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Enterprise: moving the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration back under the Department of Energy. “I thought they made a lot of good points,” Thornberry said after a speech at the American Enterprise Institute Jan. 20, his first as the chairman of the panel. “I certainly don’t agree with all of the points because organizationally they’ve taken us back to the way it was before we created NNSA. I don’t want to go back to those times. Particularly with all of the trouble the Department of Energy has had with other things. We need to get better. We don’t need to go backwards.”
The commission, chaired by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine and retired Strategic Command chief Adm. Richard Mies, considered recommending the creation of an independent agency for the NNSA, or moving it to DoD, but it ultimately settled on strengthening the authority and credentials of the Secretary of Energy and the NNSA administrator while moving the agency back under the auspices of DOE, thinking that approach had the best shot of success. If that doesn’t work, it said creating an independent agency should be considered.
‘I’m Not in Favor of Walking Backwards’
The panel will need Congress to go along with its recommendations, and it’s unclear how much traction its recommendations will get. Thornberry hinted that he was most interested in the overall health of the nation’s nuclear deterrent, and he said the committee would spend a “fair” amount of time on that issue. “I’m not in favor of walking backwards,” he said. “I don’t know. Reform if you can show me it’s really going to pay off, yes. What I’m concerned about is the credibility of the country’s nuclear deterrent and as these machines age, how to keep that credibility there. So my point is the nuclear deterrent, weapons and delivery systems, will be something we pay a lot of attention to.”
Panel Said More Autonomy Could Isolate Agency
In its report, the panel said more autonomy for the NNSA—likely through a move to a standalone agency—would “only further isolate” the agency from senior level leadership. As part of its recommendations, the panel called for a change to DOE’s name—to the Department of Energy and Nuclear Security—and a tenure of at least six years for the director of the Office of Nuclear Security (ONS), which is what the panel proposes calling the NNSA in its new spot in DOE. The panel also recommended strengthening the authority of the ONS director, giving the director the full authority to execute nuclear enterprise missions under policies established by the secretary, with mission-support staffs providing an advisory and assistance role to the director.
It also said national security expertise should be a prerequisite for future leaders of the Department, and recommended that the Senate Armed Services Committee be given parallel authority of the secretary’s confirmation along with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
If a move back to the Department of Energy doesn’t work, the panel said, an autonomous organization is the only choice left. “If for any reason the nation’s leadership is not prepared to require the Secretary to possess the qualifications demanded by the nuclear security mission, or to provide the Director the necessary mission execution authorities, then only one option remains: an autonomous organization to replace some or all of the functions of NNSA,” the panel said. “This is viewed by the panel as a clearly inferior choice.”
Implementation Key, Thornberry Says
Thornberry, for his part, did not offer up any recommendations on a path forward for the agency. He said many of the “good points” made by the panel were made in previous reports. “But they have not been implemented,” Thornberry said. “I think there are lots of folks who understand what needs to get done. Getting it done seems to be the bigger challenge.” Thornberry was very active in helping create NNSA as one of the authors of legislation that gave birth to the agency.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, urged the commission to “be bold” in its recommendations. Rogers has not publicly commented on the report since it was released. Augustine told NS&D Monitor last month that he was confident the panel’s recommendations would gain traction. “You can do bold, dumb things and we tried to avoid that,” Augustine said.
He said the panel concluded that where the NNSA stands in the government is not as important as how it’s run. “Where you put it just wasn’t that important even though it becomes kind of the headline piece. As we dug into it more and more we concluded this was by far the best option from a management standpoint but as we said, if this doesn’t work, there is only one choice left,” Augustine said.
Augustine also said the benefits of having cabinet-level leadership—as long as it’s well-versed in nuclear issues—overshadowed any benefits of creating an independent agency for the NNSA. “Absent a greater degree of attention at the very highest levels we believe this would continue to be somewhat not functional,” he said. “We wanted a secretary with a seat at the cabinet table who can speak on behalf of this mission. We also looked at if you’re really trying to impose change, is the way you do it to create an isolated group? To set itself up to define its own affairs the way it wants to? Or does it need someone that’s very senior to kind of enforce change. We just felt it wouldn’t have enough clout out there by itself to get the attention it needs and to get the funding it needs.”
