Linton Brooks, an experienced arms control negotiator and proponent of controversial strategic weapons programs, served as director of the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which oversees the country's nuclear weapons infrastructure, until January 2007, when he was forced to resign because of security lapses at the nation's nuclear labs. Before being tapped for that post, Brooks was a member of the team that produced the January 2001 National Institute of Public Policy(NIPP) study "Rationale and Requirements for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control," which was regarded by many observers as a blueprint for President George W. Bush's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review. Brooks also served on the Pentagon's Deterrence Concepts Advisory Panel, which helped implement the posture review. Head of that panel was Keith Payne, a hawkish nuclear analyst who directs the NIPP.
In announcing Brooks' resignation in early 2007, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said: "During my tenure at the Department, and even before, there have been a number of management issues involving the National Nuclear Security Administration, the most recent of which was a serious security breach several months ago at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. These management and security issues can have serious implications for the security of the United States. ... Therefore, and after careful consideration, I have decided that it is time for new leadership at the NNSA, and I have asked for the resignation of NNSA Administrator, Linton Brooks" (Energy Department press release, January 4, 2007). As Bodman intimated, among the issues that prompted Brooks' departure were a number of security breaches at the Los Alamos weapons lab, including thefts of data from lab computers and an employee who took home classified weapons data—incidents that Brooks neglected to report (Associated Press, January 5, 2007).
Brooks had been the target of criticism since early in his NNSA tenure, which began in 2002, in particular for his support of controversial weapons programs. According to the Oakland Tribune (December 11, 2003), Brooks pressured U.S. nuclear labs to ramp up work on new nuclear weapons designs after Bush signed a bill in November 2003 that repealed a 1993 ban on designing low-yield nuclear weapons, a goal that had been outlined in the Nuclear Posture Review. The Tribune reported that in a leaked memo from Brooks to lab directors, Brooks wrote: "I expect your design teams to engage fully with the Department of Defense to examine advanced (thermonuclear) concepts that could contribute to our nation's security. Potentially important areas of such research include agent defeat [bombs directed at chemical and bio weapons] and reduced collateral damage. ... In addition, we must take advantage of this opportunity to ensure that we close any gaps that may have opened this past decade in our understanding of the possible military applications of atomic energy—no novel nuclear weapons concept developed by any other nation should ever come as a technical surprise to us."
Commenting on the memo, Frank von Hippel, a physicist and arms control specialist at Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security, told the Tribune: "This is really very distressing. They're saying, 'Go after it, guys. We're back in the fifties. Come up with all the crazy ideas you can—if there are any crazy ideas left out there.' This is fossil Cold War mentality surfacing again."
The well known anti-nuclear writer and activist Jonathan Schell associated Brooks with the posture review, saying that "a revolution in U.S. nuclear policy" had been "foreshadowed by the Nuclear Posture Review Report of 2002 ... which announced nuclear targeting of, among others, China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya. The review also recommended new facilities for the manufacture of nuclear bombs and the study of an array of new delivery vehicles, including a new ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] in 2020, a new submarine-launched ballistic missile in 2029, and a new heavy bomber in 2040. The review, in turn, grew out of Bush's broader new military strategy of pre-emptive war, articulated in the 2002 White House document, the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, which states, 'We cannot let our enemies strike first.' The extraordinary ambition of the Bush policy is suggested by a comment made in a Senate hearing in April [2005] by Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, who explained that the Defense Secretary wanted 'bunker buster' nuclear bombs because 'it is unwise for there to be anything that's beyond the reach of U.S. power'" (Common Dreams, May 26, 2005).
In July 2003, the Guardian (London) reported that under Brooks' watch the NNSA quietly disbanded an advisory board just ahead of a closed-door meeting at a U.S. Air Force base in Nebraska that was to address the possible resumption of nuclear testing and the development of a new generation of so-called mini-nukes and bunker-buster bombs. According to some advisory board members, the decision to abandon the board was made by Brooks. Sydney Drell, a respected physicist and arms control expert, told the Guardian that the board's charter "was not renewed. I presume they did not value us or found us a nuisance. An independent, tough advisory board is very important in having a strong [nuclear] stockpile program. ... They just didn't call us. We didn't hear from them." A few months earlier, Drell had cowritten with another advisory board member an article for Arms Control Today criticizing the government's nuclear weapons plans: "Rather than moving to develop new nuclear weapons, the United States should push to strengthen the nonproliferation regime through example and through stronger compliance measures directed at those who flout its basic purposes" (Arms Control Today, March 2003).
Commenting on the rationale behind developing so-called low-yield nuclear weapons, Brooks said, "We need to make sure our weapons will in fact be seen by other countries as a deterrent. One element of that is usability. If nobody believes there is any circumstance where you will use the weapon, it is not a deterrent" (quoted in Jonathan Schell, "Letter from Ground Zero: Madmen," Nation, May 15, 2003).
Brooks also supported the development of the proposed Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, a low-yield bomb that is supposed to be able to burrow deeply enough into the ground that most of the fallout would be contained. However, in testimony before Congress, Brooks was forced to admit that the weapon would release significant amounts of fallout: "I really must apologize for my lack of precision if we in the administration have suggested that it was possible to have a bomb that penetrated far enough to trap all fallout. ... I don't believe the laws of physics will ever let that be true" (Cited in Mark Strauss, "Some of All Fears," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 2005).
Many of the controversial weapons policies pursued by the Bush administration and supported by Brooks were initially outlined in the 2001 NIPP report "Rationale and Requirements for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control," which Brooks helped produce along with a long list of hawkish policy figures who served in the George W. Bush administration, including Payne, Stephen Hadley, Stephen Cambone, and Robert Joseph. The World Policy Institute reported in its 2002 study "About Face: The Role of the Arms Lobby in the Bush Administration's Radical Reversal of Two Decades of U.S. Nuclear Policy": "The National Institute for Public Policy's influence on the Bush nuclear policy is grounded in its January 2001 report, 'Rationale and Requirements for U.S. Nuclear Forces and Arms Control,' which was funded by the conservative Smith Richardson Foundation. The Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review follows not only the basic logic, but also many of the specific recommendations contained in the NIPP report. The president and research director of NIPP, Dr. Keith Payne, is a former staffer at the Hudson Institute and a longtime advocate of nuclear warfighting strategies. Payne, who served as the project director for NIPP's nuclear strategy report, is probably best known as the co-author of a 1980 article in Foreign Policy magazine entitled 'Victory Is Possible,' which argues that the U.S. military should develop concrete plans for fighting and winning a nuclear war."
According to his Energy Department biography, "Prior to joining NNSA, Brooks was the vice president and assistant to the president for policy analysis at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), a federally funded research and development center located in Alexandria, Virginia. His extensive government experience includes service as the assistant director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, chief U.S. negotiator for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (where he earned the title of ambassador), director of arms control for the National Security Council, and a number of Navy and Defense Department assignments."
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Affiliations
National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP): Study Participant, 2001
Government Service
Energy Department: Former Director, National Nuclear Security Administration; Former Deputy Administrator for Nuclear Nonproliferation
Pentagon's Deterrence Concepts Advisory Panel: Member
Center for Naval Analyses (CNA): Former Vice President and Assistant to the President for Policy Analysis
National Security Council: Former Director of Arms Control
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency: Former Assistant Director
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty: Chief U.S. Negotiator
Director of Naval Intelligence
Education
Duke University: B.S. in Physics
University of Maryland: M.A. in Government and Politics
Navy War College: Distinguished Graduate
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