Joseph Cirincione:A ray of light amid the weapons hype

BY MITCHELL J. TROPIN

Photo: Julie Wiatt

Takoma Park's Joseph Cirincione, nicknamed the "dirty bomb expert," is a leading source for information on nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

Since September 11th, the government and the media have engaged in a steady downpour of hype on the threat from weapons of mass destruction. Standing up to this storm of exaggeration, like a beacon in the darkness, is Takoma Park’s Joseph Cirincione, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Non-Proliferation Project.

Nicknamed the "dirty bomb expert," Cirincione is a leading source for non-hysterical information on nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

Less than a month after Cirincione became director in 1998, India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices.

"The phones have not stopped ringing," he said. "It’s one crisis after another. Either it’s North Korea, the Iranian nuclear program, the U.S. debate on building new nuclear weapons, or loose nukes in Russia," he said.

The events following Sept. 11–including the Iraqi War–have only increased a heavy workload.

To show the objective side of the story, Cirincione will simplify critical issues by "stripping them of their political skins so that people can know the facts and make up their own mind."

He said it is imperative that those who want to counter the government’s hype work closely with the media.

"Activists can’t do it alone; you have to use the media as a leveler and to amplify your message," he said.

But making a connection with the press requires establishing credibility. Cirincione’s approach involves months of research, distilling the information into comprehensive studies, refining the studies into shorter news articles, and then compressing the essence of the issue even further into quick news bites.

"A journalist needs to know that behind a 10-second sound bite is a foundation of comprehensive research," he said, adding that he often spends hours working with a journalist so they receive the best possible factual analysis. "They’ve got to see that I am more than a wise guy with a clever slogan."

The son of a drug store manager, Cirincione was born in Bronx, N.Y., growing up in a small town in Connecticut. After attending Boston College, Cirincione settled in the Boston area.

Years of interest in social justice led to work as a tenant organizer. He was a chief organizer for the Tenants First Coalition, the largest organization in Massachusetts for residents of federally subsidized housing. It was then that Cirincione discovered he had a knack for organizing.

Through his social justice work, Cirincione met a young lawyer who was representing tenants in a rent strike. The attorney was Priscilla Labovitz, who is widely known in Takoma Park for her work with immigrants. Cirincione and Priscilla recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.

The tenant movement ran its course, and international events were beginning to heat up. It was 1979, the year of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Deciding to "retool" his energy, Cirincione attended Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Joseph and Priscilla then moved to Takoma Park. Their plan was to relocate to New England once Joseph earned his master’s degree. Twenty-four years and two houses later, they are still residents of Takoma Park.

"Each time we decided to move, we looked at other neighborhoods–even Virginia–but we couldn’t find anything nicer," Cirincione said. "We did not want give up what Takoma Park gave us."

While at Georgetown, Cirincione met Scott Thompson, a professor who had been a liberal but had turned neo-conservative, before the term was coined. Thompson became Assistant Director of the U.S. Information Agency under President Reagan, bringing Cirincione along. The liberal Cirincione found himself surrounded by conservative thinkers–people like Oliver North, before the former Marine became a household name.

While still intending to leave Washington, Cirincione found himself working for Florida Congressman Charles Bennett. Bennett created with then-Pennsylvania Congressman Tom Ridge the Military Reform Caucus, appointing Cirincione as staff director. The caucus won a major victory by helping cut funds for Star Wars, limiting appropriations for five straight years, Cirincione said.

Then a call came from the Henry L. Stimson Center, a DuPont Circle think tank. With great reluctance, Cirincione left Congress to join the center. It turned out to be most fortuitous decision. Several months later, Republicans gained control of the House in 1995 and fired virtually every Democratic staffer.

"If you didn’t have a red ‘R’ on your office door, avenging angels came along and whacked you," Cirincione said.

At Stimson, Cirincione launched a project to promote the extension of nuclear proliferation treaty. The timing was perfect.

"Proliferation had always been around but always as a secondary concern," he said.

But by 1995, defense and intelligence officials were realizing that the spread of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons were increasing as threats to the United States.

Cirincione headed up a coalition of arms control and national security groups which wanted to extend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed in 1970 by the United States and 61 other countries.

The coalition faced a dilemma: an international conference was planned for April 1995 that would decide the future of the treaty, which had become the sole legal global document against the spread of nuclear weapons.

The Clinton Administration, however, was showing little interest in the treaty or the conference. Concerted efforts by Cirincione and others made the Clinton White House sit up and take notice. The conference led to the indefinite extension of the treaty and its expansion.

The campaign’s success prompted several groups to hire Cirincione to take on a related project: build support for Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. This time, however, the treaty was unable to overcome staunch opposition from conservative Senate Republicans, who refused to bring the treaty up for a Senate vote. The Bush Administration has steadfastly refused to ask the Senate to consider the CTBT.

"The CTBT ran into trouble with Republican conservatives because it was Bill Clinton’s treaty," Cirincione said. "They also are opposed to the very idea that the United States would agree to restraint any of its military options. The Bush Administration wants nothing to do with it."

Despite being "on life support," Cirincione sees the CTBT as being very much alive and effective despite the fact it has not been ratified, adding it is one of the most important achievements in Clinton’s eight years in office.

"The CTBT serves as an effective barrier to nuclear testing. The very existence of the treaty–even though it hasn’t entered into force–has helped mobilized public opinion against nuclear testing," he said. "Any test would be considered a major international crisis, and no testing has happened despite pressure from nuclear bureaucracies to test, including those in the United States."

Cirincione also is outraged by "the mass exaggeration of the mass destruction threat." He believes that much of the hyperbole is coming from people who are "exaggering the threat to justify pre-existing agenda, whether it is vast increases in spending for defense, a missile defense system, or curtailing of civil liberties, or pre-emptive war."

Cirincione acknowledges there are real dangers to Americans, but he doesn’t believe that that we should live in fear of nuclear attack.

"There is little danger that a terrorist group is going to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead and lob it at Washington. That’s not going to happen," Cirincione said. "[But] one would never know that from the Bush Administration’s budget for defense, which has hit $9 billion a year with no end in sight, and the rush to deploy a missile defense system in time for the 2004 elections. It is all being promoted in the name of anti-terrorism. My job is to question it."

Cirincione compares the Bush Administration to the operators of the computer-generated Matrix, saying that, as shown in the film of the same name, the president has generated a false reality–a reality that the American public has accepted.

One of Cirincione’s best opportunities to shed light on the truth came along in April 2002, when he appeared on Comedy Central’s "Daily Show," hosted by comedian Jon Stewart.

Just prior to Cirincione’s appearance, Attorney General John Ashcroft had disclosed that the U.S. has acquired information that terrorists were planning to explode a dirty bomb that would spread radioactive materials across a major city, killing thousands.

Once Circincione went on stage, Stewart had some fun with him, making wisecracks. But he then gave Cirincione that one critical moment to speak. Cirincione made the most of the occasion, commenting on the news development and stressing that Ashcroft only had produced "loose talk," with no concrete evidence of an imminent attack. The threat is not as immediate or as grave as the media or the administration has made it, he said, and a dirty bomb, while theoretically possible, would not cause mass destruction or loss or lives.

Cirincione then spoke about what officials have been doing to limit the threat of proliferation, noting the achievements of non-proliferation treaties.

"The world is safer than when I was a kid," Stewart said.

It may have only been a few minutes on a cable television show, but Cirincione said it was a great chance to give solid, undistorted information to the 18-to-25 segment of the population. Moreover, the appearance made Cirincione a big hit with his two children, Peter and Amy, and their friends.

"I was able to reach a group that is not watching NBC news or reading a newspaper," he said.

Amidst the daily onslaught of fear-inducing news stories, the public has overlooked the good news, Cirincione said.

"So much of the news stems from the fear that millions could die, but people tend to lose sight of what has been accomplished: the world hasn’t blown up; there is no threat of global nuclear war, and no one has used nuclear weapons in the more than 50 years since World War II. The number of nuclear weapons has decreased greatly and so has the number of countries pursuing nuclear weapon programs," he said.

He credits the decline in the threat of nuclear war to dedicated efforts by many countries–including the United States, which used to take the lead in such efforts.

"What is so tragic is that the current leadership of the Republican Party is turning its back on the regime created by Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and [George H.W.] Bush."

Cirincione also criticizes the George W. Bush White House for reversing decades of achievement by prior administrations to reduce the danger from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

"We have shifted from eliminating weapons to eliminating regimes," he told an American University audience in March.

Noting concern over reports that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, Cirincione said that Bush’s foreign policies could be increasing problems in that region.

"Iran may believe that nuclear weapons may be the only way to stop a U.S. invasion," he said. "The U.S. needs to reach out to Iran’s leaders and give them a reason to pursue an alternative that doesn’t include having nuclear weapons."

Cirincione is the author of Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction, which examines the dangers nations face today from those weapons, and the successes and failures of international nonproliferation efforts. Cirincione also is experimenting with other means of getting information, such as a DVD on the proliferation threat. But Cirincione has already accomplished more than he could have imagined.

"The stopping of Star Wars and the development of the CTBT are two of the things I’m most proud of," Cirincione said. "They’re the kind of things you think of achieving when you’re a student. Then you come to Washington and, no kidding–an individual makes a difference."

On Sunday, July 20 at 5 p.m., Joe Cirincione will be discussing his book Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction at Politics and Prose Bookstore & Coffeehouse, 5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW. For information, call 202-364-1919.