House panel weighs need to account for nuclear material

The Homeland Security Department is coordinating an expanding interagency process to reduce the threat of a nuclear attack by terrorists, which includes international efforts to locate and secure nuclear and radiological material, a House Homeland Security subcommittee was told Wednesday.

The process is part of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism announced last year by President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It involves the departments of Energy, State and Defense and the FBI, and is an extension of the well-established nuclear nonproliferation effort, officials from the agencies told the Homeland Security Emerging Threats Subcommittee.

But that effort could be enhanced if authorities were able to swiftly identify the source of the material used in a nuclear device intercepted at the nation's borders or detonated in a U.S. city, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said. Schiff has authored legislation that would assist the government in creating a data bank on nuclear material that would enable U.S. authorities to make that determination.

Schiff compared the forensic effort to pinpoint the source of nuclear material to law enforcement's ability to identify a criminal suspect by matching crime scene fingerprints to prints on file in the national data bank.

Identifying the origins of nuclear material works the same way, Schiff said, "but there is no data bank of nuclear material."

His proposed legislation would declare the sense of Congress that the president should "pursue international agreements, both unilateral and multilateral" to establish a method for countries to share the technical information needed to create such a data bank. The bill is co-sponsored by Emerging Threats Subcommittee Chairman Jim Langevin, D-R.I., and ranking member Michael McCaul, R-Texas.

But the subcommittee had to postpone a scheduled markup of the bill Wednesday when it could not re-establish a quorum after the hearing was interrupted by a series of floor votes.