The documents in this selection relate to the beginning of the lab-to-lab collaborations. They are mentioned in accounts by Siegfried S. Hecker (“Conversation with Sig Hecker,” Volume 1, Chapter 2, “Lab Directors Exchange Visits”) and William Dunlop (“My Recollections of the Beginning of the Lab-to-Lab Programs,” Volume 1, Chapter 2). Previously unpublished, and some of them once confidential, they are now released into the public domain. They are presented in chronological order.
November 1991
In his recollections, William Dunlop describes a paper he prepared in November 1991, as head of the Treaty Verification Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), assessing the proliferation risks of a breakup of the Soviet Union. The paper suggested how scientific cooperation between Soviet and American scientists could help reduce these new dangers. Dunlop sent the memo to two people in Washington with whom he had worked on arms control and treaty verification—Victor Alessi, director of the Office of Arms Control and Nonproliferation at the Department of Energy (DOE), and Bob Summers of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency—and to a few other contacts.
February 1992
In “Conversation with Sig Hecker,” Hecker describes a protocol of potential cooperation that the Russian and American laboratory directors worked out in Snezhinsk during a long afternoon session in the office of Academician Boris Litvinov, “under the watchful eyes of portraits of Lenin and Kurchatov.” Each side agreed to take the proposal back to its government. On the way home, Hecker and John Nuckolls stopped in Moscow, where officials—including Viktor Mikhailov, who had just become Minister of Atomic Energy (Minatom)—received the protocol positively.
March 1992
Hecker and Nuckolls stopped in Washington, DC, to brief Secretary of Energy James D. Watkins. On the flight from Moscow, Hecker condensed his notes from the visit into a summary for the secretary. Stamped “In Confidence” at the time, the presentation no longer is. Its message was emphatic: “The Russian Institutes placed collaboration with the US nuclear weapons labs at the top of their list of what the US can do to help them out.” It also noted, “They welcomed and embraced us with surprising warmth and trust.”
April 1992
Washington was cautious but impressed by the clear advantages of direct contact between nuclear weapons professionals. To give the engagement room to grow, Vic Alessi at DOE and Bob Gallucci at the State Department drew up rules of engagement that carried the U.S. laboratories through the interagency approval process. As Hecker writes, “The rules were quite sensible and gave us sufficient leeway to proceed with the Russian laboratories.”
May 1992
DOE encouraged the laboratories to keep planning “lab-to-lab” interactions, as they were called. At the end of May 1992, a delegation—Dunlop, Andre Kusubov, and John Holzrichter of LLNL; Steve Younger, John Shaner, and Jim Shipley of LANL; and Tom Hunter and Paul Stokes of Sandia—traveled to Moscow, in coordination with Minatom, to meet their Russian counterparts. As Dunlop writes, “It took a bit of discussion but we were finally able to outline a set of topics that were mutually acceptable for joint work. We then discussed how we would conduct our activities. Vic Alessi encouraged us to do whatever was necessary to begin cooperation.” The protocol of the meeting listed specific areas of interest and named “liaison officers” at each institution to carry the plans forward. Joint workshops and experiments followed in rapid succession.