VIENNA – A top Interpol official said last week that funding for the global police organization’s CBRNE defense operations is a matter of concern given its work in building the capacity of law enforcement agencies worldwide to prevent acts of nuclear or radiological terrorism.
Doug Ledingham, acting assistant director of Interpol’s CBRNE subdirectorate – which focuses on the threat posed by chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive materials – told sister publication NS&D Monitor here that the agency seeks to conduct more “operational activity” in the near future, or training of law enforcement in its 190 member countries.
Future activities of the directorate, however, hinge heavily on financial contributions by those member states; the CBRNE unit is externally funded, and that money could be scaled back if funders face domestic budget issues. “There’s constantly a worry about funding,” Ledingham said on the sidelines of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s International Conference on Nuclear Security.
Interpol is funded by annual contributions from each of its member states, which pay according to a proportional scale; external funding from other donors is also used for certain activities. Last year, the organization’s consolidated budget income was 79.8 million euros – 52.8 million euros from member country statutory contributions, 3.5 million euros from other contributions, and 23.5 million euros from special account contributions, which includes funding from nongovernmental organizations and foundations. The United States’ statutory contribution last year was 9.5 million euros.
Interpol’s work includes training police forces on crime areas such as terrorism and drug trafficking, and, specifically for CBRNE, on threat awareness and the use and deployment of radiation detection equipment. The directorate has also held training exercises at the U.S. Nevada National Security Site to help international law enforcement prepare for nuclear and radiological terrorism prevention and response.
Ledingham said the United States has been a close partner for Interpol, which frequently draws on the expertise of the U.S. Energy Department (DOE), namely its Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Washington state. This partnership is used to offer training courses in other countries, which often involve demonstrations of radiation detection devices and other mobile sensor gear.
“Most recently we were in Bogotá [Colombia], we’re going to Mexico next month [for training], and PNNL provides two or three experts to provide training to us,” Ledingham said. “We’ve also got somebody from DOE who’s embedded within our team as a resource who feeds back to DOE, assists us in getting funding, assists in identifying the people from the labs that can come and show us how to use the detection equipment, etc.”
Thomas Countryman, acting U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, told NS&D Monitor that while he cannot speak about the future of the U.S. federal budget, “there was a decision by all the participants in the last Nuclear Security Summit in Washington that we would ask Interpol . . . to continue its work in support of nuclear security.”
“We would expect that all of the countries that agreed to that in Washington this spring would show tangible support for Interpol. Certainly it is the intent of the Obama administration to continue our tangible support for the important activities that Interpol does,” Countryman said.
Smuggling of nuclear materials has been a fear at least dating to the breakup of the Soviet Union, and has persisted in recent years, with a number of investigations and arrests in the Black Sea region of would-be traffickers attempting to sell radioactive material across borders. “The terrorist threat is not emerging – it’s there and it’s obvious,” Ledingham said, noting that national police forces are ultimately responsible for carrying out action against smugglers, but are assisted by Interpol’s Project Geiger database, which is similar to the IAEA’s Incident and Trafficking Database.
Upon receiving information about a nuclear material trafficking incident, Interpol adds the individuals involved to its database, contacts the country concerned, and asks that nation’s law enforcement for more information about the incident. It might then ask that member country’s National Central Bureau, the body that links the national police with the global network, to issue a “green notice.” This notice is intended “to provide warnings and intelligence about persons who have committed criminal offences and are likely to repeat these crimes in other countries,” according to the organization. The notice could then help border guards identify people who have been involved in nuclear smuggling, allowing authorities to take further action if deemed necessary.
“We’ve been very lucky up to now that there hasn’t been a significant radiological terrorist attack,” Ledingham said, citing the development of ISIL and movement of foreign terrorist fighters as reasons to build national capacities to prevent the movement of radiological material across borders. The nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative has repeatedly highlighted the urgency of the threat, calling for a global effort to secure the most vulnerable radiological sources worldwide during the first term of the next U.S. administration.
Future threats to nuclear security will be more diverse than today, Ledingham said. They will include cyberattacks on nuclear power plants and other infrastructure, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles at nuclear facilities, and 3D printing technology. Kim Won-soo, United Nations’ undersecretary general and high representative for disarmament affairs, touched on the same challenges in his remarks Tuesday at the conference. In particular, he mentioned cybersecurity; 3D printing, which makes creating and sharing nuclear technology designs easier and cheaper; and unmanned aerial and ground vehicles, which “provide readily available delivery vehicles for attacks.”