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Two weeks after being sworn in as U.S. secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel made a surprise announcement on 15 March: the government would bolster its national missile defense system by buying $1 billion worth of new equipment. What Hagel didn9t stress is that the bulking up of U.S.-based defenses also appears to mark the end of an even more ambitious—and controversial—Obama administration plan to base interceptors in Europe that could protect the United States from a potential missile strike from nations such as Iran. As for the older U.S.-based system, critics say the Pentagon has seriously understated the time and money it will take to make it fully functional. But some scientists question whether the new plan is also deeply flawed.

CONSERVATIONSetting a middle course between the wishes of marine biologists and the concerns of the Pentagon and recreational fishers, President George W. Bush this week dusted off a little-used law for the second time in his Administration to protect swaths of ocean totaling an area the size of Spain.

Documents released last week by the Pentagon about secret biological and chemical weapons tests have fueled the anger of veterans who say they were used as unwitting guinea pigs. But biological and chemical arms experts say that there are no major revelations in the documents--although they do illustrate the vast scope of the U.S. chemical and biological warfare program at the height of the Cold War.

Hundreds of Russian nuclear scientists may soon find themselves writing commercial software in a novel bid to keep their weapons expertise from falling into the wrong hands. The deal, in the works for months, may herald other initiatives aimed at blocking weapons proliferation in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks. The arrangement—announced in Washington, D.C., last week by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in Moscow, and their Russian corporate partner—is salve for a bruised U.S. nonproliferation effort. In April, the Bush Administration proposed cutting $100 million from a raft of DOE programs to improve nuclear security in Russia, from securing plutonium stockpiles against potential smugglers to helping nuclear physicists find peaceful work ( Science , 1 June, p. [1632][1]). Last month's events, however, appear to have built stronger support for U.S. nonproliferation efforts. The attacks “crystallized the need to intensify cooperation” to keep weapons expertise out of terrorists' hands, says U.S. Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA), an expert on Russia. A Russian company, LUXOFT, along with its U.S. partner CTG Inc., will take the lead in retraining the scientists, whose salaries will be paid by a $500,000 grant from the DOE's Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP) program. Previous projects in the $25-million-a-year IPP have typically paired U.S. companies directly with Russian defense scientists. Nevertheless, says DOE's Steven K. Black, turning weapons scientists into computer programmers “epitomizes the goal of the IPP.” ![Figure][2] Containment. New project will retrain 150 scientists from the Kurchatov Institute (above) over the next 2 years. CREDIT: IVAN SEKRETAREV/AP The details of the Kurchatov project, which were being finalized in Moscow on 11 September as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon burned, may also help stem a decade-long decline at the institute. Its 5000 scientists, half the peak number from the 1980s, are seriously underpaid, says Boris Stavisski, a nuclear physicist who heads the Kurchatov Technopark, which seeks to commercialize the institute's research. Although fewer than two dozen scientists will be involved in the project's first phase, LUXOFT managing director Dmitry Loschinin says his firm expects to retrain 150 scientists over the next 2 years and perhaps 500 by 2006. Stavisski concedes that it will be difficult to steer some older scientists onto a new path, while others worry that such programs may fail to reach the creme of the weaponeers because the Russian government isn't ready to have its finest weapons designers shifted to civilian work. Even so, a new day may soon dawn for many other former Soviet defense experts. The Bush Administration is expected to propose several initiatives to expand R&D collaboration and nonproliferation programs at a summit meeting next month in Moscow between President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It's a new era in our relationship,” says Weldon, one that requires “a concerted effort to show Russian scientists that there are opportunities outside of weapons development.” [1]: /lookup/volpage/292/1632 [2]: pending:yes

Physicist Ted Postol--a relentless critic of missile defense schemes--is fighting a Pentagon allegation that he has given away classified information. This is not the first time Postol has been targeted for a security investigation. But it may be the first time that he has accused his superiors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of agreeing to help the Pentagon.

A Pentagon employee has released 30-year-old evidence that the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) misled the courts and pressured witnesses following the death of thousands of Nevada and Utah sheep. The new evidence discredits the government's case that the deaths were not caused by weapons testing or that incidents of cancer in the test area are unrelated. Harold Knapp's records of fallout studies, especially those on thyroid exposure, support lawsuits charging government negligence and irresponsibility. The embarrassment and the potential economic impact of compensation awards has led to an intense rebuttal by the government, which maintains its position that fallout levels were below the five rads federal standard for nuclear industry workers. Litigants are presenting evidence of a higher level of radiation, which Knapp's work supports. Knapp, who continues at the Pentagon in another capacity, is limiting his involvement to the correction of the historical record, not to speculation about later events. (DCK)

One year after US citizen diplomats signed a remarkable pact with the Soviet Union to monitor nuclear bomb tests, they are running into some of the obstacles that regular diplomats encounter - political flak from the Pentagon and harassment by the Soviet military. But they have devised some technical solutions that they hope will get them around the roadblocks. These solutions are discussed.