118 



on radioactive waste generated by the Northern Fleet and later called in for 

 questioning inany of Bellona's contacts throughout Russia. 



Bellona's experience attests to the growing difficulties which Western and Russian 

 environmental groups confront trying to monitor military nuclear waste management in the 

 face of nationalist political pressures, skepticism about foreign involvement in military 

 matters, and especially the steady widening of the powers enjoyed by Russia's internal 

 security services. Earlier this year, for example, the FSB publicly charged numerous 

 Western aid and environmental groups with spying, and subsequently issued a series of 

 shrill warnings about foreign threats to state secrets. Such retrogressive, Soviet-era trends 

 will increasingly undermine efforts to monitor ocean dumping and, more importantly, to 

 have the practice stopped. 



For its part, over the past four years, CIA has stepped up its use of national 

 technical means, and has worked closely with its colleagues in the Intelligence 

 Community and US Govemment to provide requirements and to disseminate our analysis 

 of technical collection to assess the potential levels of contamination by both 

 radionuclide and industrial sources. Naturally, we also study available open source 

 information. Although we cannot readily declassify our information on ocean dumping 

 because of the sensitive nature of the national technical means used to obtain the data, we 

 could provide further details in closed classified session. 



The Intelligence Community is engaged in a number of new cooperative projects 

 that bring unconventional resources to bear on these issues. As part of the Gore- 

 Chemomyrdin Commission effort, the United States and Russia have agreed to share 

 products derived from national intelligence assets to help solve environmental problems 

 of concern to both countries. The proposed projects include a study of the Arctic. In 

 addition to the Intelligence Community, prominent U.S. scientists brought together by 

 the Environmental Task Force are playing an important role in this endeavour. 



