At the United Nations last week, President Obama calling for "a world free of nuclear weapons." It is a lofty goal but one towards which he has made some -- albeit some slow -- progress.
Our next guest -- the former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson -- shares the president's vision for a nuke-free world. She spent years as an undercover officer, specializing in nuclear proliferation before her cover was of course blown by members of the Bush administration.
In our third story on the "Countdown," Valerie Plame Wilson now working with the Global Zero campaign, which seeks to eliminate the nuclear weapons, and next month she will be launching an ad campaign with the actress Naomi Watts, who portrayed her in the movie "Fair Game."
The campaign highlights -- and in this climate of economic retrenchment at any price -- tries to take advantage of a sobering calculation. The world's governments spend more than $1 trillion each decade on nuclear weapons. Valerie Plame Wilson thinks that money could be better put to use in other ways and she thinks now is the time.
Next month, Global Zero will be holding a summit for world leaders at the Reagan Library. It will mark the 25th anniversary of the Reykjavik Summit -- of course the 1986 meeting between President Reagan and Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev -- at which the leaders came close to agreeing to eliminate all nuclear weapons.
(Excerpt from video clip) MAN: Have you made any real progress, sir?
(Excerpt from video clip) RONALD REAGAN: We're not through.
(Excerpt from video clip) MAN: Are you gonna meet again, sir?
(Excerpt from video clip) REAGAN: Yes.
OLBERMANN: In the end, though, those talks broke down. President Obama has pledged to pick up where they left off. In 2010, he and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the new START Treaty, pledging to reduce their nuclear arms. And at the U.N. last week, President Obama reaffirmed his commitment.
(Excerpt from video clip) OBAMA: To lift the specter of mass destruction, we must come together to pursue the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.
OLBERMANN: As promised, joining me now, Valerie Plame Wilson, former CIA officer, spokesperson now for globalzero.org. Pleasure to see you, my friend.
VALERIE PLAME WILSON: Thank you so much for having me.
OLBERMANN: Is there really a conceivable way, after 60 years of hammering at this problem from ethical, accident-based arguments -- the -- the horrors of the wars that could ensue, all of the big-picture things-- is there actually a conceivable way to hitting this, based solely on the desire of people around the world suddenly to not spend cash out of the taxpayer-dollar vaults?
PLAME WILSON: Absolutely, and it's not just liberals holding hands and hoping for world peace.
OLBERMANN: Yeah.
PLAME WILSON: The good news is -- at the height of the cold war, we had 60,000 nuclear weapons in the world. We're now down to 23,000. There was political will and where there was political will, there was progress made. And you're seeing that again with President Obama, President Medvedev.
It is there and what I love about Global Zero is -- it spans the political spectrum, internationally, as well in this country. As you mentioned in your opening remarks, this summit that Global Zero is going to have at the Reagan Library, it features former Secretary of State James Baker, George Shultz, among others. So, that's why -- it's recognition that we need to move forward.
OLBERMANN: The trillion-dollar figure -- and its $600 billion dollars in this country, alone, over the period of a decade-long stretch -- where does the money go? Because -- are we replacing the stockpiles with new? Are these maintenance?
PLAME WILSON: All of those. All of those things. It's production, it's operation expenses, it's maintenance, and so forth. Think of what $600 billion could buy, particularly in these days. Oh, I don't know, let's just say -- education, health care, job creation.
The nuclear weapons budget is really bloated, and I -- when we go -- and with the super committee, and Congress now is looking at cuts -- I would suggest that they take a look at this part. I mean, I believe they're obligated for about $350 million in defense budget. I would take a first, hard look at our nuclear weapons.
OLBERMANN: Are you, or anybody else from Global Zero, gonna be able to testify to that committee?
PLAME WILSON: We haven't been asked yet, but we will be more than willing to do so.
OLBERMANN: But are you dealing with -- and is anybody who in government would want to go along with this idea -- are you not all dealing with, essentially, the final version of what Eisenhower addressed in his farewell address in 1961? It's not just a military-industrial complex, this is specifically a nuclear-industrial complex. There are vested interests. A lot of people's, you know, wall-size TVs, depend on the continuation of this, correct?
PLAME WILSON: That's right. I live in a state -- New Mexico -- that, in fact, depends heavily on a couple of those -- the Los Alamos and Sandia labs. But you need to step back and say, "Really, is this the path we want to continue on?" We've got a lot of problems in the world, but I would argue -- strenuously -- that if we don't get this one right, none of the other ones matter.
OLBERMANN: Right.
PLAME WILSON: I feel really grateful to Global Zero, because I get to continue my work, -- what I did at the CIA -- which was at this nexus of terrorism, the nuclear issue, and I do it in a much more overt fashion.
OLBERMANN: Now -- not to give anything else away from the CIA -- but did you get to see this threat in a way that the rest of us, even the politicians -- even maybe the George Schultz's of this world -- never got to see it because of what you did, without saying what is you did?
PLAME WILSON: Right. Without giving away any secrets, I would say so. Because you really -- it's hard to believe what you were seeing. And we know that we're only seeing a tip of the iceberg, particularly where you have that cross section of terrorism, nuclear -- there's no doubt that terrorists are actively seeking nuclear capabilities. And when you see, particularly, how widespread it is and how easy it is.
In the film, "Countdown To Zero," which appeared last year, they talk about -- potatoes in Russia are being better guarded than highly-enriched uranium.
OLBERMANN: Let's scare everybody on the way out.
PLAME WILSON: I know. Cheery.
OLBERMANN: Give me a percentage. What -- of the fact that we have not had a disastrous nuclear event in this planet, essentially since the -- other than the intentional ones, there's not been a disastrous nuclear event in this planet that wiped out 3 million people at once, say, let's put that as some arbitrary threshold -- to what percentage is that absolute sheer luck -- that there should have something -- something should have fallen off of the back of a truck into somebody's hands, or something should've fallen off of a gantry somewhere and blown up?
PLAME WILSON: From what I have seen at the CIA, and my continued work with Global Zero, I think it's just a question of when, not if, if we don't do something. I know, very cheery. But it's a very real possibility, because it is not as well-guarded. But what is on the other side of that -- we do have really good monitoring and verification processes that need to be implemented with political will. And I believe it's there. But we need -- sort of after the Cold War, this whole issue --
OLBERMANN: Right, everything went away.
PLAME WILSON: You know, everyone, we swept it under the rug, and it's not en vogue anymore. But, of course we love the fact that President Obama and other world leaders are very much behind this and they realize we cannot continue.
OLBERMANN: For more information, to sign the Global Zero petition, go to cutnukes.org. Valerie Plame Wilson on behalf of the Global Zero campaign. Great thanks. Great to see you.
PLAME WILSON: Thank you. Thank you so much.
