U.S. to Seek Jobs for 2,000 Soviet Atomic Scientists

The Bush Administration is preparing an initiative to ensure full employment for an estimated 2,000 nuclear scientists in the former Soviet Union, including U.S.-funded jobs overseeing the destruction of Soviet atomic weapons and a multinational effort to provide jobs in civilian research institutes, officials said Thursday.

The plan, under discussion in a high-level interagency group, seeks to head off attempts by Libya, Iran or other countries to hire the scientists to develop nuclear weapons, officials said.

Administration officials and members of Congress have grown increasingly concerned in recent weeks about the prospect that key scientists in Russia and its neighbors, facing economic privation, might be wooed away by promises of big money--a problem one official dubbed “loose brains.”

CIA Director Robert M. Gates has repeatedly warned that the scientists could turn into “a potentially dangerous brain drain. We think perhaps 1,000 to 2,000 (of the experts) can actually design nuclear weapons or run a program to develop and produce biological weapons,” Gates told a Senate committee earlier this week.

The West could have a serious problem if even a few top-flight scientists move to hostile countries, he said. “We know from experience that small numbers of key people count.”

The Administration’s proposed response “has not yet jelled completely,” one official said, indicating that the details are still being negotiated. But the plan will be completed “sooner rather than later,” another senior official said--perhaps in time for inclusion in President Bush’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

As envisioned, the plan includes using part of a $400 million fund Congress provided for dismantling the Soviet nuclear arsenal to employ scientists, officials said. Another component is a multinational consortium that could create new research posts--in both the former Soviet Union and the West--for talented scientists, they said.

“We want to create opportunities for these scientists and technicians--projects in place, posts at universities in the West,” a senior official said. “As long as they don’t go to the Libyas and the Iraqs of the world. They really don’t want a brain drain, but it means coming up with programs that would employ these people.

“If you put out a pot of money and told the scientific community to come up with something useful for these people to do, there would be no shortage of ideas,” he added.

Undersecretary of State Reginald Bartholomew discussed the issue with officials in Russia and other former Soviet republics in a visit this week, aides said. Bartholomew returned to Washington on Thursday and is expected to report to other U.S. officials today.

Several factors have complicated the search for a workable policy, officials said.

For one, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s government has said that it intends to remain a nuclear power but with a much smaller arsenal. That means that at least some of Russia’s top nuclear scientists presumably will continue to work for their nation’s Defense Ministry on weapons projects, a U.S. government analyst said.

But the Administration does not want to find itself inadvertently supporting nuclear research in Moscow that could help sustain such a military effort.

A second problem could arise, if the Administration seeks to use the $400 million fund to employ scientists not directly involved in dismantling the Soviet nuclear arsenal.

“The legislation has to do specifically with destroying weapons and activities related to that specifically,” said a congressional aide who helped draft the law. “It doesn’t address the brain drain problem. We may have problems if they try to stretch it to cover that.”

But a senior Administration official said Thursday that he is confident that funding could be found for the plan. And Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he is working on legislation to address the problem directly.

A third problem, officials said, is a desire to avoid programs that would rob Russia and its neighbors of their best scientific talent at the very time that the United States and other Western countries are trying to help them rebuild their economies. But at least some of the republics’ top scientists are going to want to move to the West, officials said.

“The best case would be creating civilian research jobs for them at home,” one official said. “But that may not be completely feasible. Some of them are clearly going to want to emigrate . . . and, after years of pushing for free emigration, we aren’t going to ask (the Russian government) to close the gates.”

Times staff writers John M. Broder and Robert C. Toth contributed to this report.

COMMONWEALTH RELIEF: All 12 republics will get U.S. surplus Gulf War supplies. A10