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Bruce Blair, Victor Esin, Matthew McKinzie, Valery Yarynich, and Pavel Zolotarev

By Valerie Plame Wilson - Friday, July 30, 2010

The smoke was still drifting off the World Trade Center when the CIA discovered that Osama bin Laden had secretly met just a few days before the attack with a top Pakistani nuclear scientist, seeking help in building a nuclear bomb. Immediately, nuclear terrorism jumped to the top of the list of urgent threats to the civilized world. My clandestine work as a CIA operations officer became laser-focused on counterproliferation as we mobilized to prevent a nuclear 9/11.

By Valerie Plame Wilson - Thursday, July 22, 2010

As a former CIA covert operations officer specializing in nuclear counterproliferation, I believe that nuclear terrorism is the most urgent threat we face - and that the only way to eliminate this danger is to lock down all nuclear materials and eliminate all nuclear weapons in all countries: global zero.

We know that terrorist groups are trying to buy, build or steal a bomb and that top nuclear scientists have offered to help them - Osama Bin Laden met with some just before 9/11.

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United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sent a video address to the Global Zero Summit in Paris 2-4 February 2010.

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London School of Economincs Event: Can we eliminate nuclear weapons?

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Global Zero, a group of more than 200 political and military leaders from around the world, is hailing the award's recognition of a goal it shares with Obama -- the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Said former ambassador to Germany Richard Burt, chief U.S. negotiator for the START 1 negotiations and Global Zero U.S. chair in a statement: "Global Zero applauds President Obama on receiving the Nobel Prize and for his extraordinary leadership, along with President Medvedev, to achieve a world without nuclear weapons.

It was my privilege to witness the United Nations Security Council Summit yesterday unanimously adopt a resolution calling for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. It was the first Security Council Summit ever dedicated to nuclear proliferation and disarmament and the first chaired by a U.S. President.

In addressing the Security Council members, President Obama declared: "The historic resolution we just adopted enshrines our shared commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons."

Barack Obama Barack Obama dreams of Zero. A world without nuclear weapons. None. Zero. The nuclear lions will lie down with the non-nuclear lambs and hope that there are no nuclear wolves hoarding or hiding the deadly devices out there in the darkness. Meanwhile, though, the decisive question—whether this is merely a dream, merely rhetoric—will depend on how seriously the Pentagon's nuclear commanders take what is, in effect, a mandate to zero themselves out.

President Barack Obama has had to face many complex problems during the first year of his presidency, not the least of which are nuclear weapons-related issues. Last week, I interviewed Joe Cirincione, whose current position as president of the Ploughshares Fund is just the latest milestone in his long career as a nuclear non-proliferation expert.