[Congressional Record: April 23, 2007 (Extensions)]
[Page E832-E833]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr23ap07-44]                         



 

  Mr. MARKEY. Madam Speaker, I rise today to commemorate and celebrate the life and work of Paul Leventhal.
  Paul was a giant in the debate on how to protect the United States
and the world from the proliferation of nuclear technology. He
encouraged us, he challenged us, and he empowered us to not back down
in our continual struggle to free ourselves from the threat of nuclear
weapons. And now, as that struggle continues, Paul will be sorely
missed.
  Paul was a constant and tireless advocate for smart arms control and
non-proliferation policies. He helped bring into being two of the most
significant pieces of nuclear legislation of the atomic age, the Energy
Reorganization Act of 1974 and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of
1978.
  To give you a sense of the significance of these laws, I want to tell
a very short story about the concept of ``full-scope safeguards,'' of
which Paul was an early advocate, and which became U.S. law under the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act in 1978. ``Full-scope safeguards'' means
that a country would need to have IAEA safeguards over all its nuclear
facilities as a requirement for receiving any civilian U.S. nuclear
commerce. It is a crucial requirement, and it was adopted in 1992 by
the Nuclear Suppliers Group as not only a U.S. requirement but an
international one.
  In July 2005, when President Bush announced that he wanted to blow a
hole in US. non-proliferation laws to allow nuclear trade with India,
what was stopping him? Paul Leventhal and the ``full-scope safeguards''
requirement. Not many people make such an impact on U.S. policy that it
reverberates through three decades. But Paul did just that.
  I relied on Paul's encyclopedic knowledge for many years, as did my
staff. He was an irreplaceable resource to me back in the mid-eighties,
when we were fighting the Clinch River Breeder Reactor, and the Reagan
Administration's plans to open the door to nuclear cooperation with the
Peoples' Republic of China. He was also a driving force behind the
effort Howard Wolpe and I undertook in the early nineties to strengthen
U.S. nonproliferation law and close export control loopholes. He was
tireless in his efforts to move the world away from the use of highly
enriched uranium in research reactors and to promote the alternative of
low-enriched uranium. On issue after issue, Paul was on the cutting
edge of nuclear non-proliferation policy, pointing out flaws in
proposed nuclear cooperation agreements with Japan and Euratom,
pressing Congress to tighten loopholes in U.S. law, and searching for
every conceivable procedural or legislative strategy that could be
employed in the cause.
  While the void left by Paul's passing is large, and we will often
wish that we had his wise counsel to guide us as we continue the fight,
I'd like to think that as we do so Paul will be looking down on us and
encouraging us in our efforts to fight for a world free from nuclear
fear.
  I honor Paul Leventhal today, and I pray that we will succeed in the
struggle that he dedicated his life to--the fight to prevent the spread
of nuclear weapons. My prayers are with his wife, Sharon, and his two
sons, Ted and Josh; and I would like to thank them for sharing Paul
with us over the years.
  Madam Speaker, I submit Paul Leventhal's obituaries from New York
Times and the Washington Post for the Record.

                [From the New York Times, Apr. 12, 2007]

Paul Leventhal, Who Opposed Commercial Use of Nuclear Power, Dies at 69

                           (By Dennis Hevesi)

       Paul Leventhal, who as president of the small but
     influential Nuclear Control Institute was one of the most
     vocal opponents of expanding the commercial use of nuclear
     power, died Tuesday at his home in Chevy Chase, Md. He was
     69.
       The cause was cancer, his son Ted said.
       Mr. Leventhal founded the Nuclear Control Institute in
     1981, two years after becoming co-director of the United
     States Senate's bipartisan investigation of the Three Mile
     Island accident, the nation's most serious commercial reactor
     failure.
       Mr. Leventhal opposed commercial nuclear power not only
     because of the threat of a Chernobyl-like disaster but also
     because of its potential to ease the making of nuclear
     weapons. The construction of nuclear reactors in this country
     ceased for decades, though experts attribute this to cost
     more than to fears of proliferation. But Mr. Leventhal kept
     those fears on the front burner for 22 years as his
     institute's president and since 2002, when his title became
     founding president.
       He lobbied lawmakers, organized conferences and wrote op-ed
     articles about proliferation, nuclear terrorism and the use
     of commercial reactors to make tritium, an ingredient of
     nuclear bombs, a program that the federal Energy Department
     is now pursuing.
       He was particularly concerned about Iran, which he believed
     had a secret weapons program that would justify a harsh
     reaction, perhaps even military strikes.
       ``If you look at every nation that's recently gone nuclear,
     they've done it through the civilian nuclear cycle,'' Mr.
     Leventhal told The New York Times in 2004. Atoms for peace
     can be a ``shortcut to atoms for war,'' he added. ``It may
     take the unthinkable happening before the political process
     can screw up the courage to put an end to this ridiculously
     dangerous industry.''
       Paul Lincoln Leventhal was born in Manhattan on Feb. 12 in
     1938, a son of Jack and Helen Shapiro Leventhal. In addition
     to his son Ted, of Washington, he is survived by his wife of
     39 years, the former Sharon Tanzer; another son, Josh, of
     Raleigh, N.C.; a brother, Warren, of Roslyn, N.Y.; and two
     grandchildren.
       Mr. Leventhal graduated from Franklin & Marshall College in
     1959 and received a master's from the Columbia School of
     Journalism in 1960. He was a reporter for The Plain Dealer in
     Cleveland and later The New York Post and Newsday.
       In 1969, Senator Jacob K. Javits, Republican of New York,
     hired him as his press secretary. Mr. Leventhal began
     concentrating on energy issues for Mr. Javits and, in 1979,
     was named staff director of the Senate's subcommittee on
     nuclear regulation and a director of the Three Mile Island
     investigation.

               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 14, 2007]

             Paul Leventhal; Led Nuclear Control Institute

                      (By Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb)

       Paul Leventhal, 69, founder of the Nuclear Control
     Institute in Washington and an expert in nuclear
     proliferation issues, died April 10 at his home in Chevy
     Chase. He had melanoma, a form of skin cancer.
       Mr. Leventhal, a former newspaperman and congressional
     aide, launched his advocacy institute with a full-page ad in
     the New York Times on June 21, 1981, posing the question:
     ``Will Tomorrow's Terrorist Have an Atom Bomb?''
       Since serving in the early 1970s as an aide on a Senate
     subcommittee chaired by Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.), Mr.
     Leventhal remained adamant about the dangers of nuclear
     terrorism and global commerce in plutonium--a key element
     used in nuclear weapons--and worked to prevent the spread of
     nuclear weapons to nations or groups.
       On the subcommittee, Mr. Leventhal worked on a Nixon
     administration bill to reorganize the Atomic Energy
     Commission. He described work on the legislation as a
     ``baptism in fire'' that changed his life.
       Mr. Leventhal, who worked in the Senate from 1972 to 1981,
     was responsible for the investigations and legislation that
     resulted in

[[Page E833]]

     passage of two landmark nuclear laws--the Energy
     Reorganization Act of 1974, which split the Atomic Energy
     Commission into separate regulatory and promotional nuclear
     agencies, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978,
     which established stricter controls on U.S. nuclear trade.
       The non-proliferation act's requirement that countries
     accept international inspections on all their nuclear
     activities--``full-scope safeguards''--as a condition for
     receiving U.S. nuclear assistance eventually was adopted as
     an international norm by the multinational Nuclear Suppliers
     Group.
       Mr. Leventhal recognized the growth and threat of nuclear
     and bomb-grade materials, said lawyer Richard Wegman, who
     served as chief counsel for Ribicoffs committee with Mr.
     Leventhal and later as counsel for the Nuclear Control
     Institute.
       ``Paul was a truly remarkable individual, exceptionally
     dedicated to an exceptionally difficult cause,'' Wegman said.
     ``He was one of the first to work for full-scope safeguards.
     . . . He insisted on incorporating that concept in
     legislation.''
       In 1979, Mr. Leventhal served as co-director of the
     bipartisan Senate investigation of the Three Mile Island
     nuclear accident, and he prepared the ``lessons-learned''
     legislation enacted in 1980 to require preventive measures
     and emergency planning.
       He said that work left him ``acutely aware of that
     ineffable combination of human fallibility and mechanical
     failure that makes nuclear plants vulnerable to accidents,
     and also sabotage.''
       He lamented a few years ago that the flow of nuclear
     technology and materials from industrial countries to
     developing regions was continuing.
       ``As a result, there is now more plutonium in civilian
     hands than in all of the nuclear weapons in the world. And
     some of it has already been turned into bombs, as in India,
     Pakistan and North Korea, while others have used or are now
     using civilian nuclear programs as a cover for weapons
     programs,'' he said in a speech in 2001, adding that Iran and
     Iraq raised immediate concerns.
       Mr. Leventhal, born in Manhattan, graduated magna cum laude
     with a degree in history from Franklin & Marshall College in
     Pennsylvania in 1959 and received a master's degree from the
     Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1960. He
     spent 10 years as an investigative and political reporter at
     the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the New York Post and Newsday,
     until deciding that he wanted to ``get inside of government
     and try to make it work.''
       In 1969, he came to Washington as a press secretary to Sen.
     Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.), served in 1970 as campaign press
     secretary to Sen. Charles Goodell (R-N.Y.) and two years
     later was a congressional correspondent for the National
     Journal.
       From 1972 to 1976, he concentrated on nuclear weapons
     proliferation as a research fellow at Harvard University's
     Program for Science and International Affairs and as a
     visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. From 1979 to
     1981, he was staff director of the Senate Nuclear Regulation
     Subcommittee, chaired by Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.).
       After starting the Nuclear Control Institute, Mr. Leventhal
     served as its president for 22 years, lectured in a number of
     countries, organized conferences and wrote op-ed articles and
     books on nuclear terrorism, averting a Latin American nuclear
     arms race, nuclear power and the spread of nuclear weapons.
       For the past several years, he directed the institute as a
     Web-based program that maintains a word-searchable electronic
     archive at www.nci.org: and a collection of institute and
     Senate papers spanning more than 30 years at the National
     Security Archive.
       Survivors include his wife, Sharon Tanzer Leventhal of
     Chevy Chase; two sons, Theodore Leventhal of Washington and
     Joshua Leventhal of Raleigh, N.C.; a brother; and two
     grandsons.