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IN MEMORIAM--PAUL LEVENTHAL -- (Extensions of Remarks - April 23, 2007)

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SPEECH OF HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY OF MASSACHUSETTS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES MONDAY, APRIL 23, 2007

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
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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.

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