Nuclear Armament

In The Bomb, journalist Fred Kaplan reveals how U.S. presidents, their advisers and generals have thought about, planned for — and sometimes narrowly avoided — nuclear war.

New York Times reporter David Sanger talks about North Korea's nuclear program and warns that the regime, which has been "fodder for late night comedians for many many years," is no joke.

Area 51 is classified to the point that its very existence is denied by the U.S. government. Journalist Annie Jacobsen says it's not because of aliens or spaceships -- but because the government used the site for nuclear testing and weapons development.

A new book by journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins alleges that the CIA was so obsessed with getting information from nuclear trafficker A.Q. Khan's network, it waited too long to shut it down — and stood by while Khan and his associates spread dangerous nuclear technology around the globe.

Until his arrest in 2004, nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan -- the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb -- ran a vast smuggling network that sent nuclear material to Iran and Lybia. In his book Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America's Enemies, weapons expert David Albright explains how Khan's network continues to threaten global security.

Journalist David E. Hoffman revisits the high stakes maneuverings of the Cold War arms race and details the inner-workings of the Soviet nuclear program in his new book.

Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger are nontraditional tourists who explore missile silos, test sites, and bomb shelters. The two just published A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry, a chronicle of their travels to nuclear landmarks across ten states and fives countries.

In a new book, two British investigative journalists dig into the story of Pakistan's clandestine nuclear network — and America's role not just in condoning its ally's nuclear ambitions, but aiding them.

Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark are senior correspondents for the Guardian newspaper; both previously worked for the Sunday Times of London.

Their book is titled Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons.

Gordon Corera, security correspondent for the BBC, warns in his new book that we may be entering a new era of accelerated weapons proliferation. In Shopping for Bombs, Corera writes about the challenges of halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons and about A.Q. Khan, the man described by a former CIA director as at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden.

Hans Blix, the former director of the U.N. Inspection Commission, addresses the UN Thursday with a report on Weapons of Mass Destruction, Tackling the WMD Challenge. Blix is now chairman of the independent Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker discusses on the latest developments between Iran and the United States regarding Iran's nuclear power program. Hersh writes that the Bush administration has clandestine plans for a possible major attack on Iran.

Iran's attempts to restart its nuclear program in defiance of the International Atomic Energy Agency is a game of nuclear chicken, says Joseph Cirincione, the director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Physicist David Albright is president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C. He's the co-author of a new report on A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, that was published in the Spring 2005 edition of The Washington Quarterly. Khan sold nuclear technology and information to Iran, Libya and North Korea. He was reportedly able to do this for the last 20 years, while eluding authorities and intelligence agencies. Albright says Khan's actions have had an impact on nuclear proliferation.

Pritchard is a retired U.S Army colonel and the former point man on North Korea for Colin Powell. He worked on North Korea issues in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Pritchard resigned from the Bush administration in August 2003 and has criticized the administration for lacking an effective strategy. This week the United States is participating in six-party talks in an attempt to freeze North Korea's nuclear programs and restart inspections.

His new book is At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War. Reed recounts America's fight against communism at the height of the cold war. Reed was director of national reconnaissance, a special assistant to President Reagan for national security policy, and a consultant to the director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a well-known center for nuclear weapons research.

Milhollin is director the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a non-profit research group in Washington, D.C. that has been tracking the spread of weapons of mass destruction since 1986. He will talk about who has nuclear weapons, who is developing them, who has intelligence about them and who poses the biggest threat. Milhollin is also professor Emeritus of the University of Wisconsin Law School. His op-ed pieces about nuclear weapons have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times.

Nicholas Kristof, editorial columnist for The New York Times, discusses the North Korea crisis. He has covered North and South Korea off and on since 1986. He's served as the Times bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. He was co-recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his coverage of the Chinese crackdown on protesters at Tiananmen Square. In a column which appeared in the Times on February 4, 2003, he wrote, "The North Korean nuclear crisis is far more perilous than many people realize.

He specializes in defense and proliferation issues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He directs the Endowment's Non-Proliferation Project. The Endowment has just published the new report Iraq: What Next?, which examines the weapons inspection process so far.

Robert Jay Lifton is professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the Graduate School University Center and director of The Center on Violence and Human Survival at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at The City University of New York. He'll talk with us about the psychological impact of the threat of terrorism and the potential for nuclear war between Pakistan and India. Lifton specializes in the study of extremist religions and cults.

International security expert George Robert Perkovich (Per-KO-vich) is author of the new book, "India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation" (University of California Press) is about India's 50 year secret nuclear program, which began in 1947, and the forces internal and external that led to their detonation last year of 5 nuclear test bombs. Perkovich is deputy director for programs, and director of the Secure World Program for the W. Alton Jones Foundation, a philanthropic institution.