Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation (VCI)

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The Bureau of Verification, Compliance and Implementation (VCI), headed by Assistant Secretary Paula A. DeSutter, provides oversight of both policy and resources on all matters relating to verification of compliance with international arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament agreements and commitments and supports the Secretary and the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security in developing and implementing robust and rigorous verification and compliance policies.

The Bureau, which became operational on February 1, 2000, following its creation by the U.S. Congress, has three Congressionally-mandated missions:

• Ensuring that appropriate verification requirements and capabilities are fully considered and integrated throughout the development, negotiation, and implementation of new treaties, agreements and commitments;
• Assessing other nations' compliance with arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament treaties, agreements and commitments; and
• Serving as the principal policy liaison to the U.S. Intelligence Community for verification and compliance matters.

Pursuant to Congressional direction, the Bureau has principal responsibility for overall supervision (including oversight of policy and resources) within the Department of all matters relating to verification and compliance with international arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament treaties, agreements and commitment. Further, on behalf of the Secretary and the President, the Bureau prepares annual reports to Congress on compliance with arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament treaties, agreements and commitments and on implementation of the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act. These reports include: “Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control and Nonproliferation Agreements and Commitments”  and specialized compliance reports specified in U.S. Senate resolutions providing advice and consent to the ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Conventional Forces in Europe Flank Agreement. Additionally, the Bureau provides Congress, upon its request, with assessments of the verifiability of prospective agreements and produces a report on “World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers.” 

In 2005, at the direction of Secretary of State Rice, the Bureau assumed the additional responsibility, and leadership role within the Department, for ensuring the effective implementation of existing nuclear arms control treaties and agreements with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan and similar responsibilities with respect to Euro-Atlantic conventional arms control treaties and agreements.

In pursuit of its missions, VCI seeks to ensure that:

• Verification, compliance and implementation requirements are understood and addressed by policymakers and the Intelligence Community;
• The international community and international organizations promote implementation and compliance; and
• The United States and the international community pursue effective efforts to induce and enforce compliance.

The Bureau has seven offices through which it develops and implements verification and compliance policy and implementation policy for such treaties and agreements as the START Treaty, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), the Open Skies (OS) Treaty and agreements in the European Forum for Security Cooperation (FCS). This responsibility necessarily involves VCI in all phases of the development of such agreements and commitments -- initial conception, development of the U.S. negotiating position, the negotiations themselves, ratification and implementation.

Key among VCI's recent initiatives has been leading U.S. efforts to assist Libya in eliminating its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles. Current initiatives include:

• Leading U.S. efforts to develop -- and one day implement -- the elimination and verification requirements for the denuclearization of North Korea; 
• Developing a new arrangement for managing the U.S.-Russian strategic nuclear relationship in the post-START environment; 
• Working with NATO countries, other European countries and Russia on the implementation of the CFE Treaty; 
• Providing reports to the Executive Branch, Congress and the public on the compliance of other states with their arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation obligation; 
• Working bilaterally and multilaterally with the international community to resolve longstanding concerns regarding other states' compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention and their other arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation obligations; and 
• Establishing the scientific, institutional and organizational arrangements to ensure that the U.S. Government can effectively discriminate between naturally-occurring outbreaks of disease and a biological weapons attack and identify the perpetrator.

In its capacity as the Department's verification and compliance policy liaison to the Intelligence Community, the Bureau provides guidance on funding and tasking priorities for collection resources and analytic assets to support arms control and nonproliferation goals. Further, as the lead in the Department for preserving assets essential for verification, seeding development of verification technologies and enhancing the cohesiveness of national technology efforts, the Bureau manages the Key Verification Assets Fund (V Fund), co-chairs the interagency Nonproliferation and Arms Control Technology Working Group (NPAC TWG) and chairs the interagency Treaty Monitoring Working Group (TMWG).

The Bureau operates the Nuclear Risk Reduction Center (NRRC), which is charged with the transmission, translation and dissemination of the many government-to-government notifications required annually under the implementation of 20 different arms control treaties and security agreements.

VCI's staff is multi-disciplinary: It includes political scientists, foreign policy experts, attorneys, missile experts, engineers, nuclear physicists, seismologists, chemists, biologists, economists, intelligence experts, communications experts and computer scientists. They are foreign service officers, civil servants, and personnel on assignment from academia, U.S. scientific laboratories and elsewhere, including military officers from the Department of Defense.