[Editor's Note — In the original posting, Strom Thurmond was identified as a Republican senator when he made his record-setting filibuster in 1957. However, he was a Democrat at the time and didn't switch parties until the 88th Congress in 1963.]

Picture if you can US senator Harry Reid donning the garb of a swashbuckling buccaneer in the anticipated volley on the Senate floor between Democrats and Republicans over President Bush's judicial nominations. To a 19th century Mexican or Nicaraguan, it might make sense.

It's a stretch, but here's why.

Senate Majority Leader Frist and a fleet of Republicans are squaring off against Reid and the Democrats who are setting up ramparts in a battle over senate procedure at the least, if not the interpretation of the Constitution itself.

The Democrats’ line of defense is the "filibuster," a long-standing Senate privilege allowing virtually unlimited floor debate usually in the hopes of killing legislation, or, in this case, blocking the approval of Bush's nominees to the bench.

In the mid 1800s, according to the Senate Historical Office, “filibuster -- from a Dutch word meaning 'pirate' -- became popular in the 1850s, when it was applied to efforts to hold the Senate floor in order to prevent a vote on a bill."

There’s a little more to the definition, though.

The United States, officially only a little over 50 years old by then, had an ever-growing population and territory. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson had paid France the equivalent of $193 million in today’s dollars for over 828,000 acres of land west of the Mississippi—the Louisiana Purchase.

As often happens, expansion brings conflict, and the United States is no more immune from it than other nations. The larger the territory, the larger the national interests, and so as US governments and their presidents sought to secure these lands, the people who felt their own entitlements to it often felt differently.

Enter "filibuster."

The word filibuster comes directly from the Spanish filibustero, itself from the Dutch Vrijbuiter, or freebooter, plunderer—a pirate. “It was used,” says Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to Congress “to describe US military adventurers who in the mid-1800s fomented insurrections against various Latin American governments.”

With some irony,

The first parliamentary use of the word is said to have occurred in the House [of Representatives] in 1853, when a representative accused his opponents of “filibustering against the United States.” Ten years later, “filibuster had come to mean delaying action on the floor, but the term did not gain wide currency until the 1880s.

Again—unlike in the House—the filibuster tradition has allowed senators essentially unlimited debate. Which means talking. You can employ other techniques requiring parliamentary skills and knowhow, but, says the CQ guide, “The most important tool of the filibusterer, once control of the floor proceedings is gained, is continued talk.” Lots of it.

So who holds the record? In August of 1957, in an a failed effort to impede passage of the civil rights bill, a Republican senator from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond, held the floor for 24 hours and 18 minutes. Non-stop.

Also . . .

House and Senate Rules of Procedure: A Comparison (Congressional Research Service, via Senate.gov)

Everything you wanted to know about the "nuclear option (Salon.com)

With a Potential Supreme Court Nomination At Stake, Questions of The Filibuster's Constitutionality Linger (FindLaw.com)

Can the Senate Bind Itself So that Only a Supermajority Can Change Its Rules? (FindLaw.com)

"Filibuster and Cloture": an interview with former Senate parliamentarian Floyd Riddick (Senate.gov)

Senate leaders to break bread on Sunday(TheHill.com)

Rove Guided Career of Judicial Nominee in Filibuster Fight (New York Times)

On Monday April 4, 2005 Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith became the 3,460th recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Mr. Smith “distinguished himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty,” one year ago to the day for action in Operation Iraqi Freedom, which “saved the lives of at least 100 Soldiers, caused the failure of a deliberate enemy attack hours after 1st Brigade seized the Baghdad Airport, and resulted in an estimated 20-50 enemy soldiers killed.”

The history of the Medal of Honor goes back to December 9, 1861 when an Iowa senator introduced a bill that would distribute the “medals of honor” to “promote the efficiency of the Navy.” By the end of the month the bill was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. Over half a year later, in 1862, he signed a new law that would create an equivalent award for the Army.

The medal—among scores of military service medals given since 1862—is the highest given to military service personnel in the United States, and covers conflicts which include the Civil War (1,522 awardees), the “Indian Campaigns” (426), World War II (464), and Vietnam (245). Over 600 medals have been awarded posthumously, the bulk of the awardees have been from the Army, nine have been given to unknown recipients, and as of February 7th of this year, there were 127 living recipients.

And while the Civil War figure above is the highest of all the conflicts to date, it only represents medals given to Union soldiers of the northern states and does not include those from the Confederate Army who made similar sacrifices, even if for different reasons.

It has also been awarded to only one woman in its over 140-year history. Mary Walker was a Civil War “assistant surgeon” who was awarded the medal for actions during the Battle of Bull Run in July of 1861. However, in a purge about 40 years later, her medal was revoked due to her civilian status—a distinction, until her medal was restored in 1977, she would share with five others, including Buffalo Bill Cody. Cody’s was restored in 1989.

According to the Encyclopedia Americana, The Purple Heart, probably the most widely known medal in US history, was established in 1782 by George Washington and designed by Paris-born Pierre Charles L’Enfant, also the designer of Washington, D.C. It was created for Revolutionary War service and was originally called the Badge of Military Merit. It wasn’t until nearly 250 years later that it was resurrected and has been in use ever since.

Also . . .

Medal Of Honor FAQs (Congressional Medal of Honor Society)

Medal of Honor citations (US Army)

Recommendation Process (US Army)

What are the guidelines for which the medal could be awarded? (CMHS)

Civil War Medal of Honor awards (Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, National Park Service)

Global inequity, by some measures, is diminishing. Yet it is a sobering sort of success, because sometimes it is people who live on less than one dollar per day have decreased, either that their incomes increase to, perhaps, two dollars per day, or that they are dying off.

This is the subject of a Monitor article Thursday. The story is accompanied by a photograph of a beaming child in Malawi, eating an ear of corn grown by her father, with the help of an aid program.  Corn is not native to Africa, and crops get decimated when weather is bad.  Aid, too, is subject to changes in political and economic climates.   

This past week, a United Nations report suggested ways industrialized countries could halve world poverty by 2015, with the ultimate goal of eliminating it completely by 2025. The report recommends a multi-pronged approach that includes rich nations stepping up their financial support of of nations that show development promise. The report also says poor countries should do their part to meet these goals, while wealthy nations should open their markets.  Agricultural markets especially matter to struggling, pre-industrial economies, but laws protecting European Union and United States farmers often serve to push these countries out of markets.

Market demands and new customers might bring about change faster than policy shifts, however. This past November, it was reported that the US's agricultural trade balance for the first time in 50 years would be zero.   More countries are producing wheat, produce and other commodities.  In addition, trends toward fresh and exotic products, and new demands for these products created by cultural diversity in this country, are cited as factors.

The more products that rich nations buy from poor countries, this improves the standard of living in the developing world. In turn, emergent countries often want more of what the developing world has to sell - like electronics, cars, and education.  That could be good for everyone.

Iran, in a bold move earlier this week, declared that it would not conform to guidelines laid down by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Instead, reported the Monitor’s Scott Peterson Friday, it said it plans to resume uranium enrichment activities which are part of a larger nuclear program that was started in 1974.

It’s also the latest episode in an ongoing saga of nuclear rivalry and politics in the Middle East and South Asia. In 1979, then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, made the following statement:

We know that Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability. The Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations have this capability. The communist powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilization was without it, but that position was about to change.

Following the Iranian statements, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that while there’s “a clear understanding now that Iran must satisfy the concerns that have been expressed by the international community,” and that the U.S. was “talking about diplomacy and political efforts to stop this movement on the part of the Iranians toward nuclear weapons,” adding, “we’re not talking about strikes.”

The punch line came next. “But every option…of course, remains on the table.”

However, the idea of striking a country in possession of nuclear capabilities is not new. The Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies notes that Iraq attacked Iran’s Bushehr plant six times throughout the Iran-Iraq War (or Iraq-Iran war, depending).

The Israeli attack on the Osirak, or Tammuz I, nuclear facilities in Iraq in June of 1981 is undoubtedly the most famous, and it has been lately invoked by the press in the wake of statements coming out of Iran and Israel.

Some commentators have turned the tables and drawn renewed attention towards Israel’s nuclear program. And while, downplaying a nuclear preemptive move, Israel has recently announced acquisition from the United States of 5000 "smart bombs" worth $319 million, including 500 so-called "bunker busters," or BLU-109s, capable of penetrating 7ft of concrete.

Herbert Krosney and Steven Weissman, in their book, The Islamic Bomb, set up an earlier strike against Tammuz that occurred the year before and set off a wave of confusion and misinformation.

It was September 30, 1980, the ninth day of the Gulf War between Iran and Iraq. Iranian Phantom jets had just bombed a power plant on the outskirts of Baghdad, when low on the horizon, two Phantoms came streaking in over the desert sands, rushing headlong at a new target.

[ . . . ]

Early announcements said that the rockets had missed the big new Tammuz I reactor and had scored only “minor damage” to some buildings nearby. A later report in the French magazine l’Express claimed that the rockets had hit the base of the reactor dome, badly damaging the entire structure. It would set the Iraqi nuclear program back at least a year, l’Express suggested.

At the time of the attack, French technicians were still completing construction of Tammuz I, which was not scheduled to go “critical” for at least three months. But a smaller research reactor from France and possibly an older one from the Soviet Union were very much in operation when the rockets struck.

Never before had a nuclear reactor site become a military target in time of war, and perhaps it was the novelty of it al, or the apparent brilliance of the attack, that led l’Express to drop a bombshell of its own. The Phantoms hadn’t come from Iran at all, the magazine had insisted. They were Israeli, and they had taken advantage of the war with Iran to knock out the Iraqi nuclear complex.

But it was not Israel. Not this time.

The truth, it seems, was more prosaic. The later-to-be-deposed Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who was also the military commander-in-chief, admitted the Phantoms were his. And according to eyewitnesses, it is likely that the place called Tuwaitah was not even a primary objective, but simply a target of opportunity for those two Phantoms on the way home after the bombing of the power plant on the outskirts of Baghdad.

[ . . . ]

The September bombing of Tuwaitah was not the first of the violence in the trouble-plagued history of the Iraqi nuclear program, and it would not be the last. Back in April 1979, unidentified saboteurs broke into a storage hangar at a small engineering firm near Toulon on the French Riviera and dynamited the Osirak, or Tammuz, core only hours before it was due to be shipped to Iraq. In June 1980, in a hotel room in Paris, an unknown intruder bludgeoned to death an Egyptian nuclear engineer who was playing a leading role on the Osirak project. In August, a series of bombings and letter and telephone threats against French and Italian engineering firms sparked a continuing campaign of terror.

The details of the Israeli attack on Osirak are fully exploded in a new book by Roger Claire, but here’s the rough outline of the Israeli attack from Krosney and Weissmann:

But the big attack came on Sunday, June 7, 1981, the eve of the Jewish religious holiday of Shavuot, the celebration of the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses in Sinai. The thoughts of most Israelis were far from the battlefield…

… The attack itself went strictly according to plan. Late in the afternoon, about four o’clock Israeli time, eight of Israel’s new fleet of American-built F-16 jet fighters took off from Etzion air base in the Sinai. Originally designed for high-speed dogfights, the planes had been equipped with extra fuel tanks, to increase their range, and special bomb racks which carried two 2,000-pound MK-84 iron bombs.

…The first bombs to hit the lead and concrete walls had delayed-action fuses. This allowed them to penetrate the dome before exploding, opening holes with pinpoint accuracy and destroying the reactor inside.

The U.S. role in the lead up to the attack is intriguing, according to the biography by Joseph Persico of former CIA director William J. Casey. In it Persico paints a picture of a quid pro quo between Casey and parties in Israel who want something in return for a muted reaction to the shipment of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia.

First on his agenda was helping to get the AWACS deal through the Congress. The government of Saudi Arabia wanted to spend $8.5 billion for these “airborne warning and control systems” surveillance aircraft. The Reagan administration was eager to make the sale to cement its friendship with the Saudis. Israel was understandably unnerved by the prospect of an Arab state getting supersophisticated planes. …

Casey went to the Middle East and met in Tel Aviv with the Israeli intelligence chief, Major General Yitzhak Hoffi, known as Haka. How could he be helpful? Casey wanted to know. Haka told him that any information the Israelis could acquire from the CIA on certain installations in the Arab world could be most useful. Any in particular? Casey asked. Yes, the Israeli told him. Ten miles outside of Baghdad in Iraq was the Osirak nuclear reactor. The reactor’s core contained 26.4 pounds of weapons-grade uranium 235. The Israelis estimated that their Iraqi antagonists were within five years of producing nuclear weapons.

Casey understood Israel’s concern. Of course he could help—but did Israel really need to be so worried about the AWACS sale to the Saudis? Couldn’t the Jewish lobby in the States be called off? The heads of the intelligence service of the United States and of Israel managed, before Casey left, to arrive at a mutually helpful arrangement.

On Sunday, June 8 Israeli aircraft bombed the Osirak reactor. Casey was notified at home at four-fifty that afternoon. Within two hours, and American KH-11 Big Bird photo reconnaissance satellite was diverted from its customary orbit over the Soviet Union and China; and within six hours, Israeli intelligence was getting KH-11 photos direct by satellite revealing the destruction wrought on the Iraqi plant.

…During the administration’s push to win approval of the AWACS deal, Casey had watched with admiration the energy of two military officers on the project.”

Oliver North and Richard Secord.

For further reference

Iran (Nuclearfiles.org)

Iraq Nuclear Weapons Program—Import Table

Osirak and Beyond

Nuclear Rights and Wrongs

Ikonos Imagery of Dimona, Negev Nuclear Research Center

Iran boasts Dimona now 'within range'

Israel and the Bomb

2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

A Monitor article Wednesday discusses the importance of presidential debates
as the electorate's opportunity to see the candidate's character, which is evident despite much coaching, grooming and scripting.

While the declining audience in presidential debates is well documented, a recent Pew poll indicates that there is high interest in the debates this year, with six in ten voters, or (61%) saying it is "very likely" they will watch the debates between Bush and Kerry, a higher percentage than in past presidential elections.

The debates' locations, dates and formats have been confirmed and agreed upon by the candidates. The Commission on Presidential Debates, which proposes these terms, also encourages viewers to watch them in groups with friends or members of their community.

Third party candidates cannot debate unless they are on the ballot according to criteria of this commission. Supporters of third party candidates object to the requirement that third party candidates have a level of national support of at least 15%.

All three major networks will air the debates. The web site HowStuffWorks.com has an entry by its editor on what it is like to attend a presidential debate.

Quoting FCC chairman Michael Powell, a Monitor article from Thursday states, “It’s probably the most significant paradigm shift in the entire history of modern communications, since the invention of the telephone.”

What is it?

VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol. To Jane and John Doe, it’s doing on a computer what one would normally do on a phone, and for a number of privacy advocates, it could be the latest hot button issue surrounding the FCC since that body approved new rules governing media ownership. It’s also the latest wrinkle in the blanket of measures to come out of the USA Patriot Act, the monolithic anti-terror law promptly passed by Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Mr. Powell’s statement coming out of last week's FCC vote to extend wiretapping to the Internet adds, “Our support for law enforcement is unwavering; it is our goal in this proceeding to ensure that law enforcement agencies have all of the electronic surveillance capabilities that CALEA authorizes to combat crime and terrorism and support Homeland Security.”

CALEA is a 1994 law designed “to make clear a telecommunications carrier's duty to cooperate in the interception of communications for Law Enforcement purposes, and for other purposes,” and Internet, broadband, and “push-to-talk” technology now fall under its jurisdiction.

As CNET News has reported, “The vote comes five months after the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department formally asked for guaranteed wiretapping access to broadband networks. If the FCC had done nothing, wiretaps would be possible but could be more difficult and time-consuming for police to carry out.”

The battlefield where opponents inevitably will be crossing swords with the federal ruling is the US Constitution, specifically the Fourth Amendment.

The text of this amendment reads as follows:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The CALEA legislation is incorporated into Title 47 of the US Code (the formal and up-to-date version of all US federal laws) with the chapter called “INTERCEPTION OF DIGITAL AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS”. According to this item from TechLaw Journal,

Nothing in this NPRM & DR, or the CALEA, expands the authority of law enforcement agencies to conduct surveillance. Wiretap authority, and pen register and trap and trace authority (including Internet addressing and routing information), are addressed in Title 18 (criminal code) and Title 50 (foreign intelligence surveillance). The CALEA, which is codified in Title 47 (communications), imposes requirements upon telecommunications carriers to design and modify their networks to facilitate lawfully obtained surveillance orders.

For further reference:

Small players want their share of air waves (The Christian Science Monitor)

Wiretapping legislation (EPIC)

Voice On the Net (VON) Coalition

The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System

A Monitor article Thursday describes a few of the advanced security measures in place for the 2004 Athens Games, which start tomorrow. One such measure is the use of AWACS to patrol the skies over Athens – an example of increasing use of military technology for non-military situations.

A considerable portion of the $1.5 billion spent on security is for 'digital security guards' – cameras equipped with speech-recognition software that will be looking for patterns of words and actions.

And remember the expression that something had 'gone the way of the zeppelin'? People used it to say that when popular pastimes or fads were no longer au courant. Well it seems that the zeppelin may be courant again, as a high-tech version of the airship has been revived and rented by Greece, complete with cameras and 'anti-chemical detectors' to circle Athens.

But apparently security has always been an issue at the Games. In the first modern Olympics in 1896 police, cavalry units and other guards were mobilized to form a 400-strong force at Athens to combat robbery, kidnapping and pickpocketing.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has put a plug in the whistle of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. Ms. Edmonds, a naturalized US citizen born in Turkey, is at the center of one of the most interesting government secrecy debates in US history.

After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the FBI was under pressure to hire more linguists. Edmonds joined the ranks only to find herself fired less than half a year after blowing the whistle on what she felt were incompetent and corrupt procedures within her department. She claims that she brought to the attention of her superiors some serious conflicts in the translation staff — including those related to a colleague and a group being monitored.

According to a 2002 article in the Washington Post,

Edmonds said that on several occasions, the translator tried to recruit her to join the targeted foreign group. "This person told us she worked for our target organization," Edmonds said in an interview. "These are the people we are targeting, monitoring."

Edmonds would not identify the other translator, but The Post has learned from other sources that she is a 33-year-old US citizen whose native country is home to the target group. Both Edmonds and the other translator are US citizens who trace their ethnicity to the same Middle Eastern country [Turkey]. Reached by telephone last week, the woman, who works under contract for the FBI's Washington field office, declined to comment.

Edmonds allegedly went to her superiors.

"Investigations are being compromised," Edmonds wrote to the inspector general's office in March. "Incorrect or misleading translations are being sent to agents in the field. Translations are being blocked and circumvented."

The axe fell, as they say, when she was accused of having “breached security,” partly due, she says, “to specific instruction by a supervisor to prepare a report on the other translator on her home computer.”

Afterwards she found herself censured by Mr. Ashcroft, “at the request of FBI Director Robert Mueller,” from testifying in court under the rare, but absolute, "state secrets privilege." (Edmonds has actually brought suit against the Department of Justice). She did, however, testify in camera before the 9/11 Commission, but the specifics of that testimony are unknown to the public.

And in a move that has confused Senators from both parties, Ashcroft retroactively classified material in the Edmonds case. This material included letters from Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who expressed concern over the classification measures.

Earlier this month, the FBI and Justice Department indicated they might release an “unclassified version” of the reports investigating the claims by Edmonds. And The New York Times, quoting FBI director Robert Mueller, reported Thursday that the OIG at the Justice Department concluded that Edmonds' whistle-blowing actions were "a contributing factor" to her dismissal.

The inspector general "also criticized the FBI's failure to adequately pursue Ms. Edmonds's allegations of espionage as they related to one of her colleagues," Mr. Mueller said in his letter. The Times noted that the FBI is "considering disciplinary action against some employees as a result" of this finding.

For further reference:

Statement of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds and her attorneys
August 13, 2002 (Washington Post)

STATE SECRETS PRIVILEGE GETS A WORKOUT (Federaton of American Scientists)

Federal Rules of Evidence (2004) (Legal Information Institute, Cornell)

Ex-CIA analyst and Edmonds dissect final 9/11 commission report (Democracy Now)

What's covered in the 9-11 report? What's covered up?(Village Voice)

National Whistleblowers Center

Driving a car, in American society, is celebrated as freedom. Particularly so in rural areas, where alternative transportation may not be available. It is largely seen as an individual right, until the issue of drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants arises, when it becomes a privilege.

This has been a particularly contentious debate in immigration; seemingly more so than medical care, educational opportunities, or housing issues.

This is the subject of a Monitor article Monday, which describes a bill in California to grant licenses to illegal immigrants that was rescinded, and a 'certificate of driving' that has just been launched in Tennessee for undocumented immigrants.

A few bills have been introduced in Congress to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining licenses or ID cards, such as the Drivers License Integrity Act and the State Accountability and Identity Fraud Elimination Act.

In the states, bills reflect a divide on the issue, with most laws favorable to immigrants. And despite this push, there is evidence that states are not exactly rushing to license immigrants, in fact, quite the opposite. For further research on the issue of immigrants and drivers' licenses, the National Immigration Law Center has a roundup of state laws, requirements, and other news.

In Scott Peterson’s piece from last week on the growth in Asian nuclear power, he writes, “Since the atom was first harnessed for peaceful purposes – at the reactor at Obninsk ... half a century ago this weekend – the history of nuclear power has proven to be a double-edged sword.”

The emphasis of Mr. Peterson’s article is on security and the steps that led to a system of sharing nuclear technology that has had mixed results according to various proponents and critics who have commented on the "duality" of this system.

Although the first plant for nuclear power was created at Obninsk, Russia in 1954, the construction of the world’s first "full-scale nuclear reactor" was begun by the Soviets in 1946, and the first electricity-generating reactor was built in 1951, in the Idaho desert.

Dubbed the EBR-1 (i.e, the first experimental breeder reactor), construction of the project had begun in 1949 and had lured scientists from the Manhattan Project, known for its work which led to the use of the first atomic bombs.

The EBR-1, now maintained for the US Department of Energy by Bechtel, was a working reactor from the early 1950s until 1963 and helped to create the first atomic-powered city, Arco, Idaho.

Peterson draws attention to the December 1953 speech by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, referred to as the "Atoms for Peace" speech. The speech was considered the catalyst for the program, which would originally envision a "uranium bank" that would ostensibly be a depository for surplus uranium but would eventually lead to the trade of nuclear material – for "peaceful technologies" or otherwise – and end up with the present-day arrangement between the US and Russia to repatriate research reactor fuel from other countries. The underlying aim of Eisenhower's message might best be summed up by these passages taken from the speech:

The United States would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military purposes.

It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.

The United States knows that if the fearful trend of atomic military build up can be reversed, this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind.

Adapting nuclear technology "to the arts of peace" has been the proverbial fly in the ointment, however. The Nuclear Energy Information Service has posted an article citing a 1981 Los Alamos National Laboratory document which says, "There is no technical demarcation between the military and civilian reactor and there never was one. What has persisted over the decades is just the misconception that such a linkage does not exist."

In practical terms the recently enacted Global Threat Reduction Initiative is the latest marker in the sequence of steps taken after Eisenhower's speech, steps which include the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (itself an amendment to the "McMahon Act" of 1946) and the "Megatons to Megawatts" design roughly 40 years later.

Eisenhower’s speech and the Atomic Energy Act set the stage for the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, created in 1957, and the Energy Act of the early 90s produced the controversial USEC, the US Enrichment Corporation, now a privatized facility with shareholders, and the only entity that regulates the purchase and sales of uranium acquired as part of the original uranium acquisition arrangement with Russia.

For further reference:

US Outlines Plan for Securing Nuclear Materials

Nuclear power timeline from Nuclearfiles.org

Reactors around the world: Maps of Nuclear Power Reactors: Menu Page

Nuclear Power Plants Operating in the United States as of April 15, 2003

Citizen Kurchatov

Nuclear Power Plant Security (Project on Government Oversight)