Did we blow it at the end of the Cold War by not securing all fissile material in the former Soviet Union?

Question

Don't we understand how many prominent Soviet scientists are desperate for cash in the aftermath of the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the skewed government payroll that paid them?

And is it sound thinking to assume that there aren't any Soviet nuclear scientists who still believe in the communist doctrine and despise the capitalist Americans?

I think you can see where I'm going withh this.

There was no incentive for the former Soviet Union to spend the intensely high amount of capital required to secure and guard all of the fissile material existing in so many different places.

The trillions of dollars we are currently spending in our war against terrorism are dollars we should have spent to assure this fissile material was 100% accounted for and secured.

The previous Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations were completely flat-footed on this all-important issue.

Answer 1

We tried, and with some monumental foreign aid (bribes), managed to secure a lot of material in the satellite nations, a number of which decided nuclear material wasn't worth the ownership hassle. The Russians however, were smarter - the best we could do was a deal for the de-weaponized Uranium and Plutonium. There was a lot of attention paid to this issue, but the material was really not up for grabs.

Answer 2

And you think the Russians would just have let us go into their country and grab all that material? ;-)