Nunn and Lugar Win Top Defense Department Honor

NTI Co-Chairman

former Senator Sam Nunn and NTI Board Member Senator Richard Lugar received the

Pentagon’s highest civilian honor, the Distinguished Public Service Award, from

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at an all-day symposium December 3 at the

National Defense University. The symposium honored the 20th anniversary of the

Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.

After the awards ceremony, President Barack Obama thanked the Senators and in

his first foreign policy speech since the election, he underscored his

commitment to reducing nuclear dangers. “Missile by missile, warhead by

warhead, shell by shell, we’re putting a bygone era behind us,” Obama

said. “Inspired by Sam Nunn and Dick Lugar, we’re moving closer to the

future we seek.”

The symposium included a conversation with Senators Nunn and Lugar and remarks

by Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, a key figure in the legislation’s

inception two decades ago.

In bestowing the award on Senators Nunn and Lugar, Secretary Panetta said,

“We can say that the course of history changed for the better because

these two men helped the nation confront the threat of nuclear proliferation at

the end of the Cold War. The world would have been, without question, a far

more dangerous and threatening place were it not for these two patriots.”

President Obama also highlighted NTI’s contribution to global threat reduction,

saying in his tribute to Senator Nunn, “And with your Nuclear Threat

Initiative, you helped us ratify the New START treaty, rally the world to

secure nuclear materials, strengthen the global nonproliferation regime, and

create an international fuel bank for peaceful nuclear power.”

HHJ News