Joseph F. Pilat is a staff member in the office of the assistant director for planning and analysis at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was formerly a senior research associate in the office of senior specialists, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress. He was a special assistant to Walter Laqueur at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and has published extensively on nuclear energy and weapons issues for British and American scholarly journals and for the U.S. Congress.