Former talk radio show host who floated questionable theories now a top arms control official

A former talk radio show host who promoted fringe theories and suggested dropping nukes on Afghanistan might have been a way to deal with the country is now a top official at the State Department's Bureau of Arms Control. 

Frank Wuco is a senior adviser at the Bureau of Arms Control, according to the bureau's official Twitter account and as first reported by the Washington Post, after a stint as a senior adviser for the White House at the Department of Homeland Security. It's unclear exactly when Wuco began at the State Department. 

In a 2016 radio segment on the Dougherty Report, Wuco, who is a former Naval intelligence officer, was asked why the U.S. doesn't just turn Syria and Iran into "glass already."

"Um well, I — I mean, I know what you're getting at," Wuco said at the time. "I mean, it's, it's that our, I mean it's been our — I don't think it's been our policy really to just start nuking countries. I think if we were going to have done that, my preference would have been to have dropped a couple of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons over Afghanistan the day after 9/11 to send a definite message to the world that they had screwed up in a big way."

But Mr. Trump, who made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Thanksgiving, has also suggested he could also solve issues in Afghanistan with bombs. The president explained this summer he won't pursue that path because it would result in an overwhelming loss of life.

"We're not fighting a war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don't want to kill 10 million people. Does that make sense to you? I don't want to kill 10 million people. I have plans on Afghanistan that if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth, it would be gone, it would be over in, literally in 10 days. And I don't want to do, I don't want to go that route," the president said in the Oval Office in July.

Wuco has floated other fringe theories, too, including giving air time to the "birther" conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya. The president himself was among the most prominent pushers of that baseless claim. 

Earlier this week, the Bureau of Arms Control tweeted out a picture of Wuco on an official trip to Romania.

The State Department did not respond to a request to comment on Thanksgiving. 

In:
• United States Department of State