On May 27, President Obama — accompanied by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima since America used the atomic bomb against the city on August 6, 1945. Experts put the visit in context and examined the broader successes and shortcomings in President Obama’s efforts to realize the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.

WHAT: On the record media only press conference and Q&A with nuclear experts previewing President Obama’s historic visit to Hiroshima. Watch the briefing below or here.

FEATURING
Joseph Cirincione, President, Ploughshares Fund
Cirincione is President of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. He is the author of the book Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late, Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons and Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats. He is a member of Secretary of State John Kerry’s International Security Advisory Board and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Brian Finlay, President and CEO, Stimson Center
Finlay is the President and CEO at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank. His areas of expertise include nonproliferation, transnational crime, counter-trafficking, supply chain security, and private sector engagement. Prior to joining Stimson, Finlay served four years as executive director of a Washington-based lobbying initiative focused on counter-terrorism issues, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, and a program officer at the Century Foundation.

Laicie Heeley, Fellow, Stimson Center
Heeley is a Fellow with Stimson’s Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense program. Her areas of expertise include U.S. budget process, defense strategy, nuclear weapons proliferation, and Iran. Prior to joining Stimson, Heeley was Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation where her research focused on nuclear proliferation in emerging states such as Iran and North Korea, as well as budgeting and strategy at the Department of Defense.

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