Recent Nuclear Declassifications and Denials: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

This declassification of a major study on CIA reporting and analysis of the Soviet military buildup in Cuba prior to the Missile Crisis supersedes the Agency’s 2012 release.[2] Its author, Richard Lehman, the Assistant for Special Projects at the Office of Current Intelligence, played a key role in inventing the President’s Daily Brief (PDB). In this report, Lehman detailed the CIA’s collection of intelligence on Soviet military aid to Cuba and on possible missile deployments on the island, but also the constraints on the Agency as it collected that information. While the CIA was reviewing agent reports on the movement of missile-like objects on Cuban roads during September 1962, it had orders from the White House not to publish anything relating to missile deployments that could not be verified with photographic intelligence. The ban existed because top policymakers worried about the possibility of leaks of sensitive information. Even the President’s Intelligence Checklist did not include the missile reports because its compilers drew on the Agency’s Cuban Daily Summary the output of which was constrained by the ban. Also complicating intelligence collection were the delays in U-2 flights over Western Cuba—the source of a “photo gap”—caused by senior officials who worried about an international incident should a spy plane be shot down.[3] That problem, according to Lehman, reflected the “lack of urgency” in the U.S. government about the search for possible missile deployments in Cuba. The Lehman report provided a detailed account of the policymaking process at various stages, including the President’s decision to approve U-2 flights in October to check out the ground reports of missiles in Cuba and the procedures used by intelligence officials to inform the White House of the Soviet deployments.

The CIA’s fuller release, which could have occurred years ago, includes details on the discovery of expanded Soviet weapons shipments during the summer of 1962, consideration of the use of FIREFLY drones, and the reporting in the President’s Checklist. Some of the “new” information included in this release has long been in the declassified record, such as the creation and implementation of National Security Action Memorandum 181, well documented in the Foreign Relations series, and the role of the CIA base at Opa Locka, Florida, for debriefing Cuban refugees, which has also been declassified for years.[4]

President John F. Kennedy highlighted his deep concern about nuclear proliferation and European stability in this discussion with NATO Secretary General Dirk Stikker about the state of the alliance. The full memorandum of conversation indicated that one of their shared concerns was the possibility that West Germany would seek an independent nuclear weapons capability, for which Stikker saw “real indications.” Stikker told Kennedy that he “personally” believed that the Soviet Unions would see such a development as a “casus belli.” When Kennedy asked whether the Germans understood the risks, Stikker said he thought they did, but “felt there may be no other way out.” Later in the conversation, Kennedy observed that that he and Stikker had the same goal: to “prevent the development of a demand for an independent national nuclear capability by the Federal [German] Government.” Their suspicions of West Germany were exaggerated, if deeply felt; while West German officials wanted to be integrally involved in alliance decisions on nuclear weapons, no evidence has emerged suggesting that they sought independent control of them.[5]

That the German nuclear issue was a highly sensitive one for years after February 1962 is reflected in the excised version of this memcon that was published in the Foreign Relations of the United States series in 1994; State Department reviewers deleted several passages on Germany and related matters. Several years later, the same memcon was released in full at NARA in a collection of records on the multilateral force negotiations, but, as noted earlier, a Kyl-Lott review early in the 2000s locked it up for years.

This is another record that was bottled up for years because of the Kyl-Lott process. A strong proponent of the multilateral force concept, Eisenhower administration veteran Gerard C. Smith was actively involved in U.S.-European negotiations to advance the MLF. Through skillful internal lobbying by Smith and others, the MLF enjoyed great traction at the State Department, even though President Kennedy and his advisers were never fully sold on the idea. With this text, typed up from a “dictabelt,” a recording and audio storage device of that era, Smith conveyed to State Department officials Howard Furnas and Henry Owen recent developments concerning the negotiations, including an argument he was developing to persuade West European members of NATO why belonging to an MLF would be advantageous. In making his case, Smith used an idiom about Chinese people that now would be considered insulting.

Among Smith’s arguments was that an MLF would be a way to “eliminate the chance of a U.S. nuclear withdrawal from Europe” but also “to keep down pressure for additional national forces in Europe—a contingency which most sensible men abhor.” The implicit reference to the West German nuclear issue, was a commonly used argument to support an MLF. Smith also noted that firing missiles assigned to the MLF would require a unanimous decision, giving the U.S., or any other member, a veto over their use. That, Smith argued, was also to the European advantage because unanimity would be “insurance of the United States’ involvement in European affairs.”

Well aware that President Kennedy had serious doubts about the MLF, Smith cited the President’s conversation with West German defense minister Kai-Uwe Van Hassell, where Kennedy said that “if the MLF does did not work out we would have to find other means of reassuring the FRG.” For Smith, “anything that is said about if MLF does not work out is most counterproductive.”

As noted earlier, this is one of the State Department documents that the Department of Energy bottled up under the Kyl-Lott program. While it is an interesting review of the problems raised by U.S. control over Okinawa for Japanese sensitivities, there is no hint that the island was a site for U.S. nuclear weapons. That this telegram was sent back to NARA’s classified vaults for some 20 years demonstrated the weaknesses of the DOE’s search for documents potentially containing RD or FRD.

Like the previous telegram, NARA released this telegram some 20 years after the Department of Energy impounded it under the Kyl-Lott program. The document contains interesting information on financial arrangements for the November 1969 U.S.-Japan agreement on Okinawa but has nothing to do with nuclear weapons.

Under National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 231, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy directed the CIA and other agencies to “undertake every feasible measure to improve our intelligence on the Israeli nuclear program as well as other Israeli or Arab advanced weapons programs.” He also directed the State Department to “develop proposals for forestalling” nuclear weapons programs in the Middle East, partly by “seeking clearer assurances from the governments concerned on this point” and to impress on them “how seriously such a development would be regarded in this country.” In keeping with those purposes, the State Department set up a special task force to review prospects and possibilities for arms control in the Middle East.

This excised memorandum is the record of the first meeting of the Task Force on Middle East arms control established in response to NSAM 231, as prepared by Middle East expert Francois Dickman. Unfortunately, the Defense Department deleted significant portions of this memorandum, even though the Pentagon had nothing to do with the task force or the creation of this record. Given the opportunity to review it, the Pentagon used its prerogative to deny portions of this document under exemption 6 of Executive Order 13526, designed to prevent the release of information that could harm U.S. diplomatic relations with other countries. What the Defense Department did with this record was to excise any references to the Israeli nuclear program or to the contents of NSAM 231, despite the fact that the latter has been declassified for years, along with other substantive and significant information on the Kennedy administration’s deep concerns about what Israel was doing at its Dimona reactor. The State Department also used exemption 6 to withhold a sentence or so from page 3.

If what was at issue were current secrets about Israeli nuclear activities, that would be one thing. But “secrets” from 60 years ago that have long been overtaken by previous declassifications are another matter altogether. As U.S.-Israeli relations are currently burdened with deeply serious issues, the thought that declassification of these old documents would harm the diplomatic relationship makes little sense. What would make more sense, however, is if the Pentagon’s security reviewers improved their standards for assessing classified historical records and developed an appropriate mindset for declassifying historical documents that require different standards from today’s top secrets.

The Defense Department excised the record of a follow-up meeting of the working group, also on diplomatic relations grounds, removing more references to the Israeli nuclear program. The CIA also withheld a few lines, mainly the name of a CIA official, probably unnecessarily, from this 60-year-old record.

This film, originally requested in 2009, provides a useful overview of the Pentagon’s worldwide airborne command post system as it stood at the close of the 1960s. According to the film, arrangements for survivable command posts had two major purposes. The first was to provide control over strategic forces “throughout the entire spectrum of nuclear war.” As the narrator further put it, the system was designed to “assure timely execution of our war plans and to provide trans and post-attack command and control of the nuclear forces.” The second purpose was deterrence. The existence of the system would tell adversaries that the U.S. would have survivable control of nuclear forces “even after a surprise attack.” The film identified the four key elements of airborne command posts— survivable command authority, survivable two-way communications, flexible weapons systems, and current and accurate operational intelligence—and the requirements for each element. Also depicted were plans for a massive aircraft, Lockheed’s C-5 “Galaxy, “to replace the EC-135s then in use, although a few years later the Pentagon chose to use Boeing 747s instead.

With respect to nuclear war fighting, and implicitly to deterrence, the film presented airborne command posts as providing a capability to execute and monitor the progress of a nuclear war in order to reach a “better position to bring hostilities to an end on terms advantageous” to the U.S. Left unexplained is how “advantageous” terms could be reached when the world on the ground was a “smoking radioactive ruin.”[6]

The film identifies major airborne command posts that were operational as of 1969: those of the Strategic Air Command, the Pacific Command and the European Command, along with the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP) created for the National Command Authority (the President and the Secretary of Defense). The discussion of the NEACP is interesting, if not revelatory, demonstrating its immediate alert status with a “highly trained operational team.” It “can function as the primary national military command center.” The footage of the landing of a helicopter carrying the President to the NEACP is less than realistic because it is more likely that, in a real emergency, the President would be running, not walking, to the aircraft. The depiction of a Senior Master Sergeant typing on a portable typewriter will bring back memories to viewers who grew up in the pre-digital age.

The Defense Department excised this film severely, deleting over 13 of its 23 minutes. Given that the film was produced over 50 years ago and how much information is already in the declassified public domain on airborne command posts, it is unlikely that releasing any of the withheld portions would harm U.S. national security. Some of the excisions are substantial, but several are brief and somewhat obvious. For example, the excision at 6:21, in the context of a discussion of the Navy’s very low frequency communications system, is most probably a reference to the system’s role in communicating with Polaris missile launching submarines, which has long been declassified.[7]

After the airborne command post film concludes, there are a few minutes of extraneous footage, apparently included by accident in the copy that NARA acquired from the Air Force. The first scrap of film is from the early 1970s, depicting training for the new F-15 fighter-bomber. The second scrap briefly shows an Air Force recruiter making a pitch to potential African-American recruits, with the GI Bill as a major talking point.

A brutal and angry Richard Nixon is evident in this recently declassified Kissinger telcon. The telephone conversation transcripts kept by the late Henry Kissinger are the gift that keeps on giving, although Kissinger had tried for years to prevent early public access. This telcon was in the queue at various agencies for over ten years before it was declassified. The discussion covered a range of issues concerning the wars in Southeast Asia—the secret war in Laos, the “Menu” bombing of Cambodia and the recent coup there (“the Cambodia thing”) that had just brought General Lon Nol to power, and the negotiations with North Vietnam—with some comments by Nixon on the press (“not loyal to the country”).

Concerning the negotiations in Paris with Hanoi, Kissinger said he was preparing for the next series of meetings beginning 4 April 1970. While both Kissinger and Nixon wondered whether the North Vietnamese had been “diddling”in the negotiations, Kissinger more than Nixon acknowledged that there had been some give in Hanoi’s position. Looking for an excuse to carry out a heavy bombing campaign against North Vietnam, Nixon spoke of creating a “provocation to hit them,” but not in the “way Johnson did,” apparently referring to the gradual escalation of bombing strikes. “If we provoke them we are going to kick the shit out of them.”

Nixon said he would use “anything,” but quickly qualified that by adding “everything short of nuclear weapons.” Mentioning his speedy approval, the day before, of B-52 strikes in Northern Laos, he asked “what difference does it make if we hit them with little planes or big ones.” This led Nixon to conclude that “we may as well use the big ones.” Kissinger helpfully offered to “give them an ultimatum if they don’t give us something.” While Nixon waited until 1972 to escalate bombing against North Vietnam, within weeks he had expanded the war with the invasion of Cambodia.

Nixon’s words, “everything short of nuclear weapons,” were representative of his thinking. While he found nuclear weapons useful for threat-making, he excluded their combat use in the Vietnam War. That probably had nothing to do with ethical or moral concerns, but reflected Nixon’s view that nuclear weapons use was irrelevant for military operations in Vietnam and potentially destabilizing to U.S. foreign policy interests.[8]

The excised portions at the opening of this telecon are probably references to the deployment of U.S.-supported Thai guerillas for the defense of Long Tien, the CIA’s base for the secret war in Laos. Nixon and Kissinger had been concerned about the “deteriorating situation” at Long Tien; with the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese troops approaching, the CIA provided reinforcements with Special Guerilla Units (SGU) consisting of Thai forces. The CIA’s sponsoring role of the SGUs is clear enough from records of the Washington Special Actions Group meetings on the morning and afternoon of 19 March 1970, which included discussion of B-52 strikes, the “hard option” that Nixon was demanding.[9]

One of the Nixon administration’s most secret and sensitive negotiations concerned the talks with London about the role of U.S. assistance in supporting the UK’s follow-on to the Polaris Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile. This excised Kissinger memorandum reviewed the state of the talks and the four options that the British had before them. In this version, only one option has been fully declassified; the rest are withheld. Yet the four options have been declassified for years, (here, for example) as has been the Kissinger memorandum itself, which was published in the Foreign Relations series in 2014. Among the 2023 releases, this is a particularly ugly one, given its previous publication. Perhaps just as bad, it took over 15 years for the agencies to process it.

Like Document 7, this heavily excised release is also suspicious, with much of the withheld contents most likely overclassified. Perhaps a different reviewer worked on it because, in contrast to Document 7, it includes three of the original four options, with option 2 excluded (see page 2). While the British side of the story is well-documented in their open archival records, the Defense Department continues to treat these 50-year-old negotiations as too sensitive to declassify in full.[10]

In the early 1970s, South Korean president Park Chung-Hee secretly initiated a national nuclear weapons program largely out of concern that U.S. security guarantees were becoming unreliable in light of U.S. decisions to withdraw troops. The CIA had learned about Park’s decision and the secret program during 1974, but it was not until a 13 May 1975 meeting with a delegation led by Minister of Science and Technology Choi Hyung-Sup that the U.S. officially received a detailed account of the plans to acquire from France the reprocessing plant that was an essential element of the weapons program.^[11]

This discussion occurred as the State Department and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) were studying the possibility of incorporating national plans to reprocess spent fuel into regional arrangements that would reduce risks of the diversion of reprocessing capabilities into weapons programs. Consistent with that, the U.S. was encouraging the Japanese and the South Koreans to consider a regional option. During this discussion, South Korean officials acknowledged their interest in siting a reprocessing plant in Korea that would meet future economic needs in the context of an IAEA-safeguarded regional arrangement, with the “dirty end products” of reprocessing stored on an “isolated” Korean island.

In the course of the meeting, Ambassador Richard Sneider asked for more information about South Koreans plans. Yun Young-Kuo, the President of the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute, officially acknowledged that the ROK had a contract with a French firm for a reprocessing facility. After Sneider expressed “regret that USG had learned of so sensitive a decision after the fact,” the Koreans explained that their plans had not been so secret but had “slipped through [the] cracks” of U.S.-South Korean exchanges. Sneider saw some truth in that and, in his comments to the State Department, he noted that, while the acquisition of the plant was contrary to U.S. policy, the deal had gone so far that its reversal was “very difficult.” But “now that ROK decision is on the table complete with its rationale, Koreans are prepared to talk much more openly about multiple problems involved in this decision.”

This message, responding to a still-classified embassy telegram on Taiwan’s nuclear energy activities, commented on the reprocessing issue. Just as was the case for South Korea, the U.S. government “continues to oppose the acquisition of a reprocessing capability by the ROC.” Commenting on Taiwanese interest in a reprocessing plant, the State Department observed that, because Taiwan would not have an operating nuclear power plant until 1977 and would not have “significant quantities of irradiated fuel” until the mid-1980s, “it is highly questionable whether the ROC needs reprocessing in the near term or even needs to make a decision.” Noting that reprocessing was “very expensive, very risky and very complicated,” the State Department found that there “was nothing in the ROC situation that can be said to require a decision on where ROC spent fuel might be reprocessed.” All of that provided a “manifest basis for the expression of USG and Embassy concern and skepticism at any ROC claims that they need their own facility.” The Department noted that “we may want eventually to seek to direct ROC interest in reprocessing toward a regional plant” located elsewhere.

Reflecting on his difficult meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Nam Duck Woo the day before, Richard Sneider explained to the Department why the U.S. request that the South Koreans cancel their plans for a reprocessing facility posed so many problems. According to Sneider, the “essence of Korean position” involved strong concern over “loss of face and national pride, resentment that we are singling them out while their Japanese neighbors and others pursue reprocessing, and some bewilderment why we should be so greatly concerned about fully safeguarded technical tool with such little potential for producing weapons grade plutonium.” The Koreans had made it “clear that, if we lack trust, they are prepared to give unlimited access to facility to American technicians.” He added that “Not unsurprisingly they resent our ‘arm twisting.’”

Acknowledging that the Koreans were “flirting with first stages of development of nuclear capability” but were “a long way from getting it,” Sneider observed that Park “was well aware of [the] risks” associated with such a pursuit. Moreover, the General had “given Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger his personal assurances on non-proliferation.” Instead of forcing the reprocessing issue to the “point of major confrontation with Park,” Sneider recommended waiting for the official reply, which was “likely to be negative.” At that point, he suggested “test[ing] out possibilities of seeking compromise solution.” The negative reply followed quickly, and the South Koreans insisted on preserving their freedom of action until the U.S. found, by working closely with Canada and France, a “face saving” way to induce Seoul to cancel the reprocessing contact.

During July and August 1976, the U.S. government was receiving reports about Taiwanese efforts to purchase a reprocessing plant from European suppliers. A leak to the New York Times put the issue in the open, with a report claiming that the CIA had found that Taiwan had “recently begun reprocessing of the fuel to acquire a stockpile of plutonium.”[12] Meeting with members of Congress, ACDA officials commented that, despite the “definite impression” given by such reports that the Taiwanese were “illegally reprocessing,” “the available evidence was not so clear.” The U.S. was checking the evidence “and making additional crosschecks,” especially of “Crypton [sic] 85 Plum evidence.” That was a reference to Krypton-85, a gaseous fission product released through reprocessing activities. Evidently, “Plum” was the code name for the U.S. government’s collection, presumably through mechanisms at an embassy or some other facility, of Krypton-85 gases emanating from a reprocessing plant. According to this report, information from an IAEA inspection would be available soon, although it would take some months to “crosscheck” the “Crypton 85 evidence.”

Concern about Taiwanese reprocessing would lead to demarches to Taipei and eventually to the assignment of a U.S. team to inspect Taiwan’s research reactor and the discovery that spent fuel had been diverted.[13]

Responding to a State Department message asking for an assessment of Italy’s nonproliferation policies, the Embassy reported that Italy’s political leaders were not “heavily involved in defining the country’s nonproliferation policy, which is left—for good or ill—essentially in the hands of the ‘technical’ personnel in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN).” After reviewing the perceptions of U.S. policy by officials at the “sub-political and technical level,” the Embassy discussed the “marked dichotomy between rhetoric and action.” Even though the U.S. and Italy “appear to share the same nonproliferation objectives, Italy does not, in practice share the US view of the immediacy and breadth of the problem.” The Embassy pointed to the “growing body of evidence that Italy’s clear-cut stand ... becomes rather fuzzy around the edges when proliferation concerns come into conflict with commercial policy.”[14]

The U.S. Mission to the IAEA received a garbled version of the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia’s assessment of nonproliferation policy, but enough points come through to make it worth reading. Taking a critical perspective, Ambassador Robert M. Sayre saw U.S. policy as “too legalistic and mechanistic” and questioned whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should have the “final word on nuclear exports,” owing to its lack of “international expertise.” In his brief review of the Brazilian-West German nuclear deal, Sayre argued that U.S. opposition “accelerated an existing GOB tendency to diversify the nation’s international interactions away from the US toward Europe and the developing world.” He further commented that U.S. nonproliferation polices “overestimated our means to influence other nations.” For example, just when the U.S. was losing its “competitive edge” to other nuclear exporters, it “adopted a policy of denial.” Thus, Argentina and Brazil could turn to other countries for nuclear technology, needing the U.S. only for research reactor fuels. “In seeking additional conditions for nuclear exports, we are thus in a position of all sticks and no carrots.”[15]

Responding to the State Department’s request, the Embassy prepared a critical assessment of the Pakistani approach to the nonproliferation issue. As the Embassy had produced extensive reporting on Pakistani nuclear issues, it limited itself to some observations.

A central point was the perceived narrowness of local attitudes to the “present and future dangers posed ... by the proliferation hazards of sensitive nuclear technology.” According to the Embassy, “The public dialogue … is almost innocent of any reflection on its relation to the need for an evolutionary nuclear regime that can accommodate the next generation of nuclear technology and reduce the dangers of its widespread use.” Rather than considering whether investments in nuclear technology should be evaluated by their “economic, technical and scientific merits,” the Government of Pakistan gives greater priority to “concerns of national security and self-sufficiency.” In that respect, the “nuclear effort is geared mainly to assuring that this nation will not suffer any strategic disadvantage vis-a-vis India.” In light of the Pakistani Government’s efforts to ensure that its nuclear options are not constrained, “we are not sanguine that the fundamental conflict over nuclear issues between the USG and the GOP will diminish.”

Written in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when U.S.-Soviet diplomatic relations were in poor shape, the U.S. Embassy’s detailed assessment of Moscow’s nonproliferation policy found some positive developments. According to the Embassy, the Soviets saw nuclear proliferation as a security risk because many of the countries that sought to join the “nuclear club,” such as India, Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, and South Korea, had borders near the Soviet Union or “not far from” it. The Embassy saw Soviet policy as having important areas of “overlap” with U.S. interests, such as support for “strengthening the NPT regime,” enhancement of IAEA safeguards, opposition to the transfer of sensitive technology, and support for full-scope safeguards, among other issues. Nevertheless, the U.S. found Soviet policy wanting in some areas, such as their support of negative security assurances, failure to secure Cuban support for NPT and the Treaty of Tlatelolco, and their failure to respond to the U.S. request for any information the Soviets had on the 22 September 1979 “Vela Flash.”

Moscow’s critique of U.S. policy indicated “real underlying Soviet suspicions” about U.S.-Israel and U.S.-South Africa nuclear relations and that the U.S. failure to control sensitive technology transfers by allies reflected the fact that nonproliferation was a low priority in U.S. policy. The Soviets regard “other elements of our policy as perhaps well-intentioned, but misguided,” such as the U.S. decision to defer reprocessing of spent fuel and the U.S. delay of its breeder reactor program. The Embassy saw the forthcoming NPT review conference as a “major test of the two countries’ ability to work together toward the common goal of strengthening (or in this case, minimizing damage to) the NPT regime.”[16]

The discovery of A. Q. Khan’s successful efforts to support the Pakistani nuclear weapons program went public in 1979. Khan’s accomplishments in purloining sensitive gas centrifuge technology used for uranium enrichment became a scandal in the Netherlands, the scene of the crime. The Dutch Parliament reported on its investigation, but a diligent law school student at the University of Tilburg added more to the story. According to the U.S. Embassy’s message, the student’s research identified the role of the Van Doorne company in fulfilling the order of Pakistan’s embassy in West Germany for over 6,000 tubes made from a “special hard type of steel,” suitable for use in gas centrifuges. In its report, the Dutch parliament characterized this transaction as a “particularly grave offense.”[17] The special type of steel used was “maraging” steel, and its supply by a Dutch firm had been an item in U.S.-French intelligence discussions a year earlier, on 21 and 29 June 1979, although whether their sources had identified a specific firm was not disclosed. In September 1980, when this telegram was written, the Dutch government’s Criminal Investigations Department was scrutinizing the Van Doorne company’s role in the transaction.