Energy and the Environment

Bikini A-Bomb Tests July 1946

Washington, D.C., July 22, 2016 - U.S. atomic tests in Bikini Atoll in July 1946 staged by a joint Army-Navy task force were the first atomic explosions since the bombings of Japan a year earlier. Documents posted today by the National Security Archive about “Operation Crossroads” shed light on these events as do galleries of declassified videos and photographs. Of two tests staged to determine the effects of the new weapons on warships, the “Baker” test was the most dangerous by contaminating nearby test ships with radioactive mist.

70th Anniversary of Operation Crossroads Atomic Tests in Bikini Atoll, July 1946

The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll, July 1946*

Washington, D.C., July 1, 2016 - Seventy years ago this month a joint U.S Army-Navy task force staged two atomic weapons tests at Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands, the first atomic explosions since the bombings of Japan in August 1945. Worried about its survival in an atomic war, the Navy sought the tests in order to measure the effects of atomic explosions on warships and other military targets. The test series was named Operation Crossroads by the task force’s director, Rear Admiral William Blandy.

U.S., Britain Developed Plans to Disable or Destroy Middle Eastern Oil Facilities from Late 1940s to Early 1960s in Event of a Soviet Invasion

Washington DC, June 23, 2016 – Recently discovered British documents posted today by the National Security Archive provide a new and revealing account of the CIA’s role in a top-secret plan to ravage the Middle East oil industry. It’s been 67 years since President Harry Truman approved NSC 26/2 to keep the Soviet military from using Middle East petroleum if it invaded the region. This denial policy called for American and British oil companies in the Middle East to disable or destroy oil facilities and equipment, and plug the region’s oil wells.

The Clinton White House and Climate Change: The Struggle to Restore U.S. Leadership

Washington, D.C., December 11, 2015 – The Clinton administration came to office in 1993 determined to restore the United States as the preeminent global protector of the environment, but saw its hopes for a major climate treaty run aground on a series of international and domestic political and procedural setbacks, according to a selection of declassified and previously unpublished records posted today by the nongovernmental National Security Archive, based at The George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).

U.S. Climate Change Policy in the 1980s

Washington, D.C., December 2, 2015 – Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush actively promoted measures to combat climate change, with Reagan in 1987 overruling objections within his own Cabinet to a major proposed treaty to protect the ozone layer, according to recently declassified records posted today by the George Washington University-based National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org).

Kazakhstan and Nunn-Lugar: A Non-Proliferation Success Story

Related Materials

Nunn-Lugar Revisited
U.S.-Russian cooperation on threat reduction from the Soviet Union in 1991 to Syria in 2013
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 447

Project Sapphire 20th Anniversary
More than a half-ton of weapons-grade uranium removed from Kazakhstan in 1994
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 491

 

Photos


1.    The Bal Qar Gai conference “yurt.” Tom Blanton at the head of the conference table.
 

Kyoto Redux?

Washington, D.C., December 18, 2009 - The challenges facing President Obama in the Copenhagen climate negotiations this week directly parallel the domestic and diplomatic constraints that troubled the Clinton administration more than a decade ago in the Kyoto talks, according to internal U.S. government documents from 1997 obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive.

D.C. Circuit Narrows Advisory Committee Openness

Washington, D.C., May 10, 2005 - The D.C. Circuit today issued a unanimous, en banc decision effectively ending the effort by the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch to obtain information about who participated in Vice President Cheney's National Energy Policy Development Group (the "energy task force"). The plaintiffs' goal was to determine whether special interests acted as de facto members of the task force, which would then permit the plaintiffs to obtain further information about the task force's activities and recommendations.