Nuclear Proliferation and Accidents

Washington, DC, April 13, 2006 - Long before India detonated a nuclear device in May 1974, the U.S. Intelligence Community was monitoring and analyzing Indian civilian and military nuclear energy activities, according to documents released today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Those activities are at the core of the current controversy over the Bush administration's proposed legislation that would alter U.S. nonproliferation and export control laws and policies so as to allow full nuclear cooperation with India.

Washington D.C., 7 April 2006 - Only 14 of the full 93 pages of the National Intelligence Estimate that President Bush authorized Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to disclose to New York Times reporter Judith Miller has actually been officially declassified, according to a posting today on the Web site of the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Washington, DC, March 28, 2006 - The Central Intelligence Agency and National Reconnaissance Office used the nation's spy satellites and spy planes to obtain high-resolution images of the nuclear facilities of allies, adversaries and neutral nations alike, as illustrated in a collection of overhead reconnaissance images posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive. Today's posting includes 15 photographs and five photographic interpretation reports from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The images were obtained by U-2 spy planes and CORONA and KH-7 reconnaissance satellites.

Washington, DC, March 21, 2006 - The U.S. Intelligence Community devoted significant effort to the collection and analysis of intelligence concerning the French nuclear weapons program beginning in the early days of the Cold War through the mid-1970s, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and archival research and posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Washington, DC, March 13, 2006 - The U.S. Intelligence Community failed to penetrate the veil of secrecy surrounding the nuclear activities of South Africa's apartheid regime, particularly its nuclear weapons program, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and archival research and posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Washington D.C. August 23, 2005 - Next week, if all goes according to plan, the United States will resume six-party talks with North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and host nation China on the issue of North Korea’s nuclear program. The parties are trying to reach agreement on a set of principles to guide negotiations that will lead to the dismantling of Pyongyang’s nuclear program and the threat it poses of a destabilizing North Korean nuclear weapons arsenal.

Washington D.C. June 1, 2005 - The failure of the recently concluded review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, at a time when the future of the non-proliferation system is in question (Note 1), makes it an opportune time to look at how the U.S. intelligence establishment analyzed the proliferation issue during the years before the Treaty was negotiated. National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) from the 1960s and earlier shed light on how U.S.

Washington D.C., 9 July 2004 - The CIA has decided to keep almost entirely secret the controversial October 2002 CIA intelligence estimate about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that is the subject of today's Senate Intelligence Committee report, according to the CIA's June 1, 2004 response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the National Security Archive. The CIA's response included a copy of the estimate, NIE 2002-16HC, October 2002, Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, consisting almost entirely of whited-out pages.

Washington D.C., 5 March 2004 - The recent turnaround in Libya's nuclear policies and the many disclosures of Pakistan's role as a super-proliferator of nuclear weapons technology produced another extraordinary revelation: the discovery by U.S. and British intelligence of Chinese language material among the nuclear weapons design documents that Pakistan had supplied the Libyans. (Note 1) The exact subject matter of the documents remains secret, but the discovery was no surprise to students of nuclear proliferation or to China and Pakistan watchers.

Washington D.C., 5 March 2004 - Over the course of three presidential administrations, U.S. governmental officials repeatedly pressed the Chinese government to explain whether it was providing any assistance to Pakistan in the nuclear weapons field, but Chinese officials responded with denials and equivocation. New evidence from Libya of Chinese-language material among the nuclear weapons-design documents supplied by Pakistan raises new questions about the Chinese contribution to Pakistan's nuclear proliferation activities. Exactly what the U.S.