Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea

752 Pages·2007·6.28 MB·English

by  Jeffrey T. Richelson

In memory of EDNA RICHELSON
FOR AS LONG AS WAR IS A THREAT, the spy is a
ticking seismograph on top of the Jungfrau measuring distant
atomic explosions on the other side of the world, or
instruments carried in an aircraft that measure uranium or
plutonium contents of the atmosphere.
— IAN FLEMING
CONTENTS
LIST OF MAPS
PREFACE
ONE: A TERRIFYING PROSPECT
Nazi Germany
TWO: LIGHTNING STRIKES
The Soviet Union 1945–1953
THREE: THE VIEW FROM ABOVE
The Soviet Union 1954–1961
FOUR: MAO’s EXPLOSIVE THOUGHTS
The People’s Republic of China through 1968
FIVE: AN ELATED GENERAL, A SMILING BUDDHA
France and India through 1974
SIX: “PARIAHS”
Israel, South Africa, and Taiwan through the 1970s
SEVEN: THE DOUBLE FLASH
The Vela Incident: September 1979
EIGHT: ROGUES
Iraq, North Korea, Libya, and Pakistan through 1991
NINE: “PARIAHS” REVISITED
Israel, South Africa, and Taiwan in the 1980s and early 1990s TEN: BIG
BANGS
French and Chinese testing; suspected Russian testing in the 1990s
ELEVEN: POKHRAN SURPRISE
Indian and Pakistani tests in May 1998
TWELVE: INSPECTORS AND SPIES
Iraq from the end of the Gulf War through December 1998
THIRTEEN: FLAWED INTELLIGENCE
Iraq, 1999–2004
FOURTEEN: TROUBLE WAITING TO HAPPEN
Iran and North Korea, from the 1990s to 2005
EPILOGUE
Iran and North Korea, 2006–2007

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
NOTES
INDEX
LIST OF MAPS
ALSOS MOVEMENTS AFTER D-DAY
KEY SOVIET ATOMIC SITES, DECEMBER 1949
KEY CHINESE NUCLEAR FACILITIES, MARCH 1963
IRAQI NUCLEAR SITES, JANUARY 1991
PREFACE
FOLLOWING THE DISCOVERY of nuclear fission in 1939, several nations began
programs to develop the ultimate weapon. Scientists in the United States,
including many who had studied in Germany or had recently escaped from the
German campaign of conquest, were concerned that the eminent scientists who
remained, including Werner Heisenberg, might be able to produce a nuclear
weapon for Adolf Hitler’s use. The United States tried to find out whether those
fears had a sound basis. In addition to relying on traditional intelligence
methods, the Americans explored ways in which the signatures of nuclear
activity could be detected.
In 1944, scientists deployed with the invading Allied armies discovered that
the Germans had made little progress toward an atomic bomb. But the relief felt
from that discovery would be replaced in a few years by fear of what the Soviet
Union might accomplish in the nuclear field. America’s work on monitoring
German progress toward the ultimate weapon provided a foundation for the far
more extensive and long-lasting intelligence effort to uncover Soviet nuclear
secrets.
The Soviet Union was not the only nation whose nuclear activities were of
concern to the United States in the next decades. Other hostile nations seeking to
become nuclear powers—most prominently the People’s Republic of China,
particularly given the loose talk about nuclear war that came from Chinese
leaders—also worried American presidents. At least one president seriously
considered a preemptive strike to prevent China from developing the bomb.
That friendly nations might try to join the nuclear club was another mounting
concern. In the 1960s and 1970s, U.S. presidents tried their best to discourage
Israel, Taiwan, South Africa, and India from building a nuclear arsenal—fearful
that every time a new nation joined the nuclear club, more nonnuclear nations
would see it as a means to improve their status in the world. The United States
feared that nuclear acquisition would prompt regional arms races and ultimately
increase the risk of nuclear war, especially in the Middle East and on the South
Asian continent. More recently, the nations seeking to join the nuclear club—
Saddam’s Iraq, Islamic Iran, and North Korea—would be at the very top of any
list of nations that the United States would want to deny membership in the
nuclear club.
For over five decades the United States has devoted considerable resources to
monitoring the quests by friends and foes to acquire nuclear weapons and
improve their nuclear capabilities. The efforts to collect and analyze intelligence
on foreign nuclear weapons programs have continued to involve both traditional
methods such as human intelligence, aerial reconnaissance, and communications
intelligence, and newer ones such as the detection of the signatures of nuclear
detonations and of the production of fissile material.
The collected data has had many uses: keeping policymakers informed of
foreign nuclear activities, determining and estimating the nuclear warfare
capabilities of other nations, planning military operations to disrupt nuclear
activities, supporting diplomatic initiatives to forestall nuclear weapons
development, assisting inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency,
and monitoring compliance with a number of arms control treaties. The latter
include the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Atmosphere, in
Outer Space, and Under Water; the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons; the 1974 Treaty on the Limitation of Underground Nuclear
Weapon Tests (limiting tests to yields of no more than 150 kilotons); and the
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that prohibits all nuclear testing.
Spying on the Bomb traces the evolution of the U.S. nuclear intelligence
effort, its successes and failures, from its origins in the early days of World War
II to the first years of the twenty-first century. There is no simple explanation for
success or failure in these endeavors. Given the different periods, different
individuals, varying targets, and different technologies available for collecting
intelligence, that should not be surprising.
The book’s focus is largely on the early nuclear programs of about fifteen
nations, and the U.S. effort to determine if they were trying to acquire nuclear
weapons, how far they had gotten, and their attempts to improve those
capabilities. Thus, the core of the book examines the work of the CIA and other
intelligence agencies in identifying and providing the details about those nuclear
programs, as well as the agencies’ efforts to monitor and evaluate nuclear testing
—rather than their efforts to gather information on nuclear arsenals or during
nuclear crises.