Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 18. August
2006 / Timeline August 18, 2006
Version 3.5
17. August 2006, 19. August 2006
08/18/2006
National Security Archive Update, August 18, 2006
How Many and Where Were the
Nukes?
What the U.S. Government No Longer Wants You to Know about Nuclear
Weapons During the Cold War
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 197
Washington, DC, 18 August 2006 - The Pentagon and the Energy
Department have now stamped as national security secrets the
long-public numbers of U.S. nuclear missiles during the Cold War,
including data from the public reports of the Secretaries of
Defense in 1967 and 1971, according to government documents posted
today on the Web by the National Security Archive
http://www.nsarchive.org .
Pentagon and Energy officials have now blacked out from previously
public charts the numbers of Minuteman missiles (1,000), Titan II
missiles (54), and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (656) in
the historic U.S. Cold War arsenal, even though four Secretaries of
Defense (McNamara, Laird, Richardson, Schlesinger) reported
strategic force levels publicly in the 1960s and 1970s.
The security censors also have blacked out deployment information
about U.S nuclear weapons in Great Britain and Germany that was
declassified in 1999, as well as nuclear deployment arrangements
with Canada, even though the Canadian government has declassified
its side of the arrangement.
The reclassifications come in an environment of wide-ranging review
of archival documents with nuclear weapons data that Congress
authorized in the 1998 Kyl-Lott amendments. Under Kyl-Lott, the
Energy Department has spent $22 million while surveying more than
200 million pages of released documents. Energy has reported to
Congress that 6,640 pages have been withdrawn from public access
(at a cost of $3,313 per page), but that the majority involves
Formerly Restricted Data, which would include historic numbers and
locations of weapons, rather than weapon systems design information
(Restricted Data).
Documents posted today by the National Security Archive
include:
* Recently released Defense Department, NSC, and State Department
reports with excisions of numbers of nuclear missiles and bombers
in the U.S. arsenals during the 1960s and 70s.
* Unclassified tables published in a report to Congress by
Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird as excised by Pentagon
reviewers.
* A "Compendium of Nuclear Weapons Arrangements" between the United
States and foreign governments that was prepared in 1968 and
recently released in a massively excised version under Defense
Department and DOE guidelines.
* Canadian and U.S. government documents illustrating the public
record nature of some information withheld from the 1968
"Compendium."
"It would be difficult to find better candidates for unjustifiable
secrecy than decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic
weapons," remarked Archive senior analyst Dr. William Burr, who
compiled today's posting. "This problem, as well as the excessive
secrecy for historical nuclear deployments, is unlikely to go away
as long as security reviewers follow unrealistic guidelines."
"The government is reclassifying public data at the same time that
government prosecutors are claiming the power to go after anybody
who has 'unauthorized possession' of classified information," said
Archive director Thomas Blanton. "What's really at risk is
accountability in government."
08/18/2006
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