Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 2. August 2013 / Timeline August 2, 2013
Version 3.51. August 2013, 3. August 2013
08/02/2013
The Limited Test Ban Treaty -- 50 Years Later: New Documents Throw
Light on Accord Banning Atmospheric Nuclear Testing
State Department Officials Pointed to Soviet "Technical Violations"
but "Gentlemen's Agreement" Spared Both Superpowers Public
Criticisms over Possible Breaches
Secret Pentagon Programs to Monitor French Atmospheric Nuclear
Tests Worried State Department about a U.S. Violation of 1963
Treaty
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 433
Washington, D.C., August 2, 2013 -- From the 1960s to the 1990s,
the United States and Soviet Union conducted underground testing
that sometimes produced significant "venting" of radioactive gases
and particles which traveled across international borders, even
after signing the Limited Test Ban Treaty fifty years ago in August
1963. The ventings posed potential health hazards, but also created
problems for U.S.-Soviet relations, according to documents recently
uncovered through archival research. To minimize the problem, both
superpowers tacitly agreed to keep their disagreements secret. A
State Department document, published today for the first time by
the National Security Archive, indicates that both superpowers
followed a tacit "gentleman's agreement against publicizing venting
incidents" in order to depoliticize the issue and to avoid public
criticisms of nuclear testing in general, although that was more
important to Washington than to Moscow.
The United States might also have violated the Limited Test Ban
Treaty (LTBT) through a Defense Department program of monitoring
France's atmospheric tests in the Pacific, according to the State
Department in 1972. The Pentagon's objectives included tracking
France's capabilities and collecting information about nuclear
weapons effects, but even though State Department officials
objected that the program -- labeled NICE DOG -- was tantamount to
"participation" alongside France National Security Advisor Henry
Kissinger overruled them and allowed the monitoring to proceed.
Fifty years ago, on 5 August 1963, the foreign ministers of the
United States, the USSR, and the United Kingdom met in Moscow to
sign the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) outlawing nuclear testing
in the atmosphere, under water, and in space. On the 40th
anniversary, ten years ago, the National Security Archive published
a collection of documents
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB94/ on the Treaty's
origins amid the drive for a comprehensive test ban (CTB). Today,
the Archive re-posts that collection with new documents relating to
the LTBT, some recently declassified, others found at the National
Archives, all published here for the first time. They cover such
issues as intelligence monitoring, treaty violations, and Chinese
and French defiance of the treaty, and debate during the 1970s over
a comprehensive test ban treaty.
Among the disclosures in today's publication on the LTBT and
related issues:
* A 1964 report by the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee
implied that a would-be nuclear power either had to violate the
atmospheric test ban or learn how to test underground. If a country
sought a weapons capability it was "mandatory that at least one
test shot be conducted." That country could be fairly sure that the
test would work: "it is not unreasonable to expect a high
probability of success on the first shot."
* To improve capabilities for detecting violations of the Test Ban
Treaty, the United States sought to expand technical systems that
monitored nuclear activities world-wide. During 1964-65, Washington
and London negotiated a secret agreement to extend the monitoring
system's scope by establishing stations in the United Kingdom and
other British Commonwealth countries including South Africa,
Mauritius, Pakistan, and Australia and Fiji, then a colony. The
U.S. Air Force Technical Application Center (AFTAC) would secretly
provide the technology.
* The United States had a "venting" problem at the Nevada Test site
in April 1966 when the PIN STRIPE weapons test produced a discharge
of radioactive gases that formed a cloud which headed toward the
Midwest. A herd of dairy cows in Nevada were temporarily put on
"dry feed" (no grazing in the clover), but the Atomic Energy
Commission later concluded that there had been "no health
risk."
* When the U.S. government lodged protests with Beijing in 1976
over a recent atmospheric test, a Chinese diplomat tartly responded
that Washington "had no credentials" to make this complaint because
the U.S. had already conducted such tests.
* After the Jimmy Carter administration tried to revive the
comprehensive test ban, military advisers and consultants raised
critical questions about it. For example, Air Force advisers argued
that continued underground testing was necessary "to evaluate
future suspected problems with weapons in stockpile," to gauge
weapons effects, and to take advantage of "new systems design
opportunities."
The LTBT fell short of the comprehensive test ban that its
negotiators sought by permitting nuclear weapons states to test
underground. Nevertheless, the Treaty was a significant response to
the international outcry against the radioactive fallout danger
produced by atmospheric testing. By banning atmospheric nuclear
tests, according to University of Wisconsin historian (and former
National Security Archive intern) Toshihiro Higuchi, the Limited
Test Ban Treaty was the "first international environmental
regulation."
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