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

Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea is one of the most interesting books about the global proliferation of nuclear weapons I have ever read. It's an in depth look at how the United States, after we developed our atom bomb, went about finding out what other countries were doing with their own secret nuclear weapons programs. No country is left out. If they developed the bomb, or if they tried to develop the bomb, they're in this book. As a matter of fact, you might be surprised to find out who is, and who isn't a member of the so-called nuclear club. The author tells us what they did, when they did it, and exactly how big it was. Spying somebody's atomic bomb program should be easy, right? I mean: It's an ATOMIC BOMB! Can it be more obvious? When one of those things goes off it's pretty much a public thing. The sky lights up brighter than the sun, the ground shakes like the mother of all earthquakes, searing heat and lethal radiation spews out in all directions and, O'yeah, there's this huge thundering boom like God almighty himself is descending from Heaven. We had infrared sensors and bhangmeters watching from space. We had seismometers feeling for tiny vibrations in the earth, and we had Geiger counters sniffing fallout in the air. So, what was the problem? It's all explained in the book. I couldn't put it down.

Dr. Jeffrey T. Richelson, arguably the most prolific and certainly the most technically correct writer about the U.S. intelligence community, has done it again. "Spying on the Bomb" describes, in Dr. Richelson's usual thorough and well-researched manner, the U.S. intelligence community's efforts to track--and influence--other nations' attempts to develop nuclear weapons. Dr. Richelson begins his story in Nazi Germany during World War II. Hitler, as it turned out, did not have a meaningful atomic bomb program, despite the worrisome presence in the Third Reich of renowned nuclear physicist Dr. Werner Heisenberg, who was certainly capable of designing one. After the War, the Soviet Union was the second nation to join the "nuclear club," detonating a fission bomb in 1949, years earlier than the "experts" had predicted. Today the nuclear club includes, for sure, Britain, China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan and South Africa. The evidence concerning North Korea and Taiwan is ambiguous (they probably have small nuclear arsenals), and Iran could join the club at any time. Dr. Richelson describes the nuclear programs of all of these nations at great length, as well as the efforts of countries such as Libya which tried and failed to get nuclear weapons by purchasing them. He also describes the many types of technological sensors that the U.S. used to detect nuclear weapon tests anywhere on the earth or in near-earth space, and to determine the characteristics of those that were tested. The U.S. deployed global arrays of seismic, acoustic, optical, radiation and electromagnetic sensors to detect nuclear bursts. For each test, the Air Force flew specially modified aircraft into the downwind radioactive cloud to "sniff" particles of the weapon debris, from which analysts could determine many details about the weapon type and design. These sensors, naturally, were only useful "after the fact." Unfortunately, they could not reveal that a nuclear test was GOING to happen, only that one HAD happened. To try to figure out IF and WHEN nations were going to test before they did so, the U.S. used other assets--photographic reconnaissance and electronic eavesdropping satellites, human agents ("spies") and diplomacy. The U.S. intelligence community's post-test analyses of other nations' nuclear tests were usually quite timely and accurate. But its record of correctly predicting "if" and "when" nuclear tests were going to take place was dismal. Virtually every foreign nuclear test was a surprise to U.S. analysts in one way or another. Their predictions of test dates, locations, bomb types, designs, fissionable materials, yields, etc., were often so far off the mark as to be worse than useless. The record of failure is so appalling that one wonders why analysts bothered to keep making predictions when they turned out to be so wrong so often. Long after I have forgotten the technical and operational details that Dr. Richelson describes in "Spying on the Bomb," I will

Jeffrey T. Richelson chronicles the efforts the United States has made to deal with the threat of atomic and nuclear weapons from they were first conceived in the 1930s and `40s through the gathering of intelligence. You know, spying. The building of our own (the United States') nuclear arsenal is well chronicled in other books. This volume is more about the kinds of methods that were developed in the human intelligence and technical intelligence areas and the debates that have raged over the decades in interpreting the meaning of what was found out. I found the gradual growth of the intelligence bureaucracy and how each component of the CIA versus the State Department versus the Military became predictable in its interpretation of evidence of nuclear activity fascinating and distressing. It is hard to have confidence that our nation is getting a handle on the threats facing us when intelligence interpretation is more about turf wars than truly understanding what is happening in the laboratories and processing plants of our enemies. While the book does discuss the development of sampling the atmosphere for the minute quantities of by products unique to nuclear activity and the particles that are the residue of a nuclear explosion, the acoustic infrasonic signatures of nuclear blasts, the satellite detection of light signatures, gamma ray production, photographic evidence of infrastructure and activities signaling the enrichment of uranium or the collection and processing of plutonium through flyovers by spy planes and specialized satellites, it also discusses the problems associated with gathering human intelligence in the various regimes. Even when you get evidence from someone on the ground, one has to not only verify the validity of the information provided, but also consider carefully the motives of the person supplying the information. It becomes a very complicated series of issues very quickly. Adding to the difficulty is that those who desire to develop these weapons usually want to do so in great secrecy until they successfully explode a nuclear device. They have learned a lot about the capabilities of our satellites and the habits of interpretation by our intelligence services. So, they design their facilities to look as much like something legitimate as they can. They take facilities underground. They build decoys that look hidden, but are designed to hold attention. At times, they are even good enough to fool the watchdogs that come on site to inspect. For example, in the old days, inspectors measured the total radiation of fuel rods being shipped. One Asian country wanting enriched uranium got around this by building fuel rods of the proper weight and size and radiation, but using smaller pieces of enriched uranium spaced with aluminum filler. Another shaped the dirt covering the blast site (to ensure no radiation escaped into the atmosphere) so that it looked as if was created by the prevailing wind so the satellite

The header I wrote calls this a "deceptively amazing book". For pages, there are lots of details about the level of effort it took to find out how each country built their version of the bomb. Country by country. The Soviet Union. France. Israel. South Africa. And all the frustrating suspicions about who was doing it and who MAYBE was doing it. [Did you know that one of our airplanes was so close to a Soviet nuclear blast that the paint was scorched? The author, Jeffrey Richelson, reports that.] There are some treasures early on... about my hero, Moe Berg, the Yankee baseball player and spy! Then there are some quibbles about RB-57's; he doesn't distinguish between the "D" model and the "F" model. But that's a quibble. AND THEN ALL OF A SUDDEN.... IT ALL COMES TOGETHER. All that background detail about how the South Africans and the Indians successfully concealed their programs... all the ambiguities. On page 460... and thereafter... solid gold or better. How the Iraqis learned from all the mistakes of other countries and successfully deceived all the countries of the world... the deliberate construction of buildings first and THEN installing or constructing large equipment or tunnels or test facilities. How to make very specific nuclear facilities look non-descript. Use of twin facilities. Deliberate use of dual-use or triple-use (peaceful versus military versus nuclear) industrial items and machinery and materials to throw off outside observers. Use of remote electrical supplies. Burial of anything that might give away the nuclear facilities. I mean, like, the Indians even disguised piles of dirt from excavating test holes to look like wind-blown sand dunes! And how, in the absence of spies, we overlooked unofficial sources of information such as ethnic newsletters published openly. AND THEN, Richelson talks about Iran and North Korea.... in context... This is an amazing book! It is an essential part of the bookshelf of ANY enthusiast of the entire Iraq/ Iran/ WMD controversy. Richelson even talks about my favorite country, Niger. (I had a short assignment there.) [There was this (amazing!) CIA/KGB volleyball game!!!!] [And, why, exactly, would the world's poorest country warrant so many top-level spies... and apparently they all knew one another!!] Anyway, Richelson goes into exhaustive detail about the real and forged documents. Everyone in the business knew what was forged right away... but there were plenty of real ones. He never does any name calling... he just reports on meetings and the people. In a sense, also, Richelson does such a thorough job of reporting, that you feel the same sense of exhaustion as the actual players. You can understand why so many of the experts dropped out after a while. Richelson actually makes you feel as if YOU are one of the weapons inspectors. He effectively captures the frustrations, the elation, the fatigue of being there ... spying on the bomb! I wi

Half a century ago, the United States was the first country to develop and deploy nuclear weapons, uncorking a genie that has now spread to possibly a dozen nations with more crowing and sneaking to join the nuclear club. All this nuclear activity has been closely monitored by the U.S., as Richelson relates in his book "Spying of the Bomb", a timely account of the workings of American nuclear intelligence in monitoring the nuclear development and testing of 15 nations. Each chapter of this book covers one or more of the 15 nations whose nuclear programs the U.S. has surveilled, using recently declassified documents, interviews, and actual intelligence to tell each nation's story from their first inquiries into nuclear technologies and materials, their decisions to proceed to the next stages, to the actual development and testing by their researchers and scientists. Richelson juxtaposes what the U.S. thought it knew with what was actually happening, highlighting the uncertain nature of intelligence gathering and analysis. Such discrepancies might be disadvantageous when dealing with friendly nations, but with overtly hostile nations, the lack of accurate information has proved disastrous and forebodes even worse consequences. Richelson's book is a wake-up call not only to the intelligence-gathering community, but to all citizens of the world as well. When the most powerful nation lacks the information to accurately assess potential threats from hostile regimes, everyone in the global community is at risk, and we must hold not only the aggressors, but those who have the power to stop them, responsible.