39. Memorandum from Seaborg to the File, August 231
The purpose of this memorandum is to record some personal and tentative thoughts with respect to a plan for the announcement of a decision to resume nuclear weapons testing—if the President should find it necessary to make this decision; and for the subsequent conduct of such tests, including seismic research and peaceful uses detonations using nuclear devices.
The object of the plan is to minimize adverse public reaction both at home and abroad, even though I believe the President has succeeded in shifting the burden of responsibility for the success or failure of the talks to the Soviets.
[Typeset Page 131]The plan is based on a premise: nuclear weapons testing is a defense activity and as such does not impose upon the President an obligation to disclose the actual conduct of specific individual tests. Rather, I believe the United States must have the choice to disclose or conceal defense activities, including nuclear weapons testing, depending upon whether disclosure is in the interest of our national security or inimical to it. While there may be practical reasons for the announcement of specific tests—such as the need for international cooperation from seismic research stations throughout the world—this is a matter of choice and not of duty.
I should also note that the plan deals not with the decision per se, whether or not to resume testing, but rather with the announcement of the intention to resume and the announcement of specific tests as they may be held.
I would assume that if the President decides to authorize the resumption of nuclear tests he would honor the commitment made by former President Eisenhower on December 29, 1959, that, “Although we consider ourselves free to resume nuclear weapons testing, we shall not resume nuclear weapons tests without announcing our intention in advance of any resumption.”
However, I do not believe that there is a corresponding obligation to announce each individual test even though we might elect to do so under particular circumstances.
[Facsimile Page 2]If no progress is made with the Soviets following Mr. Dean’s return to Geneva, or if other developments should urge a change in our present posture, the President might wish to pursue the following course. State publicly:
1. That the United States has exhausted all efforts to reach agreement with the Soviet Union on an adequately safeguarded nuclear test ban treaty;
2. That the United States is, accordingly, making preparations for the resumption of testing of nuclear weapons;
3. That the United States will conduct weapons tests whenever it finds that it is in our national interest to do so;
4. That such tests will be conducted in the underground where the explosion will be fully contained so that there need be no fear of radioactive fallout;
5. That the United States will also conduct nuclear seismic research detonations and peaceful uses explosions with nuclear devices;
6. That the conduct of nuclear weapons tests is a defense activity and that there will be no further announcement of the conduct of individual tests if disclosure would appear to be inimical to our national security; and
7. That even though the United States will now make the essential preparations for the conduct of nuclear weapons tests, and will conduct them at sometime in the future if it is in our national interest to do so, the United States, nevertheless, stands ready, as it has for the past [Typeset Page 132] three years, to enter into an adequately safeguarded treaty with the Soviet Union.
Thus, under the foregoing plan the policy decision with respect to the probable resumption of testing would be announced, but there would be no corresponding obligation to announce the conduct of individual tests.
No doubt the conduct of underground nuclear activity at Nevada would become known. It would be assumed that such activities [Facsimile Page 3] involve nuclear weapons testing—since under this plan the President would have announced our intention for probable resumption. It would not be known specifically whether such tests involved seismic research or peaceful uses explosives, or were actually nuclear weapons tests, or perhaps a combination of all three; the difficulty of knowing would be enhanced by the fact that all three categories could be used to give seismic information. Specific knowledge as to the category of nuclear explosion would be known only to a relatively small group of people on a need to know basis, each of whom would have the necessary security clearance carrying with it a statutory obligation to safeguard the information.
There would be considerable speculation at first, but with a consistent policy of “no comment” based on the principle that nuclear weapons tests are defense activities, curiosity should decline and nuclear tests activities should come to be accepted in the same category as other secret defense activities. This plan would require the special cooperation of nearby universities with seismic detection equipment, but this could be arranged possibly by means of specific contracts for participation in the seismic program.
- Personal thoughts on possible Presidential announcement on resumption of testing. Secret. 3 pp. Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Subjects Series, Nuclear Testing, 8/10/61–8/30/61.↩