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

Jeffrey Richelson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393329828 ISBN 13: 9780393329827

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007

Synopsis

Spying on the Bomb is an "engrossing" (Wall Street Journal) global history of the American-led effort to spy on every nation with nuclear ambitions.

A global history of U.S. nuclear espionage from its World War II origins to twenty-first century threats from rogue states. For more than sixty years, the United States has monitored friends and foes who seek to develop the ultimate weapon. Since 1952 the nuclear club has grown to at least nine nations, while others are making serious attempts to join.

Each chapter of Spying on the Bomb chronologically focuses on the nuclear activities of one or more countries, intermingling what the United States believed was happening with accounts of what actually occurred in each country's laboratories, test sites, and decision-making councils. Jeffrey T. Richelson weaves recently declassified documents into his interviews with the scientists and spies involved in the nuclear espionage.

Spying on the Bomb reveals new information about U.S. intelligence work on the Soviet/Russian, French, Chinese, Indian, Israeli, and South African nuclear programs; on the attempts to solve the mysterious Vela Incident; and on current efforts to uncover the nuclear secrets of Iran and North Korea. The book also includes spy satellite photographs never before extracted from the national archives.

46 photographs; 4 maps

About this title

About the Author:

Jeffrey T. Richelson (1949―2017) was the author of several books on intelligence, including Spying on the Bomb and Defusing Armageddon. He was a Senior Fellow with the National Security Archive.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. Richelson, a senior fellow at the National Security Archive and author of several books on American intelligence including The Wizards of Langley, has written an authoritative and definitive account of U.S. nuclear espionage from the earliest days of atomic research in WWII to the present. Drawing on prodigious research—including newly declassified material—Richelson details the efforts of the U.S. intelligence community to track the nuclear activities of other states. The results of all this spy craft were at best uneven. With abundant technology—aerial reconnaissance, signals intercepts, seismic detection—but few human intelligence resources (HUMINT), the U.S. was consistently surprised by nuclear events in the Soviet Union, China, India and elsewhere. And we're still getting it wrong. Richelson analyzes how American intelligence first underestimated Iraq's nuclear program in the 1980s and then overestimated it in 2003. It's instructive that after 1998, the U.S. did not have "a single HUMINT source" in Iraq. Considering the intelligence community's "mixed record" and the continuing nuclear ambitions of rogue states like North Korea and Iran, Richelson concludes chillingly, "Trouble Is Waiting to Happen." More than a comprehensive and often compelling history of nuclear espionage, this is an important contribution to the debate regarding American intelligence that began on 9/11. (Mar.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0393329828
• ISBN 13: 9780393329827
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 768