Silencing the Bomb Page 9

  John Savino, Peter Ward, and I of Lamont presented papers on the first results of the Ogdensburg HGLP experiment at the ARPA Conference on Nuclear Test Detection at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in July 1970. Jack Evernden, then at the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Defense Department, organized the conference. In his written summary of the meeting, Evernden indicated that the CTBT detection and identification problem for underground explosions and earthquakes was solved. His summary and other papers presented at the conference were openly distributed in 1971. Evenden, however, failed to get his written summary cleared by Steven Lukasik, the director of ARPA. Lukasik exclaimed that the policy position in Evernden’s summary was not approved by the Defense Department and demanded the return of all copies. Senator Clifford Case of New Jersey, a proponent of the CTBT, asked to see a copy of the entire document. When he found shreds of paper where the summary was torn out from the rest of the papers, he raised hell in the Senate.

  JACK EVERNDEN AND CARL ROMNEY

  This is a good time to discuss the major efforts Evernden made on behalf of the CTBT, as well as the role of Romney. I worked with Evernden on a number of occasions and published several papers with him on test ban verification. He was born in 1922 and received his PhD in geophysics from Berkeley in 1951. Along with physics professor John Reynolds, Evernden developed instrumentation for measuring and dating volcanic rocks younger than several million years. To date the time those rocks were formed (solidified), they made precise measurements of one isotope of the element potassium and of its radioactive decay product, an isotope of the element argon.

  Allan Cox and his associates at Stanford University and the U.S. Geological Survey subsequently used the potassium-argon technique widely not only to date young volcanic rocks but also to ascertain whether those rocks had been weakly magnetized, either in the direction of the Earth’s present field or, at times in the past, in the opposite orientation. In 1963 Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews of Cambridge University proposed that volcanic rocks of the seafloor, upon cooling, acquired this positive or negative magnetic signature or imprinting. In 1966 Lamont scientists Walter Pitman and James Heirtzler published their famous “magic magnetic anomaly profile” across the mid-ocean ridge in the east Pacific. These anomalies or departures from the Earth’s magnetic field were generated as the seafloor cooled and was magnetized at different times when the magnetic field was either in its present direction or the opposite. It became a cornerstone for understanding that the Earth’s outermost solid layer is composed of nearly rigid plates that move with respect to one another. Evernden also used the potassium-argon technique to date sediments containing bones of human ancestors (hominids) from the Rift Valley of East Africa in Kenya.

  Evernden was so convinced of the immense importance of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the control of nuclear weapons that he relinquished his tenured full professorship at Berkeley in 1965 to work on methods of better nuclear verification, first at the Air Force Technical Application Center (AFTAC) and later at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), both agencies of the Defense Department. He made a major sacrifice; if he had continued at Berkeley, he could have worked on what was to become plate tectonics. Evernden was a proponent of the HGLP seismic stations when he was at ARPA and personally worked with several of us on the analysis of those data at Lamont. Evernden did outstanding work on seismic verification at AFTAC and ARPA.

  Many officials in the Department of Defense, however, were in favor of continued nuclear testing and the development of new nuclear weapons. An irony was that ARPA was responsible for research on nuclear verification and AFTAC for more routine classified monitoring of the Soviet Union and China.

  Evernden’s chief nemesis at AFTAC, and later at ARPA, was Carl Romney, who was born in 1924, two years after Evernden. Each received a PhD in seismology from Berkeley under seismologist Perry Byerly. Romney and Evernden were the only people at either AFTAC or ARPA who were experts in seismology. Evernden had three weaknesses. He was a poor listener, speaking for 95 percent of a conversation. He was argumentative and suffered neither those he thought were fools nor those who were poorly informed. Although he did excellent work on verification, those weaknesses hindered him in affecting U.S. policy.

  In contrast, Romney, who grew up in Utah, was a good speaker and was very effective in influencing government policy, especially at the secret level. He was often the only seismologist involved in classified U.S. government committees concerned with monitoring nuclear testing and determining the yields of Soviet underground nuclear explosions. Many nonscientists in the government took Romney’s opinions as gospel.

  Romney stated in his book of 2009 that his own involvement with nuclear test detection began in mid-September 1949 after he had completed most of the requirements for a PhD at Berkeley. In 1955 he was hired by AFTAC, where he became assistant technical director for geophysics. In 1956, before finishing his PhD, he became the chief seismologist for the consulting firm Beers and Heroy, a contractor for classified research in seismology that was sponsored by AFTAC’s predecessor, AFOAT-1. The firm had no seismologist until Romney joined them.

  As the Apollo lunar program was winding down at Cape Kennedy, Florida, a powerful member of Congress convinced the Department of Defense to move AFTAC from Alexandria, Virginia, to Patrick Air Force Base near Cape Kennedy. Evernden told me that because Romney’s wife did not want to move, Romney transferred to ARPA in 1972 so that they could stay near Washington, DC. He accepted a position in the Nuclear Monitoring Research Office of ARPA, where he became deputy director in 1980.

  Improving seismic verification was the main goal of ARPA’s Vela Uniform program, which funded research at universities in the 1960s and early 1970s. Unfortunately, few of the important findings at universities were utilized by AFTAC to improve routine monitoring and data analysis. Romney, as he recounted in 2009, had little use for many academics. After he moved to ARPA, he spent more funds on consulting companies to do routine data processing and far less on university research.

  Few scientists outside of AFTAC were aware of the important data being collected from its classified seismic arrays around the world. Romney deserves credit for acquiring very quiet sites for those arrays, which produced high-quality data. These arrays or clusters of monitoring instruments, while extremely expensive, were well worth the investment. Evernden, who worked for Romney at AFTAC, tried unsuccessfully to get papers approved by the Defense Department to demonstrate how much progress had been made at the classified level in seismic monitoring of underground explosions.

  7

  CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS ON A COMPREHENSIVE TEST BAN

  From October 27 to 28, 1971, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy of the U.S. Congress held hearings on the Status of Current Technology to Identify Seismic Events as Natural or Man Made. James Brune of the University of California at San Diego submitted a statement endorsed by a number of scientists knowledgeable about seismic monitoring regarding the verification of an underground test ban. They were all familiar with the results of the Ms-mb method used for seismic identification as well as work presented by several of us at the Woods Hole conference in 1970.

  The written statements of those scientists were published in the Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Arms Control, International Law and Organization of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. Senate—Toward a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty—on May 15, 1972. Their statements described recent advances that improved the detection of signals from underground nuclear explosions and earthquakes down to magnitude mb 4 and yields of about two kilotons in hard rock. Those methods could be used to identify (differentiate) those events with high reliability upon deployment of adequate numbers of modern instruments. This, of course, was better than the threshold of mb 4.75 proposed in 1963. This work was praised by members of the Committee on Foreign Relations but not by several members of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy.

  Lukasik, the director of ARPA
, testified at the Joint Committee’s hearings in October 1971 that we knew by then how to identify explosions down to a magnitude mb of 4.5 (7 to 14 kilotons in hard rock) and that, in principle, seismic discrimination around mb 4.0 (1 to 2 kt) appeared feasible. But he, like members of the Joint Committee, stressed that it would take time to verify such improvements.

  I testified before the same subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 15, 1972, my first testimony before Congress. I was nervous. All of the other people who testified were seasoned, well-experienced witnesses and speakers. I was invited to testify about the results of the HGLP experiment and other advances in distinguishing the signals of underground explosions from those of earthquakes. Dr. Herbert Scoville, a test ban proponent who had worked at the CIA in the early 1960s and later at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), recommended me to the subcommittee. I believe Evernden did as well.

  My conclusions were very similar to those of the above group of scientists. We all stated that major advances in seismic identification had been made in the previous decade. Referring to the plate tectonic revolution of the late 1960s, I stated, “During the last ten years the earth sciences, which include seismology, have experienced a renaissance in the understanding of large-scale earth processes such as why earthquakes occur where they do, and what types of movements occur in various parts of the world.”

  Few seismologists outside of ARPA and AFTAC, including me, were aware at the time of just how good the U.S. classified capabilities were. The findings reported in my congressional testimony of 1972, as well as those of the scientists who wrote to Congress in 1971, were based on unclassified results. In addition, because we made no assumptions about future data that might be obtained from seismic stations within the USSR and China, we were of necessity discussing observations at distances greater than about 1850 miles (3000 km).

  In my testimony, I also discussed the false alarm problem—that is, small earthquakes being misidentified as underground explosions. I stated that 99 percent of earthquakes in Eurasia (Europe plus Asia) of magnitude 4.5 and larger could be positively identified as such.

  I addressed several possible evasion schemes, including detonating small nuclear explosions near the times of earthquakes, conducting multiple explosions so that their Ms value appeared to be that of an earthquake, and using decoupled (muffled) testing in large underground cavities. I stated that research on better processing of seismic signals might render the first two schemes less useful for evasive testing, which shortly turned out to be the case. I also pointed out that cavity decoupling—large explosions set off in deep underground chambers—had not been tested for a nuclear explosion larger than a fraction of a kiloton.

  Hide-in-earthquake ceased to be a successful evasion method decades ago. Simple data processing methods allowed the signal from an explosion of interest to remain large while those from distant earthquakes were reduced in size. For example, the signal from a large earthquake in the eastern part of the Soviet Union hid that of the small explosion at the Soviets’ Eastern Kazakhstan test site on the normal seismic recording (see upper part of figure 11.1), but playing out the recordings at a higher frequency clearly brought out the signal from the small explosion (see the lower part of that figure).

  Detonating multiple nuclear explosions close in time to one another so that their signals were like that of an earthquake also is no longer a viable evasion scheme. Recording data over many periods and frequencies, as with the HGLP instruments, eliminated multiple explosions as a threat. While they might be made to look like an earthquake at one frequency, they could not at other frequencies.

  Senator Edmund Muskie, the chair of the subcommittee, asked me only one question: “Are ARPA seismologists and private seismologists far apart in their assessment of the problem?” I answered, “I think not so far as detection and discrimination. I think the disagreement mainly resolves around the evasion issue.” Muskie went on to include for the record the statement made by the group of scientists in April 1972. I think he may have expected me to launch into a criticism of the removal of the summary written by Evernden for the published volume on the Woods Hole conference, which I did not do. Muskie already knew about its removal.

  When I returned to Lamont, I received a phone call from William Best of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, who oversaw the HGLP project. He said that an official at ARPA, who was present at my testimony, said that I had done well, probably meaning I had not criticized ARPA. I found out later that person, a geologist, strongly believed that testing in huge cavities in salt could muffle large nuclear explosions.

  I vowed to myself that in future testimony I would state clearly in my conclusions that a full test ban was verifiable, desirable, and in the national interest. Prior to the deletion of Evernden’s summary for the Woods Hole conference report in 1971 and my Senate testimony of 1972, I was of the naive belief that advances in research on seismic monitoring soon would be translated politically into a full test ban.

  In the subcommittee hearings of May 15, 1972, Philip Farley, acting director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, presented the current views of the executive branch on the question of further limitations on nuclear tests. He said that he could confirm that the administration’s position remains as stated by President Nixon in 1969: “The United States supports the conclusion of a comprehensive test ban, adequately verified.” His statement gave no indication of what constituted adequate or sufficient verification.

  Dr. Herbert York, dean of graduate studies at UC San Diego, head of the Livermore Lab from 1952 to 1958, and a top Pentagon scientist in the Eisenhower administration, also testified in May 1972. He prefaced his remarks at the 1972 hearing by quoting from an interview with the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, James Schlesinger, an opponent of a full test ban. Schlesinger said, “We have very much improved our capability to monitor events in the Soviet Union, but the question of the desirability of a test ban goes far beyond the question of monitoring what the Soviets are doing. The real question is, given the changed nature of the opposing forces in this era of negotiations, whether it is desirable to cease testing.” York went on to say, “I agree with his position. I have for some time felt that the real question is whether it is desirable.” York then summarized his testimony: “[W]e could have had and should have had a comprehensive test ban ten years ago.” He discussed the main objections raised by others a decade before and found them largely wanting: (1) concern about a Soviet ABM (anti-ballistic missile) capability, (2) breakthroughs and surprises, (3) improvements in design factors such as yield-to-weight ratio of warheads on intercontinental missiles, and (4) our understanding of weapons effects. When asked about the prospects for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1972 to halt development of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) for Soviet missiles, he said it was probably too late. At that time the Soviet Union likely was testing weapons for their MIRV land-and sea-based missiles. The United States had tested them earlier.

  The CTBT hearings of 1971 and 1972 did not lead to negotiations for a full test ban treaty. The idea did not resurface in the U.S. government until 1977, when the Carter administration entered into negotiations with the Soviet Union and Britain. Following the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) of 1963, however, progress was made in other arms control negotiations, such as limits on the numbers of delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons and anti-ballistic missiles.

  NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION TREATY

  Four years of multinational negotiations finally led to the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) that was signed in 1968 and entered into force on March 5, 1970, for a duration of twenty-five years. It was the most important arms control agreement following the Limited Test Ban Treaty. The NPT was discriminatory by design, in that it divided countries into two groups: the acknowledged nuclear weapons states and nonnuclear countries. The weapons states pledged not to transfer nuclear weapons to other nations and not to ass
ist any nation in making or acquiring them. The nonnuclear states agreed not to make or receive nuclear weapons and to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to monitor their compliance. The parties to the NPT agreed to share the benefits of peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

  The NPT requires parties to the treaty to “seek to achieve the discontinuance of all test explosions of nuclear weapons for all time and to continue negotiations to this end” and to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.” Understandably, during each five-year review conference for the NPT, many of the nonnuclear states that signed the NPT sharply criticized the weapons states for not achieving a CTBT. A few countries, including India, Israel, and Pakistan, did not sign the NPT. North Korea signed but withdrew prior to its first nuclear test. India claimed that its first test, which was underground, was for peaceful purposes, which many doubted. India signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, but neither the NPT nor the CTBT.

  The NPT was up for renewal on its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1995. In return for extending it to infinite duration, the nonnuclear states extracted from the weapons states a pledge to reach a CTBT in 1996. The latter complied with their pledge. The NPT was extended indefinitely in 1995.

  MONITORING AFTERSHOCKS OF A LARGE UNDERGROUND NUCLEAR EXPLOSION

  A group of us from Lamont monitored aftershocks generated by Benham, one of the largest (1150 kt) underground nuclear explosions at the Nevada Test Site on December 19, 1968. Seismologists at the University of Nevada claimed that a previous large explosion at NTS had triggered earthquakes 25 miles (40 km) away. Their evidence was not very strong. Peter Molnar and Klaus Jacob drove a Lamont van, which had a small area for working and sleeping, to Nevada to monitor activity for a week before the United States detonated Benham. They operated six portable instruments in abandoned mines on the east side of the test site within 50 to 110 miles (75 to 175 km) of Benham.