[Infowarrior] - More on....Cold War Blackout (link to source documents)

[Richard Forno]

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB197/index.htm

What the U.S. Government No Longer Wants You to Know about Nuclear Weapons
During the Cold War

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 197

Edited by William Burr

Posted - August 18, 2006

For more information: Dr. William Burr, Thomas Blanton, 202/994-7000

Washington, D.C., August 18, 2006 - The Pentagon and the Energy Department
have now stamped as national security secrets the long-public numbers of
U.S. nuclear missiles during the Cold War, including data from the public
reports of the Secretaries of Defense in 1967 and 1971, according to
government documents posted today on the Web by the National Security
Archive (www.nsarchive.org).

Pentagon and Energy officials have now blacked out from previously public
charts the numbers of Minuteman missiles (1,000), Titan II missiles (54),
and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (656) in the historic U.S. Cold
War arsenal, even though four Secretaries of Defense (McNamara, Laird,
Richardson, Schlesinger) reported strategic force levels publicly in the
1960s and 1970s.

The security censors also have blacked out deployment information about U.S
nuclear weapons in Great Britain and Germany that was declassified in 1999,
as well as nuclear deployment arrangements with Canada, even though the
Canadian government has declassified its side of the arrangement.

The reclassifications come in an environment of wide-ranging review of
archival documents with nuclear weapons data that Congress authorized in the
1998 Kyl-Lott amendments. Under Kyl-Lott, the Energy Department has spent
$22 million while surveying more than 200 million pages of released
documents. Energy has reported to Congress that 6,640 pages have been
withdrawn from public access (at a cost of $3,313 per page), but that the
majority involves Formerly Restricted Data, which would include historic
numbers and locations of weapons, rather than weapon systems design
information (Restricted Data).

Documents posted today by the National Security Archive include:

    * Recently released Defense Department, NSC, and State Department
reports with excisions of numbers of nuclear missiles and bombers in the
U.S. arsenals during the 1960s and70s.

    * Unclassified tables published in a report to Congress by Secretary of
Defense Melvin Laird as excised by Pentagon reviewers.

    * A "Compendium of Nuclear Weapons Arrangements" between the United
States and foreign governments that was prepared in 1968 and recently
released in a massively excised version under Defense Department and DOE
guidelines.

    * Canadian and U.S. government documents illustrating the public record
nature of some information withheld from the 1968 "Compendium."

"It would be difficult to find better candidates for unjustifiable secrecy
than decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic weapons," remarked
Archive senior analyst Dr. William Burr, who compiled today's posting. "This
problem, as well as the excessive secrecy for historical nuclear
deployments, is unlikely to go away as long as security reviewers follow
unrealistic guidelines."

"The government is reclassifying public data at the same time that
government prosecutors are claiming the power to go after anybody who has
'unauthorized possession" of classified information," said Archive director
Thomas Blanton. "What's really at risk is accountability in government."