---
category: "Intelligence & Government"
tags:
  - Person
  - Israel
summary: "Deputy director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency who was troubled by what he saw as deliberate manipulation of the 1979 Vela nuclear test assessment."
born: 1924-10-24
died: 2012-08-10
location: "New York City, New York, USA"
relations:
  - type: investigated
    with: "[[VELA Satellite]]"
    role: "deputy director, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, forwarded Garwin's proposal for a longer review"
    start: 1979-10-19
    end: 1980-02-27
    fn: 2
---

Spurgeon M. Keeny, Jr. was the deputy director of the [[Arms Control and Disarmament Agency|ACDA]]. He was a senior bureaucrat involved in high-level scientific issues since the [[Dwight D. Eisenhower|Eisenhower]] administration. Keeny realized that he and his colleagues needed to "buy some time" after a [[VELA Satellite]] recorded probable evidence of a nuclear explosion on September 22, 1979. He was troubled by the intelligence community's assurance that its assessment was 90 percent accurate, believing that middle-level bureaucrats could not know all the facts. Keeny claimed it was his idea to set up an outside panel to study the VELA data and ensure the satellite had not made an error with enormous political consequences.[^1]

Keeny sent Ambassador [[Henry Owen]] on October 19, 1979 a copy of a letter from [[Richard Garwin]] dated October 18, with a note that he continued to believe there was merit in a more detailed review of the technical data "by a group of senior scientists of the type suggested by Garwin." Garwin's letter said he would "bet 2 to 1 in favor of the hypothesis," called for "another one- or two-day meeting of a group of skeptical critical experts," and named [[Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky|Panofsky]], [[Richard Muller]], [[Luis Alvarez]] and [[Burton Richter|Burt Richter]].[^2] In a January 17, 1980 letter to Owen and [[Gerard C. Smith]], [[Frank Press]] called the panel "the panel that I brought together at your request."[^3]

Keeny's claim to have proposed the panel is reported by [[Leonard Weiss]] from a 2004 interview.[^4] Keeny was dismissive of a February 1980 account, relayed through [[Jack P. Ruina|Jack Ruina]], that an Israeli missile expert at MIT had described the event as an Israeli-South African operation.[^5]

### Footnotes

[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 20.
[^2]: Keeny, Spurgeon, memorandum transmitting Garwin letter to Henry Owen, October 19, 1979, Secret. Document 11 in Burr, William, and Avner Cohen, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 570, December 6, 2016. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-12-06/vela-incident-south-atlantic-mystery-flash-september-1979-raised-questions-about-nuclear-test
[^3]: Press, Frank, letter to Henry Owen and Gerard Smith, January 17, 1980, Document 32 in Burr and Cohen. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-12-06/vela-incident-south-atlantic-mystery-flash-september-1979-raised-questions-about-nuclear-test
[^4]: Weiss, Leonard, "Flash from the Past: Why an Apparent Israeli Nuclear Test in 1979 Matters Today," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 8, 2015. https://thebulletin.org/2015/09/flash-from-the-past-why-an-apparent-israeli-nuclear-test-in-1979-matters-today/
[^5]: Burr and Cohen, Briefing Book No. 570, Documents 38A and 38B (State Department telegrams of February 25 and 27, 1980, Vienna), and Document 32 note. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-12-06/vela-incident-south-atlantic-mystery-flash-september-1979-raised-questions-about-nuclear-test