The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Louis H. Roddis, Jr..md

category	tags	summary	born	died	location	updated	relations
Scientists & Researchers	Person Nuclear Israel	Nuclear Intelligence Panel member who concluded the 1979 Vela satellite event was a South African-Israeli nuclear test and accused the White House of suppressing the finding.	1918-09-09	1991-09-15	United States	2026-10-09	type with start end role fn investigated VELA Satellite 1980-02-11 1980-02-14 chairman of the Nuclear Intelligence Panel review of the September 22, 1979 event, per the February 14, 1980 memorandum 2

Louis H. Roddis, Jr. played a major role in America's postwar nuclear weapons development. He was a member of the Nuclear Intelligence Panel (NIP). Roddis concluded that the 1979 South African-Israeli nuclear test had taken place on a barge or on one of the islands of an archipelago between the southern Atlantic and Indian Oceans. He expressed anger at Frank Press and the White House for what he saw as a deliberate effort to downplay and manipulate the facts surrounding the event.¹

A February 14, 1980 memorandum from the chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee to the Director of Central Intelligence, Stansfield Turner, names Roddis as chairman of the Nuclear Intelligence Panel for its meeting of February 11 to 13, 1980 on the September 22, 1979 VELA Satellite event; it states that the attached summary of the panel's views "was prepared by the Panel Chairman, Mr. Louis H. Roddis, Jr." and the attached judgments are completely redacted.²

Footnotes

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1. Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 20. ↩︎

2. Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee, memorandum for the Director of Central Intelligence, "Judgments of the DCI's Nuclear Intelligence Panel on the 22 September 1979 Event," February 14, 1980, Secret. Document 6 in NSAEBB 190, with the attached judgments completely redacted. The memorandum names Roddis as panel chairman and gives the meeting dates as February 11-13; Richelson's narrative in the same briefing book names Kerr as chairman. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/06.pdf ↩︎