The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Gerald G. Oplinger.md

category	tags	summary	relations
Intelligence & Government	Person CIA DIA Israel	Aide to National Security Advisor Brzezinski who, in Hersh's account, attended the White House situation room meeting on the 1979 Vela satellite double flash and wrote to Henry Owen in January 1980.	type with role start end fn participant_in VELA Satellite National Security Council staff, wrote to Henry Owen holding the press release and congressional consultations 1980-01-23 1980-01-23 4

Gerald G. Oplinger was an aide to Zbigniew Brzezinski for global issues. He had retired from the Foreign Service and worked at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before joining Brzezinski's staff. Oplinger was summoned back to an urgent meeting in the White House situation room after a VELA Satellite recorded a double flash of light on September 22, 1979, from a region that included the southern Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the southern tip of Africa.¹ Seymour Hersh wrote that Oplinger recalled that Brzezinski was present at the meeting, where the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency stated that the odds were at least ninety percent that it had been a nuclear explosion, and that Oplinger personally had no doubt that it was a nuclear event.² The mini-Special Coordination Committee meeting of September 22, 1979 in the Situation Room is summarized in the Foreign Relations of the United States, which lists Henry Owen, Odom, Schecter and Funk for the National Security Council.³

In a memorandum of January 23, 1980 to Owen, Oplinger wrote that he had told the State Department to put the press release and congressional consultations on hold, and that the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and technical people within the intelligence community had "sufficient doubts about the Press panel report to make it very dangerous to proceed without another look." He wrote that John Deutch and Dan Murphy felt strongly that unless the questions were given "a further airing, there will be continued internal dissent and an appearance that policy people (including the White House) did a whitewash for political reasons."⁴

The "Press panel" that the memorandum criticizes was the review that the presidential science adviser, Frank Press, had convened under Jack P. Ruina. The National Security Archive's briefing book on the Vela incident identifies it in those terms and describes the memorandum as Oplinger's report that the intelligence community was dissatisfied with the review's treatment of the Vela signals and of an ionospheric disturbance.⁵ The memorandum records the intelligence community's view on the Arecibo ionospheric signals in the words "DoE and DoD say no."⁵ The Press panel is the Vela review and is not the psychic research panel.

Footnotes

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1. Richelson, Jeffrey T., ed., "The Vela Incident: Nuclear Test or Meteoroid?" National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 190, May 5, 2006, narrative. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/index.htm ↩︎

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

3. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977-1980, vol. XVI, Southern Africa, Document 361. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v16/d361 ↩︎

4. Oplinger, Jerry, memorandum to Henry Owen, "South Atlantic Event," January 23, 1980, Secret. Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, NLC-28-32-4-16-5; Document 33 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 ↩︎

5. William Burr and Avner Cohen, "The Vela Incident," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 570, narrative and document 33 (Jerry Oplinger to Henry Owen, "South Atlantic Event," January 23, 1980, Secret, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, NLC-28-32-4-16-5). ↩︎