3.1 KiB
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His panel's assignment was carefully weighted towards investigating the possibility that the VELA sighting had been a false alarm. | 1923-08-19 | 2015-02-04 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts |
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Jack P. Ruina was a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a longtime consultant to the Pentagon on military and scientific issues. He was chosen by Frank Press to direct an outside panel to study the VELA Satellite data after a probable nuclear explosion was detected on September 22, 1979. Ruina held many sensitive clearances and was known for his discretion.1
Spurgeon M. Keeny, Jr. told Leonard Weiss in a 2004 interview that the idea for an outside panel was his. The panel was formed in late October 1979 under Press, began work on November 1, 1979, and was chaired by Ruina.2
His panel's assignment was carefully weighted towards investigating the possibility that the VELA sighting had been a false alarm. The panel concluded that the VELA sighting "contains sufficient internal inconsistency to cast serious doubt whether that signal originated from a nuclear explosion or in fact from any light source not in the proximity of the VELA satellite." They also found no collateral signs of a nuclear event. The panel's report is dated May 23, 1980, and a declassified version appeared in July 1980.3 It stated that the signal was "probably not from a nuclear explosion," suggesting it might have been a "zoo event" (a signal of unknown cause), possibly a meteoroid impact.1
Footnotes
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Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 20. ↩︎
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Burr, William, and Avner Cohen, "The Vela Incident: South Atlantic Mystery Flash in September 1979 Raised Questions about Nuclear Test," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 570, December 6, 2016, narrative and Document 14. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-12-06/vela-incident-south-atlantic-mystery-flash-september-1979-raised-questions-about-nuclear-test ; Weiss, Leonard, "Flash from the Past," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 8, 2015 (Keeny interview of July 30, 2004). https://thebulletin.org/2015/09/flash-from-the-past-why-an-apparent-israeli-nuclear-test-in-1979-matters-today/ ↩︎
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Office of Science and Technology Policy, "Ad Hoc Panel Report on the September 22 Event," May 23, 1980, Secret, partially declassified, p. 19 and cover. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/09.pdf ; Wright, Christopher M., and Lars-Erik De Geer, "The 22 September 1979 Vela Incident: The Detected Double-Flash," Science & Global Security, vol. 25, no. 3 (2017), reference 7. https://doi.org/10.1080/08929882.2017.1394047 ↩︎