2.2 KiB
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U.S. Government | Highly classified U.S. nuclear intelligence panel that met in February 1980 to review the 1979 Vela satellite flash; in Seymour Hersh's account its members concluded it was a nuclear detonation. |
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The Nuclear Intelligence Panel (NIP) is a highly classified nuclear intelligence group within the U.S. government. Seymour Hersh wrote that its members, including Harold M. Agnew and Louis H. Roddis, Jr., conducted their own investigation into the 1979 VELA Satellite sighting and concluded that a low-yield nuclear weapon had most certainly been detonated, and that they were dismayed by the extent of White House interference in the investigation, which they believed was politically motivated to find a different explanation for the event.1
Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner asked the panel to examine the data, according to Jeffrey Richelson. The panel met on February 11 to 13, 1980. The February 14, 1980 memorandum to the director from the chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee states that the attached summary of panel views "was prepared by the Panel Chairman, Mr. Louis H. Roddis, Jr." and that other subjects reviewed at the meeting would be in a formal panel report to follow; the attached judgments are completely redacted. Richelson and Leonard Weiss describe Donald M. Kerr as the panel's chairman or head.2
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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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 Richelson, Jeffrey T., ed., "The Vela Incident: Nuclear Test or Meteoroid?" National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 190, May 5, 2006. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/06.pdf ↩︎