Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea (review)

In this well-written, carefully documented, and important study Jeffrey Richelson describes how and why a succession of nations, beginning with Nazi Germany in World War II, have secretly sought to build nuclear weapons. After an account of each nation's program, the author assesses U.S. intelligence efforts to detect, and whenever possible, deter or impede its development. Richelson is well-qualified for this work as his solid previous books on the CIA's directorate of science and technology, American satellite reconnaissance programs, and the U.S. intelligence community will attest.

After examining the relentless spread of nuclear weapons from 1945 to the 1990s, Richelson concludes with three especially timely chapters. The first two recount the history of Iraq's nuclear weapons program from its demise after the 1991 Gulf War to the flawed U.S. intelligence alleging its revival that led to the current Iraq War. His final chapter, "Trouble Waiting to Happen," offers a singularly useful account of U.S. efforts since the 1990s to contain the mounting nuclear capabilities of Iran and North Korea.

Organized chronologically, the book first describes Nazi Germany's attempt to build an atom bomb during World War II and U.S. efforts to gauge and retard German progress. Confronting a new potential enemy after the war, the U.S. could collect very little useful human or communications intelligence on the intensely secret Soviet nuclear weapons effort, which profited enormously from Soviet spies working in American, Canadian, and British atomic sites. To detect a Soviet nuclear test, the U.S. had to rely almost entirely on passive seismic, sonic, and radiological techniques. Although these techniques successfully detected the first Soviet bomb detonation in late August 1949, the U.S. was chagrined to find that the test was at least a year earlier than the CIA and other intelligence bodies had predicted.

By the time the People's Republic of China conducted its first nuclear test in 1964, the advent of U-2 aircraft in 1956 and of reconnaissance satellite systems from 1960 onward had greatly improved U.S. capabilities to detect and monitor earlier stages of nuclear weapons programs. Surprise nevertheless remained the theme of U.S. efforts to detect and halt nuclear proliferation. After a prolonged secret program, India's May 1974 underground nuclear test achieved complete surprise. Pakistan's successful 1998 test similarly surprised the U.S. and the world. Richelson explains in disquieting detail how successive aspiring states find the necessary money, scientists, technology, and equipment, and how they use secrecy, subterfuge, and the cover of peaceful nuclear energy programs to hide their quest for nuclear weapons.

The U.S. has nevertheless had some success in slowing the spread of nuclear weapons. South Africa, having secretly built nuclear weapons in the 1980s, gave them up in 1993, not long before the 1994 elections brought Nelson Mandela and a black-majority government to power. Moreover, U.S. pressure or direct action has successfully halted three nations' incipient nuclear regimes: Taiwan in 1988; Iraq at the end of the 1991 Gulf War; and most recently, Libya in 2004. Now, as Richelson's concluding chapter makes clear, the U.S. desperately needs to stop the development of nuclear weapons in the rogue states of Iran and North Korea. In neither case, however, does anything in this account encourage hope for an easy or early solution.