| Nuclear Espionage |
Article Index for Nuclear |
Website Links For Nuclear |
Information AboutNuclear Espionage |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT NUCLEAR ESPIONAGE | |
| espionage by genre | |
| nuclear weapons | |
| nuclear secrecy | |
|
Nuclear espionage is the purposeful giving of state Secret s regarding Nuclear Weapon s to other states without authorization ( Espionage ). During the History Of Nuclear Weapons there have been many cases of known nuclear espionage, and also many cases of suspected or alleged espionage. Because nuclear weapons are generally considered the most important of state secrets, all nations with nuclear weapons have strict restrictions against the giving of information relating to Nuclear Weapon Design , stockpiles, Delivery Systems , and deployment. States are also limited in their making public of weapons information by Non-proliferation agreements. MANHATTAN PROJECT See Also: Atomic Spies is considered to have been the most valuable of the Atomic Spies during the Manhattan Project .]] During the Manhattan Project , the joint effort during World War II by the United States , the United Kingdom , and Canada to create the first nuclear weapons, there were many instances of nuclear espionage in which project scientists or technicians channeled information about bomb development and Design to the Soviet Union . These people are often referred to as the Atomic Spies , and their work continued into the early Cold War . Because most of these cases became well-known in the context of the Anti-Communist 1950s, there has been long-standing dispute over the exact details of these cases, though some of this was settled with the making public of the VENONA Project transcripts, which were intercepted and decrypted messages between Soviet agents and the Soviet government. Some issues remain unsettled, however. The most prominent of these included:
by David Greenglass , illustrating what he supposedly gave the Rosenbergs to pass on to the Soviet Union.]]
Whether the espionage information significantly aided the speed of the Soviet Atomic Bomb Project is also disputed. While some of the information given, such as the highly technical theoretical information given by Klaus Fuchs , would be thought to have certainly aided in developing a nuclear weapon, the manner in which the heads of the Soviet bomb project, Igor Kurchatov and Lavrenty Beria , actually used the information has led later scholars to doubt it having had a role in increasing the speed of development. According to this account, Kurchatov and Beria used the information primarily as a "check" against their own scientists' work, and did not liberally share the information with them, distrusting both their own scientists as well as the espionage information. Later scholarship has also shown that the decisive force in early Soviet development was not problems in weapons design, but, as in the Manhattan Project , the difficulty in procuring fissile materials, especially as the Soviet Union had no Uranium deposits known when it began its program (unlike the United States). ISRAEL , See Also: Mordechai Vanunu In 1986, a former technician, (someone who was exposing a secretive and illegal practice), while his opponents see him as a traitor and his divulgance of information as aiding enemies of the Israeli state. The politics of the case are hotly disputed. PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA about the W88 warhead, a miniaturized variant of the Teller-Ulam Design , was allegedly stolen by PRC agents.]] See Also: Cox Report In a 1999 report of the United States House Of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox (known as the Cox Report ), it was revealed that U.S. security agencies believed that on-going nuclear espionage by the People's Republic Of China (PRC) at U.S. nuclear weapons design laboratories, especially Los Alamos National Laboratory , Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , Oak Ridge National Laboratory , and Sandia National Laboratories . According to the report, the PRC had "stolen classified information on all of the United States' most advanced thermonuclear warheads" since the 1970s, and included the design of advanced miniaturized thermonuclear warheads (which can be used on MIRV weapons), the Neutron Bomb , and "weapons codes" which allow for computer simulations of Nuclear Testing (and allow the PRC to advance their weapon development without testing themselves). The United States was apparently unaware of this until 1995. The investigations described in the report eventually led to the arrest of Wen Ho Lee , a scientist at Los Alamos, which accused him of giving weapons information to the PRC. The case against Lee eventually fell apart, however, and he was eventually charged only with mishandling of data. Other people and groups arrested or fined were scientist Peter Lee (no relation), who was arrested for allegedly giving submarine radar secrets to China, and Loral Space & Communications and Hughes Electronics who gave China missile secrets. No other arrests regarding the theft of the nuclear designs have been made. The issue was a considerable scandal at the time. PAKISTAN See Also: Abdul Qadeer Khan Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan (better known as A. Q. Khan) is a Pakistani nuclear scientist who confessed in January 2004 to passing nuclear weapons technology secrets to Libya , Iran , and North Korea . On February 5 , 2004 , the president of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf , announced that he had pardoned Dr. Khan. Pakistan's government claims they had no part in the espionage. SEE ALSO REFERENCES ;Manhattan Project
;Israel
;People's Republic of China
|
|
|