The Vela Incident:Taiwan, Israel or South Africa Nuke Tests?

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Vela Incident

>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Orthographic projection centered on the Prince Edward Islands, the

location of the Vela incidentThe Vela Incident (sometimes known as

the South Atlantic Flash) was the possible detection of a nuclear

weapon test by an American Vela satellite on September 22, 1979. Much

of the information about the event is still classified.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_Incident

Detection

The flash was detected by one of the American Vela satellites

developed to detect nuclear explosions. On 22 September 1979 at 00:53

GMT, the Vela 6911 satellite detected the characteristic double flash

of an atmospheric nuclear explosion of some two to three kilotons

apparently over the Indian Ocean or South Atlantic between Bouvet (a

dependency of Norway) and the Prince Edward Islands, S.A. (47S, 40E),

a dependency of South Africa.

 

Vela 6911 was one of the pair launched on 23 May 1969, over ten years

before the possible explosion. It was operating two years past its

designed lifespan and its electromagnetic pulse (EMP) sensor had

failed. It had also developed a fault in July 1972 where around half

a second of its recording memory had failed. This had cleared itself

in March 1978.

 

It is still uncertain whether the satellite's observations were

accurate. After the blast was detected the Carter administration

summoned a panel of experts who in early 1980 found that the report

was likely erroneous, caused by a malfunction in the satellite. Most

outside observers doubt this assertion.

 

The panel set up to review the evidence, the Ruina Panel, released

its report in summer of 1980 and concluded that the signal "was

probably not from a nuclear explosion. Although we cannot rule out

that this signal was of nuclear origin". It proposed that the

satellite was in error and had perhaps been hit by a small meteorite.

That the explosion was only picked up by one of the satellites seems

to support their assertion. US Air Force flights in the area soon

after also failed to detect any sign of radiation.

 

Many doubt the panel's findings, arguing they were politically

motivated. A considerable amount of evidence corroborating the

nuclear hypothesis has been gathered. The Vela satellites previously

detected 41 atmospheric tests, each of which had been subsequently

confirmed through other means. There was some other data that seemed

to confirm the explosion. Hydrophones operated by the US Navy

detected a signal which was consistent with a small nuclear explosion

on or slightly under the surface of the water near Prince Edward

Island, S.A.. The radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico also

detected an anomalous traveling ionospheric disturbance at the same

time. A test in Western Australia conducted a few months later found

increased radiation levels. The Los Alamos scientists who worked on

the Vela program remain convinced that their satellite worked

properly.

 

It has also been proposed that there was an explosion, but one caused

by a comet or other natural cause.

 

[edit]

Responsibility

The two potential sources of an unexplained nuclear blast were Israel

and South Africa, both of which had covert nuclear weapons programs

at the time. A test by either Israel or South Africa would have been

very awkward for the Carter administration. Israel was a close

American ally, while the South African relationship was a close but

unpopular one (the lack of popularity was due to apartheid). Carter

had worked hard on nonproliferation issues, and a vigorous response

would have been required if it had been proven that either nation had

conducted the test. This would have disrupted the negotiations

underway over the Camp David Accords.

 

If a nuclear explosion did occur it is also uncertain who triggered

it. There are difficulties with both the South African and Israeli

hypothesis. South Africa did have a nuclear weapons program at the

time, and the geographic location of the tests points to their

involvement. However, since the fall of apartheid South Africa has

disclosed most of the information on its nuclear weapons program

which point to South Africa not having the ability to mount such a

test in 1979. However, in 1977, Soviet satellites reported a possible

test site in the Kalahari Desert which was then dismantled. For South

Africa to have carried out the tests a good number of the documents

released would have to be forgeries.

 

Israel almost certainly had nuclear weapons in 1979, but it is

questioned whether they had the capability to mount a covert test

thousands of kilometers away. If it was an Israeli test it is almost

certain that there was South African cooperation. Potentially the

test was of an Israeli weapon but organized by South Africa.

 

It is unlikely any of the declared nuclear powers would have

conducted such a test. They had little reason to conduct tests

covertly (as all had standing traditions of overt nuclear testing

except for India), and the small size of the blast might reflect a

less advanced weapon (though there are many "advanced" reasons for

small tests as well, including tactical nuclear weapons and testing

the primary devices for thermonuclear weapons). The only other

potential partner for South Africa sometimes mentioned is Taiwan.

 

[edit]

Recent developments

Since 1980 some new evidence has emerged, however most questions

remain unanswered. In 1994 Commodore Dieter Gerhardt, a convicted

Soviet spy, was released from prison and emigrated to Switzerland. At

the time of the Vela flash, he had been the commander of the

Simonstown naval base. In February 1994 he told the Johannesburg City

Press that the flash was produced by an Israeli-South African test.

The test was supposed to be hidden by clouds, but at the last minute,

the weather changed, and it was detected.

 

On 20 April 1997, the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz, quoted South

African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad as confirming that the

flash over the Indian Ocean was indeed from a South African nuclear

test. Soon afterwards Pahad reported that he had been misquoted and

that he was merely repeating the rumours that had been circulating

for years.

 

Some related American information has been declassified, but little

that sheds any light on the incident.

 

Report on the 1979 Vela Incident

By Carey Sublette

Last changed 1 September 2001

 

The Vela Incident

On 22 September 1979 around 00:53 GMT, the Vela 6911 satellite

detected the characteristic double flash of an atmospheric nuclear

explosion apparently over the Indian Ocean or South Atlantic. The

test location was later localized at 47 deg. S, 40 deg. E in the

Indian Ocean, in the vicinity of South Africa's Prince Edward Island,

by hydroacoustic data. Due to the position ambiguity of the initial

detection (the Vela optical sensors were not imaging sensors and

could did not detect location), the location is variously described

as being in the Indian Ocean or South Atlantic. The characteristics

of the light curve indicated that it was a low kiloton explosion

(approximately 3 kt). The hydroacoustic signal indicated a low

altitude explosion. A major and lingering controversy erupted over

the interpretation of this apparent detection.

 

The Vela satellite program was an nuclear detonation (NUDET)

detection system setup after the 1963 limited test ban and was

designed to detect nuclear explosions in space and (later) air. There

were two groups of Vela satellites developed. The original Vela were

equipped only with sensors for space detection and were launched in

three pairs between 1963 and 1965. They operated for at least five

years, far beyond their nominal design life of six months. A second

generation called Advanced Vela were launched in 1967, 1969 and 1970.

These satellites added "bahngmeters" - optical sensors for detecting

atmospheric tests - and had a nominal design life of 18 months, but

were later rated with a seven year lifespan, although they were all

operated for more than ten years, with the last one being turned off

in 1984 -- after 14 years of successful operation [JPL 2001];

[Astronautix 2001].

 

Vela 6911 is presumably one of the Advanced Vela pair launch launched

on 23 May 1969 (perigee 77,081 km, apogee 145,637 km, inclination

61.6 deg), and had thus been operating over ten years at the time of

the 1979 detection.

 

The Vela satellite system had previously made 41 similar detections

of atmospheric tests, each of which had been subsequently confirmed

through other means. The detection came at a bad time for the Carter

administration which would be under pressure to take definite action

if the detection were accepted as accurate. Inescapably it seemed

that either Israel, South Africa, or both, would be implicated.

Consequently a panel of scientists from academia known as the Ruina

Panel, after its head Dr. Jack Ruina, was created to review the

reliability of the Vela data. Since this satellite was operating past

its expected lifespan, and its electromagnetic pulse (EMP) sensor was

inoperative, questions about the reliability of the detection were

raised. The panel ultimately concluded in a report released in the

summer of 1980 that the signal "was probably not from a nuclear

explosion. Although we cannot rule out that this signal was of

nuclear origin".

 

This conclusion has cast a pall over public confidence in the ability

of the U.S. to unambiguously detect clandestine nuclear explosions

for over twenty years.

 

 

 

Advanced Vela 5

The Start of the Controversy

The instruments used by the Vela satellites for detecting atmospheric

nuclear explosions are called "bhangmeters". These are optical

sensors that record light fluctuations on a sub-millisecond time

scale. All atmospheric nuclear explosions produce a unique and easy

to detect signature: an extremely short and intense flash, followed

by a second much more prolonged and less intense emission of light.

The initial flash is typically 1 millisecond long, and although it

emits only about 1% of the total thermal energy of the fireball, it

is actually the point of maximum brightness for the fireball. The

second peak may take from hundreds of milliseconds to several seconds

to develop, depending on the size of the explosion, and lasts a

comparable period of time.

 

This phenomenon occurs because the surface of the early fireball is

quickly overtaken by the expanding hydrodynamic shock wave. This

shock wave acts as an optical shutter, hiding the small but extremely

hot and bright early fireball behind an opaque ionized shock front

which is comparatively quite dim.

 

No natural phenomenon is known that can imitate this signature. In

fact it is reported that no false alarms have ever been detected with

a Vela bhangmeter. Every other double-flash detection has later been

confirmed to be an actual nuclear test.

 

According to Seymour Hersh, the idea of referring this detection to

an advisory panel was floated before any potential problems with the

detection had been noted. An urgent meeting to discuss the handling

of this event was held in the White House situation room soon after

the intelligence report on the incident reached the Oval Office.

Among those attending were National Security Advisor Zbigniew

Brzezinski, his aide for global issues Gerald Oplinger, deputy

director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Spurgeon Keeny,

and Presidential Science Advisor Frank Press. At this meeting the

probability of a nuclear test was placed at 90 percent or better.

Either Keeny or Press (accounts of the participants vary) suggested

convening a panel - at least as much as a delaying tactic as an

effort to ensure that the data was carefully evaluated [Hersh 1991].

 

There is no question that a confirmed detection of a nuclear test

would have put the Carter administration in a very difficult

position. President Carter had placed great emphasis on nuclear non-

proliferation. The administration had been a troubled one, with the

recent collapse of a major ally in the Middle East (Iran) as one of

many problems. The upcoming re-election campaign was certain to be an

uphill battle. If Israel were to be linked to a nuclear test (as

seemed likely, it it was real) the political damage from imposing

sanctions, or not imposing sanctions, would likely be severe.

 

Within several weeks the eminent membership of the panel had been

selected - Jack P. Ruina, professor of electrical engineering at MIT

and an alumnus of several defense think tanks, was the titular head,

of the eight other members Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez, Wolfgang

Panofsky of Stanford, and Richard Garwin of the Thomas Watson

Research Center at IBM were the key players.

 

The administration succeeded in keeping the detection secret until 25

October 1979, when ABC television reporter John Scali broadcast the

story after having been briefed by contacts at the Pentagon.

 

>From the outset the panel was given guidelines tailored to help give

the Carter administration cover - they were tasked to investigate

whether the detection had been a false alarm including the

possibility that it "was of natural origin, possibly resulting from

the conincidence of two or more natural phenomena...". Given this

mandate and focus it was perhaps inevitable that the result of the

panel's work would be the most plausible possible way to explain away

the detection. It should be remembered that at the time of the panel

first convened, no reason to doubt the detection had been identified.

 

Problems were found with the Vela satellite data though - the two

bhangmeter readings did not agree on the flashes brightness, perhaps

because the aged sensors were no longer equally sensitive. This

discrepancy, and the lack of confirming data from the inoperable EMP

sensor, emerged as the chief reasons for casting doubt on whether a

nuclear test had actually occurred. Discrepancies had been observed

in Vela signals from previous confirmed atmospheric nuclear tests

however [LANL Daily News Bulletin 1997].

 

During the panel's months of deliberations, concluded in July 1980, a

variety of pieces of corroborating evidence surfaced.

 

P>One of the clearest indications was from ocean acoustic waves

detected by hydrophones. The hydrophone data indicated signals both

from a direct path originating near Prince Edward Island and from a

reflection of Scotia Ridge in the Antarctic and the Antarctic ice

shelf. Analyses of these signals conducted by the Naval Research

Laboratory (NRL) confirmed that they had been generated at a time and

location consistent with the Vela 6911 detection and that their

intensity was consistent with a small nuclear explosion on, or

slightly under, the ocean's surface. This evidence alone, if accepted

as valid, should be sufficient to confirm the accuracy of the

detection [LANL Daily News Bulletin 1997]; [Albright 1994b].

 

The radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico detected an anomalous

traveling ionospheric disturbance (that is, an upper atmosphere wave)

moving southeast to northwest during the early morning hours of 22

September 1979, something researchers had never before witnessed.

Powerful explosions create ionospheric disturbances from the direct

transmission of the upward propagating shock wave to the ionosphere.

But Los Alamos space scientist Lew Duncan, one of the researchers who

originally connected the ionospheric disturbance to the event that

night, said in 1994 that he was still not fully convinced that what

the dish at Arecibo detected was a nuclear test [Albright 1994b].

 

Frank Barnaby cites additional ionospheric data collected later by

NRL, and confirmation from Air Force early warning radar signals made

on 22 September, that was not considered by the Ruina Panel though he

does not describe the evidence in greater detail [barnaby 1989; pg.

17-18].

 

Unfortunately efforts to detect the one completely

unambiguous "smoking gun" signature of a nuclear explosion,

guaranteed to silence skeptics, namely radioactive fallout, failed.

The U.S. government quickly launched a major effort to collect

samples of the fallout cloud, but Air Force attempts to sample the

fallout failed to enter the low-pressure air mass that had been over

the detonation site at the time of the explosion (what the problem

was I do not know). However Dr. Van Middlesworth detected low levels

of iodine-131, a short-lived radioactive fission product, in sheep

thyroids in the states of Victoria and Tasmania in western Australia

soon after the event. Studies of wind patterns confirmed that fall-

out from an explosion in the southern Inidian Ocean could have been

carried there [barnaby 1989; pg. 17].

 

An summary of the panel's deliberations and conclusions is provided

by one its most distinguished members - the Nobel winning physicist

Luis Alvarez:

 

The two ways to read the one good satellite record from which the

explosive yield was determined didn't agree as well as usual. Drawing

on my bubble chamber experience, I asked to see a selection of the

satellites' "zoo-ons", events so strange they belonged in a zoo. This

idea was new to the DIA, but since their records were stored on

computer tape they needed only a week to put their zoo together. Rich

[Richard Muller], Dick [Richard Garwin], and I found a steady

degradation in record quality among these zoo-ons from confirmed

explosions to events at which no one would look twice. Although the

event we were studying had some of the characteristics of a nuclear

explosion, only one of the two satellite sensors recorded it.

Moreover, there was no indication from earlier or later records that

the sensor that failed to record the event was malfunctioning. Both

sensors looked at a large area of the Earth's surface, so it was hard

to believe that one sensor could see a nuclear blast and the other

could not.

 

Someone on the committee proposed that a micrometeorite might have

struck the satellite and dislodged a piece of it skin. Reflecting

sunlight into the optical system of one sensor but not into that of

its neighbor, the debris might have caused the questionable event. We

constructed a believable scenario based on the known frequency of

such micrometeorite impacts that reproduced the observed light

intensity and pattern.

 

I doubt that any responsible person now believes that a nuclear

explosion occurred because no one has broken security, among South

Africans or elsewhere. U.S. experience teaches that secrets of such

import can't be kept long. After the United States tested its first

megaton-scale thermonuclear weapon, which completely evaporated the

small Pacific island of Elugelab, stories about a disappearing island

reached U.S. newspapers as soon as the task force steamed into Pearl

Harbor and sailors had time to call home.

 

Many people think that solving a scientific puzzle is an exercise in

logic that could be carried out equally well by a computer. To the

contrary, a scientific detective's main stock-in-trade is his ability

to decide which evidence to ignore. In out DIA briefings we were

shown, and quickly discarded, confirming evidence from a wild

assemblage of sensors: radioactive Australian sheep thyroids,

radiotelescopic ionospheric wind analyses, recording from the Navy's

sonic submarine-detection arrays that supposedly precisely located

the blast from patterns of sound reflected from bays and promontories

on the coast of Antarctica.

 

Inevitably, then, I had a real sense of deja vu when the House

subcommittee's [on the Kennedy-assassination police-radio recordings]

acoustics experts pinpointed the location of the open mike by

triangulating the reflections of supposed gunshot sounds from the

building in Dealey Plaza. The National Academy of Sciences committee

showed conclusively that the motorcycle with the open mike wasn't

even in Dealey Plaza at the time the tape was recorded.

 

[Alvarez 1987, Chapt. 14]

 

Alvarez's discovery that Vela detections were part of a continuum of

detections of variable quality, and that this detection was less

clear cut than others, provided a defensible rationale for dismissing

it as a real detection. It showed that there existed a class of

ambiguous detections, that could include false events, and perhaps

real ones as well. Any event in the lower range of "good" detections

could be treated as suspect.

 

Alvarez's account here that only one sensor detected the test is at

variance with other accounts ([LANL Daily News Bulletin 1997];

[Albright 1994b]) that state a difference in the recorded

intensities, but not complete non-detection. This is an important

point, because a complete failure by one sensor would seriously

weaken the case of a nuclear test, while similar signals from both

sensors (even though they differed in strength) would make the

micrometeroid theory much more difficult to credit. It is perhaps

relevant to point out that Alvarez is mistaken in his implication

that the House subcommittee hearings were held after the Ruina Panel,

when in fact they were held several years before. This raises

questions about how reliable his memory of this affair is overall.

 

A feature that stands out from Alvarez's account is the apparent

summary dismissal of all corroborating evidence, one which he offers

no real rationale for (other than to suggest that this is how real

science its done). Although Alvarez proposed a statistical model (the

micrometeoroid theory) to explain away the detection, he does not

seem to consider another type of statistical model that tends to

support the possibility of a nuclear test. This is a causal model in

which a hypothesized cause is evaluated by considering the likelihood

of each of a set of ambiguous evidences is a consequence of it, none

of which is a "smoking gun". Each piece of evidence may have an

alternate explanation, or a background rate of occurrence,

unconnected with the the hypothesized cause, but taken together the

hypothesis may be a far more likely explanation for the whole set,

than assuming that each is an independent and uncorrelated red

herring. Dismissing each piece one at a time, as the panel seems to

have done, is a suspect procedure.

 

Another argument that Alvarez makes - that the absence of decisive

revelations (known to him) by 1987 was conclusive evidence against

its occurrence - is clearly flawed.

 

First, not all mysteries are ever resolved or resolved quickly. The

disappearance of Judge Crater, to pick one hoary example, was never

explained. The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the

last Romanovs remained unexplained for 75 years; the disappearance of

Raoul Wallenberg for 50. There are specific reasons that make these

things possible - only limited groups of people knew the truth, and

they had a variety of strong motivations not to reveal what they

knew, and perhaps serious obstacles to doing it. In particular,

Alvarez's experience with the Ivy Mike thermonuclear test was hardly

similar to the situation in Israel, or in South Africa at the time.

For starters - no story could ever have reached any Israeli

newspaper, for the entire Israeli press is under military censorship

which bans any reference to the Israeli nuclear program. The United

States has never had any similar censorship regime, even at the

height of involvement in world wars. Further, Israel has demonstrated

willingness to resort to kidnap operations on foreign soil, secret

arrests and incarceration, and intimidation to maintain secrecy, and

perhaps would not cavil at resorting to assassination. In the 70s and

early 80s South Africa was also a repressive nation with de facto

censorship, and extra-legal hit teams to enforce social order.

 

Second, if the existence of stories supporting the hypothesized test

are taken as a requisite for believing that it occurred then this

condition was well satisfied by 1991 when Hersh recounted detailed

stories about an Israeli-South African test collaboration in The

Samson Option [Hersh 1991; pg. 271-272]. In his treatment Hersh takes

the reality of the test as a given, a matter beyond dispute. He

refers to former Israeli government officials who indicated that the

flash was a test of a low yield nuclear artillery shell, and was

actually the third such test in the area. At least two Israeli navy

ships had sailed to the site and a contingent of Israelis, and the

South Africa navy was observing the test. The tests were conducted

under cover of bad weather, but a gap in the clouds allowed the

detection.

 

Similarly Barnaby claims that South African naval ships were

operating in the area the night of the test, citing an African

Educational Fund study on the incident [barnaby 1989; pg. 17].

 

Hersh reports interviewing several members of the Nuclear

Intelligence Panel (NIP), which had conducted their own investigation

of the event. Those interviewed included its leader Donald M. Kerr,

Jr. and eminent nuclear weapons program veteran Harold M. Agnew. The

NIP members concluded unanimously that it was a definite nuclear

test. Another member - Louis H. Roddis, Jr. - concluded that "the

South African-Israeli test had taken place on a barge, or on one of

the islands in the South Indian Ocean archipelago" [Hersh 1991; pg.

280-281]. He also cite internal CIA estimates made in 1979 and 1980

which concluded that it had been a test.

 

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory conducted a comprehensive

analysis, including the hydroacoustic data, and issued a 300-page

report concluding that there had been a nuclear event near Prince

Edward Island or Antarctica [Albright 1994b].

 

The failure of the panel to affirm the existence of the test seems to

reflect the nature of the panel and its mandate more than a failure

of the evidence. Dave Simons of Nonproliferation and Arms Control

Research and Development (NIS-RD) said that similar discrepancies had

been observed in Vela signals from earlier confirmed atmospheric

tests and is quoted as saying: "The whole federal laboratory

community came to the conclusion that the data indicated a bomb,"

[LANL Daily News Bulletin 1997].

 

Claims and Speculation: 1981 To The Present

The principle question that has hung in the air for the last 20 plus

years has been more along the lines of "whose test was it?" than "was

it really a test?". The choices were basically:

 

it was a South African test,

it was an Israeli test,

it was a joint South African-Israeli test.

But attempting to decide on one of these hypotheses is necessarily

based either on guesswork or reliance on one or more hearsay or

anonymous reports of uncertain (or outright suspect) reliability.

 

The possible theories of responsibility remain the same as in 1979,

although more information is now available to flesh them out.

 

By the time of the Vela detection it was universally believed that

Israel had a sophisticated nuclear weapons program (this was well

before the Vanunu revelations in 1986). South Africa was known to be

pursuing a weapons program, but the status of their effort was

unknown to the outside world, although the US had detected

preparations for a nuclear test site in the Kalahari desert in 1977,

[burrows and Windrem, 1994]).

 

During the years following the Vela detection unsourced reports

periodically surfaced ascribing the test to one of the above

possibilities.

 

As described above, in 1991 Seymour Hersh in The Samson Option quoted

a number of source Israeli sources as saying that the test was a

joint Israeli and South African operation [Hersh 1991]. If it was an

Israeli test, one must speculate exactly how it was done. Hersh

claims Israeli navy ships were sent - but Israeli has a small blue

water Navy most of which is based in the Mediterranean. It would

require a very unusual extended deployment out of the area to reach

the Indian Ocean for a test - and the whereabouts of Israel's navy

ships around the time of the test would provide a means for

evaluating its plausibility. I do not know whether anyone has

publicly documented information about this - although I have been

told by someone convincingly representing himself as a former South

African naval intelligence officer that in fact Israel's ships were

not unaccountably absent around this time. Even if so, the

possibilities exist of staging the test using commercial ships -

operated by Israeli crews possibly under a front company, as an all-

airborne operation using air-to-air refueled transports, or by using

South African platforms.

 

Barnaby reports an account from African Educational Fund study that

U.S. reconaissance planes operating in the area around the time of

the test were intercepted by South African military aircraft and

forced them to land. Also cited is circumstantial evidence like a

literature search done by the U.S. National Technical Information

Service (NTIS) at the request of a South African representative "on

nuclear explosions and the seismic detection of nuclear explosions,

including the flight plans, predicted orbit plans and operations of

the Vela satellite", the only such request ever received [barnaby

1989; pg. 18-19].

 

On the other hand Waldo Stumpf, of the Atomic Energy Corporation of

South Africa, argues that South Africa did not have the means to

conduct a test at that time, but also states that "South Africa was

certainly not responsible and was also not involved with anybody

else, in this incident [stumpf 1995].

 

Prime Minister F.W. de Klerk announced in March 1993 that South

Africa had built nuclear weapons, and since that time additional

information has periodically come forth. It was revealed that SA had

indeed developed and manufactured nuclear weapons (gun-type devices

using highly enriched uranium) but no tests (beyond a single zero-

yield lab test) were disclosed. The information that was made

available tended to disconfirm the hypothesis that South Africa

conducted the test. The IAEA has apparently been able to confirm that

whatever discrepancies exist between South Africa's HEU inventory and

its production records (and some are inevitable) the amount is too

small to hide the HEU required for a test. Further, South Africa's

accounts of its weapon development activities indicate that its first

device was not complete until months after the incident. From

documents made available to it, the IAEA believes that the first

nuclear device was not manufactured until November. This first device

was an experimental one named "Melba" which was said to be kept for

research and demonstration purposes throughout the program (which

ended in 1989).

 

In 1994 another claim surfaced:

 

Contradicting these statements is Commodore Dieter Gerhardt, a

convicted Soviet spy who was at the time the commander of the

Simonstown naval base near Cape Town. After this release from prison,

Gerhardt settled in Switzerland. In Februrary 1994, he told Des Blow

of the Johannesburg City Press that the flash was produced by an

Israeli-South African test code-named "Operation Phenix". Gerhardt,

who said he was not yet ready to reveal the full facts, stated that

although he was not directly involved in planning or carrying out the

operation, he had learned of it unofficially.

 

Gerhardt was quoted in the February 20, 1994 City Press: "The

explosion was clean and was not supposed to be detected. But they

were not as smart as they thought, and the weather changed - so the

Americans were able to pick it up."

 

Gerhardt told me in a March interview that no South African ships

were involved in the event. He declined to provide any more details."

 

[Albright 1994b; pg. 42].

 

It is impossible to assess whether Dieter Gerhard's account has any

basis in fact. Some parts of his statements are interesting. The

assertion that "The explosion was clean ..." suggests that it was a

neutron bomb (which has been alleged before about this event) which

is the only kind of low yield device to have reduced fallout. His

statement that weather pattern changes caused its detection is

interesting, since conclusive detection by this means has never been

made public - the Australian fallout report (and a New Zealand one

before it) were both subject to dispute. By his own admission of

course, he had no direct connection with the project.

 

Quite a stir erupted in 1997 when in a 20 April 1997 article that

appeared in the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz, South African

Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad was quoted as confirming that the

22 September 1979 flash over the Indian Ocean was indeed from a South

African nuclear test. The article said that Israel helped South

Africa develop its bomb designs in return for 550 tons of raw uranium

and other assistance.

 

Initially this seemed to conclusively decide the nature of the Vela

incident, at least as far as its participants went (the possibility

of undisclosed Israeli participation remained). Pahad's office later

responded that his remarks were taken out of context. His press

secretary told the Albuquerque Journal in an article dated 11 July

that Pahad had said only that there was a "strong rumor" that a test

had taken place, and that it should be investigated. In other words -

Pahad was not commenting on actual knowledge of a test, but was

repeating rumors that had been circulating for many years.

 

Alvarez's point about the absence of evidence being evidence of

absence in the case of South Africa today holds much more weight than

it did in 1987. South Africa has not only revealed its formerly

secret nuclear arsenal and weapons program, but has dismantled both,

and the apartheid regime that built them is no more. In the era after

the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has unearthed many hidden and

unpleasant truths regarding the National Party government (and crimes

authored by the same), it is increasingly difficult to believe that

all participants in nuclear testing, or those with authoritative

knowledge of it, would all still remain silent.

 

If the test was a South African nuclear device then at least some of

the information earlier released by the South African government

would have to have been falsified. In particular, the information

provided to the IAEA that South Africa did not construct its first

nuclear explosive device until November 1979, two months after the

mysterious flash, and that the first batch of highly enriched uranium

was kept in an experimental device until 1989. IAEA investigations of

detailed Valindaba production records, and inventories of its highly

enriched uranium, appear to support the claim that any inventory

irregularities could not hide enough HEU to fashion a bomb.

 

Whether the device was South African or Israeli in origin, Gerhard's

account (if true) indicates joint Israeli-South African participation

in the test. South Africa has now admitted direct Israeli involvement

with the South African weapons program, at least to the extent of

providing weapon design advice and exchanging material support.

Israel had previously been known to provide certain special

materials - in particular rather large amounts of tritium - to the

weapons program. But nothing has come from the South African

government indicating direct Israeli involvement in the testing of a

nuclear device, and certainly not the lead role implied by Gerhard's

assertion that 'no South African ships were involved'.

 

 

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NB: An LASL (now LANL) study of physical phenomena possibly related

to the Vela detection is available on-line in Acrobat (.pdf) format.

This document appears to have been prepared prior to the availability

of the Arecibo data mentioned earlier. A description and abstract of

the document is given below. The downloaded file is 1.4 megabytes.

 

Download LA-8672

 

 

NTIS No: LA-8672/HDM

Title: Evaluation of Some Geophysical Events on 22 September 1979

Author(s): Hones, Jr., E. W. ; Baker, D. N. ; Feldman, W. C.

Performing Organization: Los Alamos Scientific Lab., NM.

Sponsoring Organization: Department of Energy, Washington, DC.

Contract No: W-7405-ENG-36

Apr 81 Pages: 20p

 

Abstract: TIROS-N plasma data and related geophysical data measured on

22 September 1979 were analyzed to determine whether the electron

precipitation event detected by TIROS-N at 00:54:49 universal time

could

have been related to a surface nuclear burst (SNB). The occurrence of

such a burst was inferred from light signals detected by two Vela

bhangmeters approx. 2 min before the TIROS-N event. The precipitation

was found to be unusually large but not unique. It probably resulted

from passage of TIROS-N through The precipitating electrons above a

pre-

existing auroral arc that may have brightened to an unusually high

intensity from natural causes approx. 3 min before the Vela signals.

On the othe hand, no data were found that were inconsistent with the

SNB

interpretation of the 22 September Vela observations. In fact, a

patch

of auroral light that suddenly appeared in the sky near Syowa Base,

Antarctica a few seconds after the Vela event can be interpreted

(though

not uniquely) as a consequence of the electromagnetic pulse of an SNB.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Safrica/Vela.html