Private sleuths once pierced nuclear veil

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Private sleuths once pierced nuclear veil
By ROBERT BURNS (AP) – 3 hours ago

WASHINGTON — Shortly after nuclear weapons sleuths Tom Cochran and Bill Arkin published their unauthorized estimate of the size of the U.S. arsenal in 1984 they got a call from alarmed U.S. officials.

"They called us over and wanted to know where we got the numbers," Cochran recalls from a time when almost everything about history's deadliest weapon — including how many the U.S. possessed — was classified secret. It was a culture of secrecy born during the Cold War, out of a belief that nuclear candor could be dangerous.

America's official nuclear silence ended Monday when the Obama administration not only disclosed the number of U.S. nuclear weapons available for use in wartime — 5,113 as of last Sept. 30 — but surprised many by also publishing weapons totals for each year dating to 1962. (Pre-1962 data was released in 1993.)

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The U.S. disclosure didn't just strike a blow for transparency in the global debate over nuclear weapons. It revealed the remarkable accuracy of the effort by Cochran, Arkin and others, who labored for 30 years to pull back the veil that surrounded these weapons.

"We were pretty close all along — sometimes right on the button," said Robert S. Norris, another of the nuclear number detectives.

Their most recent estimate was 5,100, or just 13 weapons fewer than the number the government published Monday.

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Secrecy aside, Cochran and Arkin produced in 1984 the first volume of their encyclopedic "Nuclear Weapons Databook," compiled from mining a mountain of responses to Freedom of Information Act requests and from years of scouring congressional hearing transcripts, unclassified government reports, budgets and other open records.

It was, in the view of McGeorge Bundy, who served as national security adviser to President John F. Kennedy, a historic victory for "private clarification" over "government obfuscation." Bundy praised the 340-page work in a New York Times Book Review article in March 1984.

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"They couldn't believe we had the numbers. They thought there was a leak in the system," Cochran said. He and Norris work for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

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Hans Kristensen, who worked with Cochran and Norris, said he and his cohorts sometimes heard useful "whispers" from certain officials, but for the most part they relied on simple number crunching and a nose for nuance.

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