SIGHTINGS



Pentagon Docs Reveal
US Secretly Placed
Nuclear Weapons Abroad
10-20-99
 

 
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Newly declassified Pentagon documents show the United States secretly deployed nuclear weapons in 27 countries and territories during the Cold War, according to a report in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
 
Although the massive Pentagon document blacked out the names of some places where nuclear weapons were deployed, the list was in alphabetical order and the reporters pieced together most of the locations.
 
Between July 1945 and September 1977, the report says the United States deployed nuclear weapons in 27 different locations -- including 18 sovereign countries. The other locations were in US-controlled territories.
 
The Pentagon document lists the type of weapons stationed and how long they were deployed, and also details nuclear weapons deployed at sea.
 
At the end of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency, about 1,600 nuclear weapons were stationed in the Pacific -- excluding Hawaii -- in Okinawa, Guam, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan.
 
About half the weapons stationed in the Pacific were at US bases on Okinawa.
 
Japan also hosted non-nuclear components for nuclear weapons between 1954 and 1965, although the United States has never before admitted they were there.
 
The United States had planned to use Japan as a base for a nuclear attack against China or the Soviet Union in the event of a conflict.
 
The article also says Washington pulled its nuclear weapons out of Taiwan in the 1970s to improve its relations with China.
 
Even countries that had declared themselves nuclear-free hosted US nuclear weapons. Iceland for example, had non-nuclear components between 1956 and 1966, and complete weapons between 1956 and 1959.
 
West Germany had 21 different types of nuclear weapons, beginning 1955. Some of those weapons are still there, according to the report.
 
President Harry Truman ordered the first deployment of nuclear weapons overseas in 1951 to Guam.
 
He also authorized sending non-nuclear components to three bases in Morocco, which was then controlled by France, without obtaining permission from Paris.
 
They arrived in 1953 at the Ben Guerir, Nouasseur and Sidi Slimane bases and stayed for 12 years.
 
The three authors of the report had originally requested the document under the Freedom of Information Act in 1985, but the Pentagon only recently declassified and released to them the formerly top-secret "History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 through September 1977."
 
The Pentagon document revealed the following locations where nuclear weapons were deployed: Alaska, Cuba, Guam, Hawaii, Johnston Island, Midway, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom and West Germany.
 
The report's authors pieced together all but one of the other locations: Belgium, Canada, France, Greenland, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Kwajalein, Morocco, the Netherlands, Okinawa, Philippines, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan and Turkey.
 
The missing location fell between Canada and Cuba on the alphabetical list.





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