Date
February 1978
Document
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Description
This lengthy and heavily-redacted 1978 report by the Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy) contains a wealth of information about the early history of American nuclear weapons. It is particularly useful for the two topics mentioned in its title: the issue of custody (how physical control of the nuclear weapons was negotiated, especially in the early days of the atomic energy program), and the issue of deployment (where the nuclear weapons were physically located, notably the heavy reliance on overseas deployment in the 1950s). Though much important information is redacted (including exact numbers in many places, and many of the names of the countries where the weapons were placed), it is still possible to reconstruct a fairly detailed history of the topics at hand. Some of the redacted tables relating to custody were declassified for Wainstein, et. al, 1975 (which references an earlier 1970 version of the report), and much of the redacted location information was figured out and published in Norris et. al 1999.
Citation
Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy), “History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons, July 1945 through September 1977,” (February 1978).
Provenance
Originally available on the Department of Defense FOIA website, although the original link seems to have been broken. A mirror of the file is available from the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability.
Topics
Referenced in
Document entry started by Alex Wellerstein on June 2, 2018. Entry last updated by Mikael Kelly on October 13, 2018.