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November 16, 2020

Interview with Robert Einhorn

Robert Einhorn is a former US diplomat. He served as the head of the US delegation to ACRS. 

September 2, 1960

Note, Homi Bhabha to Shri Y. D. Gundevia

Homi Bhabha writes to Prime Minister Nehru about India's international status as a country possessing a plutonium plant but not a nuclear weapons program.

January 1966

Excerpt of an Indian Document on Chinese Nuclear Delivery Capability

An excerpt of a document recovered from the Air India 101 crash assessing China's military capabilities.

May 14, 1964

Research Memorandum INR-16 from Thomas L. Hughes to the Secretary, 'Indian Nuclear Weapons Development'

An intelligence report that the fuel core of the Canadian-Indian Reactor (CIR) at Trombay was being changed every six months raised questions about India’s nuclear objectives: a six-month period was quite short for “normal research reactor operations,” but it was the optimum time for using the CIR’s spent fuel for producing weapons grade plutonium. According to INR, India had taken the “first deliberate decision in the series leading to a nuclear weapon,” which was to have “available, on demand, unsafeguarded weapons-grade plutonium or, at the least, the capacity to produce it.”

June 18, 1974

Memorandum of Conversation, 'Indian Nuclear Explosion; World Food Conference; Pacific Coast Tankers; NATO Declaration; Middle East; Trade Bill'

Canada’s safeguards had failed to prevent India from converting spent fuel from the CANDU reactor into plutonium. Kissinger acknowledged to Canadian Foreign Minister Mitchell Sharp that U.S. safeguards had also proven to be “lousy,” failing to prevent India from using U.S.-supplied heavy water for its nuclear activities. Sharp asked Kissinger how the proliferation of nuclear technology could be prevented and what should be said to the Argentines and the Egyptians, who were also seeking to use nuclear energy. But Kissinger evidently had no answer.

May 27, 1974

Confidential Note from Pierre Laurent to the French Foreign Minister

Pierre Laurent of the French Department of Scientific Affairs describes the first Indian nuclear test and the resulting reevaluation of French nuclear cooperation with India. New guarantees are suggested to ensure that French-supplied nuclear technology and materials could not be used in future Indian nuclear explosions.

October 30, 1951

Letter from UK Embassy in Paris to London on Franco-Indian agreement

British Ambassador Oliver Harvey reports a conversation with the Director of the French Atomic Energy Commission Jules Guéron on the details of Franco-Indian nuclear cooperation.

January 16, 1950

Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission

The Indian Atomic Energy Commission meets with the French High Commissioner for Atomic Energy Joliot-Curie to discuss nuclear cooperation between India and France.

May 18, 1974

State Department cable 104613 to Consulate, Jerusalem, 'India Nuclear Explosion'

The day of the test, State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) rushed to update Kissinger. INR provided background on what had happened, how the United States and Canada had inadvertently helped India produce plutonium for the test device, earlier U.S. and Canadian demarches against “peaceful nuclear explosions,” and India’s capabilities to produce and deliver nuclear weapons. The report did not state whether India had made a decision to produce weapons, but it forecast that two large unsafeguarded reactors under construction could eventually “produce enough plutonium for 50-70 nuclear weapons.”

March 7, 1972

US Embassy Canada cable 391 to State Department, 'India’s Nuclear Intentions'

U.S. embassy officials report on an interview with Lauren Gray, the chairman of Canada’s Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB), who had recently visited India. Having spoken with Homi Nusserwanji Sethna, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and other officials, Gray believed that Sethna opposed a test and that as long as Sethna and Indira Gandhi were in office “there was no chance” that India would test a nuclear device, which would take three to four years to prepare. Other officials with the AECB disagreed with Gray's estimates - based on their assessment of Indian’s ability to produce weapons grade plutonium, they argued that it would take no more than a year to produce a device. They also pointed out that about 18 months earlier there had been a “blackout” of statistical information on plutonium production in India.

Pagination