Atomic intelligence in Norway during the Cold War

Abstract

Thanks to its geographical location and close military ties to the US and Britain, Norway took substantial part in the Western intelligence effort against the Soviet nuclear weapons programme during the Cold War. Norway's relative proximity to the nuclear weapons test sites on Novaya Zemlya and the nuclear submarine bases on the Kola Peninsula was of particular importance in this regard. Whereas the tasks of surveying the development, deployment and possible employment of Soviet nuclear forces always had first priority, Western atomic intelligence conducted from Norwegian soil and waters was occasionally aimed even at gathering information about the geophysical and possible long-term medical and environmental implications of high-yield nuclear explosions in the atmosphere.

Key Words:

• Norway
• atomic intelligence
• Cold War

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Professor Olav Riste and to several former employees at the Norwegian Intelligence Staff for valuable comments and suggestions. Whatever mistakes and errors of judgement that may still remain I am, of course, alone responsible.

Notes

¹Rolf Tamnes, The United States and the Cold War in the High North (Oslo: Ad Notam 1991), 100. The most comprehensive account on Norway's role in US and NATO nuclear planning is Kjetil Skogrand and Rolf Tamnes, Fryktens likevekt: Atombomben, Norge og verden 1945–1970 (Oslo: Tiden 2001).

²Norwegian concerns in this regard are thoroughly documented by Rolf Tamnes, ‘Integration and Screening: the Two Faces of Norwegian Alliance Policy, 1945–1986’, Forsvarsstudier VI (Oslo: Institutt for forsvarsstudier 1987); Knut Einar Eriksen and Helge Ø. Pharo, Kald krig og internasjonalisering 1949–1965, Vol. 5, Norsk utenrikspolitikks historie (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget 1997), and Olav Riste, Norway's Foreign Relations – a History (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget 2001).

³Olav Riste, The Norwegian Intelligence Service 1945–1970 (London: Frank Cass 1999), 296.

⁴The various components of the close US-Norwegian relationship in the fields of military intelligence are thoroughly described by Olav Riste and Arnfinn Moland, ‘Strengt hemmelig’: Norsk etterretningsteneste 1945–1979 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget 1997), and by Riste, Norwegian Intelligence Service.

⁵US and British warnings and concerns about Norway's uranium enrichment effort in particular and its atomic energy programme in general appear in numerous documents at the time, including Note, British Embassy (Washington DC) to the US State Dept., 20 Aug. 1948, Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1948, Vol. I, 746; Note, British Embassy (Washington DC) to the US State Dept., 16 Nov. 1948, FRUS 1948, Vol. I., 786–87; Note, Acting Secretary of State to the British Ambassador, 22 Nov. 1948, FRUS, 1948, Vol. I, 787; Memo, JCS to the Secretary of Defense, 24 Nov. 1948, FRUS, 1948, Vol. I, 788–89; ‘Aide-Mémoire: Atomic Energy: Norway’, British Embassy (Washington DC) to the US State Dept., 2 Dec. 1948, FRUS 1948, Vol. I, 789–90; and Note, Acting Secretary of State to the British Ambassador, 2 Dec. 1948, FRUS 1948, Vol. I, 790–91. Norwegian thinking on the subject is reflected in Memo, Ministry of Defence to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2 Sept. 1948, Oslo, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 30.5/17-III. Attached to the latter document was a report from the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (NDRE) expressing the opinion that the Soviets already disposed of the fissionable materials needed to develop a nuclear weapons capability, thus Norway would not risk much by pursuing its own atomic energy program. On the other hand, NDRE was convinced that, in case of major war, Norway would become a target for Soviet atomic bombs regardless of whether it developed its own nuclear weapons or not. Olav Njølstad, ‘Fissionable consensus: Scandinavia and the quest for international atomic energy control, 1946–1950’, Scandinavian Journal of History 19/5 (Dec. 1994), 349–64.

⁶Gunnar Randers to Minister of Defence (Hauge), ‘Memorandum of a conversation between Melander, Commander Porter and Randers’, 4 April 1949, Oslo, Private Papers of Jens Chr. Hauge, temporarily deposited at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS).

⁷Airgram, the US Secretary of State to Certain Diplomatic Missions Abroad, 16 Aug. 1948, FRUS (1948), Vol. I, 739–44; Memorandum, Chairman of the US AEC (Lilienthal) to the Chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy (McMahon), 18 Feb. 1949, w/enclosure, FRUS (1949), Vol. I, 430–33; Memo, Secretary of State (Acheson) to Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (Perkins), 13 Oct. 1949, FRUS (1949), Vol. I, 565–68. For details about the Norwegian response to the various US initiatives, see Memo (Anker), 7 Sept. 1948; Memo (Lange), 16 Sept. 1948; Letter, Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Ministry of Defence, 16 Sept. 1948; Memo (Ording), 14 March 1949, Oslo, Archives of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UD 38.1/9-II.

⁸G. Randers, Memo (top secret), ‘Conversations in Stockholm 9–10 February 1949’, 12 Jan. 1949, Kjeller, Archives of the Norwegian Institute of Energy (formerly Institute of Atomic Energy), 11831 USA; Memo, Randers & Møller to Ministry of Defence, 16 March 1949, Kjeller, Archives of NDRE, 033 IFA,; Letter w/attachment, Randers to Minister of Foreign Affairs (Lange), 1 July 1949, Oslo, Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 38.1.9-II; Memo w/attachments (secret), Randers to the Norwegian Research Council, 14 March 1950, Kjeller, Archives of the Norwegian Institute of Energy, 11822 France.

⁹Olav Njølstad, ‘Fissionable consensus: Scandinavia and the quest for international atomic energy control 1945–1950’, Journal of Scandinavian History 19/5 (Dec. 1994); Olav Njølstad, Strålende forskning: Institutt for Energiteknikk 1948–1998 (Oslo: Tano-Aschehoug 1999), 68–76; and Gunnar Skogmar, Nuclear Triangle: Relations between the United States, Great Britain and France in the Atomic Energy Field 1939–1950 (Copenhagen Political Studies Press 1993).

¹⁰For a full description of these measurements and causal connections, see Olav Njølstad, ‘Under en radioaktiv himmel: Norge og atomprøvespregningene, 1955–63’, Forsvarsstudier 3/1996 (Oslo: Institutt for forsvarsstudier).

¹¹Olav Njølstad and O. Wicken, Kunnskap som våpen: Forsvarets forskningsinstitutt 1946–1975 (Oslo: Tano 1997) and Njølstad, ‘Under en radioaktiv himmel: Norge og atomprøvespregningene, 1955–63’, Forsvarsstudier 3/1996 (Oslo: Institutt for forsvarsstudier).

¹²Olav Riste, The Norwegian Intelligence Service 1945–1970 (London: Frank Cass 1999). The present account relies heavily on Riste's book, and to a lesser extent on my own study ‘Under en radioaktiv himmel’ (see footnote 11 above) and on Njølstad and Wicken, Kunnskap som Våpen.

¹³Riste, Norwegian Intelligence Service.

¹⁴The implications of the U2-incident for the US-Norwegian intelligence relationship are discussed by Riste and Moland, ‘Strengt hemmelig,’ 112–17.

¹⁵This account is based on Riste and Moland, ‘Strengt hemmelig,’ 240–58 as well as my own research in the archives of the Norwegian Intelligence Service, the results of which were presented in Njølstad, ‘Beretning om en varslet provokasjon: Norske og sovjetiske perspektiver på 50-megatonnsprengningen over Novaya Zemlya 30. oktober 1961’[‘The story of a pre-warned provocation: Norwegian and Soviet perspectives on the 50 megaton explosion at Novaya Zemlya 30 October 1961’], 355–97 in Sven Holtsmark, Helge Pharo, Rolf Tamnes (eds.) Motstrøms: Olav Riste og norsk internasjonal historieskrivning (Oslo: Cappelen 2003).

¹⁶Lied to Minister of Defence Harlem, 15 Sept. 1961, Kjeller, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, Archive of the Executive Directors. For further information, see Njølstad and Wicken , Kunnskap som våpen, 415.

¹⁷Based in part on information conveyed to the author from the Norwegian Intelligence Staff.

¹⁸It should be noted that Norway at this time did not possess any independent national analysis capability as far as Elint was concerned. Thus the Elint-based measurements of the Soviet nuclear weapons tests that were issued by the Norwegian Intelligence Staff in 1956–62 were all based on information passed on from the USAF Elint analysts.

¹⁹Andrei D. Sakharov, Memoirs (NY: Knopf 1990), 222.

²⁰This was for instance the case with the very powerful explosion of 23 Oct. 1961, which on the basis of ‘Crack Pot’-data was calculated by US analysts to have had a yield of some 25–30 MT, whereas the official Russian estimate is 12.5 MT. If we look at relative figures rather than megatons, there were other cases with even greater discrepancies. Njølstad, ‘Beretning om en varslet provokasjon’, in Holtsmark, Pharo,and Tamnes, Motstrøms, 355–97.

²¹Riste and Moland, ‘Strengt hemmelig’, 256–57.

²²Njølstad and Wicken, Kunnskap som våpen, 418–21.

²³Ibid., 421.

²⁴The link between USAF, Norwegian military intelligence and the establishment of NORSAR in 1967–70 is pointed out also by Jacob Børresen, Gullow Gjeseth and Rolf Tamnes, Norsk forsvarshistorie, 1970–2000: Allianseforsvar i endring (Bergen: Eide 2004), 91.

²⁵For more information, see NORSAR's home page, <www.norsar.no>.

²⁶Sidney Greybeal in an interview with Riste and Moland 19 Oct. 1994, as quoted in Riste and Moland, ‘Strengt hemmelig’, 259, note 2.

²⁷Riste and Moland, ,‘Strengt hemmelig’, 202; Børresen, Gjeseth and Tamnes, Norsk forsvarshistorie, 91.

²⁸Riste and Moland, ‘Strengt hemmelig’, 199–205.

²⁹Ibid., 210–12; Børresen, Gjeseth and Tamnes, Norsk forsvarshistorie, 91.

³⁰Riste and Moland, ‘Strengt hemmelig’, 261–66.

³¹Børresen, Gjeseth and Tamnes, Norsk forsvarshistorie, 94.

³²The present account of the US-Norwegian cooperation in the Acoustint field relies heavily on three previous studies, each focusing on different aspects of the same matter; namely, Tamnes, United States and the Cold War in the High North, 210–13; Njølstad and Wicken, Kunnskap som våpen, 200–16; and Riste and Moland, “Strengt hemmelig”, 215–39.

³³Riste, Norway's Foreign Relation, 223.

³⁴Rolf Tamnes, Oljealder – 1965–1995, Vol. 6, Norsk utenrikspolitikks historie (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget 1997), 74.