A VARIETY OF INDIVIDUALS and institutions played a significant role in the production of this book. There are those who have researched and written about foreign nuclear weapons programs and U.S. nuclear intelligence efforts—in books, magazines and journals, newspapers, and on the Web sites of a variety of organizations. Although they did not undertake their work for my benefit, nonetheless it would have been impossible for one person to reproduce even a fraction of their work and I am grateful for their contributions.
A number of institutions have allowed me to examine their holdings or have provided documents in response to my requests. These include the California Institute of Technology, the American Institute of Physics, the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Other organizations responded to some of my many Freedom of Information Act requests by releasing relevant documents, in whole or in part, including the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, State Department, Air Combat Command, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. I appreciate the work of the people who processed my requests and reviewed the documents.
A number of individuals are also due thanks. Both Robert S. Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council and William Burr of the National Security Archive provided relevant documents as well as read each chapter and provided valuable suggestions and comments. Thomas Powers and Matin Zuberi provided helpful comments and suggestions with respect to selected chapters. Chris Pocock alerted me to relevant files in the U.K. National Archives and kindly copied a number of interesting documents that the archives contained. Others who provided information and suggestions include Matthew Aid, Desmond Ball, Hans Kristensen, Robert Windrem, and Dwayne Day. At the National Security Archive Magda Klotzenbach repeatedly printed out significant documents that were essential to this book.
Tim Brown’s work was crucial to my being able to identify the dates and frequency of aerial and satellite coverage of a number of nuclear targets, as well as to my presenting some of the imagery obtained. He searched the data sets at NARA to determine when certain targets were photographed by the U-2, KH-4, and KH-7 reconnaissance systems and the quality of the imagery produced. He also located examples of the imagery in NARA’s holdings, a particularly difficult task for U-2 imagery, and reproduced a selection for this book. As a result, a number of the images included in this book are appearing for the first time in an unclassified work.
Mark Brender and Valerie Webb of Space Imaging were instrumental in my being able to obtain their company’s images of nuclear installations in Iran and North Korea.
I owe an enormous debt to those individuals who were willing to be interviewed for this book, either in person or via telephone. They include Alan Berman (Alexandria, Va., March 27, 2003), Dino Brugioni (January 23, 2003, February 21, 2003), Robert Furman (Rockville, Md., February 13, 2003), Robert L. Gallucci (Washington, D.C., June 22, 2004), Richard Garwin (July 24, 2004), Houston T. Hawkins (October 28, 2004), Lester Hubert (September 15, 2004), Thomas L. Hughes (Washington, D.C., September 8, 2004), Robert Johnson (Washington, D.C., May 9, 2003), David Kay (Arlington, Va., April 28, 2003), Spurgeon Keeny (Washington, D.C., February 6, 2003), Myron Kratzer (September 2, 2003), Philip Morrison (January 29, 2003), Jack Ruina (July 19, 2004), Leonard Spector (Washington, D.C., March 5, 2003), Waldo Stumpf (September 13, 2004), Greg Thielmann (Arlington, Va., October 20, 2004), Notra Trulock (Washington, D.C., March 28, 2003), Stansfield Turner (April 17, 2003), and Leonard Weiss (Silver Spring, Md., March 19, 2003).
In addition, others interviewed for past projects—the late Richard Bissell (Farmington, Conn., March 16, 1994), Jack Ledford (Arlington, Va., October 7, 1999), the late Karl Weber (Oakton, Va., May 5, 1999), and Albert Wheelon (Washington, D.C., April 9, 1997, and Montecito, Calif., November 11–12, 1998)—provided information that proved helpful for this book.
I would also like to thank the National Security Archive for its support, in a variety of ways. Of course, special thanks go to my editor, Leo Wiegman, Sarah Mann, and the others at W. W. Norton involved in the production of this book.