The U.S., Canada, and the Indian Nuclear Program, 1968-1974

From a confidential source with the Canadian High Commission, whose name is excised in this text, the Embassy learned that an inspection team visiting the Canada-India Reactor (CIR) at Trombay had “‘inadvertently’ obtained” unspecified data “from an unidentified scientist” that “might indicate” that the Indian government was “working toward development of a nuclear device.” The information raised doubts among the Canadian inspectors, who concluded that they did “not have an entirely clear picture of the total use of the reactor.” “Unsettled” by their discovery, the inspectors wanted the data analyzed when they returned to Canada.

According to the message, a major problem was that, while the Indian-Canada safeguards agreement specified “peaceful uses,” India’s definition of “peaceful” permitted the production of plutonium for a “‘peaceful’ nuclear device,” which the Indians distinguished from a military device. Moreover, although not mentioned in this telegram, the Canadian-Indian agreement, which was negotiated before IAEA safeguards even existed, provided no means to constrain India’s nuclear choices.

The Embassy reported that the Canadian diplomat who provided the information, identified in other messages as Eric Wang, was a “responsible and reliable source” but was not a trained nuclear scientist. The signator, U.S. Embassy Chargé William H. Weathersby, suggested passing the message to the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa to see if Canadian officials could provide more information on the findings.

Whether Eric Wang provided the information under instruction or was freelancing is not clear, but subsequent messages indicate that the State Department wanted to protect his identity as a source. Wang would rise in the ranks of the Canadian Foreign Service, eventually becoming ambassador to Denmark and then to Iraq.

Eric Wang, on the staff of Canada’s High Commission in New Delhi, recently informed the U.S. Embassy that officials with Canada’s Atomic Energy Board had conducted an inspection of the Rajasthan Atomic Power Project [RAPP I].

The Embassy’s June 26 message is routed to the Embassy in Ottawa as Weathersby in India had recommended.

After receiving Wang’s notification that Canada had inspected Indian nuclear reactors (see Document 2), the State Department recommends that the Embassy make a direct inquiry concerning the “extent [of] Canadian satisfaction with results.” The confidential discussions with Eric Wang were not be mentioned to Canadian officials.

This telegram first became available in the records of U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) Director William C. Foster and can be found on the Digital National Security Archive, but its full significance becomes more evident when one considers the diplomatic maneuvering that preceded it. Following the Department’s request, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) scientific representative at the U.S. Embassy in Canada, met with Atomic Energy Control Board president George C. Laurence and his chief special adviser D. H. Dewar for a discussion of the inspection of the RAPP I and the Canadian-Indian Reactor (CIR). According to Laurence, because the inspection was limited only to the Canadian-supplied fuel elements it was “futile” for detecting weapons activity. Nevertheless, he disclosed that the fuel discharged at CIR had been “irradiated … at low exposure which produced weapons grade plutonium.” Dewar added that it was possible that the reactor could produce up to 12 kilograms of plutonium a year.

Laurence saw two possible reasons for the “short exposure”: 1) the production of weapons grade plutonium, or 2) “corrosion of fuel clad in CIR necessitating premature discharge.” In that connection, he said that fuel fabricated by the Indians was of “good quality” but there had been a problem with corrosion in CIR’s early operation. Laurence had no evidence that the Indians had a weapons program underway.

India’s capabilities to produce plutonium in 1968 were quite limited. Although India had a reprocessing plant at Trombay based on technology provided by a U.S. firm, operating it posed challenges. It is not clear to what degree it was reprocessing spent fuel into plutonium in 1968. Laurence’s estimate of 12 kilograms a year was high, with later studies suggesting somewhat less than 5 kilograms annually.[1]

Commenting on the telegram from the Embassy in Ottawa (Document 5), U.S. Ambassador Chester Bowles signs off on a message suggesting that the fuel elements might have been removed early because of corrosion and other problems. The message does not refute the possibility of plutonium production. While Eric Wang had suggested that the data picked up by the Canadian inspectors would have to be analyzed with computers, the Embassy observes that the statements made by Laurence did not appear to be based on “computer analysis.” Bowles suggests that U.S. officials in Ottawa “probe for additional information” if the occasion arises. No follow-up messages appear in the file.

Concerned about Indian nuclear developments, the Government of Pakistan was pressing for a UN resolution condemning the development of “peaceful nuclear explosives.” What exactly motivated the Pakistanis is unclear, but in light of the concerns, the State Department in this telegram sought the Embassy’s views about whether India had begun a “definite” nuclear explosives program. The PNE program was “tantamount to [the] development [of] nuclear weapons,” according to the telegram. The Department also requested the Embassy’s views as to whether the U.S. should advise the Indian government that the production of plutonium in U.S. “assisted reactors” and the production of PNEs “would be considered by US [as a] contravention of terms under which US materials made available to India.”

Responding to the Department’s September 29 telegram, the Embassy’s position was that the Indian government had not embarked on a program to develop nuclear explosives. Indian officials had discussed the possibility of PNEs, and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had said that “much study” would be necessary before an underground test was possible but also said that domestic pressures might impel India to “begin serious study of underground blast technology.” Not sure whether the U.S. had made clear its views on the indistinguishability of PNEs and nuclear weapons or that the development of PNEs would breach U.S.-Indian agreements, the Embassy preferred that the U.S. not make a “high-level” approach on the matter. Instead, the U.S. should “probe” India’s intentions and encourage discussions between AEC officials and their Indian counterparts about the relationship between the NPT, PNEs, and U.S.-Indian agreements.

Believing that the U.S. government should make its views on PNE’s known on a “timely basis,” the State Department did not want the Indian government to have any “misapprehensions.” Therefore, it requested that the Embassy inform New Delhi that the “use of plutonium produced pursuant to US-Indian civil agreements for [the] manufacture [of] PNE devices would be incompatible with such agreements and that we would object most strongly to such use.”

The approvals for this message indicate that it was handled below the top levels of the State Department. It was drafted by an Atomic Energy Commission official and coordinated with other State Department offices, but not with the Department’s Executive Secretariat, and much less the White House, where senior-level interest in nuclear nonproliferation policy was low.

U.S. diplomats delivered the demarche on PNEs to the foreign affairs ministry but also to M.A. Vellodi, a diplomat who had been deputized to Vikram Sarabhai, the Chair of India’s Atomic Energy Commission. A copy of the statement as it was delivered has not shown up in the State Department’s central files, but the text is found in the annex to a 1972 briefing book for a Senior Review Group meeting

(see Document 12). Arguing that PNEs could not be distinguished from nuclear weapons, the U.S. declared that the Indians could not use U.S. supplies for the production of PNEs, citing, for example, a 1960 contract with India on the supply of heavy water stipulating that it was to be used only for peaceful purposes. But as the contract did not include language specifically proscribing PNEs, the Indians saw no constraints on pursuing them.

Responding on the spot to the demarche, Vellodi noted that India would “honor its international atomic energy commitments.” India was interested in employing nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes, he said, but lacked the means and intention to do so “any time soon.” Not intending to develop nuclear weapons, India nevertheless felt free to use nuclear technology “for any peaceful purposes and to undertake whatever development is required for this.” Plainly disagreeing with the view that producing PNEs was “indistinguishable” from developing nuclear weapons, the Indian government believed it had freedom of action to develop and test nuclear explosives. There was no follow-up to the Indian reply. Although the U.S. had a weak hand, its position was officially on record, and that may have been as far as it went.

During 1972, U.S. intelligence picked up intimations that an Indian nuclear test could be imminent, leading national security adviser Henry Kissinger to issue National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 156, requesting a study on the implications for U.S. policy of an Indian nuclear test and the impacts on India’s neighbors and other “key states.” Kissinger also requested an “intelligence estimate of the likely time frame” of Indian nuclear developments.

This is the resulting study, which paralleled the production of a Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) on the subject. This version of the NSSM 156 study was released in 2018 through a declassification request to the U.S. National Archives. With excisions by the CIA and the National Security Council, more information was withheld from release in this version than in the one published in the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States series 17 years ago in 2005. Such are the vagaries of the U.S. declassification process.

A major focus of the NSSM 156 study was to review the unilateral and multilateral approaches that the U.S. and allies could take to try to dissuade the Indian government from staging a test and the possible reactions should the Indians decide to do so. According to the study, bilateral action could include “low key” efforts at dissuasion, while multilateral action could include progress toward a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty–which would make it more difficult for the Indians to test–and working with other countries, including the Soviet Union, to discourage the Indians from testing. If the Indians went ahead and tested, the U.S. and its allies could state their objections. One proposed approach was a “public statement of displeasure.” The NSSM also considers various possible approaches to Pakistan if the Indians were to conduct a test, ranging from advising the Pakistanis that the U.S. sees “no Indian nuclear threat to them” to the “other extreme of offering Pakistan the sort of nuclear assurances we have given our NATO allies and Japan.”

The study incorporates the basic findings of Special National Intelligence Estimate 31-72 (enclosed with Document 12), which found that India was “capable of detonating a nuclear device within a few days to a year of a decision to do so.” India already had produced enough plutonium to construct 10 to 12 low-yield weapons. The chances were “roughly even” that in the near future India would test a device.

To review the findings of the NSSM 156 report, the Senior Review Group scheduled a meeting for October 4, 1972, the purpose of which was apparently to form a consensus on unilateral and multilateral approaches that the U.S. and allies could take to discourage an Indian test or in response should the Indians decide to conduct one. In the briefing paper prepared for the meeting, Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Sisco expressed concern that the U.S. would lose influence with India if it took too hard a stand against a test but also that it would fail to have an impact on the “inhibitions [of] other near-nuclear countries” if the reaction were too mild. If the Indians were to conduct a test, Sisco favored an alternative in the NSSM study involving a U.S. “public statement of displeasure.” With respect to Pakistan, the briefing paper indicated that “we tentatively believe our role should be to seek to steady Pakistan by a reaffirmation of our general assurances of support against nuclear blackmail.”

The briefing package for the meeting includes Special National Intelligence Estimate 31-72, along with other background material, including the text of the demarche delivered to the Indian Government in November 1970. What conclusions the Senior Review Group may have drawn from the discussion will remain unknown until the record of the meeting is declassified.

On May 18, 1974, India staged an underground test of a nuclear device, declaring its first nuclear explosion, code named “Smiling Buddha,” to be a PNE. Consistent with NSSM 156’s option for an expression of “displeasure” over an Indian test, the State Department recommended that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger approve a public statement that the U.S. “consider this an unfortunate step” because of its adverse impact for nuclear proliferation.

Kissinger, however, forbade any comment by the Department unless it was specifically asked. Writing from Damascus, where he was meeting with Syrian president Assad, Kissinger wanted to avoid any action that could antagonize India and further complicate U.S.-Indian relations. In his role as national security adviser to the president, Kissinger sent this little noted message to his White House deputy, Brent Scowcroft, in which he took a rather scornful approach to the nuclear nonproliferation agenda. Opposed to taking the lead in a “world-wide” hostile reaction to the test, he argues that it would needlessly antagonize India and would be mainly reflective of a “self-serving and self-promoting tendency [designed] for the domestic record.” Having given nuclear nonproliferation a relatively low priority, Kissinger declared that such “breastbeating” would have only a “marginal” impact on the nuclear programs of other countries. While Kissinger saw nuclear proliferation as inevitable, his advisers sought to persuade him that it was worth trying to limit it.

Soon after the May 1974 test, the U.S. intelligence community sought to discern the effects and implications of the event and the direction that New Delhi’s nuclear policy might take. To assist that study, the State Department sent the U.S. Embassy in India questions concerning the country’s nuclear intentions and capabilities. The telegraphic reply, signed by U.S. Ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan, reviewed a number of issues, including delivery systems, possible options for weapons programs, the impact of foreign reactions, and the possibility of nuclear assistance and sales to “third countries.”

Looking back at SNIE 31-72, Moynihan saw it as “very good in retrospect” because of its judgement that India was not likely to undertake a “crash program” for delivery systems. India could have a “limited delivery capability by the end of the decade,” according to Moynihan, based on its ongoing research and development work. The Indians would also continue work to improve the efficiency of their nuclear devices and stockpile a small number so they “can be used for either peaceful or military purposes.”

According to the Embassy, the Indians “will continue publicly to insist that all research—both ballistic and nuclear—is peaceful,” but also that the military will want to preserve an option for a military program with devices “left open for multiple use,” and that “Mrs. Gandhi will agree or has already agreed to this.”

Moynihan also found “valid” the SNIE’s judgement that “foreign reactions will not be decisive in affecting Indian decisions on its nuclear development program.” Still, Moynihan saw an "unlikely but possible” chance that “Mrs. Gandhi—“for reasons of prestige, to underline [India’s] differences from other nuclear states, and to deflect internal pressure”—might offer to open up India’s nuclear program to outside inspection in such a way as to limit or even preclude the nuclear weapons option.” Moynihan cited several “hints” of such pressures, including a report in which Indian AEC officials said they needed plutonium for the breeder reactor program and that further tests could reduce supplies.

The Embassy’s May 30 telegram may have contributed to this interagency report whose purpose was to estimate whether India was heading toward the development of a “nuclear strike force” in spite of the “asserted purpose of experimentation for peaceful purposes.” The drafters of this report candidly acknowledge the lack of relevant intelligence, with no “firm evidence” available on whether the Indian government had made any decisions on nuclear weapons policy; even the possibility that India intended to “develop only a capability for peaceful nuclear explosions” could not be dismissed. But the substantial excisions suggest that some of the evidence supporting the analysis may have been redacted, even if the basic approach comes through.

Reviewing India’s political and strategic motivations, the analysts highlight the “prestige” associated with nuclear club membership and India’s desire for “paramountcy” in South Asia. China, the report found, “is the only logical threat that could be seen as requiring development of a weapons capability at this time,” an effort that “would require a major effort over many years and an inordinate expenditure of resources.” Still, the analysts suggested that India “could see merit in acquiring a limited but credible nuclear strike capability against China.”

After assessing India’s capability to produce nuclear weapons, its delivery system options, and the costs of a strategic program, the estimate evaluated three policy choices. Option A was to continue nuclear development for peaceful uses, with no military purposes. If India made such a choice, “the technology developed for PNE would be eminently suited for application to nuclear weapons developments should the decision be made.” Option B was a “covert buildup of a small weapons inventory under the cover of a PNE program but with little or no improvement of delivery capabilities.” This was considered the “most likely course.” Option C would be a decision to create a nuclear-armed strike force of either bombers and missiles or both. Such a program could also be pursued secretly but intelligence services would eventually detect it. Option C was a difficult choice because it would “create enormous complications” for India’s position in world politics, considering expected repercussions with Iran and Pakistan and with foreign aid providers such as the United States, and the possibility of an expensive arms race with China.

The estimate treated Options A or B as the main choices before India. “There is no evidence available that indicates the present Indian choice between the two.” India’s aspirations, its supply of plutonium, and the “presence of a nuclear power directly to the north,” could lead it to “move toward Option B within a few years if it has not chosen already to follow that course of action.” If India pursued the covert route, over time the government would feel pressure from the military leadership that could make increasing demands for an “effective operational force, particularly as the inventory of weapons accumulated.”

While the nuclear choices that India made after May 1974 remain largely secret, the government did seek to improve its delivery capabilities, seen, for example, in the 1978 decision by the Desai Government to purchase nuclear-capable Jaguar aircraft from the United Kingdom.[2]