Item COLD WAR 27/36 - Transcript of interview with politician Paul H Nitze, 1996

Typescript transcript of interview with Paul Henry Nitze, Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, US Defense Department, 1961-1963, US Secretary of the Navy, 1963-1967, US Deputy Secretary of Defense, 1967-1969, Member of the US Strategic Arms Limitation Talks I (SALT I) Delegation, 1969-1974, Chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger, 1977-1981, Head of the US INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces) negotiations, 1981-1984, and Special Adviser to the US President and Secretary of Defense on Arms Control, 1984-1988, relating to the US reaction to the detonation of the first Soviet atomic bomb, Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, USSR, 29 Aug 1949; US intelligence estimates on the Soviet nuclear development programme, 1946-1949; the US National Security Council Document 68 (NSC68), a review of US defence policy heavily influenced by the communist takeover in China, Oct 1949, the USSR becoming a nuclear power, Aug 1949, and US fears of the Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons (Hydrogen bombs), 1950; the US political reaction to NSC68 and speculation on a massive increase in US defence expenditure, 1950; the Korean War, 1950-1953; the ratification of NSC68 and agreement on an increase in US defence spending, 1950; the increase in US conventional forces and nuclear weapons, 1950-[1955]; speculation on the possibility of the USA using nuclear weapons during the Korean War, 1950-1953; the slow production and deployment of US atomic bombs, 1945-1946; the decision by US President Harry S Truman for the US development of thermonuclear weapons, 1950; the importance of Professor Edward Teller to the US Hydrogen bomb development programme, 1949-1952; the arrest of Dr Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs, a nuclear physicist, for passing atomic secrets to the USSR, 1950; the 'bomber gap', the US belief that the USSR had more strategic bombers in operational service than the USAF, [1955-1957]; the US use of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) piloted Lockheed U2 high altitude photographic reconnaissance aircraft in missions over the USSR to search for Soviet ICBM silos, 1956-1960; US intelligence information received from Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, a Soviet double agent, who provided evidence that the 'bomber gap' was a myth, [1957]; the launch of the Soviet Sputnik I and Sputnik II Earth orbiting satellites via SS-6 'Sapwood' Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM), Oct and Nov 1957; the negative reaction by the US public to the Soviet launch of Sputnik, 1957; the Gaither Report, a Ford Foundation Commission Study, that concluded that the USSR was ahead of the USA in the production of nuclear missiles, Oct 1957; the shooting down, near Sverdlovsk, USSR, of a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Lockheed U2 high altitude photographic reconnaissance aircraft, and the capture of the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, May 1960; the role and importance of Yuliy Aleksandrovich Kvitsinsky as head of the Soviet arms control negotiating team, Geneva, Switzerland, (1981-1985); the 'walk in the woods' arms control discussions between Nitze and Kvitsinsky, Switzerland, (1982); Nitze's relationship with US President Ronald (Wilson) Reagan, 1981-1989; the US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 1983-1986; the reformist policies of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, 1985-1991; Gorbachev's relationship with Erich Honecker, Head of State, German Democratic Republic, 1976-1989; the Berlin Crisis, Germany, 1956-1961.26pp