Sorry, Calling the Russian Seismic Event an 'Unresolved Mystery' Reinforces, Rather Than Eliminates, C.T.B. Criticisms

(Washington, D.C.): Today’s Washington Post and Washington Times published starkly
contrasting reports about the seismic “event” that occurred on 16 August in the vicinity of the
Russian nuclear test site at Novaya Zemlya. The differences between these articles by the Post‘s
R. Jeffrey Smith and the Times‘ Bill Gertz powerfully underscore the argument that the Nation’s
Capital must have an alternative to the Washington Post as a source of daily news and analysis:
In the absence of the Washington Times, and the tenacious investigative reporting that has
become Mr. Gertz’s trademark as its National Security correspondent, policy-makers and the
public might actually have been induced to accept assertions that the event was definitely not
caused by a covert Russian nuclear test.

Since the more accurate conclusion — namely, that the United States is not sure what created
the seismic signals detected in August and cannot rule out an explosive source as its cause —
creates significant problems for the Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) Treaty, it is entirely
understandable why the Clinton Administration would want to conclude otherwise. And given his
longstanding reportorial advocacy of arms control and his historic unwillingness to credit evidence
of Soviet/Russian non-compliance, Jeff Smith could be expected to publish an account of a recent
classified CIA “Red Team”⁽¹⁾ review of the data in ways that are supportive of the CTB and
critical of intelligence analysts who suspected the Russians of conducting an illegal nuclear test.⁽²⁾

According to intelligence officials cited by Smith, the “Red Team’s” conclusion was that “the
disturbance ‘almost certainly’ was not caused by a nuclear explosion”:

⁽³⁾

neither the panel nor the CIA reached a
conclusion about whether the event was indeed caused by an earthquake, as the
CIA’s critics had claimed, leaving it as an unresolved mystery of non-nuclear
origin.

What Do You Mean ‘Unresolved Mystery?‘

Therein lies the rub. Neither the panel nor anybody else in the West can say for sure what the
source of the seismic signal is. As an unnamed “senior intelligence official involved with arms
control issues” quoted by Gertz put it: “The seismic data cannot determine with high
confidence whether the event was an explosion or an earthquake.”

Two factors reported by Gertz — but notably absent from Smith’s report — provide strong
circumstantial grounds for believing that the seismic event was precipitated by a Russian
explosion of some kind, despite the “Red Team’s” “almost certain” conclusion to the contrary:

“The official…disputed claims by some seismologists that the area around Novaya
Zemlya is subject to frequent earthquake activity. ‘This is a very aseismic region,’ the
official said.”

“Russia had set up underground cables and vehicles with electronic gear at the site that
appeared in satellite photographs to be identical to past nuclear-test preparations.” And,
according to the senior official, “Nuclear weapons-related experiments were conducted by
the Russians in mid-August at Novaya Zemlya. The experiments are continuing to this
day.”

“The senior official said the weapons tests involved ‘subcritical’ nuclear tests —
small blasts that do not release nuclear energy — or ‘very low-yield nuclear
experiments that did produce a yield….If it was a nuclear blast, its size would have
been equal to an explosion caused by between 100 tons and 1,000 tons of TNT.”
(Emphasis added throughout.)

Particularly noteworthy was the bottom line of Bill Gertz’s article:

“Asked how the panel could know the event was non-nuclear when it remains
undetermined as to what it was, the senior official said, ‘There is a degree of
uncertainty left in that. As with all things in intelligence, you never try to rule
things out in an absolute sense.’

“The official said [the] data is inconsistent. ‘At several stations the event looks
like an explosion; at others, it [looks] like either an earthquake or an
explosion.‘”

What About Decoupling?

If the source of the seismic signals were indeed an explosion resulting from “Russian nuclear-related testing,” there is a distinct possibility that it was a low-yield nuclear explosion, rather than
a large high-explosive one. As the Center for Security Policy noted on 20 October 1997:

“The seismic evidence obtained from this event is not inconsistent with
signatures from a ‘decoupled’ nuclear test — a type of test well within the
technical abilities of the Russians and that one would expect to see in a CTB
environment. ‘Decoupling’ is a technique that can mask a detonation’s seismic
signatures by putting distance between the device and the walls of its underground
cavity. It was described in an important unclassified analysis prepared in November
1994 for the Pentagon organization then-known as the Defense Nuclear Agency. The
accompanying Report Documentation Page of this study, which was entitled ‘The
Feasibility of Evasive Underground Nuclear Testing Through Decoupling,’
provides the following unclassified abstract:

‘…Recent calculations of cavity decoupling suggest that it is feasible to
partially decouple a nuclear explosion of about 10 kilotons or so in hard
rocks that its teleseismic signal might be masked by a simultaneous signal
blast mining detonation using chemical explosives….To the extent
that…larger aspect ratio openings do not degrade the decoupling, the
possibility of even larger yield (perhaps as much as 50 kilotons or so)
evasive testing cannot be discounted.’ (Emphasis added.)

Watch This Space

An honest assessment of the latest review of the Russian seismic event only serves to reinforce
concerns expressed by the Center for Security Policy after Jeff Smith’s first published effort to
discredit charges of Russian non-compliance with the CTB:

Since the zero-yield Comprehensive Test Ban signed by the Clinton Administration is
unverifiable, there will be many more instances in the future of “ambiguous” events in
which there is reason to believe a test has occurred, but lack clear-cut proof one way or the
other.

When such incidents arise, the community of seismic experts can be relied upon to
challenge any finding of non-compliance.

Perhaps worst of all, given this experience, intelligence analysts will be still less inclined to
reach politically unwelcome conclusions, even where common sense and the preponderance
of the evidence suggest that prohibited testing may well have occurred.

The Bottom Line

The American people owe a debt of gratitude to the Washington Times — and in particular to Bill
Gertz — for helping to keep the Clinton Administration and its friends at the Washington Post
accountable. The contrast in the Smith and Gertz articles simply adds urgency to the Center’s
earlier appeal to the United States Senate to examine with care all the facts concerning the
Novaya Zemlya event.

Should the Senate do so, the larger reality should become sufficiently clear that even Jeff Smith
may get it: No inspection regime imaginable, let alone that provided for by the
Comprehensive Test Ban, will ensure the true character of all future “ambiguous” events is
discovered. As a consequence, the CTB will remain unverifiable, allowing the Russians (among
others) to circumvent it secure in the knowledge that, even if their covert tests are detected,
Western “experts” will fail to resolve all the ambiguities — and will be content with declaring the
seismic events “unresolved mysteries,” rather than evidence of systematic non-compliance.

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1. This term is attributed by Smith to an intelligence official. Typically, the term “Red Team” is
used to describe an effort not only to get an independent analysis of a particular proposition, but
also to have it assessed from a hostile point of view. In this case, the four members of the so-called “Red Team” do not seem to fit that bill: Stanford physicist Dr. Sidney Drell has for
decades been a preeminent advocate for a CTB; Southern Methodist University seismologist Dr.
Eugene Herrin has long evinced confidence in his science’s ability effectively to monitor a CTB;
Dr. Roger Hagengruber is a vice president of Sandia — one of the three national nuclear
weapons laboratories whose official support for a CTB is widely believed to have been coerced by
former Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary lest their budgets be slashed (or in the case of
Lawrence Livermore, eliminated) by DoE; and Richard Kerr, a former Deputy Director of the
CIA not known to have expertise in this field.

2. In fact, even before the results of the classified “Red Team” analysis was leaked to Smith, he
filed a report that was sharply critical of U.S. intelligence and trumpeted the arguments of those
who were persuaded the event was caused by an offshore earthquake. See the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Nuclear Spin-Control: Clinton See-No-Evil Response To Apparent Russian Test
Offers Bitter Foretaste of C.T.B. (No. 97-D 156, 20 October 1997).

3. As the Center noted on 28 August in its Decision Brief entitled Wake-Up Call From Novaya
Zemlya: Zero-Yield Nuclear Test Ban Is Unverifiable, Russians Will Cheat, U.S. Will Suffer
(No. 97-D 119), the Washington Times reported that day that it was only “after data from the
Russian monitoring stations were analyzed further” that “the initial conclusion that the suspected
blast occurred very near the test site was revised to place its center miles offshore.”