Tuesday, April 11, 2006 | 7:22 a.m.
Critics are scoffing at the Bush administration's claims that its massive test blast scheduled for June at the Nevada Test Site is unrelated to the effort to build a nuclear bunker-buster.
"It is abundantly clear, at least to me, that the military has not given up the idea of a nuclear penetrator," said Christopher Hellman, a policy analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington. He noted that Congress last year killed funding for the nuclear bunker-busting program.
Nonethleless, "they want it, and they are going to do as much as they can to move that program further along until they feel the situation in Washington is more favorable," Hellman said.
The criticism came as a report in The New Yorker magazine said the administration had made contingency plans to strike at Iran's nuclear program with such a tactical nuclear weapon.
In the magazine's April 17 issue, Seymour Hersh reported that the administration is planning a bombing campaign to knock out Iran's military capability, including Iran's feared nuclear development program. The campaign could include bunker-busting nuclear weapons.
Spokesmen for the Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which is planning the 700-ton, June 2 blast at the Test Site, do not deny that the test was described last year as a planning tool for development of a tactical nuclear weapon.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency says the test is not now, however, directly related to Iran or to a nuclear program. Irene Smith, agency spokeswoman, said that a funding request last year contained language now considered obsolete. That request said the test would help find "the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities."
"The 700-ton explosive size was selected to cause a desired spectrum of damage to the facility," the agency said in a statement Monday. "The explosive amount represents no specific weapon, nuclear or conventional.
"War-fighters can use the models for their planning ... One key objective of our research is to determine the potential for future, non-nuclear concepts."
Smith said the June 2 test could simulate the simultaneous detonation of numerous conventional warheads on a buried target.
"It is way too big of a blast for us to generate conventionally," Hellman said. "I understand their argument. I find it uncompelling."
John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, another organization that has been critical of the administration's weapons policies, found the agency's claim that the test would simulate multiple conventional detonations particularly unrealistic.
Such a real-world effort would require dozens, perhaps hundreds, of aircraft or missiles delivering warheads all at the same spot, designed to go off at exactly the same time, to achieve the same blast yield as the Test Site exercise, Pike said.
"I have no problem with them doing this test, but my B.S. detector has gone off the scale," Pike said. "It's bizarre. It insults my intelligence."
He said the case can be made for the "robust nuclear earth penetrator" and an explosive test to develop such a weapon, but that the administration and Defense Department should be honest about it.
"It's been a long time since they've done one of these tests," Pike said. "They've already spent all the money, OK? And everybody loves a good explosion, right? I think Fox (News) and CNN and everyone will have a good time covering it. But just tell us that, rather than making up all of this foolishness."
At least one congressman is registering concern over the test. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, said in a letter to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency that he fears that the test is "being conducted in order to further misguided attempts to build new low-yield nuclear devices."
The June 2 blast "will not simulate an actual conventional bomb because no bomber in the U.S. fleet has the capacity to carry a weapon of this size," said Matheson, who represents southwest Utah. He also noted that budget documents refer to the test as part of a nuclear development program.
"In my experience, budget documents and the stated intent of planned experiments do not typically change on a whim," Matheson said in the letter, in which he asked for a response from the agency.
Hans Kristensen, an analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, a group which first raised the alarm over the June 2 test, said the geologic conditions at the Test Site resemble those in Iran. He said the blast also seems to closely resemble that which the military would achieve with the B-61 nuclear weapon, a part of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
The test, as described last year in Defense Department budget documents, would be to find the least powerful nuclear weapon that would still be capable of knocking out buried targets. In this way, fallout and radiation exposure to civilians or friendly military troops would be minimized.
The Nevada test "is very close to the low yield range of the nuclear stockpile," Kristensen said.
That is the type of tactical nuclear weapon that The New Yorker article said the administration is considering for use against Iran.
Hersh reported that only a few senators and members of Congress, including at least one Democrat, have been briefed on the administration's war plans, and that none of them "is really objecting to those plans." Over the winter, the Pentagon presented war plans to the administration that would include the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran.
Conventional weapons might not work against Iran's reported nuclear program, which includes facilities buried 75 feet underground. Anybody who has tried to take the nuclear option is "shouted down," Hersh wrote, quoting an unnamed former senior intelligence official.
President Bush on Monday referred to the reports of Iranian war plans as "wild speculation."
Nevada's congressional delegation appears to be accepting the administration's explanation that the Nevada test is not tied to either war plans for Iran or a nuclear bunker buster.
Melissa Subbotin, a spokeswoman for Rep. Jim Gibbons, a Republican running for Nevada governor, said the test shouldn't alarm residents.
"This is nothing new," she said. "Testing is a regular part of the military's activities."
She said despite concerns raised by Citizen Alert, a Nevada-based advocacy group, the test as presented by the Defense Department will be safe. "We have been monitoring this for safety," Subbotin said. "We're basing our statement on the Department of Defense report."
Any reports of a connection between the test and the administration's war plans for Iran would be supposition "until there are official documents from our United States military."
Democrats received similar assurances. Sharyn Stein, spokeswoman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, said the senator is satisfied that there "is no nuclear program at the Nevada Test Site."
Reid "has no objection whatsoever to testing that would lead to the development of a conventional weapon," Stein said.
The assurances do not placate Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert. The group has asked for a public review of the planned blast. Johnson said the test appears to be part of a program to develop the military's long-sought "robust nuclear earth penetrator" weapon. She criticized the congressmen for accepting the military's explanation.
"This is exactly the test to build the RNEP," she said. "It just kind of takes my breath away. I can't believe they think we'll buy this."
Pike said Reid and Nevada's congressional delegation, at least, are accepting the Defense Department's explanation at face value.
"They bamboozled him," Pike said. "They tricked him. They misled him.
"He believed that a senior administration official was not going to lie to him to his face. He believed him because Sen. Reid is a man of integrity and man of his word, and Sen. Reid knows you can't do business in this town if you lie to people or cause them to be embarrassed."
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