It is more than 35 years since he was shunted out of office, but the thought of Richard Nixon‘s finger on the nuclear trigger still has the power to terrify.
Now it has been revealed that the highly erratic president’s metaphorical digit was hovering even closer than was widely realised as his administration laid plans for an atomic strike against North Korea in 1969 following the shooting down of a US spy plane.
According to newly revealed government documents, Nixon is even believed to have ordered nuclear bombers to be put on standby for an immediate strike after North Korean jets downed the American plane as it flew over international waters collecting electronic and radio intelligence.
The documents, obtained by the National Security Archive in Washingtonafter a freedom of information request, describe the plan codenamed Freedom Drop, which called for “pre-co-ordinated options for the selective use of tactical nuclear weapons against North Korea”.
Surprisingly, the contingency plans predicted that – depending on the scale of the nuclear strike – there could be as few as 100 casualties and no more than a few thousand.
A June 1969 memo from the US defence secretary, Melvin Laird, to Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, outlined a number of options for a conventional and nuclear response to what were perceived as growing provocations by North Korea.
These included a plan to “conduct strikes against military targets in North Korea employing one nuclear weapon on each target”. The memo suggests a “punitive attack” against 12 targets listed as command centres, airfields and naval bases.
But in what appeared to be an acknowledgement that the use of smaller scale nuclear weapons of less than 10 kilotonnes would prompt North Korean retaliation, a second option was added.
“An attack with nuclear weapons with a yield of 70 kt each to neutralise the North Korean air order of battle in response to a North Korean air attack on South Korea,” the memo said. “All 16 major North Korean airfields can be struck under this option.”
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