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3. It Was
cienelucad, therefor , trat a desirable policy for
Hardtack detonation announcements would require that not all
detonations be announced and, in fact, only about one-half be
announced,
Accordingly, it was determined that for this purpose,
announcement should be made of detonations having yicld nigher
than 200 kilotons,
On the basis of predicted yield for individual
detonations in the series, this would result in announcement of
about 15 of the projected 28,
4, It 1s of interest to note that there is possibly a
small factor favoring counter~intelligence of a desirable
character in a policy resulting in announcement of only about
half the detonations,
If any of the detonations were not detected
outside the proving ground the intelligence of unfriendly nations
would be, to that extent left guessing as to the total number
of detonations, a problem they would not have if we stated we
would announce all dstonations and then did so,
5, In reaching the conclusions in 3. above,
of formulae Was examined,
a wide range
Among these were (a) announcement of
no shots other than the UN Observer detonation and (b) announcement of the UN Observer shot and of the detonations from which
there might be flash hazard to personnel outside the danger area,
It was felt that any advantage gained by paucity to the extreme
of either of these alternatives would be heavily offset by the
fact that they would be contrary to the implicit posture of the
U.S. with respect to nuclear .test information, i.e. fullest
pogaible disclosure conBonant with socurity,
The principal advan-
tage of either would be'that it would give the Soviet no official
U.S, statements upon which to base propaganda regarding this
series, thus forcing reliance on their own detections.
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The principal
Annex "A" to
Appendix "A"