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Nixon planned to hit N Korea with nuclear strike in 1969 | Former US president Richard Nixon is believed to have ordered nuclear bombers to be put on standby for an immediate strike on North Korea. According to newly revealed government documents, obtained
by the National Security Archive in Washington after a freedom of information
request, describe the plan codenamed Freedom Drop, as calling for "pre-coordinated
options for the selective use of tactical nuclear weapons against North Korea".
A June 1969 memo from then US Defense 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". According to The Guardian, the memo
suggests a "punitive attack" against 12 targets listed as command centers, 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 of striking 16 North Korean airfields was added.
According to Robert Wampler, who uncovered the documents, the Nixon administration
saw the North Koreans as an "imminent threat". He said planners concluded that
the consequence of any such strike was likely to be all-out war and so if the
US were to attack North Korea it would have to be with overwhelming force. |
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