Richard Nixon Exposed To Radiation On Moscow Trip In 1959, Documents Reveal (theguardian.com) 88
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, were exposed to potentially harmful radiation while staying at the US ambassador's residence in Moscow in 1959, according to declassified Secret Service documents. Nixon, who was vice-president at the time, was not informed of the threat, and the state department was only informed in 1976, when a member of his Secret Service detail, James Golden, revealed that detection equipment had measured significant levels of radiation in and around the Nixons' sleeping quarters at the residence, Spaso House. Golden said he was later told by the state department that he had been exposed to "massive dosages" of ionizing radiation produced by an atomic battery used by Soviet spies to power bugging devices hidden in the building. However, Golden had doubts about that explanation and it was not confirmed.
After Secret Service agents denounced Soviet dirty tricks in earshot of the listening devices in the residence, the radiation stopped. "We sat down on the beds facing each other and began berating the Russians in loud voices cursing them for pulling a trick like this and wondering in loud voices why they were taking us for fools and asking each other if they thought they were going to get away with doing this," Golden testified. Before his Moscow visit, Nixon was asked by another member of his Secret Service detail, John Sherwood, whether he wanted radiation detection devices taken on the trip. Sherwood pointed out that Soviet officials visiting the US had asked for Geiger counters. The vice-president turned down Geiger counters, but yes to more discreet dosimeters -- though he said he would not wear one himself and did not want it known that the matter had been discussed.
On the first evening of the visit, on 23 July 1959, the dosimeter readings climbed rapidly, leading a senior military official in the entourage, Adm Hyman Rickover, an expert on nuclear naval propulsion, to suspect that there had been a nuclear accident. Rickover and the US ambassador, Llewellyn Thompson, agreed not to tell Nixon. Golden was skeptical of the analysis by the state department's medical division that the radiation came from atomic batteries used to power listening devices inside Spaso House. He pointed out that the radiation had stopped while he was in the building, so no one could have come in and removed the batteries. He concluded the state department experts were not being frank with him. The incident was reported after Golden's revelations in 1976, but this is the first time the underlying documentation has been made available online, after a request to the Nixon presidential library from the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
After Secret Service agents denounced Soviet dirty tricks in earshot of the listening devices in the residence, the radiation stopped. "We sat down on the beds facing each other and began berating the Russians in loud voices cursing them for pulling a trick like this and wondering in loud voices why they were taking us for fools and asking each other if they thought they were going to get away with doing this," Golden testified. Before his Moscow visit, Nixon was asked by another member of his Secret Service detail, John Sherwood, whether he wanted radiation detection devices taken on the trip. Sherwood pointed out that Soviet officials visiting the US had asked for Geiger counters. The vice-president turned down Geiger counters, but yes to more discreet dosimeters -- though he said he would not wear one himself and did not want it known that the matter had been discussed.
On the first evening of the visit, on 23 July 1959, the dosimeter readings climbed rapidly, leading a senior military official in the entourage, Adm Hyman Rickover, an expert on nuclear naval propulsion, to suspect that there had been a nuclear accident. Rickover and the US ambassador, Llewellyn Thompson, agreed not to tell Nixon. Golden was skeptical of the analysis by the state department's medical division that the radiation came from atomic batteries used to power listening devices inside Spaso House. He pointed out that the radiation had stopped while he was in the building, so no one could have come in and removed the batteries. He concluded the state department experts were not being frank with him. The incident was reported after Golden's revelations in 1976, but this is the first time the underlying documentation has been made available online, after a request to the Nixon presidential library from the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
Yeah, well... (Score:2, Interesting)
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Why can't this be on the front page?
Write an article and submit it. It sounds just as interesting and about as worthy of a news for nerds site.
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Because the ball bearing thing is 45 year old news. Its been reported on extensively since the 1970s. It just isn't news.
This however is under 4 day old news.
One thing they drill into you when you do journalism school is the "values" of what makes news newsworthy. And near the top of every standard list is Timeliness. Is this new information? Because if its not, and if there isn't some other factor that makes it relevant in a way it wasnt , say, last week, then it just isn't news.
And rehashing a 1970s news
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Re:Yeah, well... (Score:5, Interesting)
The USA provided machines to the Soviets to make the fine ball bearings needed for their gyros for ICBMs. We pushed them along on their nuclear program. They would have been decades behind otherwise. Why can't this be on the front page?
Well they also sold us the titanium we needed for our spy planes we used against them. My guesses is it because there are lots of possible uses for precision ball bearings beside nukes much like their are more uses for titanium that high altitude spy planes
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Which should make all the 'free trade' advocates take a good long pause. You don't engage in trade with your enemies. Peace thru co-dependance isn't really a thing. If it was Russia would not be invading Ukraine now, fouling up their access to all kinds of imports, and sabotaging their energy export market. We would not have CPP members calling Taipei an grey tiger and imminent threat; knowing full well what that could do in terms of US trade relations.
If your consider a foreign nations as both an 'enemy
Re: Yeah, well... (Score:2)
Your enemies today are your friends tomorrow are your enemies the day after. If the world thought like this there would be no trade with the US now because they can't be sure that a crazy person won't be in the White House in a couple of years. Trade takes longer than that just to set up.
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Which should make all the 'free trade' advocates take a good long pause. You don't engage in trade with your enemies. Peace thru co-dependance isn't really a thing.
Looking at human history, peace isn't really a thing. We'd be exploring other planets by now if it were.
Now sit back and enjoy the shitshow that is humanity. Hasn't changed in 5,000 years. Pass the popcorn.
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Like the green party in Germany pushing for the nuclear power stations to be shut down in favor for renewable energy in the future, with Russian gas being used until that never ends up happening?
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The USA provided machines to the Soviets to make the fine ball bearings needed for their gyros for ICBMs. We pushed them along on their nuclear program. They would have been decades behind otherwise.
You're saying it would have taken decades for them to to figure out how to make fine ball bearings?
Re:Yeah, well... (Score:4, Funny)
You're saying it would have taken decades for them to to figure out how to make fine ball bearings?
They couldn't replicate our superior ball washing process.
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You're saying it would have taken decades for them to to figure out how to make fine ball bearings?
They couldn't replicate our superior ball washing process.
Tucker Carlson was onto something!!! [twitter.com]
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You're saying it would have taken decades for them to to figure out how to make fine ball bearings?
Right now, today, in 2022, their tank factories are shut down, not only because they can't buy the electronics, but also because they can't buy the thrust bearings.
They still, today, do not have this industrial capability. It is not actually easy.
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The "Cold War" was a scam perpetuated on both the American and Russian people to enrich Military Industrial Complex oligarchs in both countries.
Eisenhower warned us explicitly. He didn't say whether Nixon was for or against but he supported Nixon against Kennedy (who repented after the Turkey incident).
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The "Cold War" was a scam
Cry harder, Ivan. All your orc friends are getting blown up in Ukraine. So sad.
Re: Yeah, well... (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s Nixon (Score:1, Troll)
Why would a hidden spy kit generate high energy radiation that would give it away? Atomic batteries purposefully use low energy radiation to remain hidden and minimize danger.
What would the purpose of this? To give the president leukemia that would kill him 20 years later?
Why not carry Geiger counters. Probably because it was Nixon that was poisoning the Russians, and the precaution was just to insure he did not receive a lethal dose of his own weapon
Re:Itâ(TM)s Nixon (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would a hidden spy kit generate high energy radiation that would give it away? Atomic batteries purposefully use low energy radiation to remain hidden and minimize danger.
Also, who would use an RTG to power a spying device in a building that is presumably wired with AC electrical power? This explanation fails to make sense on multiple levels.
Re:Itâ(TM)s Nixon (Score:5, Informative)
At that time Soviet spying tech was using passive detectors anyway. No power source built into them, they would modulate a radio signal transmitted at them so that it could be picked up on the opposite side to the transmitter. Very clever because it made them impossible to detect except when in use, and even then they were hard to locate.
Re: Itâ(TM)s Nixon (Score:2)
That's really interesting, sort of like a primitive RFID?
Re: Itâ(TM)s Nixon (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Itâ(TM)s Nixon (Score:5, Interesting)
And it was designed by Russian boffin Leon Theremin [wikipedia.org], inventor of the theremin instrument, who lived in the west from 1927 to 1938, but was imprisoned when he unadvisedly returned to the Soviet Union in 1938. After a spell in the Gulag he was put to work as prisoner-scientist-engineer in a secret lab where he devised The Thing.
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Plus a Russian RTG of that era would probably have used Sr-90, which emits beta radiation (high energy electrons) as it decays. The walls of the hotel room would have been sufficient to block any beta radiaition from reaching the Nixons, even assuming that the RTG containment was breached. An inch of plastic, or even one's clothing, pr
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Power could be exercised not only via an official hierarchy, but also via say cash. Some individuals may do about anything for money. So if there was a dangerous radiation, it req
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You are getting ahead of yourself with the conspiracy crap.
This happened when Nixon was Vice President. Under Eisenhower. In the 1950s. Well before "détente" was anywhere close to a thing in foreign policy.
I mean, unless you're going to include time travel in your conspiracy... then carry on as you were.
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This is what happens when people don't even bother to read the summary which would have revealed Nixon wasn't president, this was almost 70 years ago so current political labels do not apply, no one today of note cares about Nixon, and the documentation was secret service documents that were recently declassified and released due to age as per regulations/law and have nothing to do with modern political derangement.
It was a very different era with very different personalities and political agendas from toda
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Conservatives will make up any story for sympathy.
"On February 6, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee was authorized to launch a formal impeachment inquiry against the president. The House approved the resolution 410–4."
A country hardly felt sympathetic then, and it's history so ancient now that it can only be used for grand storytelling like this.
Sadly sympathy has died today in favor of blind worship to The Party. So, the suffering and anguish continues for a man who is clearly qualified for the 25th Amendment. Or perhaps history would prefer even more grand storytelling coming directly from a sitting President about when she was 12, and he was 30...
Wild times. (Score:3, Funny)
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The Soviets probably would have been more careful with Mr. Nixon's safety if they'd known what an asset he would prove to be.
60+ decades later they learned their lessons and cultivated their greatest asset with direct access to all kinds of sensitve/top secret information.
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600 years (60+ decades) --- I guess they are playing a very long game for their Manchurian Candidate.
Math has never been my strong suit. :)
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As for Nixon, he was an asset to the Soviets by sabotaging the 1968 Paris peace talks over Vietnam so he'd have a campaign issue against the Johnson administration. He literally committed treason that cost in the ballpark of a million lives. But sure, your anecdote about Clinton's speaking fees is tota
Russia is what you get (Score:5, Insightful)
The US has pulled some pretty nasty crap over the years, but nobody can top Russia when it comes to randomness and shear no-f*&cs-given carelessness. One decade, they're kicking the Nazi's asses using nothing but sheer willpower and cannon fodder. Next decade, their scientists and engineers are kicking EVERYONES asses in terms of brilliance. Next decade, they're "reeducating" everyone in the countryside. Next decade they dabble in capitalism. The one after they're back to getting every young Russian man killed on the battlefield while simultaneously shelling their own nuclear reactors.
I have no doubt in the 1950s they had a massive ionizing radiation gun pointed at a US politician. Why? Why not? Sounds like something Russia would do on any old tuesday.
This is not to suggest that we should capitulate to them in the current situation. But dealing with them is like dealing with a force of nature. The only thing they will respond to is large quantities of hard, international, projected power. Their own actions? No rhyme or reason. Russia "just happens"
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Russia, nee the USSR back right to its inception, suffers from an absolutely pathological inferiority complex. From Stalin's own deep seated feelings of inferiority from his abusive upbringing, to the deep seated dread of Western attack (which was at the time amply justified, given that Western business interests openly financed the post-Revolution civil war that attempted to overthrow the new USSR) and the fear that being "behind" would leave them vulnerable.
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Russia, nee the USSR back right to its inception, suffers from an absolutely pathological inferiority complex. From Stalin's own deep seated feelings of inferiority
Stalin? Try Peter the Great.
If the name gives you no hints at an inferiority complex, his reforms of an "antiquated" tsardom into a european-style empire kinda started the entire trend of "Russia is just as good as European countries - only bigger. And better."
Re:Russia is what you get (Score:4, Funny)
"Russia is just as good as European countries - only bigger. And better."
With blackjack! And hookers!
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With blackjack! And hookers!
...except it's Russia, so it's Vodka and Laika...
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running the country.
The Vulcans have a saying (Score:2)
"Only Nixon could go to China."
Maybe the Russians didn't like the Vulcans...
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Maybe the Russians didn't like the Vulcans...
I can see why. You'd be pretty agitated if Vulcans asked you to buy them a bridge as well. [medium.com]
Deep State (Score:1)
Deep State is older than I thought.
What a powerless puppet the role of president was even half a century ago. In a non-clown world, the president would need to know not only for his own health, but for purposes of diplomacy and negotiation.
Re:Deep State (Score:5, Informative)
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Hey! Don't let things like "accurate dates" and "facts" get in the way of a good ignorant bordering-on-conspiracy-theory rant!
We need something to laugh at around here.
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If VP is so powerless, why are the Democrats removing the 'power' that Pence refused to use?
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Deep State is older than I thought.
Any time you have subordinates with power, they will use that power.
Nothing has changed about Russia since then (Score:1, Troll)
On the US side, the right wing has not changed since then either. Lying, breaking the law, and corruption are "core values" of the Republican right.
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are these stories all lies? https://docs.google.com/spread... [google.com]
They either are lies, or the main stream media is covering up scandals far larger than Nixon's
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On the US side, the right wing has not changed since then either. Lying, breaking the law, and corruption are "core values" of the Republican right.
That's unfair. The Republican right has changed a lot over the years. They used to be discrete about their law breaking and corruption.
Why poison Nixon? (Score:2)
I mean, let's be honest, of all the duds the US elected as presidents after Eisenhower, Nixon was maybe the most useful tool for the Soviets. Nothing crippled the effectiveness of the executive branch worse than his little Watergate problem.
Or maybe they couldn't foresee this 10 years in advance, but I'd have guessed even back then it was obvious that the man is a crook.
Wouldn't surprise me if they were simply spying... (Score:5, Interesting)
15 roentgen per hour does sound like someone is running a large X-ray machine, trying to see through walls.
wow 1979? (Score:2)
The propaganda machine is reaching pretty far into the archives and this is the best they could find?
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You're right. We should ignore it because it's in the past. I'll start calling all museums and archives to let them know they're no-longer needed.
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Lol, have fun worrying about a literally infinite supply of stuff people already dealt with.
Santayana (Score:1)
Unfortunately not harmful enough (Score:2)
The country would have been spared a lot.
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Nixon wasn't that bad compared to the current crop of GOP. Bush got us into Ireck, and the current Tinted One's mayhem doesn't need an introduction.
No shortage of experts in government (Score:1)
Adm Hyman Rickover, an expert on nuclear naval propulsion, to suspect that there had been a nuclear accident.
"Nuclear accident." He could have gone across the street and seen that the reading on his dosimeter dropped precipitously. Maybe it was a nuclear accident inside the room, or a fusion warhead hidden under Nixon's bed.
Experts in government, experts like Ben Bernanke.
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A dosimeter reads the total dose received so far. So it won't drop, it will rise slower, which is hard to call "precipitously".
Really? (Score:2)
Haha. I think they might be confusing reality with a James Bond movie of that era.
James Golden --- RFK assassination and attempt on (Score:2)
Golden had been VP Nixon's Secret Service bodyguard but went to Lockheed after Nixon lost in 1960, then immediately joined Nixon's presidential campaign after RFK was assassinated! Golden was later a US Marshal in DC during the earl