[FPSPACE] July 1969 N-1 explosion

[Dwayne Allen Day]

On Sat, 28 Oct 2000, Phillip Clark wrote:

> Charles P Vick said that this explosion had been detected by seismographs
> in his early 1974 Spaceflight article about the "Soviet
> Superboosters".   I made enquiries at the geological institutes over here
> and they checked their records of activity (based upon worldwide

> I suppose that it is possible that there was a way for the intelligence
> community to "suppress" such records, but I am not convinced about this.
> 
> So, I have always been a little skeptical about the "seismograph"
> detection of the second N-1 explosion.

Just because British geological institutes did not detect a seismological
event does not mean that nobody detected it.  What about seismic stations
in Alaska, Germany, Norway or other places?

The CIA official who referred to this in an interview is Dino Brugioni,
who eventually became the number two person at the National Photographic
Interpretation Center (NPIC).  His job was to find supporting information
for the imagery analysts, such as maps, other intel, things like that.  So
it is entirely plausible that after the explosion damage turned up on the
photographs, he did some digging and discovered reports of an "unknown
seismic event" for the right date.

I am always wary of oral history.  However, I have found Brugioni to be a
highly reliable source.  He has a very good memory and he likes to
talk.  I have fairly high confidence in him as a source of information,
although it would be nice to get some hard corroborating evidence.

(By the way, Brugioni is the author of the book Eyeball to Eyeball on the
Cuban Missile Crisis, which is one of the best books out there on this
subject.)



DDAY