Two years after the Danish Thulegate ended, the U.S. government released a heavily sanitized version of the History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 through September 1977. Although not related to Thulegate, the History represents the first public U.S. confirmation -- albeit a reluctant one -- that it deployed nuclear weapons in Greenland.

The diplomatic battle U.S. and Danish government officials fought out in the mid-1990s over disclosure of this secret deployment, however, received virtually no media coverage in the United States. In Denmark the reaction by researchers involved in the Danish investigation was a coy: "Not much new." Nuclear historians, however, will treasure the History for years to come as a vital document in deciphering the nuclear deployments and decisions that ran half of the Cold War.

Despite its merits, the History is incomplete, reflecting the enormous challenge involved in keeping track of nuclear weapons information even within the government agencies tasked to do so. Although the History lists "bomb" and "Nike Hercules" as deployed in Greenland, it fails to mention 15 non-nuclear bombs that the U.S. government in 1995 told Denmark it also deployed in Thule as well. Such non-nuclear bombs are listed for other locations in the History. It also fails to mention Falcon air-to-air missiles that may have been deployed at Thule Air Base around the same time of Nike Hercules, a deployment the Danish investigation confirmed.

Both the History and the article that accompanied it are available here:

» History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 through September 1977 (excerpts only)
» Robert S. Norris, et al., "Where They Were," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1999