A summary of the January 1951 report of the Indian Mission in Lhasa.

Report of the Indian Mission in Lhasa from January 1951

US Consular Office William Gibson and Prince Peter of Greece discuss developments in Tibet and Indo-Tibetan trade. Princess Irene offers unflattering views on a group of White Russian refugees who exited Xinjiang via Kalimpong and later immigrated to the United States. In a cover note, Evan M. Wilson dismisses Irene's comments but notes that Prince Peter's information was 'quite accurate.'

With a nuclear nonproliferation treaty under consideration in Washington, INR considered which countries were likely to sign on and why or why not. INR analysts, mistakenly as it turned out, believed it unlikely that the Soviet Union would be a co-sponsor of a treaty in part because of the “international climate” and also because Moscow and Washington differed on whether a treaty would recognize a “group capability.”

This lengthy report was State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research's contribution to the first National Intelligence Estimate on the nuclear proliferation, NIE 100-6-57. Written at a time when the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom were the only nuclear weapons states, the “Fourth Country” problem referred to the probability that some unspecified country, whether France or China, was likely to be the next nuclear weapons state. Enclosed with letter from Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Division of Research for USSR and Western Europe, to Roger Mateson, 4 June 1957, Secret

The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) evaluates the available intelligence on India’s nuclear intentions. There were varying reports that India would test a device that month, sometime in 1972, or that the government was undertaking a program to test a “peaceful nuclear explosive.” According to INR, India had the capability to produce some 20-30 weapons, and it could easily test a device in an underground site, such as an abandoned mine, that would be hard to discover. Because the U.S. government had given a “relatively modest priority to... relevant intelligence collection activities” a “concerted effort by India to conceal such preparations... may well succeed.” What would motivate India to test, the analysts opined, were domestic political pressures and concerns about China and Pakistan.