June 1990-March 1993: Details of US Success in Averting Nuclear War between India and Pakistan Remain Secret for Almost Three Years

After the US successfully resolves a crisis that could have led to nuclear war between Pakistan and India (see January-May 1990 and May 1990), essential details of the affair remain secret until March 1993, when they are revealed in a New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh. Hersh will comment, “Stopping a nuclear exchange seemed made to order for the public-relations machinery of the White House.” However, what reports there are at the time in the US and British press are dismissed as exaggerations by the Bush administration. Hersh will say: “An obvious explanation for the high-level quiet revolves around the fact, haunting to some in the intelligence community, that the Reagan administration had dramatically aided Pakistan in its pursuit of the bomb.… [The administration] looked the other way throughout the mid-nineteen-eighties as Pakistan assembled its nuclear arsenal with the aid of many millions of dollars’ worth of restricted, high-tech materials bought inside the United States.” [New Yorker, 3/29/1993]