US bares all

after years of concealment from the public, the us administration revealed a small, lightweight nuclear device that was to be delivered to an enemy harbour using a navy or Marine parachutist. The information, along with 270,000 pages of materials kept secret for the last 50 years, was made public recently by the defence and energy department as a part of president Clinton's new policy of openness on atomic matters.

Although the device was never put in actual use, its yield of less than a kilotonne -- or 1,000 tonnes of tnt -- could have been destructive enough, causing large scale damage, radiation and contamination of water. Another shoulder-fired nuclear weapon, called the Davy Crockett, was also developed and both were, for years, part of the us arsenal. With the declassification of these documents, the us government ended its practice which considered all atomic weapons as "born classified." A spokesperson for the defence and energy department said that the government will no longer classify any information related "solely to public and worker health and safety or environmental quality.