---
category: Intelligence & Government
summary: Aide to National Security Advisor Brzezinski present at the White House situation
  room meeting responding to the 1979 Vela satellite nuclear test detection.
tags:
- Person
- CIA
- DIA
- Israel
---

Gerald G. Oplinger was an aide to [Zbigniew Brzezinski](/people/zbigniew-brzezinski/) for global issues. He had retired from the Foreign Service and worked at the [NRC](/organizations/nuclear-regulatory-commission/) before joining Brzezinski's staff. Oplinger was summoned back to an urgent meeting in the White House situation room after a [VELA Satellite](/concepts/vela-satellite/) recorded two distinctive bright flashes of light over the South Indian Ocean on September 22, 1979, probable evidence of a nuclear explosion. He recalled that [Brzezinski](/people/zbigniew-brzezinski/) was present at the meeting, where the [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/) and [DIA](/organizations/defense-intelligence-agency/) stated that the odds were at least ninety percent that it had been a nuclear explosion. Oplinger personally had no doubt that it was a nuclear event.[^1]

[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 20.