Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

David Powell was given an Article 15 citation — “dereliction of duty” — for attaching the socket to the wrong tool. Powell thought that if he accepted the charge, he’d be admitting negligence and assuming responsibility for the accident. Powell refused to sign and faced the risk of a court-martial instead, where he could defend himself before a panel of military judges. The Air Force didn’t seek a court-martial and gave him a lesser punishment.

Jeff Kennedy had planned to spend the rest of his career in the Strategic Air Command; now he desperately wanted to leave it. Kennedy applied for a medical discharge, hoping to return home and attend college in Maine. The Air Force balked at the request, despite his injuries. Kennedy was sent to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, for a medical evaluation. He was placed in the psychiatric ward there — along with Greg Devlin, who was also pursuing a medical disability claim.

Devlin had torn his Achilles tendon, suffered burns on his face, neck, back, and hands. He spent ten days at a Little Rock hospital recovering from the skin grafts. But the Air Force was not pleased with Devlin. He’d spoken to reporters about the accident, without SAC’s permission. And he’d filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against the manufacturer of the Titan II, Martin Marietta; members of the armed forces cannot sue the federal government for damages after an injury. David Livingston’s family and Rex Hukle had also decided to sue Martin Marietta. One of the attorneys suing the defense contractor, Bill Carter, was an Air Force veteran and a former Secret Service agent who hoped to obtain compensation for his clients — and to establish in court that the Titan II missile system was unsafe. Carter owned a farm near Damascus and had represented a neighbor sickened by the oxidizer leak there in 1978. During that case, the surgeon general of the Air Force had denied that inhaling oxidizer was bad for you, claiming it was “a substance no more dangerous than smog.”

Devlin could not believe that he and Kennedy had been confined in a mental ward, after everything they’d been through. The place was full of crazy people, like a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Devlin already felt shunned by the Air Force. After returning to duty, he’d been put to work selling hot dogs at the base — a job usually reserved for airmen caught with illegal drugs or facing a dishonorable discharge. But selling hot dogs was preferable to staying in a loony bin. Kennedy would have none of it. He told the staff to release them immediately and move them to a different wing at the hospital — or he’d contact the press. They were promptly transferred. After being examined by physicians, Kennedy was denied a medical discharge, and Devlin was denied a full medical disability. It would have allowed him to use Air Force hospitals for the rest of his life.

A few months later, at a ceremony in Little Rock, both men were given an Airman’s Medal for Heroism, the highest peacetime honor that the Air Force can bestow. Kennedy didn’t want to accept it. But his local congressman in Maine, David Emery, said that if he took the medal, the Air Force would allow him to leave. Kennedy was given the medal by Verne Orr, the secretary of the Air Force, in a room full of reporters. Airman’s Medals were also given to Rex Hukle, Don Green, Jimmy Roberts, and David Livingston’s father. Intended to boost morale, the award ceremony was dismissed by the PTS crews. They thought it was a public relations stunt — and couldn’t understand why Jim Sandaker, who’d returned to the launch complex twice after the accident, didn’t get the highest honor, too.

Jeff Kennedy was granted a “temporary medical leave by reason of disability” three days after receiving his medal. Although the Air Force could recall him to duty in the future, Kennedy’s military career was essentially over. He moved back to Maine, sued Martin Marietta for $7.5 million, and settled out of court for a much smaller sum.

Greg Devlin also left the Air Force within days of receiving the Airman’s Medal. His term of enlistment was over. And his lawsuit was settled out of court, as well. After attorney fees, court costs, and other charges were deducted, Devlin got a check for $6,400.

THE ACCIDENTS AT GRAND FORKS and Damascus had occurred during the same week, and Bob Peurifoy hoped that they would prompt a serious interest in weapon safety at the Pentagon. He traveled to Washington, D.C., and briefed a group of Air Force officials on the design flaws that could detonate a Mark 28 hydrogen bomb during a fire — and the need to retrofit the bombs with new safety mechanisms. The Air Force inspector general and the head of the Air Force Directorate of Nuclear Safety attended the meeting. But it had little effect. A study commissioned by the Air Force later questioned the possibility of an accidental detonation and argued that the Mark 28 didn’t need to be removed from bombers on alert. The study did, however, urge the Air Force to “expedite the proposed retrofit of the 28 and, in the meantime, take extraordinary steps to prevent and ameliorate fires that might involve the unmodified 28s.” Neither of those recommendations was followed.

The Department of Defense had made its spending priorities clear: safety modifications on older weapons like the Mark 28, while desirable, could wait. But Peurifoy was determined to keep fighting the nuclear bureaucracy — and he was willing to engage in a bit of devious behavior, on behalf of weapon safety. After almost twenty years of fierce resistance, the Strategic Air Command had finally agreed to put locks in its bombs. The installation of permissive action links would require new control boxes in the cockpits of SAC’s bombers. Under a contract with the Department of Energy, those new control boxes would be produced by Sandia. Peurifoy quietly arranged for a unique signal generator to be installed in the boxes, along with the coded switch necessary to unlock the PALs. The officials at the Air Force Logistics Command who handled the contract may or may not have understood the purpose of this special, added feature. It allowed all of SAC’s bombers to carry nuclear weapons employing the latest safety devices. The planes would soon be ready — and now Peurifoy had to find a way to get those devices into the weapons.

THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION’S military buildup was expected to cost approximately $1.5 trillion during its first five years. About $250 billion would be spent on nuclear weapon systems. By the end of the 1980s, the United States would have about fourteen thousand strategic warheads and bombs, an increase of about 60 percent. The Navy would get new cruise missiles and Trident submarines. The Air Force would get new cruise missiles, two new strategic bombers, and one hundred long-range MX missiles, now renamed “the Peacemaker.” The Carter administration’s plan to hide MX missiles amid thousands of square miles in the American Southwest was soon abandoned. Instead, the missiles would be deployed in existing silos — defeating their original purpose and leaving them vulnerable to attack. The only military use of the Peacemaker would be a first strike on the Soviet Union.

The Army’s Pershing II missiles and land-based cruise missiles were among the most controversial weapons proposed by the Reagan administration. They were to be placed in Western Europe, as a counterbalance to the SS-20 missiles recently deployed by the Soviet Union. The SS-20 was not considered a “strategic” weapon — and therefore not covered by existing arms control agreements — because its range was only three thousand miles. An SS-20 missile couldn’t reach targets in the United States. But its three warheads could destroy NATO bases and European cities. The Army’s cruise and Pershing II missiles were intended as a nuclear tit for tat. And yet the Soviet Union considered their deployment extremely provocative. The Pershing II had a range of about a thousand miles and an accuracy of about two hundred feet. From bases in West Germany the Pershing II could destroy command centers in Moscow within five or six minutes. It would give the United States the capability to launch a “super-sudden first strike.”