Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

In the United States, the nuclear abolition movement has failed to generate much popular support. The retired officials who jump-started the debate in 2007 had an average age of seventy-nine. Many of the issues at stake seem hypothetical and remote. Almost half of the American population were not yet born or were children when the Cold War ended. And support for the abolition of nuclear weapons is hardly universal. The administration of President George W. Bush not only sought to develop new warheads and hydrogen bombs but also broadened the scope of the OPLAN. Bush’s counterforce strategy, adopted after 9/11, threatened the preemptive use of nuclear weapons to thwart conventional, biological, and chemical attacks on the United States. A pair of liberal Democrats, former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and former director of the CIA John M. Deutch, criticized the “nuclear disarmament fantasy” from a different perspective. Nuclear weapons can never be un-invented, Brown and Deutch argued, and countries that secretly violate an international ban might achieve unchecked power. The temptation to cheat would be enormous. In their view, utopian proposals shouldn’t distract attention from practical measures to reduce the nuclear threat and avoid armed conflicts: “Hope is not a policy, and, at present, there is no realistic path to a world free of nuclear weapons.”

Between the extremes of a counterforce strategy requiring thousands of nuclear weapons always on alert and an agreement to abolish all nuclear weapons, there lies a third course. Promoted by the U.S. Navy in the late 1950s, when its submarine-based missiles were too inaccurate to hit military targets, the strategy of minimum deterrence has lately gained strong support, even in some unexpected places. In 2010 a group of high-ranking Air Force officials, including its chief of strategic planning, argued that the United States needed only 311 nuclear weapons to deter an attack. Any more would be overkill. The arsenal proposed by these Air Force strategists would contain almost 200 fewer weapons than the one recommended by the National Resources Defense Council and the Federation of American Scientists, a pair of liberal groups that also support minimum deterrence.

Bob Peurifoy advocates a similar strategy. He considers himself a realist and thinks that a world free of nuclear weapons is unattainable. He would like the United States to get rid of its land-based missiles, take all its weapons off alert, give up the notion that a counterforce strategy might work, and retain a few hundred ballistic missiles securely deployed on submarines. To avoid accidental launches and mistakes, the subs shouldn’t be capable of firing their missiles quickly. And to dissuade foreign enemies from attacking the United States, Peurifoy would let them know in advance where America’s warheads might land on their territory. That knowledge would deter any rational world leader. But the problems with a strategy of minimum deterrence have changed little in the past fifty years. It cannot defend the United States against an impending attack. It can only kill millions of enemy civilians after the United States has already been attacked.

LAUNCH COMPLEX 374-7 was never rebuilt. The underground passages were disassembled. The land around it was cleared of debris. Toxic waste was pumped from the silo, and then the silo was filled with gravel and dirt. The Air Force returned the land to Ralph and Reba Jo Parish, from whom it had been taken through eminent domain. Seeing the place today, you would never think that one of the most destructive weapons ever built once lay beneath the ground there. Nature has reclaimed the site. It’s covered with grass, surrounded by woods and farmland. A large mound covers the spot where the missile stood. The paved access road is now dirt. Quiet, peaceful, bucolic — it could not feel more removed from international diplomacy, Washington politics, nuclear strategy. The only hints of what happened there are patches of concrete overgrown with weeds and a few scattered pieces of metal, lying on the ground, that have been bent and deformed by tremendous heat.

I first heard about the accident at Damascus in the fall of 1999, while visiting Vandenberg Air Force Base. I was interested in the future of warfare in space, the plans to build laser beam, particle beam, and directed energy weapons. The Air Force Space Command invited me to watch the launch of a Titan II missile, and it seemed like an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed. The payload of the missile was a weather satellite. During the long delay of the scheduled launch, I spoke to officers who’d served on missile combat crews. They told me Cold War stories and showed me footage of warheads arriving at the Kwajalein Test Site in the South Pacific. A Peacekeeper missile had been fired from Vandenberg at night, and as one warhead after another fell from the sky and landed precisely within their target circles, it was an oddly beautiful sight. They looked like shooting stars.

The evening before the Titan II launch, I rode an elevator to the top of the tower and got to see the missile up close. I could just about reach out and touch it. The Titan II seemed a living, breathing thing, attached to all sorts of cables and wires, like an angry patient about to be released from intensive care. The tower hummed with the sound of cooling units. Looking down the length of the missile, I could hardly believe that anyone would be brave enough and crazy enough to sit on top of it, like the Gemini astronauts did, and ride it into space.

The next morning I signed a waiver, promising not to sue the Air Force for any injuries, and received training in the use of a Scott Air-Pak. I carried the breathing apparatus in case the Titan II misfired on the pad. The officer who served as my host had never been allowed to stand so close to a launch. When the missile left the ground, you could feel it in your bones. The blast, the roar, the sight of the flames slowly lifting the Titan II upward — they suddenly affected me. They were more visceral and more powerful than any Cold War story. I had grown up in the 1970s hearing about missiles and warheads, throw weights and megatons, half believing that none of those weapons really worked, that the fears of nuclear Armageddon were overblown and based on some terrible fiction. The Titan II hesitated for a moment and then really took off, like a ten-story silver building disappearing into the sky. Within moments, it was gone, just a tail of flame somewhere over Mexico.

Watching that launch, the imaginary became tangible and concrete for me. It rattled me. It pierced a false sense of comfort. Right now thousands of missiles are hidden away, literally out of sight, topped with warheads and ready to go, awaiting the right electrical signal. They are a collective death wish, barely suppressed. Every one of them is an accident waiting to happen, a potential act of mass murder. They are out there, waiting, soulless and mechanical, sustained by our denial — and they work.

Jeff Kennedy was the first person whom I interviewed for this book. More than a decade ago, I visited him in Maine, listened with amazement to his stories about the Titan II, and learned the extraordinary details of what happened in Damascus, Arkansas. Over the years, Kennedy was helpful, encouraging — and never shy about telling me how or why I was completely wrong. I admired his honesty. And I admired the bravery he showed not only in trying to save the missile that night but also in sacrificing his Air Force career to speak out about the Titan II. Kennedy passed away in the fall of 2011, at the age of fifty-six. I regret not having finished this book in time for him to read it.

Bob Peurifoy spent countless hours speaking to me about nuclear weapons, explaining fine points of physics and engineering, hoping that I’d use the knowledge well. I am grateful to him and Barbara Peurifoy for all their hospitality and their friendship. Sidney Drell played a crucial role in opening my eyes to this hidden world. And Bill Stevens patiently answered the same technical questions of mine again and again. Peurifoy, Drell, and Stevens truly are public servants.