Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

Kennedy thought the report was wrong: Kennedy interview.

Powell… blamed himself for Livingston’s death: Powell interview.

Jeff Kennedy was served with a formal letter of reprimand: For the reprimands sent to Kennedy, see Richard C. Gross, “Titan Accident: Air Force Reprimand for Heroics,” United Press International, February 12, 1981; and Walter Pincus, “‘Hero’ of Titan II Missile Explosion Is Reprimanded by Air Force,” Washington Post , February 12, 1981.

Air Force regulations permitted a violation of the two-man rule: In fact, a SAC training video about the Titan II encouraged airmen to break the rule in certain situations. According to the narrator of the video: “Under normal operating conditions, a solitary individual is never allowed inside a no-lone zone. However, during an actual emergency, a lone individual may have to take action to save lives or equipment, if at all possible. If you are working near a no-lone zone and see an emergency in that zone, you will be expected to take action by yourself to save the critical component or other equipment from damage, if possible. Yes, your action will be in direct violation of the SAC two-man policy, and you will have to report it as such. However, your action — provided it is taken under an emergency condition — is expected and condoned.” This “exception” to the rule is explained in “Nuclear Surety Program, Initial Training, Part 1: History — An Overview,” Aerospace Audiovisual Service, U.S. Air Force (n.d.). The tape can be found in the archives of the Titan Missile Museum. According to the museum’s archivist and historian, Chuck Penson, the video was most likely recorded some time between 1976 and 1979.

David Powell was given an Article 15 citation: Powell wasn’t charged with using a ratchet instead of a torque wrench — because the socket fell off before the ratchet could be “used.” See Carol Griffee, “Airman at Silo Is Disciplined,” Arkansas Gazette, February 13, 1981.

placed in the psychiatric ward there — along with Greg Devlin: Kennedy and Devlin interviews.

Bill Carter was an Air Force veteran and a former Secret Service agent: Carter spoke to me at length about his dealings with the Air Force over its management of the Titan II missiles in Arkansas.

“a substance no more dangerous than smog”: Quoted in Bill Carter and Judi Turner, Get Carter: Backstage in History from JFK’s Assassination to the Rolling Stones (Nashville: Fine’s Creek Publishing, 2006), p. 208.

A few months later, at a ceremony in Little Rock: Kennedy, Devlin, and Sandaker interviews. See also Walter Pincus, “Eight Honored as Heroes in ’80 Titan Missile Blast,” Washington Post , May 23, 1981.

his local congressman in Maine, David Emery, said that if he took the medal: Kennedy interview. See also John S. Day, “Behind an Effective Lawmaker — a Good Staff,” Bangor Daily News , March 19, 1982.

a “temporary medical leave by reason of disability”: Quoted in ibid.

Devlin got a check for $6,400: Devlin interview.

A study commissioned by the Air Force later questioned: Peurifoy interview.

“expedite the proposed retrofit of the 28”: “Letter, To Lieutenant General Howard W. Leaf, Inspector General, Headquarters, United States Air Force, From Harold P. Smith, Jr., President, the Palmer Smith Corporation, July 17, 1981” (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 2.

Peurifoy quietly arranged for a unique signal generator: Peurifoy interview.

expected to cost approximately $1.5 trillion: Cited in “Economy Can’t Absorb Defense Increase,” Washington Post , October 18, 1981.

About $250 billion would be spent on nuclear weapon systems: Cited in ”Modernizing U.S. Strategic Offensive Forces: The Administration’s Program and Alternatives,” A CBO Study, Congressional Budget Office, Congress of the United States, May 1983, p. 1.

about fourteen thousand strategic warheads and bombs, an increase of about 60 percent: The Reagan administration planned to raise the number of warheads from 8,800 to 14,000. Cited in ibid., p. xvi.

a “super-sudden first strike”: See McGeorge Bundy, “Common Sense and Missiles in Europe,” Washington Post , October 20, 1981.

the “highest priority element”: Quoted in Pearson, WWMCCS: Evolution and Effectiveness , p. 264.

“This system must be foolproof”: “Text of the President’s Defense Policy Statement: ‘Our Plan’ to ‘Strengthen and Modernize the Strategic Triad…,” Washington Post , October 3, 1981.

greater “interoperability”: Statement of Donald C. Latham, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (Communications, Command, Control and Intelligence), in “Strategic Force Modernization Programs,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces of the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, Ninety-seventh Congress, First Session, 1981, p. 239.

“to recognize that we are under attack”: Quoted in Bruce G. Blair, Strategic Command and Control: Redefining the Nuclear Threat (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985), p. 264.

an unprecedented investment in command and control: Iklé understood, more than most officials at the Pentagon, the fundamental importance of the nuclear command-and-control system. Once again, a new administration was greeted by the news that the United States lacked the ability to control its strategic forces after a surprise attack by the Soviet Union. A study conducted in the spring of 1981 by Dr. James P. Wade, Jr., an undersecretary of defense, found that the command-and-control system could not assure “an effective initial response to a nuclear attack on the United States”; could not fight a protracted nuclear war; and could not guarantee the “survivability, endurability, or connectivity of the national command authority function.” The implications of the Wade study were, essentially, the same as those of WSEG R-50 more than twenty years earlier: the only nuclear war that the United States could hope to win would be one in which it launched first. The quotations in my account of the Wade study are not from the actual document. They come from a summary of it in a document recently obtained by the National Security Archive. See “A Historical Study of Strategic Connectivity, 1950–1981,” Joint Chiefs of Staff Special Historical Study, Historical Division, Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 1982 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA, pp. 64–65.

spending about $18 billion: Cited in John D. Steinbruner, “Nuclear Decapitation,” Foreign Policy, no. 45 (Winter 1981–2), p. 25.

an expansion of Project ELF: For details of the Navy’s ambitious schemes, see Pearson, WWMCCS: Evolution and Effectiveness , pp. 287–89; and Lowell L. Klessig and Victor L. Strite, The ELF Odyssey: National Security Versus Environmental Protection (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980).

buried six thousand miles of antenna, four to six feet deep: The ELF antenna grid would have occupied 20,000 of Wisconsin’s roughly 65,000 square miles. See Klessig and Strite, ELF Odyssey, p. 14.

the “continuity of government”: For a brief description of the new programs, spearheaded in part by Colonel Oliver North, see Thomas C. Reed, At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004), pp. 245–46.

Desmond Ball, an Australian academic, made a strong case: See Desmond Ball, “Can Nuclear War Be Controlled?” Adelphi Paper #169, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981.