Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“grandiose, inappropriate, and demanding” … “eight hours on the B-25”: Ibid., p. 125.

“invested with a special mission”: Ibid., pp. 130–31.

“the authorities … covertly wish destruction”: Ibid., p. 131.

“the desire to see the tangible result of their own power”: Ibid., p. 141.

“[An] assistant cook improperly obtained a charge”: Ibid., p. 134.

“Private B and I each found a rifle grenade”: Ibid., p. 135.

“A Marine found a 37-millimeter dud”: Ibid., p. 136.

“the kind of curiosity which does not quite believe”: Ibid., p. 137.

“an accidental atomic bomb explosion may well trigger”: Quoted in ibid., p. 90.

“unfortunate political consequences”: Ibid., p. 83.

“a peaceful expansion of the Soviet sphere”: Ibid., p. 84.

“The U.S. defense posture”: Ibid., p. 95.

put combination locks on nuclear weapons: Ibid., pp. 99–102.

“If such an accident occurred in a remote area”: “The Aftermath of a Single Nuclear Detonation by Accident or Sabotage: Some Problems Affecting U.S. Policy, Military Reactions, and Public Information,” Fred Charles Iklé, with J. E. Hill, U.S. Air Force Project RAND, Research Memorandum, May 8, 1959, RM-2364 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), pp. vii, 32.

An official “board of inquiry” … an “important device for temporizing”: Ibid., p. 62.

“During this delaying period the public information”: Ibid., p. 63.

“avoid public self-implication and delay the release”: Ibid., p. 88.

the electrical system of the W-49 warhead: Bob Peurifoy and William L. Stevens, who both worked on the electrical system, told me the story of how it became the first warhead with an environmental sensing device. Stevens writes about the Army’s resistance to the idea in “Origins and Evolution of S2C at Sandia,” pp. 32–34.

“This warhead, like all other warheads investigated”: Quoted in “A Summary of the Program to Use Environmental Sensing Devices to Improve Handling Safety Protection for Nuclear Weapons,” W. L. Stevens and C. H. Mauney, Sandia Corporation, July 1961 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 6. Another study made clear how it could be done: “A saboteur, with knowledge of the warhead can, through warhead connectors, operate any arm/safe switch with improvised equipment.” See “Evaluation of Warhead Safing Devices,” p. 26.

a “handling safety device” or a “goof-proofer”: Stevens interview.

“to hell with it”: Peurifoy interview.

“environmental sensing device”: Ibid.

A young physicist, Robert K. Osborne, began to worry: My account of how the one-point safety standard developed is based on interviews with Harold Agnew and Bob Peurifoy, as well as the following documents: “Minutes of the 133rd Meeting of the Fission Weapon Committee,” Los Alamos National Laboratory, December 30, 1957; “One-Point Safety,” letter, from J. F. Ney to R. L. Peurifoy, Jr., Sandia National Laboratories, May 24, 1993; and “Origin of One-Point Safety Definition,” letter, from D. M. Olson, to Glen Otey, Sandia National Laboratories, January 6, 1993.

it could incapacitate the crew: The goal was to avoid exposing the engine crew to an “immediate incapacitation dose” of radiation. See “Origin of One-Point Safety Definition,” p. 1.

Los Alamos proposed that the odds … should be one in one hundred thousand: Agnew interview.

odds of one in a million: Ibid.

“Testing is essential for weapons development”: Quoted in May, et al., “History of Strategic Arms Competition, Part 1,” p. 235.

five hundred long-range ballistic missiles by 1961: See “Soviet Capabilities in Guided Missiles and Space Vehicles,” NIE 11-5-58 (TOP SECRET/declassified), p. 1, in Intentions and Capabilities, p. 65.

outnumbering the United States by more than seven to one: Although estimates varied, amid the controversy over the missile gap, the New York Times said that the United States would have about seventy long-range missiles by 1961. Cited in Richard Witkin, “U.S. Raising Missile Goals as Critics Foresee a ‘Gap,’” New York Times, January 12, 1959.

“entirely preoccupied by the horror of nuclear war”: Quoted in Benjamin P. Greene, Eisenhower, Science Advice, and the Nuclear Test Ban Debate, 1945–1963 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), p. 209.

also by defense contractors: By early 1960, the corporate attacks on Eisenhower were blunt and well publicized. An executive at the General Dynamics Corporation, manufacturer of the Atlas missile, accused Eisenhower of taking “a dangerous gamble with the survival of our people.” Among other sins, Eisenhower had not ordered enough Atlas missiles. See Bill Becker, “’Gamble’ Charged in Defense Policy,” New York Times, February 5, 1960.

“military-industrial complex”: See “Transcript of President Eisenhower’s Farewell Message to Nation,” Washington Post and Times Herald, January 18, 1961.

“hydronuclear experiments”: My account of these tests is based on my interview with Harold Agnew as well as this report: “Hydronuclear Experiments,” Robert N. Thorn, Donald R. Westervelt, Los Alamos National Laboratories, LA-10902-MS, February 1987.