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

The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy had been concerned: My description of the committee’s tour of NATO sites and the development of Permissive Action Links is based on “Report on U.S. Policies Regarding Assignment of Nuclear Weapons to NATO”; “Letter, From Harold M. Agnew, to Major General A. D. Starbird, Director of Military Applications, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission,” January 5, 1961 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified); Clinton P. Anderson, with Milton Viorst, Outsider in the Senate: Senator Clinton Anderson’s Memoirs (New York: World Publishing Company, 1970), pp. 165–73; “Command and Control Systems for Nuclear Weapons: History and Current Status,” System Development Department I, Sandia Laboratories, SLA-73-0415, September 1973 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified); “PAL Control of Theater Nuclear Weapons,” M. E. Bleck, P. R. Souder, Command and Control Division, Sandia National Laboratories, SAND82-2436, March 1984 (SECRET/FORMERLY RESTRICTED DATA/declassified); Peter Stein and Peter Feaver, Assuring Control of Nuclear Weapons: The Evolution of Permissive Action Links (Cambridge, MA: Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and University Press of America, 1987); Stevens, “Origins and Evolution of S2C at Sandia,” pp. 50–52; and my interview with Harold Agnew, who went on the European trip and played an important role in the adoption of PALs.

“I have always been of the belief”: The president’s news conference of February 3, 1960, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Containing the Public Messages and Statements of the President, January 1, 1960 to January 20, 1961 (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Federal Register, 1961), p. 152.

“an essential element” of the NATO stockpile: Quoted in Anderson, Outsider in the Senate, p. 170.

a private understanding with Norstad: See Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, p. 170.

“nearly wet my pants”: Agnew interview.

“All [the Italians] have to do is hit him on the head”: Transcript, Executive Session, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Meeting No. 87-1-4, February 20, 1960, NSA, p. 73.

“There were three Jupiters setting there”: Ibid, p. 66.

“Non-Americans with non-American vehicles”: Ibid, p. 47.

“The prime loyalty of the guards, of course”: “Report on U.S. Policies Regarding Assignment of Nuclear Weapons to NATO,” p. 33.

French officers sought to gain control of a nuclear device: I first learned about the attempt from Thomas Reed, a former secretary of the Air Force and adviser to President Ronald Reagan. Reed briefly mentions the episode in a book that he wrote with Danny B. Stillman, a former director of the Los Alamos Technical Intelligence Division: The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation (Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2009), pp. 79–80. The story is told in much greater detail by Bruno Tertrais in “A Nuclear Coup? France, the Algerian War and the April 1961 Nuclear Test,” Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, Draft, October 2, 2011.

“Refrain from detonating your little bomb”: Quoted in Tetrais, “A Nuclear Coup?” p. 11.

“the dumping ground for obsolete warheads”: “Report on U.S. Policies Regarding Assignment of Nuclear Weapons to NATO,” p. 45.

Holifield estimated that about half of the Jupiters: Transcript, Executive Session, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Meeting No. 87-1-4, p. 82.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted: See Nash, Other Missiles of October, p. 56.

“It would have been better to dump them in the ocean”: Quoted in ibid., p. 3.

The Mark 7 atomic bombs carried by NATO fighters: Agnew, Stevens, Peurifoy interviews.

amazed to see a group of NATO weapon handlers pull the arming wires out: Agnew interview. The bombs lacked trajectory-sensing switches and therefore could detonate without having to fall from a plane. Senator Anderson noted that at Vogel Air Base in the Netherlands “a safety wire designed to keep the firing switch open had been accidentally pulled from a nuclear weapon and that device, if dropped, would have exploded.” See Anderson, Outsider in the Senate, p. 172. “Letter, From Harold M. Agnew,” p. 8; “Report on U.S. Policies Regarding Assignment of Nuclear Weapons to NATO,” p. 37.

A rocket-propelled version of the Mark 7 was unloaded, fully armed: See “Incidents and Accidents,” Incident #3, p. 21.

“During initial inspection after receipt”: See ibid., Incident #1, p. 52.

A screwdriver was found inside one of the bombs; an Allen wrench was somehow left inside another: See ibid., Incident #1, p. 70.

the training and operating manuals for the Mark 7: See “Letter, from Harold M. Agnew,” p. 2.

“In many areas we visited”: “Report on U.S. Policies Regarding Assignment of Nuclear Weapons to NATO,” p. 38.

“far from remote”: Ibid., p. 2.

a mishap on January 16, 1961: See ibid. and “Incidents and Accidents,” Incident #3, p. 38. I was able to confirm where the accident occurred.