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

“With the possible exception of the Soviet nuclear war plan”: “Speech to the Canadian Network Against Nuclear Weapons,” George Lee Butler, Montreal, March 11, 1999.

Butler eliminated about 75 percent of the targets: Cited in R. Jeffrey Smith, “Retired Nuclear Warrior Sounds Alarms on Weapons,” Washington Post, December 4, 1996.

National Strategic Response Plans: See “Memorandum for the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, From General George L. Butler, Commander in Chief, United States Strategic Command, Subject: Renaming the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP),” September 2, 1992, (CONFIDENTIAL/declassified). This document was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.

“State Committee for the State of Emergency”: For the attempted coup, see William E. Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 305–46; Hoffman, Dead Hand, pp. 369–76; and Mikhail Tsypkin, “Adventures of the ‘Nuclear Briefcase’: A Russian Document Analysis,” Strategic Insights, Center for Contemporary Conflict, Naval Postgraduate School, vol. 3, issue 9 (2004).

President George H. W. Bush announced a month later: See “Remarks by President Bush on Reducing U.S. and Soviet Nuclear Weapons,” New York Times, September 28, 1991.

“The long bitter years of the Cold War are over”: Quoted in Steve Kline, “SAC, America’s Nuclear Strike Force, Is Retired,” Associated Press, June 2, 1992.

EPILOGUE

hidden by a repair tag: Charles Perrow’s succinct, unsettling account of the mishap at Three Mile Island can be found in his book, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 15–31.

his shirt caught on the handle of a circuit breaker: Ibid., pp. 43–44.

A lightbulb slipped out of the hand: Ibid.

“trivial events in nontrivial systems”: Ibid., pp. 43–46.

“Our ability to organize”: Ibid., p. 10.

“tightly coupled”: Ibid., pp. 89–100.

“No one dreamed that when X failed”: Ibid., p. 4.

“those closest to the system, the operators”: Ibid., p. 10.

“Time and time again, warnings are ignored”: Ibid.

“the highest state of readiness for nuclear war”: Sagan, The Limits of Safety, p. 62.

an Atlas long-range missile was test-launched: Ibid., pp. 78–80.

“so loose, it jars your imagination”: Quoted in ibid., p. 110.

“In retrospect,” Melgard said: Quoted in ibid.

one of the most dangerous incidents: Ibid., pp. 135–38.

“numerous dangerous incidents … occurred”: Ibid., p. 251.

“a stabilizing force”: Ibid.

“Nuclear weapons may well have made deliberate war”: Ibid., p. 264.

less by “good design than good fortune”: Ibid., p. 266.

“Fixes, including safety devices”: Perrow, Normal Accidents, p. 11.

“Do Artifacts Have Politics?”: The essay can be found in Langdon Winner, The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 19–39.

“As long as it exists at all”: Ibid., p. 34.

“born secret”: The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 required that “all data concerning the manufacture or utilization of atomic weapons” must be classified, and it created a new legal category for such information: Restricted Data. An amendment to the act in 1954 added another category of secret knowledge — Formerly Restricted Data — that pertains mainly to the military uses, capabilities, and deployments of nuclear weapons. Despite the apparent meaning of that name, Formerly Restricted Data is still classified information that can’t be released to the public without permission from the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. For insight into the Orwellian world of nuclear secrecy, see Howard Morland, “Born Secret,” Cardozo Law Review, vol. 26, no. 4 (March 2005), pp. 1401–8; “Restricted Data Declassification Decisions, 1946 to the Present,” RDD-8, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Health, Safety and Security, Office of Classification, January 1, 2002 (OFFICIAL USE ONLY/declassified); and “Transforming the Security Classification System,” Report to the President from the Public Interest Declassification Board, November 2012.

“Accidents and Incidents Involving Nuclear Weapons”: The document, cited previously, is “Accidents and Incidents Involving Nuclear Weapons: Accidents and Incidents During the Period 1 July 1957 Through 31 March 1967,” Technical Letter 20-3, Defense Atomic Support Agency, October 15, 1967 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified).

a Genie antiaircraft missile released from a fighter: Ibid., Incident #33, p. 14.

a Boar missile crushed by the elevator: Ibid., Incident #3, p. 53.

a Mark 49 warhead blown off a Jupiter missile: Ibid., Incident #11, p. 34.

smoke pouring from a W-31 warhead atop a Nike missile: Ibid., Incident #51, p. 89.