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

Even more worrisome than the technical challenges were the risks of human error and sabotage. Iklé noted that the Air Force’s shortage of trained weapon handlers “sometimes makes it necessary to entrust unspecialized personnel with complex tasks on nuclear weapons.” A single mistake — or more likely, a series of mistakes — could cause a nuclear detonation. Safety measures like checklists, seals that must be broken before knobs can be turned, and constant training might reduce the odds of human error. But Iklé thought that none of those things could protect against a threat that seemed like the stuff of pulp fiction: deliberate, unauthorized attempts to detonate a nuclear weapon. The technical safeguards currently in use could be circumvented by “someone who knew the workings of the fuzing and firing mechanism.” On at least one occasion, a drunken enlisted man had overpowered a guard at a nuclear storage site and attempted to gain access to the bombs. “It can hardly be denied that there is a risk of unauthorized acts,” Iklé wrote — and figuring out how to stop them remained “one of the most baffling problems of nuclear weapon safety.”

With help from the psychiatrist Gerald J. Aronson, Iklé outlined some of the motivations that could prompt someone to disobey orders and set off a nuclear weapon. The risk wasn’t hypothetical. About twenty thousand Air Force personnel worked with nuclear weapons, and in order to do so, they had to obtain a secret or a top secret clearance. But they didn’t have to undergo any psychiatric screening. In fact, “a history of transient psychotic disorders” no longer disqualified a recruit from joining the Air Force. A few hundred Air Force officers and enlisted men were annually removed from duty because of their psychotic disorders — and perhaps ten or twenty who worked with nuclear weapons could be expected to have a severe mental breakdown every year.

In an appendix to the report, Aronson offered “a catalogue of derangement” that seemed relevant to nuclear safety. The most dangerous disorders involved paranoia. Aronson provided a case history of the type of officer who needed to be kept away from atomic bombs:

A 23-year-old pilot, a Lieutenant, had difficulty in maintaining social contacts, fearful of disapproval and anxious to please. A few hours after he had to say “Sir” to someone, he was overwhelmed with fantasies of tearing that person apart…. He felt like exploding when in crowded restaurants; this feeling lessened when hostile fantasies of “tearing the place apart” occurred. He suffered anxiety attacks every two weeks or so in connection with hostile or sexual thoughts. To him flying was exciting, rewarding in its expression of hostility and power.

In another case history, Aronson described an Air Force captain who developed full-blown paranoid schizophrenia at the age of thirty-three. His behavior became “grandiose, inappropriate, and demanding.” He considered himself the real commander of his unit and gave orders to a superior officer. At the height of these delusions, the captain nevertheless managed to log “eight hours on the B-25 [bomber] with unimpaired proficiency.”

Aronson thought that an unauthorized nuclear detonation would have a unique appeal to people suffering from a variety of paranoid delusions — those who were seeking fame, who believed themselves “invested with a special mission that sets them apart from society,” who wanted to save the world and thought that “the authorities … covertly wish destruction of the enemy but are uncomfortably constrained by outmoded convention.” In addition to the mentally ill, officers and enlisted men with poor impulse control might be drawn to nuclear weapons. The same need for immediate gratification that pyromaniacs often exhibited, “the desire to see the tangible result of their own power as it brings about a visual holocaust,” might find expression in detonating an atomic bomb. A number of case histories in the report illustrated the unpredictable, often infantile nature of impulse-driven behavior:

[An] assistant cook improperly obtained a charge of TNT in order to blast fish. He lighted it with a cigarette. As he was examining it to make sure it was ignited, the explosion took place. The man was blown to pieces.

“Private B and I each found a rifle grenade. We carried them back to our tent. Private K told us that we had better not fool with the grenades and to get rid of them. Private B said, ‘What will happen if I pull this pin?’ Then the grenade exploded.”

A Marine found a 37-millimeter dud and turned it in to the Quartermaster tent. Later, a sergeant came into the tent and saw the dud. In disregard of orders and safety, he aimed the shell at a hole in the wooden floor of the tent and dropped it. He commented that he would make “a pretty good bombardier.” He dropped the shell at least six times. Finally, inevitably, it exploded. The sergeant was killed and 2 others were injured.