Command and Control

“The enemy has for the first time used cruel bombs”: Quoted in John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), p. 36.

Potential Hazards

“fire in the hole”: “Report, Major Missile Accident, Titan II Complex 374-7,” Statement of Eric Ayala, Airman First class, Tab U-4, p. 2.

“Can my people come back into the control center?”: Quoted in ibid., Statement of Allan D. Childers, First Lieutenant, Tab U-13, p. 2.

“There’s got to be a malfunction”: Ibid.

“Well, get over here”: Ibid.

“Holy shit,” thought Holder: Holder interview.

Sid King was having dinner at a friend’s house: Interview with Sid King.

an oxidizer trailer parked on the hardstand had started to leak: My account of the oxidizer leak is based on interviews with Jeff Kennedy, who was a PTS technician in Little Rock at the time; Gus Anglin, the sheriff who responded to the leak; and Bill Carter, the attorney who represented a local farmer sickened by the fumes. See also Art Harris, “Titan II: A Plague on This Man’s House,” Washington Post, September 22, 1980.

Gus Anglin, the sheriff of Van Buren County, was standing with a state trooper: Anglin interview.

“I’m the sheriff of the county”: Ibid.

“No, no, we’ve got everything under control”: Quoted in ibid.

“Sir, get your ass out of here”: Quoted in King interview.

“Boy, he wasn’t in too good a mood”: Quoted in ibid.

“green smoke”: Quoted in “Report, Major Missile Accident, Titan II Complex 374-7,” Childers statement, Tab U-13, p. 3.

“If the missile blows,” Holder said: Holder interview.

designed to withstand a nuclear detonation with an overpressure of 300 psi: Cited in Stumpf, Titan II, p. 101.

survive an overpressure of 1,130 psi: Cited in ibid., p. 118.

“Put him in the middle of you guys”: “Report, Major Missile Accident, Titan II Complex 374-7,” Childers statement, Tab U-13, p. 4.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Holder thought: Holder interview.

“Get out of here, get out of here”: “Report, Major Missile Accident, Titan II Complex 374-7,” Statement of Thomas A. Brocksmith, Technical Sergeant, Tab U-9, p. 1.

PART TWO: MACHINERY OF CONTROL

The Best, the Biggest, and the Most

Hamilton Holt’s dream of world peace: See Warren F. Kuehl, Hamilton Holt: Journalist, Internationalist, Educator (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1960).

“PAUSE, PASSER-BY, AND HANG YOUR HEAD”: Holt’s inscription continues: “This engine of destruction, torture, and death symbolizes the prostitution of the inventor, the avarice of the manufacturer, the blood-guilt of the statesman, the savagery of the soldier, the perverted patriotism of the citizen, the debasement of the human race…” The peace monument was vandalized and destroyed in 1943.

About fifty million people had been killed: The actual number will never be known. I have chosen to use a conservative estimate. See Martin Gilbert, The Second World War: A Complete History (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2004), p. 1.

“destructive beyond the wildest nightmares”: See “General Arnold Stresses Preparedness Need in Statement,” Washington Post, August 19, 1945.

“Seldom if ever has a war ended”: Quoted in Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), p. 7. The full text of Murrow’s broadcast can be found in Edward Bliss, Jr., ed., In Search of Light, 1938–1961: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), pp. 102–3. “No one is trying to assess the relative influence of the atomic bomb and the Russian declaration of war in bringing about the Japanese defeat,” Murrow added, less than a week after Hiroshima’s destruction. “People are content to leave that argument to the historians.”

The appeal called for the United Nations’ General Assembly: See George C. Holt, “The Conference on World Government,” Journal of Higher Education, vol. 17, no. 5 (May 1946), pp. 227–35.

“We believe these to be the minimum requirements”: Quoted in ibid., p. 234.

“a world government with power to control”: Quoted in Boyer, Bomb’s Early Light, p. 37.

lowered “the cost of destruction”: H. H. Arnold, “Air Force in the Atomic Age,” in Dexter Masters and Katharine Way, eds., One World or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb (New York: New Press, 2007), p. 71.

“too cheap and easy”: Ibid., p. 70.

“A far better protection”: Ibid., p. 84.

atomic bomb’s “very existence should make war unthinkable”: “Memorandum by the Commanding General, Manhattan Engineer District, Leslie R. Groves: Our Army of the Future — As Influenced by Atomic Weapons” (CONFIDENTIAL/declassified), in United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, Volume 1, General; the United Nations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972), p. 1199.

“If there are to be atomic bombs in the world”: Ibid., p. 1203