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Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

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Eric Schlosser Command and Control
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    Command and Control
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    Penguin Press HC
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  • Year:
    2013
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    New York
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    9781410461933
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Excellent hair-raising is how nonfiction should be written. (Louis Menand) Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of Americas nuclear arsenal. A ground-breaking account of accidents, near-misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: how do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind. Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller, interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policymakers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons cant be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with men who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable, is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of Americas nuclear age.

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Eric Schlosser

COMMAND AND CONTROL

Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

For my father

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
Thats how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

AUTHORS NOTE

This is a book about the effort to control nuclear weapons to ensure that one doesnt go off by accident, by mistake, or by any other unauthorized means. The emphasis in these pages isnt on the high-level diplomacy behind arms control treaties. Its on the operating systems and the mind-set that have guided the management of Americas nuclear arsenal for almost seventy years. The history of similar efforts in the Soviet Union is largely absent here. Although no less important, such a history requires a knowledge of Russian archives and sources that I lack. Command and Control explores the precarious balance between the need for nuclear weapon safety and the need to defend the United States from attack. It looks at the attempts by American scientists, policy makers, and military officers to reconcile those two demands, from the dawn of the nuclear age until the end of the Cold War. And through the story of a long-forgotten accident, it aims to shed light on a larger theme: the mixture of human fallibility and technological complexity that can lead to disaster.

Although most of the events in this book occurred a long time ago, they remain unfortunately relevant. Thousands of nuclear warheads still sit atop missiles belonging to the United States and Russia, ready to be launched at a moments notice. Hundreds more are possessed by India, China, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, Great Britain, and France. As of this writing, a nuclear weapon has not destroyed a city since August 1945. But there is no guarantee that such good luck will last.

The fall of the Berlin Wall now feels like ancient history. An entire generation has been raised without experiencing the dread and anxiety of the Cold War, a conflict that lasted almost half a century and threatened to annihilate mankind. This book assumes that most of its readers know little about nuclear weapons, their inner workings, or the strategic thinking that justifies their use. I hope readers who are familiar with these subjects will nevertheless learn a new thing or two here. My own ignorance, I now realize, was profound. No great monument has been built to honor those who served during the Cold War, who risked their lives and sometimes lost them in the name of freedom. It was ordinary men and women, not just diplomats and statesmen, who helped to avert a nuclear holocaust. Their courage and their sacrifices should be remembered.

SELECTED CAST OF CHARACTERS

THE TITAN II MISSILE COMBAT CREW

Captain Michael T. Mazzaro, the commander, a young officer from Massachusetts with a pregnant wife

Lieutenant Allan D. Childers, the deputy commander, raised in Okinawa, a former DJ in his late twenties

Staff Sergeant Rodney L. Holder, the ballistic missile systems analyst technician, son of a Navy officer, responsible for keeping the Titan II ready to launch

Staff Sergeant Ronald O. Fuller, the missile facilities technician, responsible for the equipment at the launch complex

Lieutenant Miguel Serrano, a trainee studying to become a deputy commander

PROPELLANT TRANSFER SYSTEM TEAM A

Senior Airman Charles T. Heineman, the team chief

Senior Airman David Powell, an experienced Titan II repairman, twenty-one and raised in Kentucky

Airman Jeffrey L. Plumb, nineteen and from Detroit, a novice receiving on-the-job training

PROPELLANT TRANSFER SYSTEM TEAM B

Sergeant Jeff Kennedy, a quality control evaluator for the 308th Strategic Missile Wing, perhaps the best missile mechanic at Little Rock Air Force Base, a former deckhand from Maine in his midtwenties

Colonel James L. Morris, the head of maintenance at the 308th Strategic Missile Wing

Senior Airman James R. Sandaker, a young missile technician from Evansville, Minnesota

Technical Sergeant Michael A. Hanson, the team chief

Senior Airman Greg Devlin, a junior middleweight Golden Gloves boxer

Senior Airman David L. Livingston, a twenty-two-year-old missile repairman from Ohio with a fondness for motorcycles

CIVILIANS IN AND AROUND DAMASCUS

Sid King, the twenty-seven-year-old manager of a local radio station

Gus Anglin, the sheriff of Van Buren County

Sam Hutto, a dairy farmer with land across the road from the missile site

THE DISASTER RESPONSE FORCE

Colonel William A. Jones, the head of the force as well as the base commander

Captain Donald P. Mueller, a flight surgeon manning the forces ambulance

Richard L. English, head of the Disaster Preparedness Unit, a civilian in his late fifties, still fit and athletic, nicknamed Colonel, whod served in the Air Force for many years

Technical Sergeant David G. Rossborough, an experienced first responder

SECURITY POLICE OFFICERS

Technical Sergeant Thomas A. Brocksmith, the on-scene police supervisor at the accident site

Technical Sergeant Donald V. Green, a noncommissioned officer in his early thirties who volunteered to escort a flatbed truck to Launch Complex 374-7

Technical Sergeant Jimmy E. Roberts, a friend of Greens who accompanied him on the drive to Damascus

AT THE LITTLE ROCK COMMAND POST

Colonel John T. Moser, commander of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing

AT THE SAC COMMAND POST IN OMAHA

General Lloyd R. Leavitt, Jr., the vice commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command

AT BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE IN LOUSIANA

Colonel Ben G. Scallorn, a Titan II expert at the Eighth Air Force whod worked with the missiles since the first silos were built

THE MANHATTAN PROJECT

General Leslie R. Groves, director of the project, who led the effort to build an atomic bomb

J. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist, later known as the father of the atomic bomb, who served as the first director of the Los Alamos Laboratory

Edward Teller, a physicist later known as the father of the hydrogen bomb, often at odds with the other Los Alamos scientists

George B. Kistiakowsky, a chemist and perhaps the nations leading explosives expert, later the science adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower

SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS AT THE WEAPONS LABS

Bob Peurifoy, an engineer from Texas who joined Sandia in 1952 and subsequently became its leading advocate for nuclear weapon safety

Harold Agnew, a physicist from Colorado who helped create the first manmade nuclear chain reaction, filmed the destruction of Hiroshima from an observer plane, and played an important role in nuclear weapon safety efforts at the Los Alamos Laboratory

Carl Carlson, a young physicist at Sandia who in the late 1950s recognized the vulnerability of a nuclear weapons electrical system during an accident

Bill Stevens, an engineer who became the first head of Sandias nuclear safety department and worked closely with Bob Peurifoy

Stan Spray, a Sandia engineer who burned, crushed, and routinely tortured nuclear weapon components to discover their flaws

MILITARY LEADERS

General Curtis E. LeMay, an engineer who revolutionized American bombing techniques during the Second World War and turned the Strategic Air Command into the most powerful military organization in history

General Thomas S. Power, an Air Force officer who led the firebombing of Tokyo during the Second World War, followed LeMay to the Strategic Air Command, and gained the reputation of being a mean son of a bitch

General Maxwell D. Taylor, an Army officer who championed the nuclear strategy of limited war and served as influential adviser to President John F. Kennedy

OFFICIALS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

David E. Lilienthal, the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and a strong believer in civilian control of nuclear weapons

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