-
- American Air Defense Command Almost Destroyed
World/It Wasn't A Movie - In a new book, appropriately titled "From
the Shadows" ((Simon and Shuster, $30)), Robert Gates, a former top
White House national security adviser and a director of the Central Intelligence
Agency, tells of one night during the Cold War when the nuclear nightmare
see in special effects movies almost happened. In a 3 a.m. phone call,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security assistant to the President,
was told of a U.S. National Military Command Center report that the Soviet
Union had just launched missiles carrying 220 nuclear warheads at targets
in the United States. According to Gates, Brzezinski knew that President
Carter had a "window" of three to seven minutes in which to decide
whether to launch a retaliatory U.S. missile strike. Brezezinski held
off waking the President for a minute or two to await a confirming report.
-
-
- One minute before he was going to alert
the President to push the nuclear button, Gates says Brzezinski got another
call saying that the original report was inaccurate--that the Soviets had
actually launched 2,200 warheads in an all-out attack. Then, just as Brzezinski
was about to call the President to suggest vaporizing the U.S.S.R., he
got a third call that someone had put a training drill in the computer
at the North American Air Defense Command. Sorry--false alarm.
-
-
-
- Secret US Accident Almost
Nuked UK
-
-
- Forty years ago, a B-47 aircraft bomber
crashed into a nuclear weapons store in Lakenheath in the English countryside,
setting on fire three Mark Six nuclear bombs. "Preliminary exam by
bomb disposal officer says a miracle one Mark six with exposed detonators
sheared didn't go," said Gen. James Walsh, the commanding officer
of the U.S. Seventh Air Division, in a private cable to his superior in
Washington. At the time of the crash and again in 1979, when the story
first emerged in the press, The Pentagon denied that nuclear weapons were
damaged or that civilians were ever at risk. The Washington-based National
Resource Defense Council uncovered the declassified documents, including
the smoking-gun cable, in the U.S. Library of Congress last year. The
papers prove the occurrence of a near-disaster on English soil--and the
U.S. government's scandalous initial cover-up.
-
-
- The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
has revealed a previously secret investigation of a 1958 fire that destroyed
a US-B-47 bomber at Greenham Common, a former US air base in Britain.
Researchers traced "high concentrations" of uranium-235 around
the base to the accident site. According to the report, the bomber was
carrying a nuclear device, and radioactive ash and dust from the fire spread
over more than 200 square miles of Berkshire. The "Scottish Daily
Express" expressed anger that the accident "was kept secret for
nearly 40 years" and reported that "demands are being made for
an inquire into child cancer levels in the country."
|
Homepage