Posted on 05/24/2018 7:46:23 AM PDT by BenLurkin
More than a dozen U.S. Air Force airmen faced disciplinary action – including court martial – after a drug ring was found operating at a base that controls America's nuclear missiles, the Associated Press reports.
Military investigators cracked the ring in 2016, after one of the service members made the mistake of posting material to social media that suggested the drug use.
Nearly half of the airmen were convicted of using or distributing LSD – a drug for which the Pentagon had stopped testing, the AP says. Citing records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the AP reports that the drug ring operated at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, just outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The airmen took the drugs – which also included ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana – during their off-duty time, but at least one airman admitted that while under the influence of LSD, he wouldn't have been able to respond properly if he had been suddenly called to duty.
Evidence in the airmen's cases showed that they did the drugs state parks or at parties in Denver – where a group went longboarding on the streets after taking LSD, the AP says. It also includes quotes from some service members who recalled having "bad trips" – and others who said their experiences had been positive.
"Minutes felt like hours, colors seemed more vibrant and clear," Airman Basic Kyle S. Morrison is quoted saying. "In general, I felt more alive."
But Air Force prosecutors had a different view, saying that taking the powerful hallucinogenic drug can produce "paranoia, fear and panic, unwanted and overwhelming feelings, unwanted life-changing spiritual experiences, and flashbacks."
Warren is the headquarters of the 20th Air Force, which oversees three missile wings. While the personnel there are held to a high standard because of their work securing Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles, the AP notes that the assignments are sometimes seen as a "backwater."
More than 400 Minuteman missiles, each capable of delivering devastating nuclear blows, are deployed around Warren and other bases, the Air Force says.
Six of the airmen were convicted of drug offenses in courts martial. They're among 14 service members who faced disciplinary measures over the investigation — which came on the heels of other scandals involving the U.S. missile corps.
Those recent incidents include the use of narcotics by officers with launch authority, and rampant cheating on proficiency exams – which was seen as both manipulating the promotion process and masking security lapses.
Revelations about drug use at Warren also come less than five years after the Air Force's No. 2 missile commander, Maj. Gen. Michael Carey — who led the 20th Air Force that is headquartered at Warren — was relieved of command over "drunken and inappropriate behavior while leading a security delegation to Moscow."
Reporting on the recent drug case, the AP quotes Capt. Charles Grimsley, a lead prosecutor in some of the courts martial, saying, "Although this sounds like something from a movie, it isn't."
trippppppin’ yo !
Why are they reporting this now, instead of when Obama was in office?
Well this makes me feel secure.
Not.
Just test them for drugs regularly. It’s the government.
I remember acid mostly made feel like you couldn’t stand up. And mostly it was right.
-PJ O’Rourke. “A Parliament of Whores- A lone humorist tries to explain the entire US government”
As an ex TACAMO crewman, I saw things...personally...that would frighten the nation.
I also witnessed behavior at sea, on warships, that would astound.
Of course, it was a different era.
Something tells me the more responsible types would be older. Perhaps it should be civilians manning the sites. Retired military/law enforcement types. A young and bored airman who may not be committed to 20 years has other things on his mind.
Help me!
Who was President/POTUS/CIC in 2016!
Americans voted twice and elected twice an admitted druggie.
So why is the media concerned with this.
Discipline, training, recurring training, oversight. All went to crap after 1992 when SAC and its stringent requirements went away and they turned the operations end over to the fighter weenies. They had no sense of the gravity of the mission or the requirements needed to maintain readiness and discipline. They ignored it because it got in the way of faster fighter jets.
Many of us in SAC at the time predicted this decline in standards and the many incidents like this over the years bears out our concerns.
SAC maintained their steel fist grip on our snarklies 24/7 but the results were exemplary discipline and control over the nation’s nuclear assets.
They do test regularly. It’s all on a random computer selection....some numbers thrown into the system, and once a month....it spits out some list of folks. It could be 200 folks on a base of 2,000.
There’s two general issues.
First, there’s a list of drugs on their lab testing procedure. In the late 70s...I think it was just six of them. Toward the last 20 years....I think they are up to around 25 to 30 drugs. There are various drugs which exist....but don’t fall on the list. LSD hasn’t been regularly used drug until the last decade, and depending on where you live....it’s still awful rare.
Second issue is randomness. When I went into service in 1977...for the entire first decade...my name popped up three times in that ten year period. Then I hit some period of one single year and eight times of randomness....all consecutive months. I even went to complained on the 7th consecutive month that it can’t be random if it occurs that many times in a row. They laughed, and a month later....my name popped up again.
Oddly, after that one single year....I went another six years without a single random testing.
Personally, I think they ought to test just about everyone every six months.
What is TACAMO? The data below comes from Wikipedia:
TACAMO (Take Charge and Move Out) is a United States military system of survivable communications links designed to be used in nuclear warfare to maintain communications between the decision-makers (the National Command Authority) and the triad of strategic nuclear weapon nuclear weapons delivery systems. Its primary mission is serving as a signals relay, where it receives orders from a command plane such as Operation Looking Glass, and verifies and retransmits their Emergency Action Messages (EAMs) to US strategic forces. As it is a dedicated communications post, it features the ability to communicate on virtually every radio frequency band from very low frequency (VLF) up through super high frequency (SHF) using a variety of modulations, encryptions and networks, minimizing the likelihood an emergency message will be jammed by the enemy. This airborne communications capability largely replaced the land-based extremely low frequency (ELF) broadcast sites which became vulnerable to nuclear strike.
One current version of the TACAMO is the replacement mission for the SAC 24/7 Looking Glass mission that maintained the worldwide NCA link. The Navy now maintains and flies the aircraft for the mission. They are a continuation of the mission begun in the early 60s but is no longer 24/7.
Immorality kills in numbers great and small. The number of those who could have died as a result of this flagrant betrayal of trust and duty could have been catastrophic.
The problem with LSD is that you have to catch them within 12 hrs of tripping.... metabolizes fast and is quickly undetectable.
They should also randomly rotate in new testers.
We’ve heard guns and alcohol don’t mix but here we have ... nukes and LSD.
You just know an airburst would be like WOW man!
It’s probably not complete random. It’s random plus recommendations.
Someone might have suggested that they pay closer attention to you.
Retired LEO? You mean dudes with bad credit and skeletons in the closet? No thanks.
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