Keeping Presidents in the Nuclear Dark

CDI (Center for Defense Information) ^ | Feb. 11, 2004 | Bruce G. Blair

[Nail]

Keeping Presidents in the Nuclear Dark
(Episode #1: The Case of the Missing ?Permissive Action Links?)
Bruce G. Blair, Ph.D, CDI President, bblair@cdi.org
Feb. 11, 2004

Last month I asked Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, what he believed back in the 1960s was the status of technical locks on the Minuteman intercontinental missiles. These long-range nuclear-tipped missiles first came on line during the Cuban missile crisis and grew to a force of 1,000 during the McNamara years ? the backbone of the U.S. strategic deterrent through the late 1960s. McNamara replied, in his trade-mark, assertively confident manner that he personally saw to it that these special locks (known to wonks as ?Permissive Action Links?) were installed on the Minuteman force, and that he regarded them as essential to strict central control and preventing unauthorized launch.

When the history of the nuclear cold war is finally comprehensively written, this McNamara vignette will be one of a long litany of items pointing to the ignorance of presidents and defense secretaries and other nuclear security officials about the true state of nuclear affairs during their time in the saddle. What I then told McNamara about his vitally important locks elicited this response: ?I am shocked, absolutely shocked and outraged. Who the hell authorized that?? What he had just learned from me was that the locks had been installed, but everyone knew the combination.

The Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha quietly decided to set the ?locks? to all zeros in order to circumvent this safeguard. During the early to mid-1970s, during my stint as a Minuteman launch officer, they still had not been changed. Our launch checklist in fact instructed us, the firing crew, to double-check the locking panel in our underground launch bunker to ensure that no digits other than zero had been inadvertently dialed into the panel. SAC remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders. And so the ?secret unlock code? during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War remained constant at OOOOOOOO.

After leaving the Air Force in 1974, I pressed the service, initially by letters addressed to it and then through congressional intermediaries, to consider a range of terrorist scenarios in which these locks could serve as crucial barriers against the unauthorized seizure of launch control over Minuteman missiles. In 1977, I co-authored (with Garry Brewer) an article (reprinted below) entitled ?The Terrorist Threat to World Nuclear Programs? in which I laid out the case for taking this threat more seriously and suggesting remedial measures including, first and foremost, activating those McNamara locks that apparently he and presidents presumed had already been activated.

The locks were activated in 1977.

It is hard to know where to begin, and end, in recounting stories like this one that reveal how misinformed, misled, and misguided on critical nuclear matters our top leaders have been throughout the nuclear age. A multitude of such examples can, and will, be described in forthcoming columns

[BulletBobCo]

Mushroom Bump

[Felis_irritable]

"...misinformed, misled, and misguided on critical nuclear matters our top leaders have been throughout the nuclear age"

Yeah but cripes, picking McNamara as an example is like picking the worst of the worst -- geez, I'm speechless -- I was a 6 year old kid when he became SECDEF and I knew then he was an idiot...

[al baby]

[Nail]

LOL

Taken from December 1996's Feature "Homemade Science" Article:

(...)

The rumors that have unfortunately occurred as a result of widespread
misinformation can, and must, be cleared up now, for the construction
project this month is the construction of a thermonuclear device, which
will hopefully clear up any misconceptions you might have about such a
project. We will see how easy it is to make a device of your very own in
ten easy steps, to have and hold as you see fit, without annoying
interference from the government or the courts.

The project will cost between $5,000 and $30,000 American dollars,
depending on how fancy you want the final product to be. 

(...)

Here are the instructions:

Nukes Made Easy

[BenLurkin]

A much better combination would have been 1-2-3-4.

[Rudder]

?WTF?

[wattsup]

I am an ex-Nuclear Weapons Specialist 1972-1993. I can tell you for a fact that each weapon has it's own PAL and they are not set to all zeros. I have been assigned to PAL teams and there is no doubt as to the security of the weapons stockpile. We had it and now my 463X0 brothers and sisters have it under control.

[Nail]

Bruce Blair has been a senior fellow at the leftist Brookings Institution, and he has been associated with nuclear weapons abolition efforts.
So I know that he is not necessarily a trustworthy source. Perhaps I should not have assumed that he would tell the truth.

[Nail]

There were 1,500 also around each SAC base, you sure the number is not 10,000?

This looks like a decent site: Minuteman ICBM History Website

They also seem to indicate that the peak was around 1000 missiles in 1962, but I'm not sure what the right number is.

[JimNtexas]

The reason they set all zeros is to ensure that a valid code was not set inadvertantly.

Every weapon had its own unique code.

This guy is full of it.

[DuncanWaring]

1000 ... 1500 ... 10000

Are you counting warheads or missiles?

[jnarcus]

Isn't CDI just another leftist think tank with morons writing blather?

[Nail]

I think you are right. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have posted the article.