Replies

I was a newsman in Dallas at the most popular radio station in 1971.
I was alone in the newsroom on
February 20.
On that morning at 9:33 AM Eastern time, Telex machines in every broadcast station in America that was part of the EBS suddenly rang urgently with ten successive bells–a signal only used for an imminent EBS warning.
It then spit out a sheet reading, “This is an Emergency Action Notification directed by the president. Normal broadcasting will cease immediately.” The telex included the code word, “Hatefulness.”
I opened up an envelope that contained a verifying word for the code word, and there it was. Hatefulness.

Trying to remain calm, I went into the control room and showed Weaver Morrow, the morning DJ, the message. He turned pale.
Dallas is just a stones throw from Carswell AFB, a SAC base for nuke armed B52s, and ideal nuke target.

It was a weekend and over half of the city was listening to the station at any given moment. We decided not to air the announcement we were ordered by the government to broadcast because of the panic it could and probably would create.

We called station management and they agreed. We believed if a nuclear attack had already happened somewhere on US soil or one could be pending here and possibly any minute, why create chaos. We just waited for the late morning flash of an exploding sunrise at Carswell to the west of us.
About 15 minutes later the AP and UPI telex machines printed in capitals that the message was a mistake

There is audio out there of a very shaken announcer at WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana who DID break-in with the alert, and then spent a very nervous eight minutes or so on the air before getting the all-clear.

Someone at NORAD scrooood-up by sending out the actual attack code and not the test.

"We decided not to air the announcement we were ordered by the government to broadcast...We called station management and they agreed. We believed if a nuclear attack had already happened somewhere on US soil or one could be pending here and possibly any minute, why create chaos."

Really?? You admit that you overrode an apparently legitimate message from national command authorities. That was still the era where people had their own fallout shelters and many had storm cellars that did double duty.

Life around Carswell would have sucked if they got nuked but Dallas and the listening area covered a much wider and more survivable area if some people sheltered and there was an attack.

You had no way of knowing why the alert was released. What if it could have been something else, like a broken arrow at Carswell or in the surrounding area? That could have resulted in a risk to the population served by your station but not lethal if simple sheltering indoors was appropriate.

You and your station did not act responsibly and were in violation of your FCC broadcast license agreement...

Or maybe this is all just a "war story".