Weapons accident in damascus arkansas that occurred in 1980. And i use that story, that narrative as a way of looking at the management of our Nuclear Weapons really since the First Nuclear device was invented in 1945. And i hope to remind readers that these weapons are out there. That theyre still capable of being used and that theres probably no more important thing that our government does and manage them. Because these are the most dangerous machines ever built, and i think the subject has fallen off the radar quite a bit in the cold war. Host lets talk about the story. You were telling the story from the ground up. You chose tying it to missile explosion at so why that particular explosion rather than many other incidents that you can lock in the book . Guest my interest in writing about Nuclear Weapons was sparked by i spent time in the air force. I finished writing my book fast food nation and one of the officers told me as sort of the damascus accident to hed been in a Missile Launch crew and i just thought it was an extraordinary story. I had never heard of it. I could not believe what happened, and the more i learn about it the more it seemed like it was a very good way to look at these much larger themes about Nuclear Weapons, of our strategy for using them and about our management of them. Is a story in which a seemingly trivial event, someone drops a tool, leads to a potential catastrophe. The dropping of the tool damages and intercontinental ballistic missile, creates a situation where the missile might explode, and in this case the missile has the most powerful Nuclear Warhead the United States has ever deployed on a ballistic missile. So it was quite a story. And originally i thought the book would be relatively short. I was just going to tell that story, but the more i learned, the story got bigger and bigger. And it was another narrative about the effort what happens during actions, and another narrative about the effort to control them from a command and control point of view. I hate to turn the tables on you, but where were you when this missile exploded and what do you remember of it . Post that i remember the explosion, i was in the government and didnt actually have any responsibility for it. But the risks of Nuclear Accident has been something ive worked about as well for many years of my career. So lets explore a little bit, sort of what you have learned about those risks. Because in the case of titan for example, and in the case of these other mishaps, no Nuclear Weapon has actually exploded. Guest no Nuclear Weapon has detonated. Some Nuclear Weapons have exploded and spread plutonium, which is not a good thing but not as bad as a detonation to the book is a critique of a lot of the management of Nuclear Weapons, but at the same time it recognizes that enormous tactical ingenuity, great organizational skills, and huge amounts of personal courage and bravery are responsible for the fact that weve never had an accident or nuclear detonation. Host so you dont think its lock transit and theres lock. If you think about the fact that we have manufactured about 70,000 Nuclear Weapons and weve never had one that thats incredible management. Weve never lost one. Thats incredible inventory. Weve never lost one to other people. But in this business anything less than perfect is unacceptable. And theres no question that we have come close to having detonations on american soil. And the damascus accident is only one of the incidents. Another accident i wrote about was a b52 bomber that broke apart over North Carolina just a few days after john f. Kennedys inauguration. And that weapon came very close. Host we want it to be 100 . That guest i think enormous praise and credit must go to the weapons designer. Must go to the ordinary servicemen who i really try to write about at length. There been hundreds of books written about Nuclear Weapons and very few of them have been written about the day in and day out management. And the people who risk their lives and lost their lives time to prevent nuclear catastrophe. At the same time, theres an inherent risk in having Nuclear Weapons that are capable of being used quickly. And as long as weapons are maintained in that status, theres going to be the possibility of one going off when its not supposed to. So you tell us the history of efforts that make the weapons themselves say for. Guest yes. Host you can talk about the fact that in the past, many of these weapons were what you call, what we call alert. That is, they were ready to detonate. But lots has changed since the end of the cold war and youre the first to say that. So do you think that its hard to judge, but how worried should i be today about the possibility of a Nuclear Accident . Theres no question that the weapons that the United States has today are far more safe than the ones that we have deployed in the 1950s, even through the 1980s it and one of the narratives of the book is the effort includes the safety of our weapons. And i focus on one engineer in particular became Vice President of the laboratories. He devoted his career to eliminating safety problems with the weapons. It would be nice to think that it was usually supported by the grace National Security bureaucracies in doing that. But it was a real battle. There were others like him who believe in the need for safe Nuclear Weapons to but there always was this inherent contradiction between military demands of having the weapons immediately available and reliable, and then the more civilian need to not have one of them detonate on american soil. I think that helped the military as our not having it be dangerous. Getting back to todays weapons, they are much safer. The weapons themselves are much safer than the ones that were deployed again as recent as the 1980s. But i do have some concerns about the contemporary management of our arsenal, particularly the problems with the air force has had in recent years. In 2007, half a dozen german Nuclear Weapons were loaded inadvertently onto an airplane. The plane were flown across the United States without the pilot realizing there were Nuclear Weapons on board, and then that plane got on a runway for nine hours unattended. So that have a dozen Nuclear Weapons that nobody knew were missing for a day and a half. And that showed management fault that i think were extraordinary. Because there were many steps along the way in which standard operating procedures, and using common sense were ignored. The people who removed the weapons from the bunker never checked to see if they were Nuclear Weapons. They were never asked to cite any piece of paper saying that they were removing Nuclear Weapons. The security guys never checked as th the vehicle went past to e if your Nuclear Weapons on board. The crew that loaded the weapons never looked to see if your Nuclear Weapons. The pilots never checked. And in that case you could argue, the system works. Terrorists didnt get the weapons. Rogue officers didnt get the weapons. But you shouldnt have sex Nuclear Weapons that dont need to be signed for. And that cant be accountable for for a dnf. Just this year, we have three wings, just this year two of them have been found to have raised safety violations and their commanders have been vote relieved of command. The third as a few years ago lost communication with an entire squadron of missiles. Thats 50 missiles and they were sure why it happened but it turned out to be a trivial mechanical fault, but its not good to be able to not commit it with your missiles for an hour. And it raised the possible that our command and control system might be vulnerable to cyber attack. So a lot of a lot of the problems that arrive in the book have been addressed. But the same with commandandcontrol issues have been solved would be a mistake. Because with Something Like commandandcontrol which is a process, its never fully process, its never fully achieved. The record, the Safety Record was perfect until its not. Host you right. So theres still risks as long as you have Nuclear Weapons. And you know, the differences from the past to the pres preset have to do with kind of the ways in which some dangers have arisen. Some of those are not as difficult as in the past. And clearly different arsenals, that is, the United States and russia, are different in terms of their safety. If you asked me i would probably tell you i could stay awake worrying about pakistan and india and their Nuclear Arsenals. But i think its important to make those differences, not to say that there are not problems. I dont think anybody says it could be. But just to understand the nature of these kinds of things. Guest i tried to make a point clear in the book. We invented this technology. We have longer extend greater than any other nation. And i would bet our safety mechanism at our command and control mechanisms are superior to those in any other nation. Host but they are not necessary perfect. Guest i know what i was going to say is, i do think its true, its quite sobering, challenges we face and the problems we fixed. And at the end of the book i look at the rate of industrial accidents in other countries as a measure of their proficiency in dealing with complex technologies. And i worry about pakistan and india and north korea and iran getting one of these weapons. A u. N. Inspector who became for me with the iraqi design for their Nuclear Weapon, which was never asked to build, said it was quoted as saying he would be worried it might detonate if it fell off of the table. And that might be an exaggeration, but these are very complicated machines. And you dont want them to go wrong. Host couldnt agree with you more. So youre an Investigative Reporter, and an awardwinning Investigative Reporter. And ive been thinking about that sort of profession. And it seems to be more and more a lost art. So my question now is, do you agree, is your profession going out of business . And second, why do you continue to be an Investigative Reporter . Guest i think the need for my profession may be greater now in the country than it has benow in the country than it has been in 100 years. And the ability for people to practice my profession and be paid to do it is probably the worst that its been in 100 years. The first thing that newspapers tend to cut out their investigative reporting units. This sort of investigation, i spent six years on this book, but at a newspaper, investigative reports take weeks, months. They can be legally, there can be liability issues. And as newspapers have cut back, i think that Investigative Reporters are probably the first to go, and celebrity us a call in this may be the last to go. And so it is an endangered art, but anbut in a democracy i thins an essential one. My background academically is history. And so ive tried to cacademicas history. And so ive tried to combine those two sort of investigative reporting in a contemporary implications of what im writing about and my academic backgrou background, and try to we look at history that may be has been thoroughly explored. And i think this book combines those. Host you show yourself to be a great just went along the way. Guest thank you. By the way, thank you very much because you know a thing or two about the subject house of representatives but i also wonder if your Investigative Reporter, what you want to happen on the other side of the book. And so im thinking that you would probably want to see some changes, potentially. So let me play should if i can into situation where the secretary of defense called you in and says okay, tell me what you want me to do given what you now understand about commandandcontrol, United StatesNuclear Arsenal. Guest let me preface the answer to that part of the question by saying, i try very hard not to write rant or diatribe, and the books that i write dont end with a point by point political program. I did the best i can to allow the facts because i see them, to write as a calm tone as possible so my persona and my cleverness and my ideology isnt at the forefront. What im really trying to do is take subjects i think are very important, that the Mainstream Media may not be addressing, and particularly take very powerful institution that are very secretive and provide information. To the public so that decisions can be made on the basis of information and not on basis of this information, or disinformation or im not necessarily talking about the pentagon here. Im just as easily talking about mcdonalds, and their marketing versus the reality of how they procure their food. So for me, Nuclear Weapons is a subject of existential importance, and the book is just remind people they are there and provoke a dialogue. Not to impose my point of view. Having said that host i can imagine you dont have a few thoughts. Guest i do. Having said that, where the secretary of defense to call me and then asked for my advice, which is about as likely as a meteor striking this building as we speak host not talking about probabilities. Guest i would say the first thing that we need to do immediately is spare no expense in the management of a Nuclear Weapon that we currently have. Make sure that those who work with them are trained to the max, make sure that they have a testing equipment that they need right now, the testing whether we have for Nuclear Weapons backs dates back to the 1970s. Really invest in that infrastructure immediately. High morale. People who are well compensated. The very best officers being encouraged to enter the Nuclear Field as opposed to the Nuclear Field particularly and air force right now seeming like a career deadend. Those are things that we could do within a few years. And in a bigger sense, im a great believer that the fewer weapons possessed by few countries is better and safer. Not just in terms of accidents but in terms of potential for nuclear war. So we have had arms control agreements that our bilateral between the United States and the soviet union, and now with russia. But i think we need to find a way to engage the other Nuclear Powers in our control talks, and i can go off on all of the kind of specific things. But one of the important things about the book is the book is about a very unnerving and unsettling subject. Having spent six years investigating it, im not overwhelmed with doom and gloom. Im not a public. I dont think any of this is hopeless. And really if i thought it was i wouldnt have bothered to write the book. Host and spend all those years. I want to come back to the writing in the book, but just in a few words i was trying to capture kind of the theme. Thats one of the things that i tried to do. I want to try one out on you at this point. So the theme might be good people, very dangerous things, and a bureaucracy that you cannot trust. Guest those are some of the things. I would say good people come up well intended, patriotic, dangerous things, and peoples behavior in bureaucracy is not always the best behavior. Someone recently, i read the basic rule of success in a bureaucracy is better to be wrong than alone. And what one of the engineers, people i wrote about who i think are a true hero, he was right about the problems with our Nuclear Weapons. But he had to pay a price. He had to be alone. Yet to be a thorn in peoples sites, and his career might have gone a lot farther if he hadnt ruffled feathers costly trying to push Nuclear Weapons safety. Another fundamental theme i think in the book is that we are much better at creating complex technologies than we are at managing it. And theres just, its hard to anticipate what can go wrong, how it might go wrong, and if its an automobile that breaks down, thats unfortunate. If its an airliner that has some unanticipated mechanical flaw, thats tragic for those passengers. But with a Nuclear Weapon that goes wrong, the potential impact is almost unimaginable. And thats why we have to be extra vigilant with these highrisk technologies. Host i dont think any of us would a disagree with that. Lets take a short break and we will come back. Host eric, you talked throughout the book about the people. Youve been talking about the heros, the folks you got to know along the way. But im kind of interested in your story. That is, kind of in very personal terms what it was like to write this book. To get up in the morning, go to your computer, try to get the documents, talk to people. So tell us your story. Guest it was an extraordinary challenge for me. But is also fascinating. Nuclear weapons are the greatest National Security risk to the United States, and the most important weapons in our arsenal. And for those two reasons is very difficult to get information about the subject. So i relied on this document that others obtained through the freedofreedom of information ace National Secret archives is a nonprofit based in washington, d. C. , has been a terrific job of assembling such documents and archives. Those are useful for me. I got some documents through the freedom of information act myself. It took a long time to get them. Just. Host whats it like, youre right and the right to back or they dont write you back . Guest back . Guest you write in and they dont write you back to it took a couple of years for things to arrive. I also reached out, people and firsthanhavefirst hand experienh Nuclear Weapons, and many books have been written about this but most of them have been written by manhattan projects businesses, or about those people. National security advisers have written their memoirs. Theres very few books have been written about the day in day out management of our Nuclear Arsenal by the people who do it. So i really reached out to former members of ms. Launch crew, technicians. A bomb squad technicians who its their job was to render safe a damaged Nuclear Weapon. And the stories they have to tell were absolutely fascinating. And this history as i learned it was amazing to me. I studied Nuclear Strategy as an undergraduate. I felt like i was very familiar, compared to most people, about Nuclear Weapons. And yet this research may be realize i was profoundly ignorant. So much of this information has only been available since the end of the cold war. I think in a decade after the cold war ended and maybe even still, people have wanted to think about it because it was such a great relief that that war ended without bloodshed. But a lot of important details and a lot of Important Information has been released. I think this book is my attempt to get some of that out there to the public. Host do you think you have the information you need to understand it now . Did you get all the documents that you would have wished to have . Guest i say in my source notes that this book, like all of manmade things, is flawed and imperfect. And i tried. I really tried. I felt like i had some very crucial people who were very helpful in different areas. So by spending time with people who served in launch crews, by spending time with people who are in maintenance crews, by spending time with weapons designers and never just one, but a group so i felt like i had a sense. I feel confident that the central arguments of this book are accurate. Almost all the facts or acted. I really tried. I dont rely on unnamed sources. In fact, assertions i make in the book, theres a source node and a doctorate for it. But inevitably i did make mistakes. I wish i knew what they were, and i would love for a reader to point them out to me. Host the book is now being published so people will have a chance. Guest was there anything you found it was factually inaccurate . Host it was a great debt did not going to edward but generally i do agree with your history. I think some people might say perhaps you didnt provide them a big enough context, yeah, for the things, the quick view the history. But nothing struck me along the way that i would come back to you and say it wasnt guest so you might challenge interpretation or my own view on a broader historical issue, but you didnt find any factual air that jumped out of jumped out at you . Host no, i didnt but i also didnt look at every know. But your reader will find that kind of know keeping in terms of what it is that you are saying. And i think thats a real contribution. But shifting from the notes, the 100 pages of notes and back to the story of the time explosion, are they going to make a movie of its . Guest i have no plans to do that. Host you have made movies before. Guest believe me, it was hard enough to make a book of it. Host but the story, not the whole book. Guest just, and again, it should be digging a ditch, but just putting together that story. When i contacted the air force, the air force told me that all of the copies of the accident report had been destroyed, and that they couldnt give me a copy of that. It turns out there are a handful of copies still but they had to find in a University Library in kansas. And so quite honestly, the complexity of this subject, trying to get as many perspectives as possible on the accident, so i tell the accident from a point of view of the guy who dropped the tool, the guy in the Launch Control center, the guys who were in headquarters in nebraska. I try to tell as many perspectives as possible. That was so complicated, that the movie of the book i will leave to someone else to worry about. Its an extraordinary story. Its an extraordinary story i think of great personal and with some. Host who are your heroes . Thats a question i couldnt have you talked about, the phone from the lab. Guest the Sandia National laboratory. I would single out bill stevens, william stevens, who was a safety engineer. He did some really pioneering work in trying to figure out how to make sure Nuclear Weapons wont detonate an abnormal environments, like a plane crash, a fire. If they are dropped. If theres a short circuit. Bob, the Vice President of the Sandia National laboratory, who as i said earlier really risked his career for years for the chance of making weapons safer, and he would never build a Nuclear Weapon in the United States today without the mechanisms that these gentlemen thought for years ago. Again and again, there is another Nuclear Weapons that could have been gotten very little attention, a very dangerous one at grand forks, north dakota were a b52 bomber on fire four Hydrogen Bombs in eight short missiles that had thermoNuclear Warheads. The fire was being fed by the fuel pump. It was extraordinary that the retail force winds blowing things away from the few spots of the bomber so that the weapons were again endangered, that they realized the heat was beginning to blister and they had to do something and there was a tennessee process. Wife, small children. He puts on his fire protective gear, climbs onto a burning bomber, gets into the cut there to try to figure out how to turn off the fuel pump. When he pulls the race which come under fire goes out right with the stove going out. Now that is true. There were so many stories that even on the routine airborne alert lights that didnt have an accident. Pilots and crews put their lives at risk on a daily basis during the cold war. I think the hair him by the veterans now a memorial and the Second World War and people died and people were injured during the cold war in order to prevent a nuclear war as part of the process of deterrence, but also in handling Nuclear Weapons accidents. So i tried to honor the sacrifice of some of these people in the book and tell the story of people whom i admire. So back to some of the things that you find your semicritical about. Im not close to a continuing theme about secrecy of the summer. Its actually a theme that i share with you is a problem. So im kind of format, looking across all of this, whether you see secrecy has inherited the government purchase something that that is a fact of life, people are going to be secretive and coverup, or do you think its something that could possibly change clinics guest i think the secrecy we had during the cold war actually endangered us more than i protect it us. In looking at the Nuclear Weapons issue, there was such intense compartmentalized secrecy within the government. Not even keeping secrets from the public, but within the government that the people who were deciding our Nuclear Weapons didnt know how the Armed Services for handling those weapons in the field. The Armed Services didnt know some of the safety issues with the weapons they were flying around and transporting. So the risk of a catastrophic accident was made worse by some of that secrecy, a document we got through the freedom of information act that was 200 pages. The list of accidents and incidents i showed to the sandia weapons designers. These are the people designing our Nuclear Weapons and may have never been able to see some of these incidents, which were hugely relevant to what they were doing in their design. Whats ironic in terms of the secrecy is throughout the cold war, theres no question. The soviet union knew more about our and then the American People did. And thats absurd. Now i do think there are things that must be kept secret. And in my book, i did everything i could not to have anything whatsoever in my book that could threaten National Security. And i have the book read by someone with a very high security clearance and expert in Nuclear Weapons. Not a member of the government. I didnt want anything in the book that could threaten the National Security. Having said that inhabit that on it these documents, again and again, overwhelmingly what has been excised, with the scent is eliminated was noninformation is going to threaten National Security. It is information that was going to threaten National Security bureaucracy. So i would say we need many fewer secret much more closely called. When you have that many secrets like we do now and not many people with security clearances like we do now, you have the potential for Chelsea Manning or first note and, relatively lowlevel people who have access to secret sometimes they shouldnt be revealed. Host so its a real tension as the just and the book because some secrets are very important to be kept to a very small number and other secrets or not. Bureaucracies and government can want to not to show off mistakes or problems. So that takes me back a bit to this fact of life. This is the way we have to see her government. But i dont think it really agree with me. Guest no, i dont. Theres greater disclosure where things have been held much closer and i cant stress enough that this sort of secrecy is dangerous of more than protects us. In the book i go through a number of examples that much publicity about Nuclear Weapons accidents actually led to the important safety changes being made. In the research for this book, i obtained documents that have been heavily censored that pertain to weapons it the to 60 years old, no longer in our arsenal. The soviet union no longer exists. I have no desire to reveal specific design details that would help anyone in pakistan or india to sign a better weapon. We need to know the history because many to have a thriving the in which fundamental decisions about National Security should he made by the American People and they are representative, not by a small group of policymakers acting in secret, which is about so much of our Nuclear Weapons policies. Host so we could have a longer conversation about that, but lets go back to the people power. I really havent told you too much out in terms of your own working on this book. So lets come back a little bit to that. Did you do a single draft . Did you kind of produce lots of drafts . How did you go about your work for the book . Guest i am unusual in that i dont have any research assistants. At dont even have an assistant. That may have also contributed by the book took six years. I immerse myself not in thousands, but tens of thousands of pages of documents. I didnt read every word of every page, but with the search technologies that you now how come you can just pour through an enormous amount of material. And what i was doing was i was looking at little nuggets that might be within congressional testimony. And maybe within documents released through the freedom of information act. I interviewed hundreds of people and read as many books as they could on the subject. Host people were willing to touch you pretty easily . Guest some of them asked in some of them now. Most of the hardware, a great oak of the hard work went into the research and then went into the structuring of the book because i had a wonderful writing teacher who stress to his students that if you put everything you know about a subject into what you write come you dont go anywhere near enough about it. You should leave out 99 of what you know. But that 99 is in between every line that you write, sort of like this book is sort of the tip of the iceberg of what i read and what i learned and as a result, the real struggle was what do i include, what do i cut out . I try to interweave these different tories. Its a researching the book and coming out with structure and the outline was the most difficult part. Some of the writing was hard or write complicated sentences. But this subject matter particularly of military issues is so full of jargon and acronyms and Nuclear Weapons are very complicated things. So the struggle in writing it is how do i take it, these complex issues and write about them simply, clearly without charge in. And that was a challenge. But it didnt go through amateur draft. I cut from, but its pretty much what i set out to be. And some could argue you shouldnt set out to do that or whatever. But it turned out how i set out to make it. Host that may take you to the last couple of pages because i did get to the last couple of pages. Im intrigued by your description of watching the titan to launch the way you kind of got really interested us in this story, but the whole subject. So tell us about that experience. Host one of the great things about not becoming a professional historian, which i thought about doing and being a journalist is that i actually get to see things have not supposed to just write about things that happened many years ago. One of the most memorable experiences i have had professionally was watching the launch of the Titan Missile crew remarkably close range. The officer who was my host had never said that close to a missile while it was being launched. We had our air packs in case there is a problem with the missile piece of toxic fumes. The reason i was doing this with a spent time at the air force, looking into the future of warfare and base a lot of the in the warfare Space Command served in missile cruiser old word. Save for the damascus story fairly recently. And it is purely coincidental that i was getting to see exactly the same missile being launched thankfully not the Nuclear Warhead on it, but with a weather satellite. Host because they took them down once we didnt need them any longer . Guest they are very effective. Theyre actually very reliable if you had months to plan the launch, not when you have to keep them sitting in the silo fully fueled anyway. I had this extraordinary experience of going up in the tower the evening before the watch and enjoy the ride up to the missile, close enough to touch it. It is standing next to a huge, silver 10 Story Building really. The next day i was standing there on the hill, remarkably close when that thing took off. And amid loud you felt the heat and it was extraordinary to see the building rise up in the sky and fly up very fast if you can still see it. I was at vandenberg on the Central Coast of california and you can still see the missile when it was over mexico. And it happened quite quickly. And what should not launch, i realized in a very deep visceral way that all these things i heard about the cold war and its rockets and missiles. I grew up during the cold war. Part of me thinks thats never going to happen. This results if you read about. It became very real. I just saw in that moment the work. They really do. In some ways it is unfortunate. This is something that a weapons designer said to me. Harold agnew, he used to be head of the los alamos lab, he said that every world leader should be gathered in one place and forced to watch the detonation of a Hydrogen Bomb because harold agnew had in at least an impression. I dont want to see one of these things detonate, but the last time the United States detonated a Nuclear Weapon in the atmosphere was 1962. Thats 51 years ago. That means the youngest person to have seen one of these detonate, was probably in the early 70s. The austin power and mr. Admits that these weapons cannot be conveyed by youtube videos were written accounts. So seeing the Missile Launch isnt like the Nuclear Weapon detonated, but it is a powerful experience. In many ways encouraged me in to start this process that took years of writing this book and getting it into the world. Said those who actually did it. And Nuclear Weapons test in massive explosion are very very different generation than cj suggested. We are, even though you mention in your book and i can remember coming in now, and the told to get under the dash and on the sort of drills that were part of the 50s. But to those who actually began this nuclear age is one of the things that surprised as i let at it as been historian as well. There was a real debate about our Nuclear Weapons at the end of the Second World War. That is what we should do about it. So i dont know whether you want to talk a little bit about that, but its history, but its an interesting time in which we commend United States had folks suggesting that we give them out. Absolutely. I think that president obamas speech in 2009 cant for the abolition of Nuclear Weapons, which seems like such a radical idea actually harkens back to the postwar moment in 1945, 1946. This is a generation that saw tens of millions of civilians killed in war. The estimates vary. 59, 60 Million People are, overly slaloming civilians. During wrote laura comment devastating. There is a great leave do not have any more world wars and after the destruction of your machine and nagasaki, a real conviction the world have entered and that these weapons must be banned. So it wasnt just radical philosophers in the United States. It was some of our top military officials. You know, air force and Strategic Air command officers who talked openly about the past abilities of abolishing Nuclear Weapons are putting them under some form of International Control of the growing rivalry between the United States and the soviet union and behavior of soviet union and Eastern Europe and their clear threat to the freedom of europe made that an impossibility. Be that very who suggested we should preempt with our discussions. They went to the other extreme. There was a real debate. But lets come back to the present and pain of how we see into the future. So we dont have too much of our time. Have some time. A couple more thing you want to bring out of the book, are there any other heroes, keep what you want to sort of talk about. One of the crucial things of the book is again and again there is this feeling of things being out of control. There are all these different rivalries throughout the cold war, not just the one between the United States and the soviet union, but between the different Armed Services and the United States cut each one seeking access to the tone of Nuclear Weapons, rivalries between the weapons laboratories. There were civilian and military disputes who would control Nuclear Weapons. And going back to a preset at the beginning, very well attended told, genuinely featured at it, generally trained to protect the night date with visions on how it could be passed on. But these were very stressful decisions to be made. The margin of error was very, very slim. Questions of whether we should try to protect her land in the different building crises we had, what that precipitate world war . So one of the things i read about again and again are civilians who think they are asked if the end that they are experts on a nuclear war fighting strategies. Finally getting into positions of power and being amazed when they get access to the single integrated up relational plan, which is a nuclear war plan. And its a recurring team. Whether its john f. Kennedys advisers who had come from her hand, whoever thought is the latest alleged a nuclear war. When they saw the targeting and when they saw the number of what it would be use and when they saw the fact that this war plan, once it was because, could not be stopped, they were stunned. The venue now coming years later Henry Kissinger who made his career as a Nuclear Weapons strategist comes National Security adviser, gets briefed on the single integrated Operational Plan and as a means how destructive and how powerful. Host and then he begins to take that mark flexibility and to those plans. Guest he does everything he can and yet there is this ongoing tension at last it really into jihad menace duration of george h. Debut pushed between the civilians in the department of defense who want to get control over nuclear war fighting strategy in turn getting in and the officers in omaha who actually control it through their computers and he said the war plan. They coming in now, they have a good argument themselves. They have been, for example, house of the inner fonts with war fighting during the vietnam war had been a fiat go. You know, the air force guys felt the civilian leadership could tell us when to go to war. But then we have to fight the war. Where the experts. So it wasnt really until the end of the cold war that you had civilians in the First Bush Administration making crucial decisions about the targeting and execution of a nuclear war crimes. Thats pretty extraordinary. Host so that leaves back to his sense of secrecy, which you describe is not only extending secrets for the american public, but actually within the cells. Do you think things are better now . Guest when have i kissinger went to air force Space Command had orders and Strategic Air command to get a briefing on the nuclear war plans. Again, the president s National Security adviser, expert on Nuclear Weapons, details of the plan were deliberately hidden from him. Host and hes the source of that. If he tells that story. Guest i actually think there are memos, internal air force memos that mentioned they are not telling him everything. Host so we actually see in our path and improvement at least in that realm. Guest absolutely. Host lets talk about things that go on into the future. I hear you say that we need to still pay a lot of attention to the possibility. Guest we need to pay a lot of attention and we need to spare no expense. We can argue about how many we need, how many bombers we need, but if we are going to have vessels and we are going to have bombers, they need to be whelming team. They need to be the very latest that you can buy. Right now, the bulk of our Nuclear Bomber force is as old as i am. I am 54. You know, we have to think when hundred nuclearcapable bombers. Host theyve been upgraded and modernized guest the b52 bombers was designed right after the Second World War for a high altitude. Its got a patent for new electronics and avionics and weapons system. But they have the ability b52s since 1962. On minute man three, the launch complexes themselves are more than half a century old. And this is not a plea for building hundreds of new bombers and missiles. But there needs to be attention to the infrastructure, particularly to the the commandandcontrol and infrastructure of nuclear forces. I am concerned about that with the cup racks that weve had not just because of the sequestered, but also as they look for places to cut. The Nuclear Enterprise as they call it i think of not gotten enough attention. I think it hasnt been kind of a teachers role, particularly in the air force. We need to Pay Attention to it. Thats just a very practical immediate concern of mine. Host well, unfortunately that time is running out. But i wanted to say that you have found in the subject of nuclear racks than, an incredibly important subject. You have given us a history of these enough access to a history that we really needed to know. And youve told a really good story. So thank you very much. Guest thank you very much. Coming from someone who knows if the outcome of that is a high compliment. Thank you. Host good luck. That was trained to, but to the Signature Program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by kinross, public policymakers, legislators and others familiar with the material. After words airs every week and i took tv, 10 00 p. M. On saturday, 12 00 p. M. And 9 00 p. M. On sunday at 12 00 a. M. On monday. You can also watch after words online. Go to booktv. Org and click on after words in the series and topic list on the upper right side of the page. In 2003, of tvs 50 or broadcasting can do some of the New York Times book reviews nonfiction books were some of my people have to. Our appearances are horrible nick is looking away but i caught the eye of someone in distress. Extreme hunger is not evident. As an almost sublime record of extreme suffering and undaunted resolution, few documents can compare with a lot of William Bligh kept in the bountys launch. In its stark phrases, beautifully painted each day painted each defendant conjured but the horror of the mansour dealer complies on furman and wavering attention to all the response abilities of his command. Quote, our situation today heidi perlis. I however got propped up and made an observation. Not a start to be seen nearby in the sea breaking constantly over s. We are covered with rain and see that we can still see your make use of our eyes. Every person complaining that some of them soliciting extra allowance, but i positively refused it. The next three hours is your chance to speak with author and civil rights leader representative john lewis, a democrat from georgia. The 14 term congressman will talk about his role in the civil rights movement, Race Relations in the obama era and political partisanship on capitol hill. The former chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is the author of three books, walking with the wind, across that bridge and his 2013 release, march, book one. Host congressman john lewis, who was out when wilson . Guest out when wilson is a man that i first encountered on may 9 culminate in 61 in South Carolina at the Greyhound Bus station. In 1961, i was at the freedom ride. We left washington ecma four, 1961, 13 of us. To test a division of the United States supreme cour