Premier Nikita Khrushchev, under pressure from hardliner generals, needed a way out. The correct assumption was that the every TASS journalist was KGB and those assigned to Washington, being at the top of their game, had access to the Kremlin. Talking with Russians was key.ĪBC News’s John Scali knew that his neighbor and friend Alexander Fomin, a Soviet TASS journalist assigned to Washington, was also a KGB officer. Kennedy asked his speech writer Ted Sorensen to prepare two addresses: one informed the American people we were at war and the other stated the issue had resolved peacefully. Twelve days into the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Eleven years earlier, in October 1962, no such process existed. ![]() ![]() Communication, some might say “collusion,” saved the world. In October 1973, when I phoned General Meyer, the White House and the Kremlin were already communicating to resolve an issue that avoided Armageddon. This is no drill.” He replied, “I’m on the way.” I swallowed hard. “Sir, this is Captain Tilford in the SAC Warning Center. Nixon ordered all military forces to DEFCON-3 during the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East, SAC went to DEFCON-2.Īs senior watch officer in INEW, I made an after midnight secure phone call to SAC commander Gen. In October 1973, when President Richard M. A SAC general officer carried an identical code aboard SAC’s Airborne Command and Control Center a backup in case three stories of concrete and steel proved vulnerable. At that level, SAC was “locked and loaded.” DEFCON-1 initiated the “Go Code.” Go codes changed every 12 hours at Headquarters SAC. When the president ordered the armed forces to DEFCON-3, the Strategic Air Command automatically went to DEFCON-2. military normally stayed at the lower level DEFCON-4. The Strategic Air Command remained perpetually at Defense Condition Three (DEFCON-3) while the rest of the U.S. Under the best of circumstances, 10 to 20 million Americans would die. These planes would proceed to their targets. A number of B-52s hovered at their Fail Safe points just outside Soviet radar coverage. If the “balloon went up,” within 15 minutes they would be on the way to targets in the Soviet Union. Bomber crews at SAC bases sat in their planes, nuclear weapons on board. ![]() ![]() No one could enter or leave Offutt Air Force Base no off-base communication, not even with family.Īt ICBM sites across the American northwest, newly installed Minuteman solid-fueled missiles prepared for launch. The massive doors to the SAC’s War Room were closed and the vault pressurized. LeMay, urged a preemptive attack on Soviet medium-range ballistic missile sites in Cuba and IL-28 twin-engine bombers sitting on runways only 90 miles from the U.S. They remembered-and made sure we young officers learned-the chilling reality of being at nuclear ground zero during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962.Īt the height of that crisis, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including Air Force Chief of Staff and former SAC Commander-in-Chief Gen. When I arrived in late 1971, the senior-officer “old hands” at SAC had been there as captains and majors in October 1962. From there SAC could direct global Armageddon while (hopefully) withstanding 30 or more nuclear strikes. The INEW office attached to the SAC War Room was buried three stories underground in a concrete and lead-sheathed vault behind massive steel doors. In November 1971, after serving a year as an intelligence officer supporting the secret American war in Laos, I returned to an assignment in the Intelligence Early Warning Center (INEW) at Headquarters, Strategic Air Command (SAC), near Omaha.
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