the Tea Party basically run in the republican party the pro the
speaker the house john bainer he who Bob ney in his book sideswiped
lays out actual crimes the john bainer committed along with the names of actual
witnesses should anybody want to convene a grand jury
and Bob points out that John is drunk
every single night and
you know this is the guy running our country who refused to bring
make continuing our government to a vote last night had he brought it to a vote
his own republicans
sever for at least a hundred of them probably over 170 other
would have voted along with all the democrats to say no don't
and don't you know shut down the World War Two memorial
keep the government going
I mean it's just amazing what's going on here
and the Mitsu this we've got a whole buncha nuclear power plants in the
united states that are identical though once the focus Shima
and some other even worsen even older
her she lost hers with us an investigative journalist author of
command-and-control
previously right he wrote Fast Food Nation reefer madness jewel nurse
um it is the
a great pleasure to have you with us Eric thank you thanks for joining us
having a
yeah my pleasure are EMS and I comes as your hair raising new book about actual
potential actions
nuclear weapons command-and-control sharpens the dialogue
I'm nuclear is this about
principally weaponry or nuclear power start nuclear weapons
okay it was it looks at the effort since
the dawn of the Atomic your to make sure these things don't explode by accident
they can't be stolen
they can be used for unauthorized personnel
for stay connected two nuclear reactors and
that the basic problem we have is a human as human beings were better
at inventing complex technologies
then we are controlling them and we've had some major nuclear reactor
meltdowns we haven't had a nuclear weapon detonate on American soil yet one
around
we've come close and they're just maybe sushi is that we're just not capable of
a weekly
controlling or we shouldn't try to yeah
yeah so tell me what is it that we need to know about the nuclear weapon for
small how many nuclear weapons do we have
what kind what we've got a lot less than we used to in the area in the early
sixties we are about 32,000
well right now we've got maybe 1600 raise
ready to be used at a moment's notice in a few thousand more
in storage but the book really looks hidden history
over nuclear weapons enterprise and about how close we came
on a number of occasions having our own weapons
go off I was a book is a narrative
a nuclear weapons accident in Damascus arkansas in 1980
and I give soared over a minute by minute account
what happened there and how close we came to have
saying oh Arkansas largest incinerated with a lot of
we for radioactive fallout going up the stairs six so I i'm familiar with the
the plane dropping the two nukes during the kennedy administration their burdens
I think was South Carolina North Carolina
North Carolina yeah um and and had one of the
fails we say switches not failed to work
actually a the only reason Obama didn't go off is because it failed it was
supposed to go off
yeah um North Carolina would've been taken out I didn't know about arkansas
tell me what happened
I will you know the North Carolina Bar even if thats which had worked perfectly
as the bomber was breaking up with the bomber breaking up
in mid-air if there had been some wires crossing which
happens when a big plan is breaking up it could have arms Obama could have
detonated
in Damascus arkansas 33 years ago
a guy was doing routine maintenance on a Titan to miss all the biggest
intercontinental ballistic missile we ever built and have the most
powerful warhead we ever put on a mess of and he was on the still work platform
near the top in this or any dropped a socket after his ranch
it bounced on the steel platform to try to grab it
its tail between its narrow space between still platform in Mysore
so about 70 feet bounced hit the miso
pierced a hole in it skin and suddenly
highly toxic highly explosive rocket fuel was feeling so I love in
and the Air Force had no idea what to do nothing like this has ever happened
before
and again the most powerful nuclear warhead we ever put on a missile
was on top as a and so the story I tell
is how some very brave young airman I mean 19 20 21 year old guys
risked their lives to try to prevent dismissal from exploding
and try to prevent this warhead from going off
minutes one warhead was three times more powerful
then all the bombs dropped by all the military's in the second world war
including both atomic bombs while so it literally would have taken out our Kings
there were then you know Bill Clinton was not far away he was governor this is
the time
vice president mondale was there that day for in a meeting in hot springs
Chelsea was a one year old and it's just it's amazing did any of them know if
this is the time we would have been changed and just buy these little weird
events like you know somebody drops 20
and a catastrophe really could have followed
did jerk did governor clinton then governor clinton then vice president
mondale where they informed us that they had
come within moments have in vapor iced
you know where the reasons we don't know about this accident was a reason most
people never heard about it is the government doesn't tell the truth about
it
after time a clinton knew the accident was unfolding
but the air force was adamant that there was no chance that this were hurt
could edit and set off a firestorm
and one other things I learned in my research is that's not true
and so there's another narrative in my book which is about
the engineers and scientists at our weapons were school realized in the late
nineteen sixties
the menu for nuclear weapons were prone to accidental detonation and their
effort to put in
new safety mechanisms and there were hairs on an assault
in arkansas just three years earlier had decided
by the Sandia National Laboratory one of our weapons labs
as being a warhead with inadequate safety devices that might detonate in an
accident so the government to tell the truth
not only about that accident about many others and through the Freedom of
Information Act
through interviews with people who were there through interviews with former
leading
weapons designers from los alamos in Livermore and Sandia
I put together the story while while we're talking with Eric Schlosser his
new book
is called command-and-control
about are the danger for nuclear weapons
that you know there are some folks I'm sure who would say well that was then
this is now
you know back in nineteen eighty a computer filled a room and now you've
got that much computing power
you got more computing power and iPhone then the entire you know Mon
mission um you know we get this thing under control
when he said a you know I wish that were the case
what computer technology is that it is a whole new layer of complexity
and this sounds like the plot other that Hollywood film
but the defense Science Board which advises the Department of Defense
issued a report in January a saying that
for nuclear command and control system and is a former ability to being hacked
has never been fully assessed and a few years ago
the Air Force began to worry about this when 50
minuteman missiles suddenly went offline
St Warren Air Force Base what that means is
for about an hour their underground lawn launch control centers could not
communicate with fifty
intercontinental ballistic missiles and the air force tonight at the time
that the system has been hacked the problem was traced back
to a computer chip that was improperly installed in a processor
but privately high-level Air Force officials became concerned
about the possibility of someone hacking into our nuclear command control system
and again the ass if this is love but the consequences
would be unimaginably high and the most likely where would happen
wifi through some sort of insider like this note
knows it was a be able to get extraordinary information from the most
top secret intelligence agency that we have
despite being a little guy and we're moving contractors working on a nuclear
control system amazing Eric Schlosser
check out his book command-and-control thank you Eric thanks for having me
me this is the Thom Hartmann program
that is truly chilling and stuff Manning controls before
will be okay