Nukes

Speaker 1 So, hey, this is Radio Lab. I'm Storm Wheeler filling in today for Lotif because he has a nasty, nasty cold and lost his voice.
And a voice is a key part of making radio.

Speaker 1 But this week, here in the U.S., we just inaugurated a president, a new, but also not so new president.

Speaker 1 And so, we, like maybe many of you, have been thinking about this big and important political moment, transfer of powers and whatnot.

Speaker 1 So, we wanted to re-air an episode today, is actually one we made in the first Trump presidency, all about one particular and maybe the most consequential presidential power.

Speaker 1 Now, sometimes with these rewinds, we have a little update for you at the end, but I'm just going to give you that update now because the update is that despite numerous efforts by numerous people, the story you are about to hear, and I think this is important to know, is basically still the deal today.

Speaker 1 Anyway, here, originally aired in 2017, is our episode called Nukes.

Speaker 6 Wait, you're listening.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 6 All right.

Speaker 2 You're listening

Speaker 8 to Radiolab.

Speaker 9 Radio Lab. From Renewables.

Speaker 10 WN Weiss.

Speaker 11 Rewind.

Speaker 12 Your name again is. Cedric.
Cedric. I'm going to write that down.

Speaker 11 And they're on the line now, so you'll be able to talk to them.

Speaker 13 So, Harold, can you hear me?

Speaker 2 Hello? Hi.

Speaker 13 Okay.

Speaker 13 I'm Robert Krillowich.

Speaker 14 I'm Jad Abum Raj.

Speaker 13 This is Radiolab.

Speaker 14 And a little while ago, our producer Latif Nasser brought us a story about a guy.

Speaker 2 My name is Harold Herring.

Speaker 12 I used the middle initial L for Lewis in honor of my father.

Speaker 15 Who asked a question?

Speaker 13 It was a pretty simple question.

Speaker 13 Maybe a dangerous question. Maybe a dangerous question.
Certainly, just the mere asking of it pretty much ruined the man's life.

Speaker 6 And he never got an answer.

Speaker 13 No, but today on Radiolab, we are going to re-ask Harold's question, and this time we get an answer. And Latif Nasser takes it from here.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 4 So our main guy, Harold, he's former military and he's 81 years old.

Speaker 12 I'm staying pretty active. I'm competing at the national and the world level at Duathlon competition.
Wow.

Speaker 19 And right off the bat, this is the kind of guy you could tell he just does not give up.

Speaker 12 I really am not supposed to be competing because I've had both knees replaced. But anyway.

Speaker 22 So Harold grew up in this tiny town called Browns, Illinois from a poor family.

Speaker 20 He was the eldest of 11 kids.

Speaker 24 When he was growing up, he would always hear Air Force planes flying overhead.

Speaker 5 And that's why from when he was very young, he always wanted to be an Air Force pilot.

Speaker 13 So why don't you just tell us a little bit about your military background?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 12 most of my career was with the Air Rescue Service.

Speaker 22 This was in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

Speaker 7 And if an Air Force pilot went down, got shot down, whatever, Harold and his team would jump into their helicopters.

Speaker 12 Two jolly Green heavy lift helicopters.

Speaker 27 They'd fly them in, hover over the survivors on the ground, lowering the poised cable.

Speaker 22 And then a para-rescue man would climb down to the forest floor, find the injured soldier, and attach the cable to him.

Speaker 4 And while that was happening, Harold had to hold the helicopter steady.

Speaker 4 He had to hold his hover.

Speaker 12 And a lot of times, the enemy would wait until that process started before they opened fire.

Speaker 12 I had some wonderful experiences. Probably chief among them was my crew and I.
We picked up a pilot that ejected into the North Sea at night in the wintertime. Wow.
200 miles out to sea.

Speaker 12 We picked him up and brought him back.

Speaker 8 So it was a super high-risk, high-adrenaline kind of job.

Speaker 12 And I had an outstanding record.

Speaker 2 And then, well,

Speaker 2 he got old. How old were you around this time?

Speaker 12 Oh,

Speaker 12 about 30.

Speaker 2 I was old.

Speaker 12 Pilots my age and with my experience were put into desk jobs. And

Speaker 12 I wanted to be on the front line if I could.

Speaker 16 This was 1973, middle of the Cold War.

Speaker 21 So Harold decided that the way for him to be on the front lines without actually having to be on the front lines, you know, because he couldn't anymore, was to go into training to become a missileer.

Speaker 12 A missile launch officer. Those are the people who sit in an underground bunker and just wait to get an order to turn their key and unleash a nuclear attack.
In training, I mean, just the

Speaker 12 information I can remember just virtually verbatim is that each missile launch officer has under his direct control

Speaker 12 more firepower than all all generals in all wars in the history of warfare.

Speaker 30 And so

Speaker 26 Harold started his training at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Speaker 5 Nixon was president at the time.

Speaker 2 And at the time, the prospect of nuclear war felt very real.

Speaker 12 There's a lot of responsibility there, and there's there's no room for error. And so in Harold's training, we were a very small class.

Speaker 2 And he learned all about the technical stuff.

Speaker 12 You know, all the mechanical stuff and emergency procedures that were involved.

Speaker 19 All the nitty-gritty details of how a missile actually launched.

Speaker 12 And then part of the time we had classroom instruction.

Speaker 16 Where he learned about the chain of command and all the different safeguards and checks.

Speaker 10 Right. So imagine that he gets an order to launch.

Speaker 24 That order has to be decoded.

Speaker 5 So he would decode the order and then his partner would decode the order and then then they would verify it with one another.

Speaker 29 So one guy would be like, okay, I got the order, Alpha Bravo 124. And then his partner would say, I confirm Alpha Bravo 124.

Speaker 6 And then

Speaker 21 they launch.

Speaker 21 So neither of them has the power to launch on his or her own.

Speaker 12 And both of you were armed.

Speaker 12 You carried a sidearm with you.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 12 Well, you know, it's serious business. And if you had someone that was, you know, if they threatened your life.

Speaker 20 If one of the officers wanted to just go rogue.

Speaker 12 You had a sidearm, too.

Speaker 13 Well, if I took my gun and pointed at you and said, turn the key, Harold, I wouldn't do it.

Speaker 12 I may go down, but I'd be drawing my weapon.

Speaker 13 And these keys have to be turned simultaneously. So if I shoot you, turn my key, then run over, get your key, and turn your key, that's too late, right? It has to be a simultaneous.
Yes.

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 10 So the whole point is the system is designed so that no one person can launch a nuclear attack.

Speaker 12 I was very pleased, very satisfied with the checks and balances at the crew member level.

Speaker 4 You know, the bottom where they're turning the keys.

Speaker 12 I was not concerned about that at all.

Speaker 16 But then a few weeks into training.

Speaker 12 There was

Speaker 12 some discussion about preemptive strike.

Speaker 2 Real quick.

Speaker 18 Obviously, if someone launched a nuclear attack against the U.S., we would be able to strike back, you know, in response.

Speaker 4 But a preemptive strike would be where we, for whatever reason decided to strike first

Speaker 12 and that raised the hair on the back of my neck a little bit

Speaker 12 you know it's just I thought we're receiving all of this information about all these elaborate checks and balances within the system but they never got any information about how things worked at the presidential level

Speaker 12 there is a complete void or blackout at the level that the order is initiated.

Speaker 13 When you had this thought, did you say to the other classmates?

Speaker 12 No, I didn't. It wasn't my intent to try to create a scene by involving other people, students, whatever.
So.

Speaker 27 Harold waits until the end of class, walks up to the front of the room, and asks the instructor a question.

Speaker 12 A very reasonable question.

Speaker 5 He's like, just checking, there's a safety net in place if the president is making a crazy decision, right?

Speaker 12 I wanted to find out more about checks and balances at the top level.

Speaker 2 And the instructor pauses, looks at him, and says,

Speaker 5 can you put that in writing, please?

Speaker 4 Okay. And so he did.

Speaker 12 Let me find it first.

Speaker 12 You do your best to have everything ready to go. No, no, no.

Speaker 2 Take your time. Yeah.

Speaker 12 Oh, here it is.

Speaker 12 Okay.

Speaker 12 There is presently a degree of doubt in my mind as to whether I might someday be called upon to launch nuclear weapons as a result of an invalid, unlawful order.

Speaker 23 This is part of the letter that Harold wrote explaining his question.

Speaker 12 I asked myself, how will I know or can I be sure I'm participating in a justifiable act?

Speaker 24 In his letter, he says that if he were ordered to turn his key, he would absolutely do so.

Speaker 4 But because he had not been told what the checks and balances are for the president, he would be doing so with a conflict of conscience.

Speaker 12 Which I've underlined.

Speaker 12 I would be required to assign blind faith values to my judgment of one man, the president, values which could ultimately include health, personality, and political considerations.

Speaker 12 This just should not be.

Speaker 13 So we've got a guy training to be the person who pulls the trigger, and he's sitting there wondering, okay, there's a lot of checks on me, but who's checking the president?

Speaker 14 And this struck us as a really

Speaker 14 kind of serious question.

Speaker 14 Because right now we have a president, President Trump, who is clearly interested in nuclear weapons.

Speaker 14 He talks about it constantly.

Speaker 13 And you got the thing with North Korea?

Speaker 14 Yeah, escalating tensions with North Korea, Syria, for Christ's sakes. Sort of makes you stop and think, like, okay, if and when these decisions get made, how are they made?

Speaker 13 Is there someone else in the room and who if the president is is determined if he if he's ready to go is there somebody there who can turn to the president and say

Speaker 2 stop

Speaker 34 that is a great question

Speaker 30 this is historian alex wellerstein he's the one who introduced us to herald he uh wrote an article in the washington post about this very topic am i at the right place yeah you you tend to want to be just like a fist's length away yeah yeah perfect and he has spent so much time in just archives behind microfilm readers and foyering documents and doing all kinds of different things to figure out the history of our relationship to this uniquely destructive weapon.

Speaker 18 And what he found was a kind of tug of war between the military and the president that has gone back more than 70 years.

Speaker 38 As the nation is plunged into mourning by President Roosevelt's death, Harry S. Truman becomes president, the 7th of May.

Speaker 34 Truman learned he had a bomb the day that Roosevelt died.

Speaker 19 This is April 1945.

Speaker 22 At this point, America has been at war with Japan for over three years.

Speaker 34 It was impressed upon Truman that this was not just another weapon, that this was something that could be bigger and better than any other weapon before.

Speaker 34 But there's no point at which somebody says, hey, Mr. President, should we bomb Japan with this bomb? It's assumed that, of course, you're going to do it.
You have the bomb, you have the enemy.

Speaker 34 And in fact, nobody ever goes to Truman and says, should we do this? Really? They go to him and they say, we are doing this.

Speaker 34 So Truman writes in his journal, we're going to use the atomic bomb, but we will not use it on a civilian target. We will use it on a purely military target.
That's the term. Purely military.
Purely.

Speaker 19 Now, we can't get into his head to know exactly what he was thinking, but that is what he wrote in his journal at the time.

Speaker 34 And then he says, we will not be killing women and children.

Speaker 13 So the first atomic bomb is going to be dropped by a president who thinks that he's dropping it on soldiers only.

Speaker 34 He's somewhat congratulating himself on that no women and children will be killed in this attack.

Speaker 25 The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base.

Speaker 10 That's part of Truman's announcement after they dropped the bomb.

Speaker 34 The day after they get casualty estimates from the Japanese. And he realizes this is not purely a military base.

Speaker 25 There is reason to believe that the Japanese city of Hiroshima, approximately the size of Memphis or Seattle or Rochester, New York, no longer exists.

Speaker 19 The total death toll was almost 200,000.

Speaker 34 So there's a real switch that happens between Truman talking about the bomb and also everything he says about the bomb before he hears about the casualties is held about the greatest thing ever.

Speaker 34 And this is the greatest day in history. And he's so proud and so happy.
And then he hears about the casualties and he hears about the women and children. And suddenly it becomes a burden.

Speaker 13 Now what happens?

Speaker 34 So on August 10th, he gets a message from General Groves.

Speaker 25 Nagasaki, just three days after Hiroshima.

Speaker 34 That says, we've dropped two bombs. We're going to have a third one in a week.
Just FYI. And it's not clear that Truman knew that two bombs were going to be dropped so soon.

Speaker 34 So he has just learned that Hiroshima is a city when he just learns that another city gets destroyed. He is not in control.
Wow. And he has immediately written back to them and says, just stop.

Speaker 34 Knock it off. You are not not going to drop another bomb without express permission of the President of the United States.

Speaker 34 So the major theme of Truman's approach to nuclear weapons is to keep them out of the hands of the military.

Speaker 2 Hmm. Why?

Speaker 34 He believes that the military, if you give them a new weapon, they will use it. It's not a crazy idea.

Speaker 16 So they actually start to design and build these bombs to make sure the military can't launch them on its own.

Speaker 34 The nuclear parts of the bomb have to be in the possession of the civilians.

Speaker 13 The nuclear parts. So the plutonium.

Speaker 34 The plutonium. The core.
Right. And the early bombs allow you to do that.
The fronts of them actually open up and allow you to stick the core in and close it back up.

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 13 So the civilians walk into the room with the explosive part. The soldiers open the lid.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 13 The civilians put the explosive part in, close the door, and now you have an active bomb.

Speaker 20 So it's like putting in a battery or something almost, like into your Walkman. Why do I have that analogy? Am I like an 80-year-old?

Speaker 9 Where does the president put the nuclear part?

Speaker 34 They have their own vaults with their own guys, with their own guns, and their job is to shoot anybody who tries to take a core without presidential authorization.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 28 So for the rest of his presidential term, Truman doesn't budge.

Speaker 31 The nuclear power is his and his alone.

Speaker 34 But the technology starts to make it trickier to do this. If you want a very small atomic bomb, you can't separate the pit out from that.
It's just not going to happen.

Speaker 34 It's physically like glued to the explosives and things like that.

Speaker 5 So it's 1953, just a few years before Harold entered the military.

Speaker 27 President Eisenhower comes to power and he's a former general.

Speaker 2 Right, exactly. And so he's a little bit less concerned about who has control over these nuclear weapons.

Speaker 24 So he eases up a little bit.

Speaker 34 And he says, in his administration, atomic weapons, small ones, are to be treated as basically any other kind of weapon.

Speaker 41 A nuclear age arsenal of awesome proportions.

Speaker 5 This is archival footage from 1960 when President Eisenhower is getting a first look at some of the newest additions to the nuclear arsenal.

Speaker 41 He pulls out his binoculars to watch helicopters and foot soldiers in the field.

Speaker 6 At that time, they were getting really creative with their new nuclear weapon.

Speaker 41 That bazooka-like weapon is the red-eye, a one-man-operated missile launcher.

Speaker 13 Does he continue to maintain authority over the bigger bombs?

Speaker 34 He allows them to be transferred to the military, but he says, don't drop them without my permission.

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 34 But there are some cases in which he says, under really bad circumstances, you can use some of these weapons without my permission.

Speaker 16 So compared to Truman, he's really shifting that power back to the military.

Speaker 26 Yes.

Speaker 38 Good evening, my fellow citizens.

Speaker 34 By the time Kennedy is the president...

Speaker 42 It is an ironic but accurate fact.

Speaker 27 1961, Harold is 24. He's a pilot in the Air Force.

Speaker 42 That the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation.

Speaker 34 The Soviet capabilities are greatly increased.

Speaker 7 So...

Speaker 43 That signal means to stop whatever you are doing and get to the nearest safe place fast.

Speaker 34 You get real anxieties, and some of these anxieties bubble up in popular.

Speaker 34 These are kind of out there.

Speaker 3 So long, mom. I'm off to drop the bomb.
So don't wait up for me.

Speaker 4 At this point, popular culture is saturated in nuclear fear.

Speaker 43 First thing will be a white light that'll blind us, then a hot flame that'll burn us.

Speaker 7 Take it easy. I don't want to die.

Speaker 2 People are building bomb shelters.

Speaker 29 Kids in classrooms are practicing hiding under their desks.

Speaker 2 And then you'll covered it.

Speaker 7 At this distance,

Speaker 34 You have bombers flying from the United States and on these routes that take them near the Soviet borders. And the problem is you put up a lot of bombers.

Speaker 23 It's only a matter of time before

Speaker 34 you'll expect one to crash or have a malfunction.

Speaker 25 A SAC B-52 carrying hydrogen munition.

Speaker 34 And so indeed there are a bunch of accidents where bombers crash with hydrogen bombs on board. They crash in Spain and drop hydrogen bombs.
One of them gets dropped in Greenland.

Speaker 34 They crash in the United States numerous times. There's one in the south where a bomb basically lands on somebody's house.
An atomic bomb.

Speaker 4 An atomic bomb.

Speaker 16 An atomic bomb landed on someone's house?

Speaker 38 An atomic bomb breaks loose from a mounting shackle in a B-47 jet over Florence, South Carolina. Flommits to Earth.
It didn't detonate. Six were injured.

Speaker 38 The home of Walter Greg was turned into a sham.

Speaker 10 Oh my God, that would be the most terrifying thing.

Speaker 20 Imagine you're just brushing your teeth and and then...

Speaker 26 Atomic bomb.

Speaker 10 Atomic bomb.

Speaker 13 And there's a knock on the door and say, excuse me, we're going to remove this.

Speaker 34 So there's all these accidents.

Speaker 28 And on top of that, America is keeping a bunch of its bombs in bases all over the world.

Speaker 34 And they start to worry that some of these bases are not American bases and there aren't that many Americans on them.

Speaker 5 For instance, some nukes are kept at a base in Turkey.

Speaker 2 Turkey's our friend, right? Not a problem.

Speaker 28 But there are like two American guys guarding these things.

Speaker 34 They have the keys to turn these missiles on. What do you need to to do if Turkey wants to become a nuclear power? They need to hit these guys over the head with a hammer and take the keys.

Speaker 34 Now Turkey is a nuclear power.

Speaker 2 Whoa.

Speaker 34 Yeah, this is more or less what Kennedy says. Yeah.

Speaker 30 So Kennedy actually has the exact same instinct that Truman did.

Speaker 34 He issues a directive which says no weapons can be kept overseas unless they have locks on them. And the first versions of these are very crude.
They're like literally combination locks. Really?

Speaker 6 Like bike locks?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 34 They're pretty simple. So you're doing this technological enabling of this kind of of vast political metaphor that the president is in control of these nuclear weapons at all times.

Speaker 20 So it's like Truman wanted it close to the chest and then Eisenhower wanted it out there and then Kennedy now is pulling it back in.

Speaker 4 Right, exactly.

Speaker 35 At the time, this felt safe. Who better to trust than the president with something so powerful it could end the world?

Speaker 18 And even after Kennedy, the laws around this solidify.

Speaker 5 The power stays stays with the president.

Speaker 4 Yes. But then you get this guy.

Speaker 25 People have got to know whether or not their president's a crook.

Speaker 10 Richard Milhouse Nixon.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm not a crook.

Speaker 10 And this feeling of safety and really all trust in the presidency just starts to erode.

Speaker 34 So in the last days of his presidency, there's the Watergate break-in. There are all the investigations.

Speaker 34 Nixon was drinking more than the president perhaps ought to. He was under an intense amount of stress.
He did a few things that made people uncomfortable.

Speaker 23 The most infamous moment like this happened in the summer of 1974.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 26 When all the Watergate stuff was really coming to a head.

Speaker 34 He was talking with two congressmen, and he was trying to impress upon them what a waste of time this, quote, little burglary was.

Speaker 34 And to give an example of how minor this was, he explained that his responsibilities were huge.

Speaker 34 If he wanted to, he could go into the other room, pick up a telephone, and in 20 minutes, 60 million people would be dead.

Speaker 2 Whoa. He said this.

Speaker 34 He said this.

Speaker 32 And that's exactly the kind of situation Harold was thinking about when he asked his question.

Speaker 15 Like, since I'm the guy with my hand on the key, just kind of curious here, is there a system for making sure a president doesn't just walk into the other room, pick up the phone, and order me to kill 60 million people?

Speaker 12 There's presently a degree of doubt in my mind.

Speaker 22 So he asks this question first out loud, then he does it in writing.

Speaker 12 And then I was pulled out of training, I think it was about six days before graduation.

Speaker 4 That leads to a series of meetings with superior officers where they basically tell him.

Speaker 12 That I need to have more faith in our leaders, you know, not to question them.

Speaker 12 And I was told that I didn't have a need to know.

Speaker 4 That leads to a trial where he has this one meeting with this military judge who basically says, here I have your question in my hand. I will tear it up and we can all forget this ever happened.

Speaker 12 But I still wanted the question answered.

Speaker 22 And then that leads to appeals and he's writing letters.

Speaker 44 I would spend days and nights virtually continuously writing to congressmen and writing and writing to the president.

Speaker 12 But it really didn't matter at all what I had to say.

Speaker 21 At that point, he's basically like, okay, fine. I don't want to be a launch officer anymore.

Speaker 6 I asked to be, you know, reassigned if they weren't going to give the information.

Speaker 4 But instead of reassigning him.

Speaker 12 My promotion to lieutenant colonel was withheld. I was removed from flight status, so I no longer would get flight pay.
I was then permanently disqualified from the human reliability program.

Speaker 12 And along with that, my top secret security clearance was taken away from me. And once you have a security clearance removed and you're permanently disqualified, there's no hope for your career.

Speaker 12 I pursued every avenue available to me to have my military record corrected and to have the findings reversed and to remain in the Air Force.

Speaker 12 Only after I exhausted all of my appeals was I ordered to be

Speaker 12 retired.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 2 Why? Why?

Speaker 30 I mean, I know that like

Speaker 14 the whole military thing, you got to stay in your lane, lane, you don't question your superiors, but why would they

Speaker 2 what's

Speaker 2 just asked the question?

Speaker 14 Why, why would they, why, what's wrong with him asking the question? Why is it such a threat?

Speaker 4 Well, I'll tell you right after we take a break.

Speaker 13 Hey, I'm Chad Abumrod. I'm Robert Krilwich.

Speaker 40 This is Radiolab.

Speaker 14 And so, Latif, why was Harold's question such a threat?

Speaker 2 Well, here's how it was put to me.

Speaker 11 You know, the other side has to know. The only reason, the only way that,

Speaker 11 let me phrase it this way. Sure.

Speaker 11 The whole premise is deterrence. That has been our founding philosophy since we developed these things.

Speaker 5 This is Dr. Sonia McMullen.

Speaker 11 And I'm a former Air Force missileer.

Speaker 23 She had her hand on the nuclear keys from 1997 to 2001.

Speaker 37 And by deterrence, she means...

Speaker 25 There is only world peace where there is power to preserve order among nations.

Speaker 26 We keep other countries from nuking us.

Speaker 2 B-52s represent a shield by making clear that if they do, the missiles are ready. We'll nuke them

Speaker 4 right back.

Speaker 11 But if the other side doesn't believe that you will respond in kind,

Speaker 11 then it doesn't work.

Speaker 34 You have to believe my threat is legit. I have to be credible.

Speaker 32 So if you're the guy whose hand is on the key, when the order comes down to launch, there can't be any doubt that you will do what you were ordered to do.

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 34 So the problem with somebody like Harold is that you're in, if you start allowing people to, at the bottom, to start making up their mind, then it's not a credible threat.

Speaker 13 So do you understand in your own mind why they had to have a committee to sit in judgment on him and review some sort of facts? I don't know what I'm in.

Speaker 34 It's hard to know. I haven't seen their side of it.
I'm filing. to get access to that side.
We'll see how that goes.

Speaker 9 Great.

Speaker 16 So I found this.

Speaker 28 I actually just, we got this this morning.

Speaker 5 So we actually ended up finding a statement by the commander-in-chief of Strategic Air Command, General Russ Dougherty.

Speaker 30 I don't know if you have seen it, Harold, but it's...

Speaker 4 And to be fair, we thought we should let Harold respond to it.

Speaker 2 Do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 12 No, but he was the SingSack, Commander-in-Chief of Strategic Air Command.

Speaker 2 Right, right, right.

Speaker 24 And so let me just read to you what he said.

Speaker 33 Sure.

Speaker 36 The major's hesitation initiated extensive hearings and administrative procedures. Later, he professed that he really would turn keys and that his hesitation had been misunderstood.

Speaker 5 I examined the record thoroughly and discovered that, for a fact, he had repeated several times in the record that he would readily turn keys.

Speaker 24 Then, in each instance, his affirmative assertion was followed immediately by a personal, subjective qualification.

Speaker 36 Yes, he would turn keys upon receipt of an authentic order from proper authority if he thought the order was legal, if he thought the circumstances necessitated an ICBM launch, if he was convinced that it was a rational, moral necessity, and so on.

Speaker 5 Every affirmative answer was qualified by a subjective condition.

Speaker 12 No, no, no, no.

Speaker 12 I did not say that anywhere. Nowhere did I say that.
Nowhere did I use those words.

Speaker 12 And I'm sorry, but

Speaker 12 that's just false. That doesn't surprise me.

Speaker 2 According to Harold, he never wanted to doubt an order coming from the president.

Speaker 12 I assumed that there had to be some

Speaker 12 sort of check and balance so that one man couldn't just, on a whim, order the launch of nuclear weapons.

Speaker 33 He just wanted to be told that something like that existed so that he and his fellow launch officers would not have to have a conflict of conscience.

Speaker 12 And that we not put anybody in a position where they're just following orders

Speaker 12 and throwing their conscience to the four winds. I think it's an affront to play the game of you don't have the need to know

Speaker 12 of someone that's doing one of the most serious,

Speaker 12 grave jobs that there is in the armed forces.

Speaker 4 And so

Speaker 6 since Harold never got an answer to his question, we decided to make it our question.

Speaker 34 Where do you get somebody who's allowed to question the president? Because we know that by the time you get to the bottom, there's no way that that's possible. So, what about the guy above them?

Speaker 34 Let's say there's an officer who's one more up the tier. Is he going to question the order? Well, I don't know.
He's getting it from the generals who coordinate all of the nuclear attacks.

Speaker 34 If it got to him, it must be a legitimate order, right? Maybe those top-level major heads of the military branches, maybe they get too. I don't know.

Speaker 34 And so, my question is: where, if anywhere, if the president issues an order, can they, will they, say no?

Speaker 6 After a lot of digging around, Alex says that he thinks.

Speaker 34 My guess is you're not allowed to question the president more than a couple steps down from the very top. If you're allowed to question the president at all, maybe the Secretary of Defense can do it.

Speaker 10 And when we talked to Sonia McMullen,

Speaker 4 our missile ear, she also thought that the Secretary of Defense could probably provide a check.

Speaker 11 The Secretary of Defense is the first person to say, hey, let's think about this. Let's think about this in detail.

Speaker 39 All right.

Speaker 2 We're ready.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 39 This is Bill Perry, formerly Secretary of Defense, 19th Secretary of Defense of the United States.

Speaker 4 So we decided to ask an actual Secretary of Defense.

Speaker 23 William Perry served under President Clinton from 1994 to 1997.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Let's just pretend for a moment that the president issues you an order that you disagree with because you don't think the president is of right mind or sober or whatever.

Speaker 13 What authority do you have as Secretary of Defense, if any?

Speaker 39 Well, the system is set up so that only the President has the authority to order a nuclear war. Nobody has the right to countermand that decision.

Speaker 39 He might choose to call the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to get his advice or his counsel.

Speaker 39 But even if he does that,

Speaker 39 he may or may not accept that counsel.

Speaker 13 If you as Secretary of Defense say to the President, he says, let's go, and you say, let's not,

Speaker 39 first of all, if he calls me, and then if I say,

Speaker 39 Mr. President, that would be a very serious mistake, don't do that.
He might or might not accept my advice.

Speaker 13 Are you necessary to launch? No.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 13 Suppose everybody in the room thought that it was a bad idea. Would he still be able to do it?

Speaker 12 Yes.

Speaker 39 He has the

Speaker 39 call directly to the Strategic Air Command to do the launching, and they will respond to his orders. They don't call the Secretary of Defense or the Chairman and say, Should I do this?

Speaker 12 They do it.

Speaker 9 Yeah, so in our training, we were conditioned almost like a Pavlovian talk.

Speaker 4 This is Dr. Bruce Blair.

Speaker 36 He was a missile launch officer at the exact time that Harold was training to become one.

Speaker 4 And ever since then, he basically spent the whole rest of his career studying nuclear command and control.

Speaker 9 I wrote studies so classified that the Pentagon demanded that I not be allowed to read them anymore.

Speaker 17 And we asked him, like, why does it work like this?

Speaker 4 Why would we give one person that much power?

Speaker 9 It's always been set up that way.

Speaker 2 Why would that be? What's the reason? Why?

Speaker 9 It came out of the Cold War from, you know, in the 1960s.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 16 By the 1960s, the U.S.

Speaker 22 and the Soviet Union were building ICBMs, which are these nuclear missiles that could go from a silo in one country to a target in the other in a matter of minutes.

Speaker 5 So if the Soviets ever launch their missiles at us.

Speaker 9 If we're under a missile attack, there's very little time to assess the attack, to brief the president on his options.

Speaker 30 Because the assumption was that the Soviets would target our missiles.

Speaker 39 Our ICBMs. And they would be the first to go.
And so, therefore, the president has to decide whether to launch our ICBMs before the other missiles land.

Speaker 9 For any incoming missiles could destroy the command and control system.

Speaker 9 And that forces the president to make a decision on how to respond immediately because missiles are flying in at four miles per second.

Speaker 39 He has about six or seven minutes to make that decision.

Speaker 9 Six minutes? The decision process just is too short.

Speaker 2 For any kind of thoughtful or serious deliberation.

Speaker 9 And the pressure is intense. And there I think you would find that different presidents would respond differently.

Speaker 9 And their character, their temperament, are they thinking people, or are they intuitive people who respond instinctively?

Speaker 9 And so, you know, you would see a lot of variation in the way presidents react to a nuclear emergency.

Speaker 45 The president of the United States, now for 50 years, is followed at all times, 24 hours a day, by a military aide carrying a football.

Speaker 26 This is then-Vice President Dick Cheney, also a former Secretary of Defense, talking on Fox News Sunday back in 2008.

Speaker 45 He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world's never seen. He doesn't have to check with anybody.
He doesn't have to call the Congress. He doesn't have to check with the courts.

Speaker 45 He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in.

Speaker 12 It bothers me immensely that the only area that there is not a check and balance is the one that can literally result in the end of the world.

Speaker 12 That seems strange to me.

Speaker 13 Have you thought about this at all and wondered whether there's a better way to do this?

Speaker 39 Yes, I have.

Speaker 13 What would you suggest?

Speaker 39 I have specifically proposed and continue to propose unsuccessfully

Speaker 39 that we phase out our ICBMs and to the extent we have to have a nuclear deterrence, we limit it to submarines and airplanes because they don't have to launch in five minutes or six minutes or seven minutes.

Speaker 5 And when it comes to preemptive strikes, he says.

Speaker 39 We have before the Congress now a bill making a modification which says that

Speaker 39 unless the United States has been verifiably attacked, then the president has, before he launches his nuclear weapons, has to go to Congress for permission.

Speaker 40 So our bill is very simple.

Speaker 22 This is Congressman Ted Liu, and he and Senator Ed Markey are the guys who authored the bill.

Speaker 40 It basically says before the president can launch a nuclear first strike, the president must first get a declaration of war from Congress.

Speaker 16 I believe that you introduced this bill before the election, is that right?

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 40 Senator Markey, I believe we need a structural fix. We believe actually Hillary Clinton was going to be president, so this bill would have applied to her.
And that's because

Speaker 40 The fate of humanity in our world should not rest on one person.

Speaker 5 And wait, so are you seeing this as just as you're sizing this up, is this a systemic problem, or is this a problem with one person who just happens to have the office right now?

Speaker 40 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It's absolutely a systemic problem, and it's also a problem with the current person in the office of the president.

Speaker 40 But you could see future presidents, right, that could be elected with judgment or temperament issues, or maybe they simply go to advance age and get Alzheimer's, right, or some other sort of issue.

Speaker 40 That's why we can't have a system where there's so little checks and balances.

Speaker 5 Do you know about this bill? Or have you heard of it?

Speaker 2 No, actually, I don't.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 that's interesting. That is a very interesting bill.

Speaker 11 That

Speaker 11 let me say it this way. Yeah.

Speaker 11 On one hand, I agree,

Speaker 11 because again, I always like to have checks and balances.

Speaker 11 On the other hand,

Speaker 11 I also think that

Speaker 11 it says to a potential adversary,

Speaker 11 you know,

Speaker 11 now there's doubt.

Speaker 13 So there are two sort of values here. One is

Speaker 13 your humane interest in making sure that

Speaker 13 the end of the world, if it comes to that, is happening for a good reason and a just reason, as best you can define it.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 13 the ongoing hope that by making this our system credible, that we will never have an end of the world.

Speaker 13 So, my question to you is: how do you weigh those together?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, and

Speaker 2 it's

Speaker 11 that's a dilemma.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 11 You know, that's a dilemma.

Speaker 23 So, after the military forced Harold to retire, he became a truck driver.

Speaker 12 And once I got that job, I made up my mind that I was going to devote my time to making a living for my family and to that company. And I wasn't going to be off dealing with this subject anymore.

Speaker 18 And eventually he started doing addiction counseling at the Salvation Army, mostly with homeless people.

Speaker 36 What's your sort of emotional state around all this right now? Like, how often is this something you still think about?

Speaker 5 How do you feel right now?

Speaker 12 Well,

Speaker 12 I'm just,

Speaker 12 I think that common sense, I think the

Speaker 12 goodness in human beings

Speaker 12 begs

Speaker 12 for a resolution of this. I just think that the need

Speaker 12 for that

Speaker 12 is

Speaker 12 at least as great now as it's ever been in the history of our republic. And I might add on a personal level that

Speaker 12 I had, I mean, I was really committed to the military, to the Air Force,

Speaker 12 volunteered several times, you know, to do my duty

Speaker 12 with respect to the Vietnam War. And I just felt that I had asked a very reasonable question

Speaker 12 that deserved an answer, and

Speaker 12 it was not

Speaker 12 for me alone,

Speaker 12 it was for all of us.

Speaker 12 All ships of any kind bound in the portfolio

Speaker 12 from whatever nation preferred

Speaker 12 getting

Speaker 12 offensive

Speaker 14 I keep thinking about those six minutes.

Speaker 2 Not a long time.

Speaker 14 Big props to reporter Latif Nasser. This story was produced by Annie McEwen with production help from Simon Adler.

Speaker 13 And a big thank you to historian and reporter Ron Rosenbaum, whose research we relied on in some part for this story.

Speaker 14 And to our special consulting researcher, Alex Wellstein, who is by day a nuclear historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.

Speaker 13 And to the U.S. Air Force, to Captain Chris Mezinard and to Carla Pampey and to Lieutenant Esther Wuellette and to Lieutenant Veronica Perez.

Speaker 14 Also thanks to Elaine Scary, Ryan Pettigrew at the Nixon Presidential Library, Ryan Furkamp, Robin Berry and Lisa Berry, Tom Woodruff, Doreen DeBruome, and Ray Peter.

Speaker 1 Soren here again, just with a quick note. Since we first aired this episode, Bruce Blair, the missile launch officer who wrote those classified studies, has actually passed away.

Speaker 1 And also, we should mention the passing of Tony DeBrum, who if you are a patient or maybe just meditative listener, you'll hear from in a little bit.

Speaker 13 I'm Jad Abumrod. I'm Robert Quilwich.

Speaker 14 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 46 Hey, I'm Lemon and I'm from Richmond, Indiana. And here are the staff credits.
Radio Lab was created by Jad Abumrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latz of Nasser are our co-hosts.

Speaker 46 Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W.

Speaker 46 Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhun Yanan Sambandan, Matt Kielty, Rebecca Lacks, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Kari, Sarah Sandback, Anissa Vitza, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster.

Speaker 46 Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Speaker 47 I'll be happy to share whatever I may remember. Remember, this took place early in the morning of March 1st, 1954.
So it's been a while.

Speaker 14 So, a couple weeks back, the writer Sam Keene put us in touch with this guy.

Speaker 47 But it was quite traumatic and hard to forget.

Speaker 13 How old were you on that day?

Speaker 47 In 1954, I was nine years old.

Speaker 13 Nine years old. Okay, good.
All right.

Speaker 14 His name is Tony DeBrum. He is an ambassador for the Marshall Islands in the North Pacific.

Speaker 14 And he tells this story about a particular moment that happened when he was nine on a day very early in the morning.

Speaker 47 At that moment, in that early morning hours, I was out fishing with my grandfather.

Speaker 47 It was customary,

Speaker 47 a village that we lived in to go

Speaker 47 net fishing, pro-net fishing for scats.

Speaker 14 Tony says he and his grandpa were out on the beach before the sun had risen

Speaker 14 and they waded through the water tossing their net, pulling it back, tossing it out, pulling it back. And after they'd done that for a while.

Speaker 47 The sun was beginning

Speaker 47 to rise from the east and I was carrying the basket. He was throwing the net

Speaker 47 when the flash went off.

Speaker 47 We were temporarily blinded by the flash.

Speaker 47 It was as if someone had walked up to you with a flash camera

Speaker 47 and took a shot right inches from your eyes.

Speaker 47 I cannot

Speaker 47 with any certainty tell you how many seconds passed,

Speaker 9 but

Speaker 47 we felt the shock.

Speaker 47 It was like a real heavy burst of wind going through the land.

Speaker 14 He says he turned away from the light and back towards the shore.

Speaker 47 And you can see the vegetation move.

Speaker 47 It's indescribable.

Speaker 47 I thought it was the end of the world.

Speaker 14 What Tony didn't know

Speaker 14 is that 300 miles away, the U.S. had just tested a bomb they called Castle Bravo.
It was a hydrogen bomb, about a thousand times as strong as the bomb that dropped on Hiroshima.

Speaker 47 And then the

Speaker 47 rumble and the roar and the thunder of the sound of the explosion.

Speaker 47 Because it was not one big explosion that goes just boom and that's it. The chain reaction caused it to

Speaker 47 roll like thunder.

Speaker 14 And then

Speaker 14 he says the sky erupted.

Speaker 47 Everything turned red. The sky turned red.

Speaker 47 The ocean was red.

Speaker 47 The sand was red. My grandfather was red, and the fish we caught were red.

Speaker 47 The whole atmosphere, the whole hemisphere, the

Speaker 47 effect was like you're standing under a glass bowl and somebody poured blood over it.

Speaker 47 We were terrified.

Speaker 14 That explosion, and the many others like it, would poison the Marshall Islands, poison its people. But in that moment, Tony says, he and his grandpa just stood there,

Speaker 14 listening to the explosions and staring at the blood-red sky.

Speaker 47 It seemed to have lasted for

Speaker 47 what seemed like hours.

Speaker 47 I am now 72 years old,

Speaker 47 and every time I speak about this, my skin still crawls, and I still get goosebumps.

Speaker 48 Hi, my name is Teresa. I'm calling from Colchester in Essex, UK.

Speaker 48 Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandblocks, Seymour's Foundation Initiative and the John Templeton Foundation.

Speaker 48 Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.