http://www.rense.com/general78/stupid.htm



Nukes Over America -

All A Stupid Mistake

...Sure it Was
By Dave Lindorff
10-21-7



      The Air Force's Friday report on the August 29-30 nuclear weapons 
incident which saw six armed cruise missiles flown across the continental US 
in launch position on a B-52H bomber leaves all the big questions 
unanswered, attempting to shuck the whole thing off as an "unacceptable 
mistake."



      To be sure, Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne and Air Force Deputy 
Chief of Staff for Operations Maj. Gen. Richard Newton, said that after a 
six-week investigation, five officers, including Col. Bruce Emig, commander 
of the Fifth Bomb Group at Minot AFB in North Dakota, where the flight 
originated, have been relieved of duty, and 65 other Air Force personnel 
were also removed from their duties, and both Barksdale and Minot were 
decertified for their strategic nuclear responsibilities. But that's still 
pretty small beer for an incident so serious it's never happened before in 
half a century of nuclear weapons handling.

      There are, at this point, no court martials being contemplated, and 
nobody's been discharged from the military.



      Put simply, six 150-kiloton warheads were improperly attached to six 
Advanced Cruise Missiles, all loaded onto a wing launch pod, and then 
mounted on the wing of a B-52 H Stratofortress at Minot, along with six 
similar missiles with dummy warheads, which were loaded onto a launch pod on 
the plane's other wing, an all 12 were improperly and illegally flown across 
the country to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.



      The Air Force, following its "investigation," is saying the same thing 
it said before the investigation: it was all a big "mistake"-the result of 
"widespread disregard for the rules" regarding handling of nuclear weapons.



      A few guys at Minot "inexplicably" screwed up and loaded the nukes and 
then there were a chain of mistakes because no one else treated the 
nuclear-tipped missiles as if they were armed with nuclear weapons.



      The trouble with this theory, or story line if you will, is that while 
nobody at Minot, supposedly, noticed what was happening-even though ground 
crew workers spent eight hours laboring to get the pod with the six 
nuke-tipped missiles mounted on the plane's wing. This despite the warheads 
are clearly visible and identifiable by the silver coating they exhibit when 
viewed through a little window in each nosecone cover, and because there are 
red coverings on the nuke nosecones-once the plane got to Barksdale, the 
ground crew there, which had no reason on earth to suspect it was looking at 
nuclear warheads, spotted them immediately upon going to the plane.





      They had no reason to expect nukes because for 40 years it has been 
illegal for the military to carry nuclear weapons on bombers over US 
territory, and indeed since 1991, it has been illegal to even load nuclear 
weapons on a plane, period, even for training purposes on the ground. (The 
weapons went unnoticed for 10 hours in Barksdale, but that's because no 
groundcrew visited the plane for that long, but when they did go to it, they 
reportedly spotted the nukes right off the bat.)



      How can it be that Air Force ground crew people at Barksdale could 
spot the nukes in a flash while nobody at Minot-not the workers who mounted 
the warheads on the missiles in the heavily guarded bunker, not the guards 
who are supposed to guard those weapons with their lives and prevent any 
unauthorized removal from the bunkers, not the ground crew that loaded them 
onto the plane, and not the pilot and crew of the bomber, who are supposed 
to check every missile before they take off-noticed they were nuclear 
warheads?



      The Air Force, at a press conference announcing the results of its 
investigation, didn't answer this question. It appears the reporters at the 
session didn't ask it either.



      Certainly the AP reporter didn't ask it, because if she had, she would 
surely have included the Air Force's answer, or it's non-answer, in her 
story.



      Nobody, apparently, asked the Air Force either about six mysterious 
violent deaths of Air Force personnel from Minot and Barksdale, and from a 
mysterious Air Force Special Commando Group, all of which occurred in the 
days and weeks immediately before, during and after the incident. Two of 
those deaths-of the Special Commando Group officer and of a Minot weapons 
guard-were reportedly "suicides."



      In an article in the current issue of American Conservative magazine, 
currently on newsstands, I report that incredibly, no federal investigators 
from the Pentagon or the federal government even bothered to contact the 
police investigators or medical examiners who investigated those six 
deaths-an remarkable failure of due diligence, given the seriousness of this 
incident.



      One retired Navy officer who contacted me during my investigation, who 
worked in electronic warfare, told me it would be simply impossible for 
those weapons to have been moved out of the storage bunker. He claims to 
know for a certainty that all nuclear weapons in the US arsenal are equipped 
with high-tech tags ("like they have at WalMart and Kmart only better") that 
would instantly trigger alarms when the weapons are moved, unless they were 
deliberately disarmed.



      So what we have is pretty clearly a cover-up here.



      A cover-up of what though?



      Here we're into speculation.



      One thing we need to keep in mind is that Barksdale AFB, on its 
website, advertises itself proudly as the base that prepares B-52s for duty 
in the Middle East Theater.



      Another thing we need to keep in mind is that Vice President Dick 
Cheney is trying hard to gin up a war against Iran, against the better 
judgment of top military leaders and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.



      And a third thing to remember is that these particular six warheads, 
called M80-1 warheads, are able to be adjusted to have a power of anywhere 
from 150 kilotons down to just 5 kilotons-a so-called "tactical" size.



      Perfect for a tactical strike on an Iranian nuclear processing or 
research site, or for a "false flag" type attack that could be blamed on a 
fledgling nuclear power.like Iran.



      Of course, this is all speculation.



      What we do know is that for 36 hours, six nuclear warheads went 
missing. Nobody at the Pentagon in authority knew they were gone or where 
they were. And when they were discovered, the initial Pentagon response was 
to cover it all up. The only reason we know about this incident is that 
three Air Force officers became whistle-blowers and contacted a reporter at 
Military Times, a private newspaper trusted by and popular with the 
rank-and-file military.



      And what we know is that this couldn't have been what the Air Force, 
six weeks and one "investigation" late, is calling a "mistake."