Friday, October 22, 2010

Important botches...

After reading recently some books on the cold war, 'Rising Tide' and 'One minute to Midnight' and how close the superpowers where blowing each other up just by pure accident. I'm not suprised by reading this from the BBC::

Gen Shelton said the incident had taken place "around the year 2000".
Under the procedures, an official was sent every month to check the codes, and that they were replaced every four months with new codes.
According to Gen Shelton's book, Without Hesitation, an official had gone to check one month and been told by the aide that the codes were on the president's person but that he was in an important meeting and could not be disturbed.
A different official went to do the same check a month later and was told a similar story. When it came time to change the codes, an aide admitted they had been missing for months.
Gen Shelton said it was apparent that the president had not had the codes and that he had been unaware that an aide had lost them.
If the cold war was still going at least only half the world would have been blown up!




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