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1973: What if the president ordering nuclear attack isn't sane? An AF major lost his job for asking.
Retropolis
What if the president ordering a nuclear attack isn’t sane? An Air Force major lost his job for asking.
By Michael S. Rosenwald August 10, 2017
Like any good student with a sensitive question, Harold Hering approached his teacher after class, out of earshot from his classmates. ... “How can I know,” he asked, “that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?” ... It was 1973. President Richard M. Nixon was seriously depressed about Watergate. Hering, an Air Force major who rescued downed pilots in Vietnam, was training to be a missileer — the guy who turns the keys to commence nuclear Armageddon.
“I assumed there had to be some sort of checks and balances so that one man couldn’t just on a whim order the launch of nuclear weapons,” Hering, now 81, told Radiolab in a remarkable interview earlier this year. ... Hering was wrong. And decades later, so is anyone who thinks President Trump, having recently threatened “fire and fury” for North Korea, can’t order a nuclear attack anytime he darn well pleases, even from a fairway bunker on the golf course.
{In Trump’s North Korea warnings, his military school classmates hear echoes of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis}
Just ask Hering. ... Back in 1973, the drama that followed Hering’s question did not, as he hoped, fundamentally alter the fate of the world, but it certainly reshaped his life. Forced to retire, Hering took up a career with a less dangerous set of keys: long-haul trucking.
....
Michael Rosenwald is an enterprise reporter writing about history, the social sciences, and culture. He also hosts Retropod, a daily podcast. Before joining The Post in 2004, he was a reporter at The Boston Globe. Follow @mikerosenwald
What if the president ordering a nuclear attack isn’t sane? An Air Force major lost his job for asking.
By Michael S. Rosenwald August 10, 2017
Like any good student with a sensitive question, Harold Hering approached his teacher after class, out of earshot from his classmates. ... “How can I know,” he asked, “that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?” ... It was 1973. President Richard M. Nixon was seriously depressed about Watergate. Hering, an Air Force major who rescued downed pilots in Vietnam, was training to be a missileer — the guy who turns the keys to commence nuclear Armageddon.
“I assumed there had to be some sort of checks and balances so that one man couldn’t just on a whim order the launch of nuclear weapons,” Hering, now 81, told Radiolab in a remarkable interview earlier this year. ... Hering was wrong. And decades later, so is anyone who thinks President Trump, having recently threatened “fire and fury” for North Korea, can’t order a nuclear attack anytime he darn well pleases, even from a fairway bunker on the golf course.
{In Trump’s North Korea warnings, his military school classmates hear echoes of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis}
Just ask Hering. ... Back in 1973, the drama that followed Hering’s question did not, as he hoped, fundamentally alter the fate of the world, but it certainly reshaped his life. Forced to retire, Hering took up a career with a less dangerous set of keys: long-haul trucking.
....
Michael Rosenwald is an enterprise reporter writing about history, the social sciences, and culture. He also hosts Retropod, a daily podcast. Before joining The Post in 2004, he was a reporter at The Boston Globe. Follow @mikerosenwald
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