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Speaker 2: Enter it now. Bill Cunning in The Great American of Course.
Speaker 2: Andy Jacobson is a New York Times best selling author.
Speaker 2: She's written, among other things, many many books, including The
Speaker 2: First Platoon and Area fifty one. She's spent I would
Speaker 2: think years interviewing all the relevant players about a nuclear
Speaker 2: war exchange, and when I got the book about three
Speaker 2: weeks ago, it's amazing the research that was done. Some
Speaker 2: of the topicies include the build up, How we Got here,
Speaker 2: Part two, the First twenty four minutes of Nuclear War.
Speaker 2: Part three is the next twenty four minutes of nuclear
Speaker 2: war and the final twenty four minutes and Annie Jacobson,
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bill Cunningham show. The book is Nuclear
Speaker 2: War a Scenario? And you go through the beginning of
Speaker 2: about almost eighty years ago when Americas set off the
Speaker 2: first nuclear explosion. Plus you have the six scenarios under
Speaker 2: which America was very very close to a nuclear exchange
Speaker 2: with that point through the USSR. At this point, can
Speaker 2: you describe to the American people the first twenty four
Speaker 2: minutes of nuclear war and what occurs in those time
Speaker 2: period and does it make a difference between North Korea
Speaker 2: and USSR or Iran? So what are the first twenty
Speaker 2: four minutes?
Speaker 3: Well, you've hit upon the basic issue and the most
Speaker 3: terrifying issue of all of this, which is timing and
Speaker 3: speed and urgency of it all. Once nuclear war begins,
Speaker 3: it does not stop. And that is why I chose
Speaker 3: the ticking clocks in the area, which happened in seconds
Speaker 3: and minutes, not hours and weeks. Nuclear war essentially begins
Speaker 3: in the first fraction of a second that our satellite system,
Speaker 3: very advanced technological system made by Lockheed parked over our
Speaker 3: nuclear armed adversaries attacks the hot rocket exhaust on a
Speaker 3: nuclear launch. So if you just imagine, if your listeners
Speaker 3: imagine how this all begins. This is not a scenario
Speaker 3: like nine to eleven where someone whispers in the president's ears, sir,
Speaker 3: we've been hit by the terrorists. This is it happens
Speaker 3: before the missile lands in America, and that is why
Speaker 3: a system of events begins to happen, whereby the president
Speaker 3: must launch a counter attack, ideally before the first missile
Speaker 3: hits the United States. I mean, the peril only ratchets
Speaker 3: up from there.
Speaker 2: In fact, you reference the fact that other than an
Speaker 2: asteroid strike the Earth which destroyed the dinosaurs and I
Speaker 2: allowed the mammals to arise about one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: million years ago. This is the one of the triggers
Speaker 2: for the war. Let's go over the first. Give me
Speaker 2: the top one or two circumstances when America was this
Speaker 2: close to a nuclear exchange with the USSR.
Speaker 3: Well, there's been many situations that have been misunderstanding or miscalculations.
Speaker 3: And yes, I referenced them in the book to indicate
Speaker 3: that it's not just you know, actual adversary attacking, but
Speaker 3: that nuclear war could be started by a miscalculation. And
Speaker 3: I referenced a story that was told to me by
Speaker 3: a former Secretary of Defense when he himself was told
Speaker 3: in error that there were thousands of then Soviet missiles
Speaker 3: coming at the United States, only to learn a few
Speaker 3: minutes later that it was that it was a false alarm.
Speaker 3: But I think the focus really in the book for
Speaker 3: me is on taking the reader through the hypothetical situation
Speaker 3: of how it would unfold in the future, could happen tomorrow.
Speaker 3: A quote from former Stratcom commander General Keeler to me
Speaker 3: kind of lives at the heart and soul of the story.
Speaker 3: He said to me when we were discussing an exchange
Speaker 3: between Russia and the United States and a full scale
Speaker 3: nuclear weapons exchange, he said to me, Annie, the world
Speaker 3: could end in the next couple of hours.
Speaker 2: Let's go over you talk about our satellites parked over
Speaker 2: a nuclear powered enemies of ours. Let's assume the Russian
Speaker 2: satellite killers don't work. I can only imagine if the
Speaker 2: Russian satellite killers work and we're not warned. But let's
Speaker 2: say we're warned. Take us through the scenario of the
Speaker 2: first twenty four minutes, and right now this is in Germain,
Speaker 2: and Joe Biden or Donald Trump, Because it could happen
Speaker 2: at any time. But Joe Biden. Shall we say it
Speaker 2: isn't playing with a full deck of the present time?
Speaker 2: In fact, in the morning one or two o'clock in
Speaker 2: the morning. There was a question asked the other day
Speaker 2: by Fox News about who makes who picks up the
Speaker 2: phone at three o'clock in the morning. Maybe you don't
Speaker 2: have time to pick up the phone. Explain the football
Speaker 2: carried by by the assistance to the President. Take us
Speaker 2: through the first twenty four minutes the first scenario, the
Speaker 2: satellite picks up the exhaust from the nuclear weapon. Take
Speaker 2: us through the first twenty four minutes.
Speaker 3: So it happens incredibly quickly. There are three command bunkers
Speaker 3: in the United States. Ones underneath the Pentagon, the other
Speaker 3: is beneath Stratcom in Nebraska, and then there's another one
Speaker 3: inside Shyenne Mountain, and together with the Nora D officials
Speaker 3: at Peterson Air Force Base. The minute that launch is detected,
Speaker 3: data begins to spin down from that satellite system one
Speaker 3: tenth of the way to the Moon, by the way
Speaker 3: down to these command testers, down to places like the
Speaker 3: Aerospace Data Facility in Colorado, a facility that was classified
Speaker 3: until ten years ago. It's very existence. We didn't even
Speaker 3: know about. The data goes there, and there begins the
Speaker 3: interpretation of data by these massive computer systems together with
Speaker 3: people to determine the trajectory of the ballistic missile launch.
Speaker 3: And as soon as that information is clear, which is
Speaker 3: by the way, one hundred about one hundred seconds into it,
Speaker 3: the officials will know that weapon is headed towards the
Speaker 3: east coast of the United States. If that's where it's been,
Speaker 3: that's where it's coming. And so then you can just
Speaker 3: imagine how it all begins this sequence of events. Now
Speaker 3: the president must be told. The NORAD commander is the
Speaker 3: guy who's going to brief the president. But first another
Speaker 3: element of the Events department is working to get secondary
Speaker 3: confirmation that is required before the President launches a counter attack,
Speaker 3: which he must make before the missile comes in. In
Speaker 3: the next twenty four minutes, you can see the urgency involved.
Speaker 3: I hope readers will read this because I take them
Speaker 3: through seconds and minutes, play by play, the various different
Speaker 3: situations in these different bunkers, all working toward the next
Speaker 3: big moment, which is telling the president he must launch
Speaker 3: a counter attack. That happens secondary confirmation comes in at
Speaker 3: about nine minutes. We have long range radars in Alaska
Speaker 3: that will confirm the missile. And then the president has
Speaker 3: a sixth minute window to decide which weapons to use
Speaker 3: in a counter attack against the person that was foolhardy
Speaker 3: enough to launch against the United States.
Speaker 2: So Annie Jacobson, author of Nuclear War, the first step
Speaker 2: is depicting the launch of the missiles from North Korea
Speaker 2: or Russia or Iran. And that's done under two minutes.
Speaker 2: And then after that two minutes is done, and then
Speaker 2: nine minutes kick in as far as okay, it's coming
Speaker 2: toward Washington, New York, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, whatever. Then after
Speaker 2: that nine minutes, the president has six minutes to make
Speaker 2: the decision. So we're talking about something in the range
Speaker 2: of under twenty minutes. We all could be dead twenty
Speaker 2: minute absolutely.
Speaker 3: And here's an interesting here's an interesting decision tree problem.
Speaker 3: So when I was reporting this, I would exactly as
Speaker 3: you just relate. I would learn about this, and you
Speaker 3: gather the information from the different players. And then I
Speaker 3: got to the point where the president and I thought
Speaker 3: to myself, in wait a minute, I know from previous
Speaker 3: books I've reported that the Secret Service has a mission
Speaker 3: to protect the life of the President of the United States.
Speaker 3: So at that nine or ten minutes, Defense Department Stratcom
Speaker 3: knows the nuclear incoming. A nuclear weapon is headed toward Washington, DC.
Speaker 3: The Secret Service is going to have a different agenda
Speaker 3: than Stratcom. Stratcom is going to want to get the
Speaker 3: president's order for a counter attack. But the Secret Service
Speaker 3: is going to move the President out of the White
Speaker 3: House because that is their duty. And so I interviewed
Speaker 3: the Director of the Secret Service. I interviewed members of
Speaker 3: what's called the HAT Team, the counter assault team, who
Speaker 3: would be in charge of moving the president, to try
Speaker 3: and decide the most realistic scenario that would unfold in
Speaker 3: this moment. And guess what I realized. The people who
Speaker 3: would win in that argument are the ones with the weapons.
Speaker 3: Cat Team carries right long long guns and they are
Speaker 3: going to say, mister President, we are moving you. And
Speaker 3: so then you have a problem with Stratcom saying sir,
Speaker 3: we need the launch codes. Secret Services now moving the
Speaker 3: President trying to get into a nuclear bonker. You have
Speaker 3: decision trees unfolding, and now you're setting things up for
Speaker 3: a series of mistakes and miscalculations. That's what I learned
Speaker 3: that's what I report in the book.
Speaker 2: I guess the fear in your book is that that's
Speaker 2: a mistake. And of course, if North Korea launches five
Speaker 2: nukes at US, that's completely different than Russia launching five
Speaker 2: hundred or one thousand nukes. And describe the second the
Speaker 2: next twenty four minutes, because I don't know if a
Speaker 2: president middle of the night could make a six minute
Speaker 2: decision to kill one hundred million Russians or to kill
Speaker 2: twenty five million North Koreans or fifty million Iranians. What
Speaker 2: does the president go through? And before we get to
Speaker 2: the president, what happens with the president's unavailable? What if
Speaker 2: for some reason he's unavailable, he's somewhere and the person
Speaker 2: that must make the decision can't make it, the president.
Speaker 2: What happens then?
Speaker 3: So for starters, the football which contains the nuclear codes
Speaker 3: is with the president twenty four seven, three sixty five.
Speaker 3: And in my interview with lumer Letti, who was the
Speaker 3: President's lead security on his detail during Clinton, he told
Speaker 3: me a story once when President Clinton tried to get
Speaker 3: into an elevator and he was visiting the Syrian president Assad,
Speaker 3: and assad guys wouldn't let the military aid with the
Speaker 3: football into the elevator, and it was a standoff because
Speaker 3: lumer Letti told me, we are never going to let
Speaker 3: the president be separate from the football, and so the
Speaker 3: football is always with the president if the president is available.
Speaker 3: As one issue, but a more important issue, I believe
Speaker 3: is the lack of information that most presidents have on
Speaker 3: their responsibility to launch nuclear war. That does not come
Speaker 3: from Annie Jacobson's imagination. That is told to me by
Speaker 3: Secretary of Defense former Leon Panetta, who before he was
Speaker 3: SECDAC was the director of the CIA, and before that
Speaker 3: he was President Clinton's chief of staff. And Panetta told
Speaker 3: me that most presidents are underinformed about nuclear war, a
Speaker 3: fact that was confirmed by another Secretary of Defense, Bill Perry.
Speaker 3: They just simply don't want to know. They prefer to
Speaker 3: believe that nuclear war will never happen. And that again
Speaker 3: is another major thread in my book.
Speaker 2: Wow, So if the president, here's the question. If the
Speaker 2: president does not make that decision, either he's incapable of
Speaker 2: making it, he is stuttering, he is hesitating, I can't
Speaker 2: do it. What happens then, at the end of the
Speaker 2: six minutes, you got the three steps to launch and
Speaker 2: then you got nine minutes evaluating, Okay, where's it going,
Speaker 2: how many are coming? Then the President must be notified.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine the six minutes in the middle of
Speaker 2: the night, woke up at three o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 2: that president is going to make that do what happened
Speaker 2: to president is frozen and can't make the decision.
Speaker 3: The decision does get made. The decision does get made
Speaker 3: in the scenario that I propose, because you have a
Speaker 3: Stratcom commander and you have a number of defense officials
Speaker 3: who are doing what is known in circles as jamming
Speaker 3: the president. They insist for a counter launch order. And
Speaker 3: when that counter launch order happens, that's when we move
Speaker 3: into the next twenty four minutes. And then you see
Speaker 3: other problems with technology. As I take the reader through
Speaker 3: and again confirmed with me by cabinet members, presidential advisors,
Speaker 3: all kinds of problems unfold with the technology. And what
Speaker 3: ultimately happens in the scenario that I write is that
Speaker 3: Russia misinterprets nuclear missiles coming for them that are in
Speaker 3: fact going for North Korea. And that's because the usicbms
Speaker 3: do not have enough range to target North Korea. Directly
Speaker 3: they must overfly Russia. That's a little bit of a
Speaker 3: spoiler alert. But I hope people will read nuclear war
Speaker 3: scenario win their jaw down so they can understand that
Speaker 3: this is a critical issue. It's a time of peril,
Speaker 3: and people understanding about this is a way to get
Speaker 3: presidents to pay attention to it.
Speaker 2: Any Jacobson, you seem to be implying that it's more
Speaker 2: likely a mistake than I can't imagine Vladimir Putin or
Speaker 2: Kim John Onhn or a Shijao Peing saying, Okay, we're
Speaker 2: going to exchange nuclear weapons with America. Isn't it more
Speaker 2: likely to be a mistake.
Speaker 3: Well, that's for readers to decide. In my scenario, I
Speaker 3: use mad king logic, which was conveyed to me by
Speaker 3: the thermonuclear weapons designer Richard Garwin, a founder of Animal
Speaker 3: and also an advisor to all of the presidents on
Speaker 3: nuclear weapons since Eisenhower, and Garwin told me he's now
Speaker 3: in his nineties that what he fears most is mad
Speaker 3: king logic, that there would be a leader with a
Speaker 3: nuclear arsenal who would not really care about what happened
Speaker 3: to the rest of the world, and he used the
Speaker 3: phrase a play mois le deluge after me the flood,
Speaker 3: and that is what really made me make the decision
Speaker 3: to set the stage for the nuclear launch the way
Speaker 3: I do in my book.
Speaker 2: I saw a movie about twenty or thirty years ago
Speaker 2: with a Bush forty one look alike. It was watching
Speaker 2: a football game in Kansas City and Ben Affleck was
Speaker 2: the hero, and that had a small indication of what
Speaker 2: would happen to little Kansas City if a nuclear detection
Speaker 2: of nuclear bomb happened. What would America look like if
Speaker 2: five hundred to one thousand thermonuclear by bombs and missiles
Speaker 2: struck us? What would America look like?
Speaker 3: The end of my book details nuclear Winter. That is
Speaker 3: a situation where five billion people, not just Americans, five
Speaker 3: billion people around the world are dead. And again that's
Speaker 3: sourced from scientific facts with people who wrote the original
Speaker 3: Nuclear Winter treatise back in the eighties and the sense
Speaker 3: work for decades to update that using computer models. So,
Speaker 3: after all the soot gets lost it into the air
Speaker 3: from the megafires of nuclear exchange, this sun's rates get
Speaker 3: blocked out, and agriculture fails. We return to our hunter
Speaker 3: gatherer state. That is the sad reality of nuclear war.
Speaker 3: But I will leave you with a.
Speaker 2: Ray of hope.
Speaker 3: Read the book and realize that you can make a
Speaker 3: difference by having a conversation about all of this. Thank
Speaker 3: you to have a conversation before we can't.
Speaker 2: Nuclear war a scenario by Annie Jacobson. It's about four
Speaker 2: hundred pages long and it's it's a scenario. It's possible.
Speaker 2: But when I look at the world today, many think
Speaker 2: it's likely. I pray to God not But Annie Jacobson,
Speaker 2: once again, we've only scratched the surface. But the scenario
Speaker 2: is in the book Nuclear War. And once again, thank
Speaker 2: you for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. Thank you
Speaker 2: Annie Jacobson very much. Thank you. That's a cheerful thought.
Speaker 2: Uh five, three, seven, four, nine, seven thousand. We become
Speaker 2: hunter gatherers again. Only the strong survive. Maybe in South America.
Speaker 2: On news radio seven hundred ww Wumbia several eight has
Speaker 2: the lowest prises