AMERICAN HISTORY IS ONE BIG LIE AFTER ANOTHER:

• THING OGNEO T:O WMASTERE’RE IANDEXBOUT OF W FARFAREREEDOM

(FREEDOM BEING THE FREEDOM TO OWN SLAVES)

• THING TWO: RAIN FOLLOWS THE PLOW

(I.E., HOMESTEADS FOR WHITES)

• THING THREE: NATURE IS TO BE CONTROLLED

(WE DRAIN SWAMPS, LEVY RIVERS, ETC.)

• THING FOUR: WAR IS PEACE

(AND ATOMS’RE FOR ELECTRICITY)

• THING FIVE: IT IS ICBM THROW-WEIGHT

THAT PUTS MEN ON THE MOON, TRA LA HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“I thought that people would not like the prospect of being fried with their families and their neighbors and every living person that they had heard of. I thought it would only be necessary to make the danger known and that, when this had been done, men of all parties would unite to restore previous safety. I found that this was a mistake. There is a motive which is stronger than self-preservation: it is the desire to get the better of the other fellow.”

— Bertrand Russell’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY (3 Volumes, 1967, 1968, 1969)

WALDEN: As with our colleges, as with a hundred “modern PEOPLE OF improvements”; there is an illusion about them; there is not WALDEN always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

ADELAIDE HARRIET MARTINEAU

“I’d rather use the nuclear bomb.... The nuclear bomb. Does that bother you? I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christ’s sake.... You’re so goddamned HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE concerned about the civilians, and I don’t give a damn.” — President Richard Milhous Nixon, on tape, 1972

“Fiddle-dee-dee, war, war, war, I get so bored I could scream!” —Scarlet O’Hara

Nuclear peace is a cover story, sponsored by a people who are covering up after perpetrated two nuclear atrocities.

There exists in our psychology a perpetual war between reality and self-delusion. What is real is simple and obvious but often needs to be ignored. Every battle in this psychological war is won by our self-delusion, but needs for self-delusion are ever- changing. One century’s need for self-delusion expresses itself in one peculiar manner, and then after a century or so there is a ground-shift in our psychology and the self-delusions we come to require are similar but different. When our need for self- delusion shifts in this manner, the simple and obvious reality that had previously been hotly denied and attacked comes to be simple and obvious to all. Reality wins as soon as no-one any longer needs to reject and repudiate it.

Thus it is in our saga of atomic power. We claimed that we had won WWII by dropping a couple of advanced A-bombs on Japan. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE Actually the weapons we employed on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki amounted to low-tech dirty bombs, not much resembling the nuclear detonations we had been scheming. These devices did not so much as leave craters. The damage we photographed was mostly due to structure fires they occasioned on the ground. They amounted to the type of device that unskilled terrorists might nowadays fashion in some cavern in the mountains of the Hindu Kush — but then our propaganda machine took over, and we convinced everyone that these crude radiological devices dropped after Japan had already been seeking to surrender unconditionally had been what had won the war. Truth was inverted in the usual manner: we had to destroy cities of women and children and old people in order to save lives, etc. “Atoms for Peace” became our rallying cry as we infinitely stockpiled new generations of improved A-bombs and then H-bombs. We weren’t the perpetrators of atrocity because we were the very opposite of that, a peace-loving people willing to do whatever to create a future world of plentiful power. Nuclear peace, electricity too cheap to meter, became our self-righteous apology for our regime of terrorizing the entire planet. To obtain the cooperation of the utility corporations we legislated a secret tax subsidy — that they be released from almost all of the liability for any serious nuclear accidents.

When the ground shifts and we are no longer important and we no longer have any need to lie to ourselves in this particular manner, reality will emerge from its cocoon of lies and will be seen as simple and obvious. Our history books will record this period in which we are now living as the period in which “Atoms for Peace” had for a time been the necessary cover story for the only nation ever to have bombed entire civilian cities into oblivion. It had made us seem virtuous rather than wicked during the period in which anyone cared whether we were seen as good or evil.

The story told by the nuclear interveners is that they have not won yet because they have not yet come up with a persuasive argument against nuclear power, an argument persuasive enough to make citizens understand. The story is that as soon as they come up with this persuasive argument and convince advocates of nuclear power that this has all been one big mistake, all the nuclear power plants will have to shut down and we’ll be oh so safe. I don’t credit that story because there already exists such a totally persuasive argument, and it’s a simple one. What it is, is, it’s an explanation of the danger and expense that would carry the day for any reasonable person. The fact of the matter is, however, that the nuclear protesters are prevented from deploying such a totally persuasive and simple argument! They are prevented because of what they are — they’re protesters. Perpetuation of our dangerous situation is not only the legitimation of the intervener, it is his and her bliss. Such protest is for them a way of life, a manner of being. Without being feckless opponents of nuclear power, they’d be HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE nothing — if they won hands down there’d be nothing left to enable them to present themselves as the righteous and knowing ones!

What is this totally persuasive and simple argument that is being ignored because it would shut down all the nuclear power plants, that I referred to in the above paragraph? I’m going to tell you right now. I’m going to give it to you straight and simple. “Atoms for Peace” is an American national project that originated after the “Little Boy” U235 gun-mechanism bomb we had constructed at Oak Ridge, Tennessee was dropped onto the undamaged city of Hiroshima at approximately 8:15AM (Japan Standard Time) on August 6, 1945 and 3 days later at 11:02AM the “Fat Man” Pu239 implosion-mechanism bomb that we had constructed in Hanford, Washington, intended for the undamaged city of Kokura, Japan, was dropped instead onto the undamaged city of Nagasaki. Comparing the blast results of these 2 distinct devices, produced by our 2 distinct weapons programs, was what was going to enable us to decide which of our 2 production facilities to close at the end of the war as our spending began to wind down. Unfortunately, due to defects in the firing mechanisms, neither bomb went off like an atomic bomb — going off instead like the kind of “prompt criticality” that can easily occur as a nuclear power plant melts down. However, when President Eisenhower needed a cover story in order to generate public support for taxation to keep our atomics agenda alive, he was able to initiate his “Project Plowshare” to (among other things) detonate a string of atomic devices deep underground, blasting a channel across Nicaragua connecting the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific — something nicknamed our “Pan-Atomic Canal.” When it became clear that such earthmoving projects were far too radioactive ever to be realizable, we fell back on our cover story “electrical energy too cheap to meter.” –For what better excuse for the guilt of our continuation of atoms for war could there be (I ask you) than pride that what we were going to use them for was peace? The problem with this was radioactivity — our electric utilities were far too conscious of the enormous liability they were going to incur in the inevitable eventual major accident at a privately owned fission nuclear power plant, and they were wisely unanimously refusing to fund such a dream. That little fiscal kerfuffle was solved very readily by legislative enactment of a “cap” on the total amount of liability each holder of a nuclear power plant license faced in the event of any such accident (the term “subsidy” is never deployed in describing this cap on liability, because to deploy such a term would be to give away the whole welfare-for- the-wealthy confidence game). The utility corporation would be liable only for the first $375,000,000 of the damages (seems like a lot, huh?). Industry insurance would cover the next $11,600,000,000 (seems like a lot, huh?). New taxes would be enacted to cover damages above $11,975,000,000. Now, let’s see some comparison figures — since Chernobyl cost about $15,000,000,000 immediately plus perhaps $564,310,000,000 in HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE the following decades, if such an excursion were to occur at a fission power plant owned by a public utility in the United States of America (such as Brown’s Ferry or Three Mile Island), we would need to authorize an increase in our federal tax burden of some $567,000,000,000. It follows that nuclear electricity can be shown to be more affordable than that generated by fossil fuel only in disregard of all such eventualities (likewise it can be shown to be “greener” only in such a fraudulent manner).

Our nuclear protesters cannot afford to point out that our utility companies don’t think nuclear electricity is a wise investment, because then they’d win — and since there’d be nothing left for them to protest they’d need to get a life. Therefore what we hear them produce amount to “loyal opposition” arguments in favor of this or that doable marginal improvement in plant safety standards.

There aren’t very many citizens who are in favor of atoms for war. This whole thing is based, therefore, upon the conceit that it is possible for a citizen to be “against atoms for war” but “for atoms for peace.” However, the atoms-for-peace thing demonstrably began as a cover story for the funding of continued development of atomic weapons, and in my own work experience in the nuclear economy during the decade of the 1970s, I saw again and again how this cover story was continuing ad infinitum. Atoms for peace was atoms for war. I would be interfacing with a nuclear engineer one day, at General Electric’s Nuclear Energy Division in San Jose — and the next day he’d be absent from his work station. When, weeks or months later, he would re-emerge, he’d offer no explanation for his absence — presumably he had been at his other duty assignment, a secret one at a bomb trigger plant in Texas. I would interview for a job at the Clinch River fast-sodium-loop breeder reactor, and would learn that the reason why this device was referred to as a “breeder” was that in addition to generating a minuscule amount of civilian electric power as a mere cover story, the device also had a primary purpose of enriching nuclear materials for use in the cores of new atomic weapons. I would read about the prospect of fusion energy generated by dropping little hollow glass pellets of deuterium gas into an explosion chamber and detonating them one by one by means of a ring of powerful lasers, and would recognize that these pellets were cheaply available because the container surrounding an H-bomb is packed full of these pellets — and they need to be regularly swapped out due to the fact that the halflife of deuterium is short.

Our “peace” is all about war, it is our cover story for war. It is the smiley-face chalked onto the tip of a nuclear missile. Nuclear peace is nuclear war. Those who are against atoms for war but for atoms for peace assure us that they will never sell HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE their souls to Satan but in fact –although they are blissfully unaware of this– they have already sold their souls to Satan.

(At this point I have encountered an objection from a reader. “Your argument is an over-generalization. You can’t possibly know how everyone thinks, so I object to your pejorative claims about how the people who are against atoms for war but for atoms for peace think. There are citizens who are perfectly well aware of what has happened historically, but they condition their support for the nuclear economy on a verifiably peaceful program.” Here is what I responded to that objecting reader: “You are supposing incorrectly that it matters what these people who are in favor of the nuclear economy although opposed to atoms for war presume they are doing. Actually it doesn’t matter in the slightest what they presume they are doing. It is not what people presume they are doing that matters, but what they are doing! What these advocates of the nuclear economy (for peaceful generation of clean civilian electrical energy) are actually doing is supporting the nuclear economy that supports nuclear war. For instance, in a stage hypnotism exhibition it is almost impossible to get an hypnotized person on the stage to do anything wicked while they are hypnotized, if you allow the hypnotized person to be aware that this thing is wicked. If you say “This is your wife and here is a hatchet. Kill your wife!” the hypnotized husband will of course refuse. You have to hand the hypnotized husband a pillow and say “This is a hatchet and your wife is a chicken. Prepare supper for your family.” Then he will run around on the stage chopping at his wife with the pillow, and it will be so hilarious you’ll be rolling in the aisle. You see, it doesn’t matter what the hubby supposes he is doing while he is hypnotized, it doesn’t matter at all that he supposes that he is killing a chicken to prepare dinner for his family. What matters is what he is actually doing on the stage, which is chopping at his wife, who is a chicken, but with a pillow (in this stage hypnotism act, of course, for obvious reasons you can never ever actually hand a hypnotized subject a real hatchet).

No, we don’t get a free pass for supposing we are right and righteous. Things don’t work that way. It is our responsibility not to allow ourselves to be duped. If some spokesperson waves his hands at us and goes ‘In this fist I am holding atoms for war, but in the other fist I am holding atoms for peace, and lucky you, you can choose the reason for which you are in support of the nuclear economy,’ it is our responsibility to figure out that this is a false dichotomy and that both his fists are offering, actually, atoms for war. Nobody gets to be a fault- free dupe. In this real world the only way to be as innocent as a dove is to be as cunning as a serpent.”)

I have been very much derailed by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Plant #2 on this electric-power site happens to be a General Electric Mark I design on which I had worked. Once upon HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE a time, many long years ago, I was not a retired geezer — I was a workahubby in his late 30s with four small mouths to stuff full of food. This was in San Jose, California in the 1970s. I was a systems analyst for the General Electric Nuclear Power Division. Part of my work was night work, radiation cleanup at the General Electric Test Reactor (GETR) in Pleasanton, California, and in doing that work I sustained exposures approximately 5 times higher than the maximum radiation that is now being received by Japanese nuclear workers as they attempt to bring what is left of these reactors to cold shutdown. I also from time to time served Generous Erectric as an “internal auditor,” which is to say, at my boss’s request I sniffed around to try to find things that were going sour, and make confidential reports to management about such issues. (The purpose of such internal auditing is for management to learn about potential problems before these show up unexpectedly and embarrassingly on an external, which is to say, a for real, audit.)

The thing about fabricating a nuclear reactor pressure vessel bigger than a house with steel walls a couple of inches thick, is that it is not possible to fabricate anything so huge without there being multiple defects — imperfections such as “cold shuts” and “apparent cracks and voids.” Therefore a necessary part of the construction of these safety vessels is to detect the inevitable detectable defects, and then (1) to hog out all suspect areas with a welding torch and refill them very carefully with uniform molten material that is at least as strong as the surrounding two inches of steel wall. Therefore (2) a necessary part of the process must be X-ray verification of these weld corrections. Did the welding remove the entire imperfection, or was it perhaps merely a surface job, a mere cosmetic “fix”? Therefore (3) a necessary part of the process is documentation of the satisfactory nature of these X-ray verifications of these weld corrections. What I discovered in an internal audit in 1976 was merely that some of this vendor quality documentation was missing from the purchasing record. Did the welds actually get performed, at that vendor manufacturing facility? Had such repairs been performed correctly at the vendor plant? In the absence of such documentation, who is to know for sure that quality has been preserved? This becomes exceedingly dangerous and potentially exceedingly expensive if the reactor pressure vessel in question is already in use, because by then it has become intensely radioactive and cannot even be approached let alone X-rayed. Did I mention that these nuclear reactor pressure vessels cost multiple millions of dollars, each, and millions more to move to the power site?

Well, I filed my internal report, with my boss and with my boss’s boss, and then began to notice strange activities. Conference rooms full of buyers and buyers’ assistants, sitting around scribbling on pieces of paper. Pieces of paper that look very much like the missing weld verification documents. This looked HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE very much like the after-the-fact forging and robosigning of missing quality documentation. Did I know that for sure? –No, it was mere suspicion. So I asked my boss what was going down and his answer was “It’s none of your business. You’ve made enough trouble already. Now you stay out of this.”

I waited roughly ten days, while I talked about my suspicions with various low-level GE managers, and then one morning I walked to a nearby pay phone at a gas station and placed a telephone call to Washington DC, to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I couldn’t get through to anyone so I left my name and home phone number and said some words about having discovered some stuff that needed to be looked into.

The next morning I was back at my desk and Security paid me a visit. I was raised up and duck-walked to Personnel, and then I remember about an hour with the suits, with unpleasant things being said. On the basis of the fact that it had been something like ten days between the point at which my internal audit had uncovered these irregularities, and the morning I attempted to place that pay phone call to the NRC, I was warned that I might well be charged with a crime of ten days worth of guilty knowledge and collusion — and not only fined but imprisoned for years.

However, if I would say nothing, in its kindness to me as a career employee GE would not ask that I be prosecuted. I would be instantly terminated “for lack of work” and would receive one week’s termination pay for each of the dozen years I had been a Generous Erectric employee. I would be eligible for Unemployment Compensation. Then there was a door, and I was standing in the parking lot with a check in my hand. I remember turning around and seeing that there wasn’t a doorknob on the outside of the door. I hadn’t even managed to retrieve the pictures of my four little ones off the top of my desk (a friend inside later brought this out to me) — let alone any of my audit documentation in a file in my desk drawer.

I immediately went to a lawyer I knew in downtown San Jose. However, she said she would need to decline to take my case because of “conflict of interest.” Since a large part of her income came from doing bits and pieces of work for the local General Electric Nuclear Power Division, she explained, it would be against her best interests to represent me, because then she like me would be put on the industry’s blacklist.

Over the decades since then I have kept my part of the bargain, have remained silent (on account of that threat, but also, I confess, due to the sad reality that nobody has ever displayed the slightest interest). However, when recently I learned that Reactor Pressure Vessel #2 at Fukushima Daiichi was leaking nuclear fuel out its bottom, learned that this plant had gone into “China Syndrome,” I said to myself “Maybe I know why this HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE is happening. Are the core materials leaking out through the cracks and crevices for which I was fired back in 1976?” (Do I know that for sure? No, I’m merely suspicious.)

So I have been spending some time constructing an account of atomic war and atomic peace and the intimate linkages between these two thingies. Here it is.

Also, recently, at the urging of a Quaker friend who had made some contacts for me, I attempted a phone call to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington DC to inform them that I had information about quality defects in one of the Fukushima reactors that had gone “China-syndrome.” The lady on the other end of the line went “Well, I guess the statute of limitations has expired on that one,” and I was going to inquire “Hey, what statute of limitations?” — but I was granted no opportunity to react in such a manner, she having already hung up.

I have recently been making the acquaintance of Professor Emeritus Anne Firor Scott of Duke University, and familiarizing myself with her historical writings. I note one of the remarks made by Professor Scott in a recent addendum to her classic 1970 monograph THE SOUTHERN LADY: FROM PEDESTAL TO POLITICS, 1830-1930:

We sometimes say, only half in jest, that historians write their autobiographies into scholarship; this book might give some credence to that notion.

(Professor Scott, who is now in her 90th decade, had grown up surrounded by southern “ladies,” hence her research.)

Well, as a point in comparison, you will easily detect in the chronology of “Our Friend The Atom” that follows, that my own historical scholarship has been produced under a similar sort of rubric. I am writing in general about nuclear power in war and peace –about our national trajectory in this regard– while in fact my own personal trajectory through life has been largely shaped by our national relationship with the atom: this was initially because of memories of what my mother said to me while I was a tender child and our atomic bombs were descending onto Japanese cities and WWII was abruptly coming to a completion, and then subsequently due to Marine training for “ABC” warfare, and because of my friendship after exiting the Marines with a mulatto Proctor and Gamble employee in Evendale, Ohio who was being systematically murdered as part of a federal government plutonium experiment run under the authority of the hospital of the University of Cincinnati, and because of my subsequent education and training and systems-analyst and auditing duties at the General Electric Nuclear Power Division in San Jose, HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE California, and at the end because of my abortive attempt to become a “nuclear whistleblower” to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, followed immediately by my being fired by the General Electric Corporation, and because of the quarter-century of duress that followed that firing (possibly, although I cannot know for sure) in consequence of that attempt to blow the whistle on quality problems, problems having to do with the apparent falsification of vendor X-ray verification documents for welds on the surface of immense multi-million-dollar Mark I nuclear reactor pressure containment vessels (such as the vessel used in Plant #2 at Fukushima Daiichi).

Recently I have been perusing a long series of news articles in the New York Times, that have been pretending to be factual reporting but have tendentiously been characterizing what has happened at Fukushima Daiichi after the earthquake and tsunami as having been a situation set up by a uniquely Japanese false consciousness, that has led uniquely the Japanese to forever be lying to themselves and to each other about the safety of what they have been doing with atomics. This series of articles has literally amazed me! –because of the manner in which these descriptions of this supposedly unique Japanese false consciousness are identical with what I personally have experienced at GE with the all-American nuclear false consciousness. The cover-up continues! There is now an overt newspaper campaign to contain the disaster as a Japan-only disaster, pretending that the lessons we might learn cannot apply to America (apparently because we Americans aren’t at all like those collective-consciousness Japs who only think the way a colony of ants thinks1 — apparently we Westerners know how to think creatively and individually and rationally and could never be guilty of a Japanese nuclear false-consciousness certitude of collective safety — and therefore our nuke industry at home is safe even though theirs has now been demonstrated not to have been safe).

“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”

— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955)

1. It amazes me, how for instance a newspaper article by a Japanese reporter, Norimitsu Onishi’s “‘Safety Myth’ Left Japan Ripe for Nuclear Crisis” (June 24, 2011), can be employed to pander to a racist/culturalist fantasy about differences in mental capacity between Americans and Japanese — yet the manner in which this series of articles has left entirely open and available this racist/ culturalist fantasy seems to me to be inexplicable except as such an exercise in disingenuity. JAPS THINK LIKE ANTS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1275

The Dominican friar Albertus Magnus developed Europe’s 1st skyrockets. The popularity of Saint Albert’s Roman candles combined with Albert’s saintly reputation to help dispel Christian Europeans’ fear of black powder and its demonic ingredients. (Sulfur, for instance, was historically associated with various Goddess religions, while the willow wood said to make the best charcoal also was believed to make the best witches’ wands.) ICBMS

WALDEN: In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing the PEOPLE OF flute, and saw the perch, which I seemed to have charmed, hovering WALDEN around me, and the moon travelling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest. Formerly I had come to this pond adventurously, from time to time, in dark summer nights, with a companion, and making a fire close to the water’s edge, which we thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts with a bunch of worms strung on a thread; and when we had done, far in the night, threw the burning brands high into the air like skyrockets, which, coming down into the pond, were quenched with a loud hissing, and we were suddenly groping in total darkness. Through this, whistling a tune, we took our way to the haunts of men again. But now I had made my home by the shore.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1340

Dead horses and other animals were catapulted into the castle of Thun L’Eveque in Hainault (now northern France).2 The defenders found that “the stink and the air were so abominable ... they could not long endure,” and so a truce was arranged.

GERM WARFARE To describe the 9 centuries between the fall of Rome and that present era, Petrarch coined the term “Dark Ages.”

In order to better punch through the flat steel armor then in use, the French and Italians began to use quarrels (crossbow bolts) having a square tip. This would be good for the armaments business, for the 1370s the armor makers of Europe would be replacing the old-style flat breastplates with angular ones that made it more likely

2. At about this point, the Chinese were attaching rockets to arrows, and launching them in volleys from spe- cial wheelbarrows. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE that a bolt would be deflected.

ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH.

Men on the Moon “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1380

The Venicians and Genoans developed war-rockets. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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19TH CENTURY

1805

During this year rockets, as originally constructed by Sir William Congreve, were being reintroduced as weapons into the British army (this would eventually result in the matchstick being referred to as a “Congreve”). ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1806

October 8, Wednesday,: The Emperor Napoléon responded to Prussia’s ultimatum by invading Prussian territory by way of the Thuringerwald (Franconian Forest). Bayreuth passed into French administration.

Congreve rockets were used for the initial time by the Royal Navy, to destroy a substantial portion of the city of Boulogne, France. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1807

September 2, Wednesday: This day marked the 1st mention of Jan Ladislav Dussek in the service of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand.

British ships began a bombardment of Copenhagen with fire bombs and phosphorus rockets, to preempt the use of the Danish fleet by the Emperor Napoléon. ICBMS

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 2nd of 9 M / Pretty dilligently at trade, - In the forenoon Cousin A Greene called at the Shop & set sometime She is a friend I love much, & whose conversation is very interesting, tho’ much in the simplicity — Called this evening to set with her a little while before she goes on her journey which she expects to tomorrow if the weather permits RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1828

May 16, Friday: William Congreve died in Toulouse, France, from which location his soul ascended by deadly military rocket to Heaven.

ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1848

Venice was bombed from unmanned Austrian balloons — marking the very 1st time that civilized people have dropped bombs on the civilian population of a city from the air.

(fast forward now to Hiroshima and Nagasaki) ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1857

September 17, Thursday: According to the New-York Times, Physic Rush Elmore was recognized in Kansas to be “a keen party leader, an acute, high-minded, and well-disposed Southern Democrat” — a man even the free-state press admitted to be of considerable ability.

In Multan, India, one Sepoy was blown from a gun as 121 others were being summarily executed.

Bedrich Smetana arrived in Sweden from Prague.

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky was born. ICBMS

Thursday Sep 17 [Transcript] THE ACTUAL JOURNAL I go to Fair Haven Hill looking at the varieties of nabalus — which have a singular prominence now in all woods & road- sides. The lower leaves are very much eaten by insects. How perfectly each plant has its turn! as if the seasons revolved for it alone. 2 months ago it would have taken a sharp eye to have detected this plant. [^One of those Great puff balls 3 inch diam — ripe] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1882

October 5, Thursday: Robert Hutchings Goddard of Worcester, Massachusetts received a patent for a liquid-fuel rocket. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1888

January 24, Tuesday: Ernst Heinrich Heinkel was born in Grunbach, Germany. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1893

By what road have we traveled, to arrive at our firm unanalyzed conviction that the science of biology requires us to identify survival with strength? The recent undated (1981?) inspirational THE HUNDREDTH MONKEY has a dedication sheet which can stand by itself in elucidation of this contemporary morality of fitness. In emphatic typeface this page states that the book is dedicated “To the Dinosaurs, who mutely warn us that a species which cannot adapt to changing conditions will become extinct.” A hundred and fifty pages later the author was able to derive his strength-lesson of survival: “the strength of our species lies ... in our ability to use our minds to cooperate with each other” and “the same powerful minds that nuclear bombs and intercontinental missiles can also learn how to create human unity and cooperativeness.” A preposterous fraud like THE HUNDREDTH MONKEY is in the main line Waldo Emersonian tradition, in which each new metaphor in our lexicon is “a new weapon in the magazine of power” (Emerson 1971-1987, I:35). An earlier source for the moral behind that counterfactual “100th monkey” story, of such great fame, turns out to be, however, Lev Nikolævich Tolstòy’s manuscript TSTARSTVO BOZHIE VNUTRI VAS, Volume XX of the COMPLETE WORKS. I quote from the KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU translation by Leo Wiener, 10: ICBMS

The transition of men from one structure of life to another does not always take place in the manner in which the sand is poured out from an hourglass, –one kernel of sand after another, from the first to the last,– but rather like water pouring into a vessel that is immerged in the water, when it at first admits the water evenly and slowly at one side, and then, from the weight of the water already taken in, suddenly dips down fast and almost all at once receives all the water which it can hold. The same occurs with societies of men at the transition from one concept, and so from one structure of life, to another. It is only at first that one after another slowly and gradually receives the new truth by an inner way and follows it thorough life; but after a certain diffusion it is no longer received in an internal manner, nor gradually, but all at once, almost involuntarily ... the movement keeps accelerating and accelerating, expanding and expanding, like a snowball, until there germinates a public opinion which is in accord with the new truth, and the remaining mass of men no longer singly, but in a body, under the pressure of this force, passes over to the side of the new truth, and a new structure of life is established, which is in agreement with this truth.

FAKE NEWS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE In this 1893 book Tolstòy in effect declared himself an apostle of the love god:

The three life-conceptions are these: the first – the personal, or animal; the second – the social, or the pagan; and the third – the universal, or the divine. The savage recognizes life only in himself, in his personal desires. The good of his life is centered in himself alone. The highest good for him is the greatest gratification of his lust. The prime mover of his life is his personal enjoyment. The whole historical life of humanity is nothing but a gradual transition from the personal, the animal life-conception, to the social, and from the social to the divine.... The positivists, the communists, and all the preachers of the scientific brotherhood preach the widening of that love which men have for themselves and for their families and for the state, so as to embrace all humanity, forgetting that the love which they advocate is the personal love, which, by spreading out thinner, could extend to the family; which by spreading out still thinner, could extend to the natural country of birth, which completely vanishes as soon as it reaches an artificial state, such as Austria, Turkey, England.... the recognition of self as this son of God, whose chief quality is love ... because he cannot help loving ... everybody and everything.1

1. Section IV:90-2, 108, 111.

Of course, real people never have been at all like Tolstòy’s concept of the egoistic savage. Such remarks are not so much scandalous as counterfactual, and as one studies this text one notices that Tolstòy accompanied his unhistorical “history of savagery” with an equally unhistorical condemnation of the Jews who rejected his “Jesus Christ.” Tolstòy’s reconstruction of the past is of a counterfactual past. His dream of the future is HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE something that never will happen. We can’t get there from here:

In order to get the power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness, but with qualities which are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, cruelty. Without self-aggrandizement and debasement of others, without hypocrisy, deceit, prisons, fortresses, executions, murders, a power can neither arise nor maintain itself.... And so all the probabilities are in favor of the fact that not those who are better than those over whom they rule, but, on the contrary, those who are worse, have always been and even now are in power. There may also be worse people among those who submit to the power, but it cannot be that better people should rule over worse people.... It even sounds ridiculous to speak of ruling Christians. The non-Christians, that is, those who base their lives on the worldly good, must always rule over Christians, over those who assume that their lives consist in the renunciation of this good.1

1. Ibid, Section X:247-8.

His recognition of the nature of the instant world of power, a world in which more power overcomes less power and in which the good, being meek and weak, is never dominant, was accurate, so accurate that no Russian liberal could afford to believe in Tolstòy’s God, or could afford to sympathize with Tolstòy’s criticism of the existing social order.3 As we noticed, his dream of the past was counterfactual and his dream of the future was counterfactual. We can’t get there from here. Having more power, those who exploit will always be the ones who hire the philosophers and pay for the dissemination of words which sanction the continuation of their looting, right up to the end: “Philosophers are hired by the comfortable classes to prove that everything is all right.”4 Where Tolstòy went wrong was in the assertion that “outside of violence, which never puts a stop to evil, there is another means for the abolition of violence” (Tolstòy, Section 10). This is like saying that circles can grow so large as to exceed their perimeters, or that squares can acquire a fifth corner. It is, in effect, suggesting that under certain circumstances weakness can be stronger than strength, without itself becoming not weakness but strength, simply because we need this to be the case. We wouldn’t be at all tempted to believe such absurdities about the path of power if we weren’t constantly tempted to follow the path of power.5 3. All Lenin quotes are from his newspaper and journal articles published around the time of Tolstòy’s death, most available in Macherey 1978, pages 299-323 (for all these remarks about impotence, you’d think someone had an unconfessed sexual problem): “...no Russian liberal believes in Tolstòy’s God, or sympathizes with Tolstòy’s criticism of the existing social order.... the landlord obsessed with Christ.... hypocrisy:... On the one hand, merciless criticism of capitalist exploitation, exposure of government outrages, the farcical courts and the state administration, and unmasking of the profound contradictions between the growth of poverty, degradation and misery among the working masses. On the other, the crackpot preaching of submission, ‘resist not evil’ with violence. On the one hand, the most sober realism, the tearing away of all and sundry masks; on the other, the preaching of one of the most odious things on earth, namely, religion.... impotent ... Tolstòy, owing to these contradictions, could not possibly understand ... the contradictions in Tolstòy’s views and doctrines ... the contradictions in Tolstòy’s views ... Most of the peasantry wept and prayed, moralized and dreamed, wrote petitions and sent ‘pleaders’ – quite in the vein of Leo Tolstòy! ... weakness ... flabbiness ... immature dreaming ... political inexperience ... flabbiness ... softness ... flabbiness ... dreamy, diffuse and impotent lamentations ... apathetic attitude ... utopian ... reactionary in the most precise and most profound sense of the word ... reactionary and utopian ... the fundamental inconsistencies and weaknesses of Tolstòy’s world outlook are being hushed up in the most unpardonable fashion....” 4. Oliver Wendell Holmes. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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5. The idea that there is a “mass effect” associated with collective wishing is an idea that originated with Lev Nikolævich Tolstòy. Its most recent manifestation was in regard to some people who were putting it out that there was something they termed “the hundredth monkey phenomenon.” Supposedly there were, near Japan, these two islands inhabited by monkeys, and on one of the islands the monkeys were learning to wash the food they were given to eat in the ocean, to get the grit and sand off of it before putting it into their mouths. When the hundredth monkey learned this trick, on the one island, allegedly, spontaneously, the monkeys on the other separate isolated island acquired this trick! The people who were putting this out alluded to scientific studies of the phenomenon. As it turned out, there were a few things wrong with the story. First off, the two islands proved to be within monkey swimming distance of one another. The two populations were infrequently exchanging members. Secondly, the “scientists” in question, studying the monkey behavior, were embarrassed by the publicity, for in fact they had noticed no such occurrence as was being reported. All they had observed was that some of the monkeys had learned to wash the food to get the grit and sand off of it, and other monkeys, watching this, had also acquired this behavior. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were such a mass effect of thought? If wishes were horses beggars would ride! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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20TH CENTURY

1903

In Russia in this year during which the infamous Fake News PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION (ПРОТОКОЛЫ СИОНСКИХ МУДРЕЦОВ) were being fabricated by the secret police, K.E. Ziolkowski was presenting his “Exploration of outer space by rockets,” I.Nikashidze was presenting Henry David Thoreau’s “philosophy of natural life” to the Russias in an edition titled FILOSOFYA ESTESTVENNOY ZHIZNI. This booklet in Lev Nikolævich Tolstòy’s library would be one of his 2 sources for the some 30 Thoreau quotes in his KRUG CHTENYA (A CIRCLE OF READING) published in 1904-1908 (the other source was EVERY DAY WITH THOREAU, now at the Tolstòy State Museum in Moscow). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1914

July 14, Tuesday: After initial reluctance, the Hungarian government agreed to send an ultimatum to Serbia and if necessary to attack.

In London, Sergei Diaghilev introduced Sergei Prokofiev to his main conductor, Pierre Monteux. Prokofiev played his First Piano Concerto and some other works for them and was favorably received.

Mexican President Huerta resigned and fled toward exile in Europe, leaving the responsibility of negotiating with the soon-to-be victorious revolutionaries to his Chief Justice Francisco Sebastián Carbajal y Gual.

Robert Hutchings Goddard of Worcester, Massachusetts received a patent for a liquid-fuel rocket. ICBMS

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

Men on the Moon “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1916

October: The 1st idea of exploding a bomb on the surface of the moon seems to have been in Robert Hutchings Goddard’s A METHOD FOR REACHING EXTREME ALTITUDES. In this month he investigated the possibility of reaching our moon with a rocket loaded with photographer magnesium powder, in order to photograph from earth the explosion made by the impact. To establish the minimum powder mass to be carried by the rocket, he observed at night from his Worcester, Massachusetts home the magnesium flash made in an air evacuated glass ampule located some 3,600 meters away, determining that the flash made by 0.0029 grams of magnesium was barely visible and that one made by 0.015 grams was plainly visible. He was able to extrapolate from these datapoints that, using a telescope of 30-centimeter diameter to observe the impact, his rocket would need to transport 1.2 kilos of magnesium for the flash to be barely detectable and 6.27 kilos to be plainly visible. To be able to accelerate such a payload to escape velocity, Goddard estimated that he would need to construct a rocket with a launch mass of some 15 tons. (In 1945 H.H. Nininger would elaborate on this agenda by suggesting that we send up one of our new atomic weapons, to blow samples of the lunar surface in the direction of the Earth where they could be evaluated in the manner in which we have been examining meteorites. In 1956 RAND Corporation would begin to study sending a nuclear warhead to the moon. In 1957 an Atlas rocket scientist, Kraft Ehricke, and Nobel-winner George Gamow, would propose a rocket –to be named “Cow,” in honor of that nursery rhyme– that would loop past the Moon and return to Earth. Cow would be preceded by a rocket carrying an atomic bomb that would explode on the moon and raise a cloud of vaporized rock. Cow was to fly through the cloud and thus return lunar surface samples to Earth. In February 1957 Edward Teller would propose that we either explode an A-bomb in space some distance from the lunar surface in order to observe any fluorescence this might induce in the lunar surface, or explode one directly on the surface to observe what kind of disturbance this might cause. In October 1957 the Jet Propulsion Laboratory would propose that we out-Sputnik the Russkis with a lunar program they called “Red Socks” that would set off an atom bomb on the surface of the moon, not only to collect samples of lunar rock as meteorites, but also, JPL’s director Pickering was quick to point out, to create “beneficial psychological results.” From Spring 1958 to January 1959, while we would have a test-ban treaty with the Soviets that would prevent tests at the surface of the earth, the US Air Force would be developing their top-secret Project A119, described as a “study of lunar research flights,” to detonate on the moon without any warning a fission atomic weapon sufficient to suitably impress and deter the Soviet enemy. Of course, our wise planners always had to bear in mind the possibility that there would be an accident or a miscalculation and our nuke-loaded rocket would fail at liftoff, sending an armed warhead back toward the surface of the earth. All surviving documents have now become available for your amazement courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act. Carl Sagan would be involved in this scheming and would contribute such studies as “Possible Contribution of Lunar Nuclear Weapons Detonations to the Solution of Some Problems in Planetary Astronomy.”) ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1919

After his development of a 2-stage rocket, Robert Hutchings Goddard predicted improved models would eventually break free of gravity and reach our moon. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1926

March 16, Tuesday: When students marched in protest against allowing Jews into the University of Bucharest, the school was forced to close.

Incidental music to William Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest” (translated by Lembcke) op.109 by Jean Sibelius was performed for the initial time, in Copenhagen.

Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard demonstrated the 1st liquid-fuel rocket in a flight from his aunt’s farm in Auburn, Massachusetts. The fuel was gasoline and liquid oxygen, ignited by means of a blowtorch. His device flew for 2.5 seconds, reaching an altitude of 12 meters, and landed 56 meters from its launch site. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1929

July 7, Sunday: Regular transcontinental passenger air service began, between New York and Los Angeles. The trip would require approximately 48 hours because of all the takeoffs, landings, and refuelings.

Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard launched another liquid-fuel rocket from his aunt’s farm in Auburn, Massachusetts. This one, carrying a thermometer, barometer, and camera, reached an altitude of 27 meters and made its way 52 meters downrange before exploding. The flight took 8.5 seconds. Frightened neighbors summoned the local police (the state fire marshall would ban further such tests, wisely deeming them a menace to public safety). ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1941

July 14, Monday: A British/French Syria/Lebanon armistice was signed at Acre, Palestine.

The Soviets introduced a multiple rocket launcher at Orsha that could fire off 320 rockets in 25 seconds. Red Army soldiers named it after the heroine of a popular song: Katyusha. ICBMS

The British occupied Syria. WORLD WAR II HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1942

June 13, Saturday: The New York Times ran a headline on its Page 7, that “Nazis Blame Jews / For Big Bombings.” In this article, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was quoted as vowing that the Jews would pay for German suffering “with the extermination of their race in all Europe and perhaps even beyond Europe.” ANTISEMITISM

German and Italian forces defeated the British in a furious two-day tank battle near Al’Adam, Libya.

German scientists launched the first V2 (known to the Germans as A4) at Peenemünde. The rocket lifted off but crashed a kilometer away. ICBMS

A team of 4 saboteurs trained in Germany in explosives, chemistry, secret writing, and how to blend into American surroundings, led by George John Dasch, had landed from a U-boat on the beach near Amagansett, Long Island. Another such team would land in a few days in Florida. Dasch would turn himself in at the New York Field Office of the FBI and help locate and detain the remainder of his Long Island team. Within a couple of weeks, the Bureau would have all 8 saboteurs in custody.

German submarine U-157 was sunk by Coast Guard cutter Thetis (PC-115) north of Cuba, at 24 degrees 13 minutes North, 82 degrees 3 minutes West. WORLD WAR II

October 3, Saturday: Malambo, a film with music by Alberto Ginastera, was released, in Buenos Aires.

German scientists successfully launched a V2 rocket bomb at Peenemünde. WORLD WAR II ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1943

June 28, Monday: Chansons villageoises for voice and piano by Francis Poulenc to words of Frombeure was performed for the initial time, in the Salle Gaveau of Paris, with the composer himself at the keyboard.

Heinrich Himmler visited Peenemünde to witness the 1st test of an A-4. The rocket fell back nearby, taking out 3 aircraft (a later test would be somewhat more successful with the rocket traveling 142 miles out to sea). GERMANY WORLD WAR II ICBMS

August 22, Sunday: Over the next week American troops occupied several of the Ellice Islands (Tuvalu) including Nukufetau and Namumen, without opposition.

After a protracted and bitter struggle, the Germans begin to pull out of Kharkov.

A V2 test at Peenemünde landed a rocket on the Danish island of Bornholm. A Danish naval officer, Lieutenant Commander Hasager Christiansen, had the presence of mind to photograph the craft and send the picture to Britain along with sketches he made. He would be arrested and tortured but would then be rescued from the hospital by the Danish resistance, and spirited to Sweden. WORLD WAR II ICBMS

August 27, Friday: Marines and Seabees occupied Nukufetau, Ellice Islands.

Army troops were landed on Arundel Island, Solomon Islands.

German Submarine U-847 was sunk by aircraft (VC-1) from escort carrier Card (CVE-11), in the mid- Atlantic, at 28 degrees 19 minutes North, 37 degrees 59 minutes West.

Oxford University scientists announced the discovery of a new substance that was 100 times more effective than sulfa drugs in killing bacteria. This would be termed penicillin.

China and 7 Latin American countries recognized the French Committee of National Liberation in Algiers. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE Soviet troops took Sevsk, south of Byansk.

185 American bombers struck the rocket launch site at Eperclecques on the Channel coast. ICBMS

In the presence of Soviet, British and American officers, Yugoslav partisans held their 1st national assembly, in Jajce.

Kurt Weill took the oath to become a citizen of the United States, in New York.

Henry Cowell’s dance music Chinese Partisan Fighter, to a scenario by Chen, was performed for the initial time, in Redlands, California. WORLD WAR II

November 16, Tuesday: Friend Bayard Rustin posted a letter of refusal to register to local draft board #63. As a recognized Quaker with religious scruples against war he was entitled to exemption as a conscientious objector, but refusing to register would be construed as tantamount to refusing to accept alternative service and he would be sentenced to 3 years in the federal Lewisburg Penitentiary.

A flight from Britain of 160 American bombers struck a hydro-electric power facility at Vermork in Norway that included a facility for the creation of heavy water. The raid had been at the insistence of General Leslie Groves, head of the Allied atomic bomb project at Los Alamos. The bombers hit the plant with but two of their bombs, killing 22 civilians. The Germans, however, shut down heavy water production and determined to relocate the project inside Germany, where it could be better defended. (The project would never get underway again, as the development of V-rockets and jet fighters would soak up all the German development funds.) ICBMS

Invading Germans completed their conquest of Leros, capturing 8,850 British and Italians.

US Submarine Corvina, on the surface, was sunk near Truk by a Japanese submarine.

Japanese Minelayer Ukishima was sunk by submarine torpedo off Japan. WORLD WAR II HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1944

June 13, Tuesday: Lieutenant-Commander F.W. Hawkins’s destroyer HMS Broadicea was sunk off Portland Bill, Dorset, England by a couple of torpedoes launched from German aircraft. The skipper and 8 other officers died, as did 166 ratings. There were 12 floaters.

The German launched their 1st V-1 rocket bombs on England (every war you get killed a new way). Of 10 launched this day only 4 reached across the English Channel to England, killing 6 and destroying a railroad bridge. Through early September these V-1s would kill 6,184 and injure 17,981 in Britain (thousands would be killed in Belgium as well). ICBMS

French troops took Narni, north of Rome.

British forces captured Carentan.

Sweden agreed to cut its export of ball bearings to Germany by half.

Battleship and destroyer task group (Vice Admiral W.A. Lee) bombarded Japanese installations on Saipan and Tinian, Marianas Islands.

Cruiser and destroyer force (Rear Admiral E.G. Small) bombarded Japanese positions on Matsuwa Island in the Kurile Islands.

The submarine Narwhal (SS-167) shelled oil tanks at Bula, Ceram Island, Netherlands East Indies.

Japanese submarine sunk: RO-36, by destroyer Melvin (DD-680), Marianas Islands area, 15 degrees 21 minutes North, 147 degrees 0 minutes East WORLD WAR II

June 14, Wednesday: Hymn and Fuguing Tune no.1 for symphonic band by Henry Cowell was performed for the initial time, in New York City.

Allied troops captured Orvieto, Terni, and Todi, south of Perugia.

The Germans launched 244 V-1 rocket bombs causing severe damage to London. ICBMS

All 1,800 Jews on the island of Corfu were deported to Auschwitz. ANTISEMITISM

Two task groups of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers (Rear Admiral J.B. Oldendorf and Rear Admiral W.L. Ainsworth) bombarded Japanese installation on Saipan and Tinian, Marianas Islands.

United States naval vessels damaged: HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE • Battleship California (BB-44), by coastal defense gun, Marianas Islands area, 15 degrees 12 minutes North, 145 degrees 42 minutes East • Destroyer Braine (DD-630), by coastal defense gun, Marianas Islands area, 15 degrees 2 minutes North, 145 degrees 50 minutes East • LST280, by submarine torpedo, Normandy area, 49 degrees 55 minutes North, 0 degrees 30 minutes West WORLD WAR II

June 17, Saturday: Allied task force (Rear Admiral T.H. Troubridge, RN), including US naval vessels, landed Senegalese French troops on the island of Elba off Italy.

V-1 rocket bombs killed 42 in England. ICBMS

The Republic of Iceland declared its independence from Denmark under President Sveinn Björnsson and Prime Minister Björn Thordarson.

United States naval vessels damaged: • Escort carrier Fanshaw Bay (CVE-70), by horizontal bomber, off Marianas Islands, 15 degrees 0 minutes North, 145 degrees 0 minutes East • Motor minesweeper YMS-377, by mine, Normandy area, 49 degrees 29 minutes North, 1 degree 8 minutes West • LST84, accidentally by United States naval gunfire, Marianas Islands, 15 degrees 10 minutes North, 145 degrees 58 minutes East TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS

Japanese submarine sunk: RO-117, by naval land-based aircraft (VB-109) from Eniwetok, 11 degrees 5 minutes North, 150 degrees 31 minutes East WORLD WAR II

August 12, Saturday, 6:20PM: The English were faced with many German brags about how they were going to destroy England from across the channel by the use of a new secret weapon. They had therefore been experimenting in the early use of “smart bombs,” by the repurposing of “war weary” bomber airframes. They were going to take these old bombers and strip them down, and fill them with high explosive, and set them up so they could be guided by radio remote control from a “mother” plane. Then an air crew was going to get the old airframe into the air and into steady flight, turn over control of the plane’s speed and altitude and direction to the mother plane flying nearby, arm the explosives, and bail out while still over British soil. On this day the American pilot Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., regarded as an experienced Patrol Plane Commander, and a fellow-officer, an expert in radio control projects, were to take one of these “drone” Project Aphrodite guided bomber, a PB4Y- 1 Liberator loaded with 21,170 pounds of high explosives, up into the sky and to stay with it until two “mother” planes had achieved complete radio control over this “drone.” They were then to bail out over England, leaving the “drone,” under the control of the “mother” planes, to proceed on its mission — which was to culminate in a crash-dive on its intended target, a V-2 rocket launching site in Normandy. The airplane in question was in flight and routine checking of the radio controls was proceeding satisfactorily when suddenly 2 explosions knocked this “drone” right out of the sky over Blytheburgh in Suffolk, England, resulting in the death of these 2 crewmen who had had no chance to bail out. No final conclusions as to the cause of the 2 explosions has ever HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE been reached. (All told, there would be 19 such Aphrodite missions, not a single one of which would reach its target. Technicians at the time were suspecting that there must have been something awry in the arming system.) ICBMS

Allied troops completed the conquest of Florence.

Americans retook Mortain while French troops captured Alençon, north of Le Mans.

Many retreating Germans were being killed in the ambushes and skirmishes of the Italian underground. Just north of Pisa, between the towns of Lucca and Currara in the village Sant’Anna di Stazzema, the 6th Panzergrenadieren “Reichs” was shooting on sight all partisans they came across. Believing that the inhabitants of this village were partisan sympathizers, the SS started knocking on doors and shouting “Heraus! Heraus!” The buildings were put to the torch, the church organ was riddled with machine-gun bullets, and the christening font was blown apart with a grenade. After being collected in the village square, 560 people, 110 of whom were children, were shot down, and their corpses doused with petrol and set alight. WORLD WAR II

September 8, Friday: Japanese airplanes bombed Chengtu.

US forces complete the conquest of Biak Island, Netherlands New Guinea.

Romania declared war on Hungary.

American forces captured Besançon and Liège while the Canadians took Nieuport (Nieuwpoort) and Ostend (Oostende).

The Belgian government-in-exile returned home to Brussels.

Malta ended blackouts.

The 1st German V-2 rocket bomb landed in London, killing 3 (the V-1 had been not a rocket but a ramjet).6 ICBMS

The V-2 would eventually kill 2,724 and injure 6,467. WORLD WAR II

6. During World War II the Tower of London was being hit with incendiaries, high explosive bombs, and V-rockets. The only buildings lost would be the Main Guard and the North Bastion. The demolition would be part of the wall built by King Henry III of England. During the war, spies were shot in Mint Street. LONDON HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 28, Saturday: Representatives of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile set up an administration in Chust.

Bulgaria signed an armistice with the Allies. Bulgarians were already fighting alongside the Allies.

British troops took Tilburg, northwest of Eindhoven. Polish troops captured Breda, west of Eindhoven.

71 civilians were killed in Antwerp by a V-1 rocket bomb. ICBMS

The last deportation from Theresienstadt sent 2,000 Jews to Auschwitz. After 1,689 were gassed, as the Germans began a systematic dismantling of any evidence of mass murder, meticulously prepared false death certificates and other files were burned. ANTISEMITISM

A Legend for Orchestra by Arnold Bax was performed for the initial time, over the airwaves of the BBC Home Service, originating in The Guildhall, Cambridge.

Partita for violin, viola and organ by Walter Piston was performed for the initial time, at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.

The US Army Air Forces Aviation Psychology Program was formally extended to service in 11 air-force convalescent hospitals. Captain Sidney W. Bijou was placed in charge of coordinating this program of testing, classification, and training hospitalized personnel for further service.7

Armistice Agreement with Bulgaria. READ THE FULL TEXT

Aircraft from carrier task group (Rear Admiral R.E. Davison) bombed Japanese shipping near Cebu, Philippine Islands.

American troops captured Abuyog, Leyte.

United States naval vessel sunk: Destroyer escort Eversole (DE-404), by submarine torpedo, Leyte area, Philippine Islands 10 degrees 18 minutes North, 127 degrees 37 minutes East

United States naval vessel damaged: Light cruiser Denver (CL-58), by Japanese Kamikaze, Leyte area Philippine Islands, 10 degrees 57 minutes North, 125 degrees 2 minutes East Japanese submarines sunk, Leyte area, Philippine Islands: • Submarine I-45, by destroyer escort Whitehurst (DE-634), 10 degrees 10 minutes North, 127 degrees 28 minutes East • Submarine I-54, by destroyers Gridley (DD-380) and Helm (DD-388), 10 degrees 56 minutes North, 127 degrees 13 minutes East WORLD WAR II

7. Street, W.R. A CHRONOLOGY OF NOTEWORTHY EVENTS IN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 1994 HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE November: The initial batch of spent nuclear fuel was obtained from the reactors at Hanford for irradiation and processing into an atomic weapon.

The Japanese home islands began to launch balloons from which high explosive devices were suspended, to drift in the recently discovered “jet stream” in the general direction of America. Some 9,000 such devices would be launched, and 342 bomb reports would be made in the US. ICBMS

Goudsmit’s ALSOS mission obtained documents which implied that Germany’s rate of progress toward an atomic weapon had slowed. WORLD WAR II HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1945

H.H. Nininger elaborated on the prospects of our sending up one of our new atomic bomb things, to blow samples of the lunar surface in the direction of the Earth — where they could be evaluated in the manner in which we examine meteorites. ASTRONOMY ICBMS

March 27, Tuesday: The Germans fired 3 V2 rockets from near The Hague. One killed 134 in London, another 27 in Antwerp. When the 3d V2 detonated in Orpington, Kent, killing one civilian, we can be sure that the British people would have liked to know at that time, that this was the very last V2 the Nazis were going to be able to send across the English Channel, and that this dead civilian was the to be the very last killed by war action in Great Britain (the cumulative score would be that V2s killed 2,855 in Great Britain and 4,483 in Belgium — the weapon hadn’t been all that cost-effective). ICBMS

The Japanese commanders on Iwo Jima killed themselves, thus ending organized Japanese resistance on the island. In over a month of fighting for the island, 25,000 people had died. 200 Japanese were taken prisoner.

American troops landed on Caballo Island in Manila Bay.

Soviet troops pierced the final defensive lines at Danzig (Gdansk) and Gdynia.

Soviet authorities arrested 16 Polish underground leaders.

Francis Poulenc writes to Darius Milhaud in the United States. “The ascension of Messiaen has been the most significant musical event. You would, in fact, find a fanatical sect surrounding this musician who, for all the impossible literary jargon, was nevertheless remarkable.” Argentina declared war on Germany and Japan.

A symphonic allegro by Peter Mennin was performed for the initial time, in New York conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Army troops, supported by destroyers and motor torpedo boats and air attack, landed on Caballo Island near Corregidor, Luzon, Philippine Islands.

United States naval vessels damaged, Okinawa area: • Carrier Essex (CV-9), by aircraft operational casualty, 25 degrees 10 minutes North, 132 degrees 5 minutes East • High-speed minesweeper Southard (DMS-10), by Japanese Kamikaze suicide plane, 26 degrees 0 minute North, 127 degrees 0 minute East • Light minelayer Adams (DM-27), by Japanese Kamikaze suicide plane, 26 degrees 17 minutes North, 127 degrees 40 East

Japanese naval vessel sunk: HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE • Cable layer Odate, by submarine Trigger (SS-237), East China Sea, 30 degrees 40 minutes North, 127 degrees 50 minutes East WORLD WAR II

March 28, Wednesday: The Red Army captured Gdynia, Poland and Györ, Hungary, southwest of Vienna.

American troops captured Marburg, north of Frankfurt-am-Main and Lauterbach, to the east.

United States naval vessel sunk: Minesweeper Skylark (AM-63), by mine, Okinawa area, 26 degrees 20 minutes North, 127 degrees 41 minutes East

United States naval vessels damaged: • Attack cargo ship Wyandot (AKA-92), by horizontal bomber, Okinawa area, 26 degrees 0 minutes North, 127 degrees 0 minutes East • Repair ship Agenor (ARL-3), by collision, Iwo Jima area, 24 degrees 46 minutes North, 141 degrees 19 minutes East

Japanese naval vessels sunk: • Coast defense vessel #33, by carrier-based aircraft, off Kyushu, Japan, 31 degrees 45 minutes North, 131 degrees 45 minutes East •Frigate Mikura, by submarine Threadfin (SS-410), off Kyushu, Japan, 31 degrees 49 minutes North, 131 degrees 44 minutes East • Minesweeper #11, by Army aircraft, Netherlands East Indies area, 5 degrees 6 minutes South, 119 degrees 18 minutes East • Patrol boat #108, by Army aircraft, Netherlands East Indies area, 4 degrees 15 minutes South, 119 degrees 5 minutes East WORLD WAR II

March 29, Thursday: American troops landed on Negros, in the Philippines near Bacolod.

Soviet forces captured Kapuvar, southeast of Vienna, and crossed the border into Austria at Köszeg.

Dozens of Allied agents captured by the Germans were executed at Flossenbürg death camp.

American forces captured Frankfurt-am-Main.

Aircraft from two carrier task groups (Rear Admiral J.J. Clark and Rear Admiral F.C. Sherman) attack airfields and shipping in the Kagoshima Bay area, Kyushu, Japan.

Japanese naval vessels sunk: • Submarine chaser #192, by Army aircraft, off Formosa, 22 degrees 40 minutes North, 120 degrees 15 minutes East HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE • Coast defense vessel #18, by Army aircraft, South China Sea, 14 degrees 44 minutes North, 109 degrees 16 minutes East • Coast defense vessel #84, by submarine Hammerhead (SS-364), South China Sea, 14 degrees 30 minutes North, 109 degrees 16 minutes East • Coast defense vessel #130, by Army aircraft, South China Sea, 14 degrees 44 minutes North, 109 degrees 16 minutes East WORLD WAR II

TIMELINE OF EXPLOSIONS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1949

March: General Curtis LeMay, head of the US Strategic Air Command drew up his initial plan for the prosecution of nuclear war, War Plan I-49. LeMay knew about killing people, having already killed during World War II some 2,000,000 civilians. Atomic schmatomic, killing civilians is killing civilians, it’s been done before and can be done again. His B-29s and B-50s were poised to drop 133 nuclear bombs on 70 Soviet cities, with an estimated impact of some 3,000,000 civilian deaths plus some 4,000,000 civilian injuries. You want that before or after breakfast?

The general noted that he was able to send planes directly over Vladivostok without encountering any resistance by the Soviets, and would comment regretfully “We could have delivered the stockpile ... with practically no losses.” ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1951

September 20, Thursday: The Indian Parliament changed marriage laws to limit Hindu, Buddhist, Djin, and Sikh men to a single wife. Women were granted the right to sue for divorce. The law would not, of course, apply to Muslim men. There was so much opposition across the nation that Prime Minister Nehru would delay enactment of the measure until the following session of Parliament.

Yorick, a monkey, and 11 mice became the 1st Earthlings to fly in a rocket and survive. Their rocket reached a height of 70 kilometers before returning to the planet’s surface. The flight took place above New Mexico. No, they did not have a view. ICBMS

The 1st shopping mall in history opened, in Seattle. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1955

A prototype engine for a proposed nuclear-powered bomber that would be able to stay aloft for years without refueling proved too heavy unless the designers eliminated all radiation shielding. Such a device would of necessity be a drone flown under remote control (another little difficulty would be that the initial takeoff would need to be from an existing flat straight highway at least 16 kilometers in length). TIMELINE OF EXPLOSIONS ICBMS

Robinson Jeffers received the Borestone Mountain Poetry Award, for HUNGERFIELD.

A photograph was taken of Sadako Sasaki of Hiroshima, a hibakusha at this point still in the early stages of leukemia:

Her best friend in school told her of a legend, that if you folded 1,000 origami cranes (senzaburu) you would be granted a wish.8 She had begun to fold cranes out of whatever pieces of paper came to hand. She would fold some 1,300 individual ones, out of whatever gum wrappers came to hand, before dying. WORLD WAR II HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

8. It’s a joke, actually, a sick joke. There’s an origami trick by which one is supposed to be able to fold a circular chain of 100 cranes out of a single piece of paper — this takes about a week of folding (the crane figure is appropriate, since in Japanese mythology the crane is supposed to live a thousand years, although of course everyone understand that the actual bird has no lengthy lifetime). If one were able to accomplish this week-long folding task without any tearing, when one actually counted the cranes in the chain, there would be only 96 little ones plus one larger central one possible by means of such a folding technique. Not only cannot one fabricate a chain of a thousand cranes out of a single piece of paper, but also, despite the name, one cannot even achieve a round hundred. The moral of this sick little tale seems to be: you aren’t going to get what you want out of wanting it very much, this real world simply not being responsible to one’s longings.

But you can imagine how a sick little A-bomb girl received this tale. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1956

Vernon Ingram of Cambridge University precisely identified the amino-acid substitution in the human gene resulting from the sickle cell mutation.

Gilbert Plass’s “The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change.”

M.W. de Laubenfels suggested that the dinosaurs had been driven to extinction by a meteorite impact. Deus ex machina! PALEONTOLOGY

Keith Runcorn described polar wandering based on paleomagnetic studies of Europe and North America. His suggestion as to a cause for the observed wandering was not a deus ex machina but continental drift.

At the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, Oxfordshire, a DIDO heavy water enriched uranium nuclear reactor began operation.

The existence of antineutrinos was experimentally confirmed by Clyde L. Cowan and Frederick Reines, and also by Bruce Cork. THE SCIENCE OF 1956

RAND Corporation began to study detonating atomic bombs on the moon. ICBMS

What could go wrong? ASTRONOMY

Meanwhile our bomb tests on the surface of our own planet continued and continued: TIMELINE OF EXPLOSIONS

“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”

— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955) HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE November 28, Wednesday: US Department of Defense and Department of State officials met to consider “Defense proposal to authorize the introduction of ‘Honest John’ and the 280 millimeter gun in Korea.” Noting that the Honest John rocket system and the 280-millimeter gun “have both conventional and atomic capability,” the Pentagon’s general counsel pitched a proposal that American soldiers in South Korea “be permitted to have weapons of dual capability.” Herman Phleger, legal adviser to the Department of State, pointed out that these weapons systems would constitute clear violations of the armistice agreement that all nations had concluded in 1953, violations that could not be justified even by the most “liberal interpretation” of that document. Over and above that, he pointed out that such nuclear-capable weapons “would create an imbalance” that would violate the spirit of the agreement. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1957

The initial nuclear-powered surface ship, the Lenin, an icebreaker.

An Atlas rocket scientist, Kraft Ehricke, and Nobel-winner George Gamow, a couple of truly ingenious mother-huggers, proposed a rocket –to be named “Cow” after that nursery rhyme– that would loop past the Moon and return to Earth. Cow would be preceded by a rocket carrying an atomic bomb that would be exploded on the moon to raise a cloud of vaporized rock. The Cow rocket would fly through this cloud — and thus return lunar surface samples to Earth. ASTRONOMY ICBMS

The US congress provided the electric utilities with abundant motivation for indulging in atomic power, by means of a Price-Anderson Act that affirmed a preposterously low $65,000,000 cap on liabilities to the general public for a major accident (estimates at the time were that such a major nuclear incident might cost the nation more than $650,000,000), and in effect created a government-run nuclear insurance pool.

“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”

— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955) HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE February: Former President Harry S Truman was interviewed by Edward R. Murrow of CBS for a “See It Now” program that would be aired one year later.

The director of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore, California, Edward Teller, proposed that we either explode an atomic bomb in space some distance from the lunar surface in order to observe any fluorescence this might induce in the lunar surface, or explode one directly on the surface to observe what kind of disturbance this might create. ICBMS

May 7, Tuesday: The remains of Joseph R. McCarthy were interred in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Appleton, Wisconsin (the John Birch Society would place its national headquarters in this town).

The United States, and Chinese nationalists, announced that missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads were being based on Taiwan. ICBMS

About 50 people were killed by police in Cali during demonstrations against the regime of Colombian President Lieutenant-General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla.

Texas State Representative Joe Chapman revealed that his protests had corrected an unacceptable situation at the Austin campus of the University of Texas. They had cast the student Barbara Smith in an opera production despite the fact that this singer was black! Chapman indicated that the role in question, Dido in Henry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas,” “calls for a white person,” since Aeneas was a white man and since the Aeneas role was being sung by a white student. Thank God for this Representative’s alertness! Who knows what a travesty such a casting error might have led to!9

9. This incident was the very first thing that would be brought to my attention as I became a student at the University of Texas at Austin in January 1958. I would be advised that any physical contact between students of differing races was entirely interdicted, and that therefore white students and the newly arrived black students could not appear in any dramatic production together, and also, could not play on the same sports teams. (The absolute limit was, we could be seated in the same classrooms at the same time, period paragraph. Also, the only way in which a black student could be allowed to enter the Student Union building on campus was if he or she had paid employment there and were entering and departing through the service entrance in back.) Therefore the very first piece of higher learning I would acquire in my college education in Texas was what my getting a college education was worth, or rather, what my a college education was not worth. My college education would not be worth a single interracial physical contact, because a single interracial physical contact would be sufficient to discontinue support of this entire institution of higher education, by the Texas Legislature ensconced in its pink government building on the skyline to the south. ASSLEY HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE June 30, Sunday: On this day of worship President Jimmy Carter announced that we would not produce the supersonic B-1 bomber prepared to drop nuclear weapons. On this day of worship he opted instead for our developing cruise missiles tipped with nuclear warheads. ICBMS

The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization was formally dissolved at a ceremony in Bangkok.

Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams required that all new automobiles be equipped with air bags or passive restraint seatbelts (delaying to begin this, of course, with the 1982 model year — as he could see no particular imperative to try to save any American lives during 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, or 1981).

A news event in the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: J.C.R. Licklider gave up his tenured position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a job at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, the idea being to find better ways of coupling humans with their new electronic environment. One thing BBN promised him was that would let him spend $30,000 on a computer, and hire a programmer for it. He would hire Edward Fredkin and the computer would be an LGP-30 (not much, but this would have to do until DEC had been brought into existence and could create its PDP-1).

July 31, Wednesday: The Distant Early Warning Line (a series of 58 radar sites across the arctic regions of the United States, Canada, and Greenland designed to warn of a Soviet nuclear missile attack over the North Pole) was declared operational. ICBMS

October 5, Saturday, early in the morning local time: A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: An R-7 ICBM of the USSR, looking for all the world like a corn silo on steroids attired in a skirt, rose 141 miles to place in earth orbit an aluminum sphere with 4 long antennae, 23 inches in diameter, weighing 184 pounds. It was the Sputnik Zemli, which would go around and around the world going “beep- beep-beep” until its batteries died. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

When translated from the Russian, what “beep-beep-beep” means is “You’d better start treating us right, and you’d better start treating us right, right away — because this could’ve been our A-bomb dropping right on top of your pointed little heady-head-heads!”

ICBMS

To restore the lead of the USA in science and technology applicable to the military, President Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower’s Department of Defense would be creating the ARPA Advanced Research Projects Agency, with just skadzillions of bucks to throw at all known problems (and thus we have the internet).

October 28, Monday: An R-7 ICBM had risen 141 miles above the USSR to place in earth orbit an aluminum sphere with 4 long antennae, the Sputnik Zemli. For 23 days this device had been circling the planet transmitting its terrifying message “beep-beep-beep” to remind all and sundry that “The USSR can rain A-bombs on your head from the other side of the earth.” Finally on this day the satellite went silent. ICBMS

November 7, Thursday: The US press had been reporting that the USSR was planning to launch an atomic bomb to the Moon, to explode during the lunar eclipse of November 7th in commemoration of the Soviet revolution. NBC broadcasted the eclipse live on TV but of course nothing of the sort was observed to happen.

By remote command, aboard the Sputnik II in earth orbit, Laika the space border collie was administered a lethal injection.

Does anybody know where and when the orbit of this particular satellite with its dead-dog payload has decayed, and it has descended into Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated as an immense shooting star? ICBMS The Dog in the Sky [three versions] Signs have appeared in heaven, that dog is one. The second General war was the end of a period, The last monstrous convulsion. Now a new age begins. We’ll be wishing ourselves back in the stone age Or in that comfortable time when Rome fell and the dark ages Danced on its grave. There’ll be no more dancing, But if you are strong enough you can live and die. It is a little hard That the world should change in my old age — never mind — we’ll meet it.

I was brave when I was young, there was nothing to fear Except the bloody wars and the urban vulgarity, One could endure them. But now in weakening old age HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE One sees the future. We are like that Russian dog in hollow space Strapped down and helpless, waiting to burn alive, Whining no doubt, wishing for even its merciless masters, But no one will ever come. That is man’s fate. By God we are strong enough to take that too.

It is strange that the Russian bitch dying in the sky Breaks up my sleep, there are ten million dogs Dying on earth. It is strange that the moon’s purity Concerns me, for that’s natural instinct To shoot whatever he sees — would the moon be hurt? We were better and luckier many thousands of years ago, with flint weapons. — Robinson Jeffers

December 6, Friday: The 1st attempt by the United States to launch a space satellite ended in failure when a Vanguard rocket blew up during launch at Cape Canaveral, Florida. ICBMS

Symphony no.3 by Roger Sessions was performed for the initial time, in Boston. Neither the public nor the press were particularly impressed.

December 19, Thursday: The NATO heads of government meeting in Paris agreed to set up an integrated nuclear missile force. ICBMS

“Music Man” opened in New York City. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1958

Spring (to January 1959): While we had a test-ban treaty with the Soviets that prevented nuclear tests at the surface of the earth, the US Air Force was developing their top-secret Project A119, described as a “study of lunar research flights,” to detonate on the moon without any warning a fission atomic weapon sufficient to suitably impress and deter the Soviet enemy. Of course, our wise planners always had to bear in mind the possibility that there would be an accident or a miscalculation and our nuke-loaded rocket would fail at liftoff, sending an armed warhead back toward the surface of the earth. All surviving documents have now become available for your amazement courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act. Carl Sagan would be involved in this scheming and contributed such studies as “Possible Contribution of Lunar Nuclear Weapons Detonations to the Solution of Some Problems in Planetary Astronomy” (Davidson, K. SAGAN: A LIFE. NY: John Wiley & Sons). ASTRONOMY ICBMS

June: A coordinated command structure was created by the Communists of the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam and 37 armed companies began to organize themselves there.

With wife Bess and the Samuel Rosenmans, Former President Harry S Truman made his 2d trip to Europe in this postpresidential period.

The director of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore, California, Edward Teller, had proposed that we explode an atomic bomb directly on the surface of the moon to observe what sort of disturbance this might produce. At this point “Project Plowshare” was announced, to demonstrate that nukes were not just for war, they were also for peace. The initial plan was to dig an ocean harbor on a coast that lacked such a convenience, or dig a new sea-level canal through which ships might sail between the Atlantic and the Pacific, or lower some mountain pass across which people needed to travel. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE August 29, Friday: Peking Radio announced that “a landing on Quemoy was imminent.” Chinese batteries shelled the Tan Islands to the west of Quemoy.

The Soviet news agency TASS reported that the Soviets had sent 2 dogs to an altitude of 450 kilometers and returned them safely to Earth (of course, just like the US ballistic missile program, the USSR ballistic missile program was all about lofting dogs and monkeys in a peaceable manner and not at all about developing a capability of lofting and bringing down nuclear warheads in a hostile manner — you do understand that, don’t you?). ICBMS

Karl August Fagerholm replaced Reino Iisakki Kuuskoski as prime minister of Finland.

In Ulm, 10 former SS officers were sentenced to from 3 to 15 years in prison for the 1941 murders of 5,202 Lithuanian Jews.

Ernest Bloch underwent cancer surgery at Good Samaritan Hospital, Portland, Oregon. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1959

January 27, Tuesday: Nikita Khrushchev bragged to the 21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that they had begun production of sufficient ICBMs to ensure the utter destruction of any enemy in any world war. ICBMS

Belgian and colonial troops were called out to quell violence on this day and the following one in Léopoldville.

The new Cuban government removed thousands of “no-shows” from government payrolls, who had been doing no work. It reported that properties seized from former President Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar and his associates had already reached a collective valuation of $40,000,000.

October 28, Wednesday: Turkey and the USA signed an agreement to install 15 nuclear-tipped Jupiter missiles in underground silos in Turkey. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1960

January 20, Wednesday: China completes ratification of a treaty with Indonesia requiring Chinese residents of Indonesia to choose citizenship in either country, but not both.

The Soviet Union began a series of ICBM tests from its territory into the mid-Pacific Ocean. ICBMS

Major General Jacques Massu publicly reaffirms his loyalty and confidence in President Charles de Gaulle and the French command in Algeria. Prime Minister Michel Debré announces that President de Gaulle’s policies in Algeria will continue as planned.

A round-table conference on the future of the Belgian Congo opens in Brussels, chaired by Prime Minister Gaston Eyskens.

Entité for tape by Pierre Henry is performed for the first time,at the Galerie internationale d’art contemporain in Paris. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 5, Wednesday: The warning system at the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s NORAD tracking center inside Cheyenne Mountain was put on high alert by the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System at Thule Airbase in Greenland because it misinterpreted the rising moon and indicated that with a probability of 99.9% the United States was under massive attack by dozens of Soviet nuclear warheads out of Siberia (since Chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikita Krushchev was at the moment at the United Nations in New York City, in the minds of the humans involved the warning did not seem at all likely). ICBMS

CLOSE CALLS

When a helium tank exploded at McGuire Air Force Base near New Egypt, New Jer- June 7, 1960 sey, the fuel tanks of a BOMARC-A surface-to-air missile were ruptured. The missile and its nuclear warhead were destroyed and the immediate vicinity was contaminated.

The warning system at the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s NORAD tracking center inside Cheyenne Mountain was put on high alert by the Ballistic Mis- sile Early Warning System at Thule Airbase in Greenland because it misinterpreted the rising moon and indicated that with a probability of 99.9% the United States was October 5, 1960 under massive attack by Soviet nuclear warheads out of Siberia (since Chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikita Krushchev was at the moment at the United Nations in New York City, in the minds of the humans involved the warning did not seem at all likely).

On the Soviet Northern Fleet November-class submarine K-8 in the Barents Sea of the Arctic there was a leak in the steam generators and in a pipe leading to the com- October 13, 1960 pensator reception. The crew improvised a cooling system but there was leakage of radioactive gases and some men were exposed to doses of up to 180–200 rem. On 3 of these men there was visible radiation damage.

White voters in South Africa approved a change from a constitutional monarchy to a republic.

67 important French educators issued a declaration more moderate in tone than the infamous Manifesto of the 121. Nevertheless, they declared that a French Algeria was no longer possible, and supported French soldiers who refused to be a party to acts of torture in Algeria. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 13, Thursday: Cambridge Friends Monthly Meeting minutes: “A request was received from the Acton Meeting that they be recognized as a Preparative Meeting under our care.”

General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union departed New York for home.

In Cuba, 382 locally owned firms, including the sugar mills, banks, and large industries, were nationalized.

In Santiago de Cuba 7 Cubans and a US citizen were put before a firing squad after being convicted of invading Oriente Province. 18 others were given jail terms.

Il pigmalione, a scena drammatica was performed for the initial time, in the Teatro Donizetti, Bergamo (this had been Gaetano Donizetti’s 1st stage work, written during his student days in 1816).

On the Soviet Northern Fleet November-class submarine K-8 in the Barents Sea of the Arctic there was a leak in the steam generators and in a pipe leading to the compensator reception. The crew improvised a cooling system but there was leakage of radioactive gases and some men were exposed to doses of up to 180–200 rem. On 3 of these men there was visible radiation damage.

CLOSE CALLS

The warning system at the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s NORAD tracking center inside Cheyenne Mountain was put on high alert by the Ballistic Mis- sile Early Warning System at Thule Airbase in Greenland because it misinterpreted the rising moon and indicated that with a probability of 99.9% the United States was October 5, 1960 under massive attack by Soviet nuclear warheads out of Siberia (since Chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikita Krushchev was at the moment at the United Nations in New York City, in the minds of the humans involved the warning did not seem at all likely).

On the Soviet Northern Fleet November-class submarine K-8 in the Barents Sea of the Arctic there was a leak in the steam generators and in a pipe leading to the com- October 13, 1960 pensator reception. The crew improvised a cooling system but there was leakage of radioactive gases and some men were exposed to doses of up to 180–200 rem. On 3 of these men there was visible radiation damage.

There was an explosion at the SL-1 prototype at the National Reactor Testing Station January 3, 1961 in Idaho Falls, Idaho that killed all 3 operators (they had been withdrawing a control rod and pulled it out a bit too far). HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE November 15, Tuesday: The initial Polaris missile launching from a submarine. ATOM BOMB

The USS George Washington sailed from Charleston, South Carolina, the initial submarine to be equipped with nuclear missiles. ICBMS

In voting for the Danish Folketing, leftist parties made good gains over the center-right and the Social Democrats remained in power.

Rioting erupted during a rally of the White Citizens Council in New Orleans. Also, seven whites were arrested in violent demonstrations at a desegregated school. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1961

Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima for 52 strings by Krzysztof Penderecki was performed live for the first time, in Warsaw. It was broadcast over the airwaves of Radio Warsaw. TIMELINE OF EXPLOSIONS

General Electric’s SNAP small nuclear reactors began to be included in our space satellites. –I’m just saying, if it’s small it’s not that dangerous, right?

“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”

— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955)

The beginning of the “Operation Plowshare” program to use nuclear explosions as part of massive construction projects. For instance, a chain of explosions across Nicaragua might be able to dig a “Pan-Atomic Canal,” a sort of supersized Panama Canal all at ocean level. To move all that dirt, loft it into the sky where it will do no harm. If only there were no such thing as radiation damage, this might seem like a good idea, an engineering feat one might attempt. (If only.)

Bell Laboratories introduced the first high-energy gas laser. High-energy gas lasers can drill holes through solid steel at nearly light speed, and this would cause industrialized nations to spend billions of dollars researching direct-fire laser weapons. Unfortunately, such weapons would turn out to require batteries storing several megawatts of energy, and those are not especially portable. (By way of comparison, the most powerful turbine at Washington State’s Grand Coulee Dam generates 815 megawatts, while the most powerful nuclear reactors in the world, including the Ignalina reactor in Lithuania and the CHOOZ-B1 reactor in France, generate around 1.4 megawatts.) The Bell Laboratories gas laser employed a mixture of helium and neon as a lasing medium, its most intense beam being generated at a wavelength of 1.153 um in the near infrared spectrum.

HISTORY OF OPTICS

By passing the pulse from a ruby laser through a quartz crystal, it became possible in this year to demonstrate the generation of harmonics in light. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE January 2, Monday: Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev told a gathering at the Cuban embassy in Moscow that “Alarming news is coming from Cuba at present, news that the most aggressive American monopolists are preparing a direct attack on Cuba. What is more, they are trying to present the case as though rocket bases of the Soviet Union are being set up or are already established in Cuba. It is well known that this is a foul slander. There is no Soviet military base in Cuba.” ICBMS

Cuba required that the US reduce its embassy staff from 300 to 11 within 48 hours.

Two black students were enrolled at the University of Tennessee.

January 31, Tuesday: Janio da Silva Quadros replaced Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira as president of Brazil.

In a test of the Project Mercury space capsule the US rocketed a 17-kilo chimp named Ham from Cape Canaveral to an altitude of 250 kilometers. During an 18-minute flight Ham operated levers in response to colored lights in accordance with his training. The capsule was then retrieved from the ocean surface just as it was sinking, and Ham was rewarded with an apple and half an orange (he would spend the next 17 years on exhibit at the National Zoo in Washington DC and then find himself retired to North Carolina, a benefit he could hardly have been expecting). ICBMS

The governor of Georgia signed several too-clever-by-half legislations intended to intercept six anti- integration measures, provide state grants for students who preferred to attend (racially segregated) non- religious private schools, and enable local elections that would close (racially integrated) public schools. He also signed an amendment to the Georgia constitution to guarantee “freedom from compulsory association [that is, from racial integration] at all levels of public education.”

Variations on the Name of Gabriel Fauré for harp and strings by Arnold Bax was performed for the initial time, over the airwaves of BBC Third Programme.

February 1, Wednesday: Sonant for guitar, harp, double bass and drums by Mauricio Kagel was performed for the first time, in Paris.

The United States launched a Minuteman I missile. ATOM BOMB ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE April 25, Tuesday: In the Laos conflict, a cease fire was agreed to in principle by both sides.

In the Sahara Desert at Reggane, France exploded an atomic bomb. The yield, less than a kiloton, may indicate that this was a hastily planned nuclear disposal action. It may have come about due to the “Revolt of the Generals” that had broken out on April 22d, and been intended to keep the device out of the hands of mutineer General Maurice Challe. Meanwhile, loyal troops gained control of Oran and Constantine, rebel paratroopers who tried to take the naval base of Mers-el-Kebir were being dissuaded by shelling from a French cruiser standing offshore, and loyal troops were beginning to take back Algiers (Generals Challe and Zeller would surrender but Generals Salan and Jouhard would become terrorists devoted to white control of Algeria).

The US Patent Office issued Patent 2,981,877 to Robert Noyce of Intel for the silicon integrated circuit that would replace transistors to allow computers to be significantly smaller (thus would begin a long court struggle between him and Jack Kilby, who devised a germanium version of the same circuit under Patent 3,138,744).

An unmanned American Atlas rocket was destroyed by ground control 40 seconds into its launch into orbit, and a rain of shrapnel fell from 16,000 feet. Fortunately an F-106A piloted by Gus Grissom to observe the launch was not knocked out of the air by this cloud of debris. ICBMS

April 27/28, Thursday/Friday: While at a Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) meeting in Ankara, Turkey, Secretary of State Dean Rusk privately raised to Turkish Foreign Minister Salim Sarper the possibility that US Jupiter missiles with nuclear warheads might be withdrawn from Turkey. Sarper pointed out that this would embarrass the Turkish administration because the Turkish Parliament has just approved appropriations for the missiles and they would need to inform the Parliament that the Jupiters were being withdrawn. Upon returning to Washington DC, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy would debrief Rusk on his discussion with the Turkish Foreign Minister and accept the idea of some delay in removing the Jupiters. ICBMS

May 5, Friday: Preliminary talks began in Hin Heup between the warring sides in Laos.

Alan Shepard became the initial American to enter empty space, by being blasted off from Cape Canaveral atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket. He reached an altitude of 185 kilometers and 15 minutes and 22 seconds later splashed into the Atlantic 485 kilometers downrange. All’s well that ends well. During his ride he had been a mere passenger, with no control over anything at all. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE May 25, Thursday: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy committed the United States of America to landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. What a marvelous Fake News cover story it would provide, if we could pretend that the high-throw-weight intercontinental ballistic missiles being developed for total nuclear- Armageddon war with the Soviet Union were actually purposed to play a peaceable scientific game of cow- jumps-over-the-moon! ICBMS

Seven black and four white civil disobedience protesters were arrested when they requested service at a lunch counter at a Montgomery, Alabama bus terminal. Among those arrested were the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, chaplain of Yale University, and the Reverend Ralph Abernathy.

The Reverend Solomon Seay, a civil rights leader in Montgomery, Alabama, was shot in the wrist in front of his home by gunmen firing courageously from a passing car.

Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy removed all but 100 of the US marshals he had sent to Alabama.

June 1, Thursday: This had been set tentatively, as the target date for installation of the 1st US ICBM launch site in Turkey. ICBMS

September 21, Thursday: An inter-agency report on Soviet nuclear capabilities, National Intelligence Estimate 11-8/ 1-61, was disseminated within the government. This NIE and later intelligence reports showed for the 1st time that the Soviet ICBM program had been far less productive than previously estimated. Only some 10 to 25 Soviet ICBMs on launchers were believed to actually have been constructed, plus, no major increase in Soviet ICBM capability was to be anticipated in the near future. ICBMS

October 21, Saturday: In a major speech cleared by Rusk, Bundy, and President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric publicly deflated the “missile gap” hypothesis — the theory that the United States of America had fallen dangerously behind the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in its nuclear capabilities. He informed an audience in Hot Springs, Virginia that we actually possessed a substantially more deadly arsenal than they had any realistic expectation of being able to achieve. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE November 24, Saturday: Staff at the Strategic Air Command Headquarters (SAC HQ) simultaneously lost contact with NORAD and multiple Ballistic Missile Early Warning System sites. Since these communication lines had been understood to be redundant and independent from one another, the communications failure was interpreted as either a very unlikely coincidence or a coordinated attack. SAC HQ had the entire ready force prepared for takeoff before aircraft already aloft confirmed that there did not appear to be any attack. It was later found that the failure of a single relay station in Colorado in this supposedly redundant and independent system had been the sole cause of the problem. ICBMS

CLOSE CALLS

Off the coast of Norway, when the cooling system of Soviet Hotel-class submarine K- July 4, 1961 19 failed, reactor core temperatures reached 1,500 °F and its fuel rods nearly melted. Some of its ballistic missiles were contaminated and there were several fatalities.

Staff at the Strategic Air Command Headquarters (SAC HQ) simultaneously lost con- tact with NORAD and multiple Ballistic Missile Early Warning System sites. Since these communication lines had been understood to be redundant and independent from one another, the communications failure was interpreted as either a very November 24, 1961 unlikely coincidence or a coordinated attack. SAC HQ had the entire ready force pre- pared for takeoff before aircraft already aloft confirmed that there did not appear to be any attack. It was later found that the failure of a single relay station in Colorado in this supposedly redundant and independent system had been the sole cause of the problem.

When the 2d French underground nuclear test, codenamed “Béryl,” was detonated in a shaft under Mount Taourirt near In Ecker north of Tamanrasset in the Algerian May 1, 1962 Sahara, a spectacular flare burst out of the concrete cap and a plume of radioactive gases and dust rose to 8,500 feet. About 100 soldiers including 2 government minis- ters were irradiated; the number of contaminated Algerians is of course unknown. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1962

January 27, Saturday: Direct negotiations between rival factions in Algeria began, easing tensions.

The East German government announced it had failed to meet production goals in agriculture, heavy machinery, and electricity for the first half of 1962. They indicated however that their success in coal and chemical production made up for these losses.

27 were arrested in a civil disobedience prayer pilgrimage to the City Hall of Albany, Georgia.

In the USSR, the names of all places honoring Molotov, Kaganovich, and Malenkov were changed. (Molotov, Kaganovich, and Malenkov who?)

Astronauts Virgil (Gus) Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire in their Apollo spacecraft, while undergoing tests at Cape Kennedy, Florida. ICBMS

Representatives of 60 countries sign a treaty banning weapons of mass destruction from space in separate ceremonies in Moscow, London and Washington.

Nach Bach, Fantasy for harpsichord or piano by George Rochberg was performed for the initial time, in Annenberg Auditorium of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

String Quartet no.3 by Leon Kirchner was performed for the initial time, in Town Hall, New York.

February 20, Tuesday: At 9:47AM a rocket containing John H. Glenn Jr. as payload blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. 5 minutes later he became the 3d human to go into orbit about the Earth as his Mercury/Atlas 6 spacecraft would accomplish 3 revolutions in 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 23 seconds. The capsule would drop into the Atlantic Ocean near Grand Turk Island in the Bahamas. ICBMS

String Quartet no.3 by Ulysses Kay was performed for the initial time, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE March: “Operation Sunrise” began the Strategic Hamlet resettlement program in accordance with which the scattered villages of South Vietnam were to be resettled into fortified villages that could be defended by the local militias, while being separated from their ancestral farmlands. However, more than fifty of these strategic hamlets were soon infiltrated and taken over by Viet Cong who killed or intimidated the village leaders. President Ngo Dinh Diem was ordering bombing raids against strategic hamlets suspected of being under the control of the Viet Cong. These air strikes were by the South Vietnamese Air Force, but they were being supported by US pilots, who also were themselves perpetrating some of the bombings. The civilian causalities were resulting in peasant hostility toward America, which was being largely blamed for the unpopular resettlement program as well as for the indiscriminate bombings, and were eroding even further Diem’s popular support.

The Atomic Energy Commission launched its “Atoms for Peace” nuclear-powered luxury liner NS Savannah. It could be able to cruise all the way around the planet without refueling. It offered 30 air-conditioned luxury staterooms and a swimming pool. It would never prove economically viable — although it looked damned nice. Meanwhile, up above the air, Marine Lieutenant-Colonel John Herschel Glenn, Jr. orbited the earth in the 1st manned American space capsule. His swimming pool would be an ocean, hopefully, upon touchdown. ICBMS

March 13, Tuesday: As an anti-terrorism measure the French government banned all civilian flights except those by regularly scheduled airlines.

Magnificat and Nunc dimittis for chorus and organ by Michael Tippett was performed for the initial time, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The NBC news program The Land with music by Ulysses Kay was shown for the initial time, over the airwaves of the network.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (the USA’s top military leaders) had all signed off on a plan to trick the American public into supporting another invasion of Cuba to oust the island’s then new leader, Fidel Castro, a Commie symp. They were to accomplish this by orchestrating covert military acts of violent terrorism in US cities, murdering innocent citizens: [C]asualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.

Every one of the Joint Chiefs having given written approval of this proposed false-flag “Operation Northwoods” operation, on this day they pitched it to Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s go-to Ford Motor Company expert, he of the impeccable slicked-back hair, for final approval. They urged him to provide them with, get this, political support in, bullet point, the assassination of Cuban émigrés, bullet point, the sinking of boatloads of Cuban refugees on the high seas, bullet point, the hijacking of planes, and, bullet point, the blowing up a US ship à la the battleship Maine and the Spanish/American War: We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantánamo Bay and blame Cuba.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff even suggested to our strange Secretary of Defense that, bullet point, if US Marine Lieutenant-Colonel John Hersichel Glenn, Jr. should happen (unfortunately) to get blown away during our 1st attempt to rocket an American into orbit in a space capsule, we could use this as a false pretext for our coming war upon Cuba by announcing that those nasty Cubans must have shot our right-stuff guy right out of the sky: HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE [T]he objective is to provide irrevocable proof ... that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba [sic]. ICBMS The Joint Chiefs were at the time headed by an Eisenhower appointee, Army General Lyman Louis Lemnitzer. Details of the plan are now available in BODY OF SECRETS: ANATOMY OF THE ULTRA-SECRET NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, a 2001 book by investigative reporter V. James Bamford issued by Doubleday. There is no doubt about this! –Bamford points out that we have the actual documents: These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing. The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS March 14, Wednesday: India formally annexed Goa, Diu, and Damão.

A meeting of 17 nations to discuss disarmament convened in Geneva under UN auspices.

Three of the 15 études pour alto saxophone et piano op.188 by Charles Koechlin were performed for the initial time, in Brussels.

Serenade for flute, clarinet, harp, viola and cello by Thea Musgrave was performed for the initial time, in London.

Guidelines for OPERATION MONGOOSE drafted by General Maxwell Davenport “Max” Taylor were approved by the SG-A.They noted that the United States would attempt to “make maximum use of indigenous resources” in trying to overthrow Fidel Castro but recognize that “final success will require decisive U.S. military intervention.” Indigenous resources would act to “prepare and justify this intervention, and thereafter to facilitate and support it.” President John Fitzgerald Kennedy would be briefed on the guidelines for this US conquest of Cuba on March 16th. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

April: A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: “Spacewar!” was completed on the PDP-1. ICBMS

The US Jupiter nuclear-warheaded missiles in Turkey had become operational. All positions were reported “ready,” and manned by US personnel.

A $4,085 check was posted by the federal government of the United States of America to the Treasurer General of the Republic of Cuba. The money represented this year’s rent for the US’s oldest overseas naval base, Guantánamo Bay, a 45-square-mile sliver on the southeast coast of the island originally acquired as a coaling station for US vessels and exceedingly unlike any other military installation in the world. This check would not be cashed by its addressee. No such check would ever again be cashed. Eventually even the postal address to which these checks continue to be mailed year after year would no longer be a deliverable Cuban postal address — and nevertheless the checks would be posted. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

Late April: While vacationing in the Crimea, Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev reflected on the US Jupiter nuclear-warheaded missiles across the Black Sea in Turkey and, reportedly, conceived the idea of deploying similar weapons in Cuba. Tit for tat, this for that. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. Soviet sources have identified 3 reasons that might have led him to pursue such a thought. The deployment of missiles in Cuba would:

(a) increase the Soviet nuclear striking power, which was lagging further and further behind that of the US;

(b) deter the United States from invading Cuba; and

(c) psychologically end a double standard in which the United States could get away with placing missiles on the Soviet perimeter while denying to the Soviets any reciprocal capability.

Upon returning to Moscow, the Soviet leader would discussed his red hot idea with First Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan and discover Mikoyan to be opposed. He would then ask a group of his closest advisers, such as Frol Kozlov, Commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces Marshal Sergey Biryuzov, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, and Marshal Malinovsky, to evaluate the idea. This group proposed that a mission be sent to Cuba to see if Fidel Castro would agree to the proposed deployment and to determine whether the deployment could be undertaken without being detected by the United States of America. ICBMS

May 6, Sunday: Near Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean, the USS Ethan Allen, one of our nuclear powered submarines, sent up a “Polaris” missile with a nuclear warhead, and this exploded successfully at its point of impact downrange — this marked the initial time that such a warhead has been delivered, by a long-range missile, fired from any submarine. ICBMS

Sur scène, a kammermusikalisches Theaterstück by Mauricio Kagel was performed for the 1st time, in Bremen.

Rondo for accordion by Otto Luening was performed for the initial time, in Town Hall, New York.

Wind Quintet no.2 by George Perle was performed for the 1st time, in New York, on the composer’s 47th birthday.

Elegie et rondeau for alto saxophone and orchestra by Karel Husa was performed for the 1st time, at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and was conducted by the composer himself. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE May 22, Tuesday: 16 people were killed by conservative terrorists in Algiers. The crush of European refugees at the Algiers airport was so great that it needed to be closed until 4,500 were put on planes for France.

Heterophonie for 42 solo instruments by Mauricio Kagel was performed for the initial time, in Cologne.

During a contractor checkout, a Titan I ICBM exploded in its silo near Chico, California. The contractors and the crew of the silo were unharmed. ICBMS

CLOSE CALLS

When the 2d French underground nuclear test, codenamed “Béryl,” was detonated in a shaft under Mount Taourirt near In Ecker north of Tamanrasset in the Algerian May 1, 1962 Sahara, a spectacular flare burst out of the concrete cap and a plume of radioactive gases and dust rose to 8,500 feet. About 100 soldiers including 2 government minis- ters were irradiated; the number of contaminated Algerians is of course unknown.

During a contractor checkout, a Titan I ICBM exploded in its silo near Chico, Califor- May 22, 1962 nia. The contractors and the crew of the silo were unharmed.

Soviet patrol diesel submarine B-59 almost launched a nuclear-tipped torpedo while under harassment by American naval forces. One of several vessels surrounded by American destroyers near Cuba, the sub had dived to avoid detection and been out of touch with Moscow for days. When the USS Beale dropped practice depth charges to signal the B-59 to surface, the Soviet commander considered that war had begun. The commander of the B-59 had a 10-Kiloton nuclear torpedo to use against an American aircraft carrier within range, the USS Randolph. The submarine political officer October 27, 1962 agreed but as low batteries affected the submarine’s life support systems, commander of the sub-flotilla Vasili Arkhipov voted “Nyet” and forced them to surface and radio for orders. On the same day an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba while a U-2 flown by US Air Force Captain Charles Maultsby strayed by navigational error 300 miles over the Chukotka Peninsula, causing Soviet MIGs to scramble and pursue. American F-102As escorted the U-2 into friendly airspace. These interceptors were armed with GAR-11 Falcon nuclear air-to-air missiles (each having a 0.25 kilo- ton yield) which their pilots were authorized to arm and launch. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE June 1, Friday: The conservative Secret Army Organization (conservative terrorists) suspended its terrorist campaign in Algeria. Secret negotiations had begun between the conservative terrorists and the provisional executive in Algeria.

Lee Harvey Oswald signed a promissory note for $435.71, loaned to him by the Department of State of the United States of America as an American in hardship overseas, which enabled the Oswalds to leave for America.

Before departing Cuba in early June, Marshal Sergey Biryuzov sought to determine whether the deployment of Soviet missiles could be accomplished without detection by the United States or others. Upon the return of the party to Moscow, First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev would be told that Fidel Castro has accepted the offer to place Soviet missiles in Cuba, and Biryuzov would report that he believed such a deployment could in fact be carried out covertly. ICBMS

June 6, Wednesday: Hard line elements of the conservative terrorists announce a resumption of the terror campaign in Algeria.

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum #160, establishing a special very secret, very difficult Permissive Action Link (PAL) code be provided prior to the launching of any US nuclear missile. This was just to make certain that a global nuclear interchange had receiver proper prior authorization (was the characterization in “Doctor Strangelove” a description of the mistrust that US General Horace M. Wade experienced in regard to US General Thomas Power?). The intent of the new PAL code was to make the launch of such a missile “about as complex as performing a tonsillectomy while entering the patient from the wrong end.” ICBMS

July 2, Monday: Meetings resumed in Geneva among 14 nations interested in a final agreement on the neutrality and independence of Laos.

Concerto for violin and orchestra op.13 by Alexander Goehr was performed for the initial time, in Cheltenham.

A high-level Cuban military delegation led by Raul Castro was met at the Moscow airport by Marshal Rodion Malinovsky and Anastas Mikoyan (Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev would meet with Raúl Castro on July 3d and 8th). During these discussions, detailed arrangements would be made for Soviet nuclear missile deployment. Raul Castro would spend a total of 2 weeks consulting with Soviet officials, and return to Cuba on July 17th. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE July 3, Tuesday: In Moscow, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev met with Raúl Castro about Soviet nuclear missile deployment to Cuba. ICBMS

President Charles de Gaulle of France declared the independence of Algeria under the Chairman of the Provisional Executive Abderrahmane Farès. In the 8-year war for independence, 250,000 had been killed and 500,000 injured. Within hours the provisional government in Tunis arrived in Algiers, including Prime Minister Ben-Youssef Ben Khedda.

The Argentine government announced plans to disband the anti-Semitic organizations that had been responsible for the wave of attacks on Jews that had followed the hanging of Adolf Eichmann. ANTISEMITISM

No Exit, a film with music by Vladimir Ussachevsky, was shown for the initial time, at the Berlin Film Festival.

July 8, Sunday: In Moscow, Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev met again with Raúl Castro about Soviet missile deployment to Cuba. ICBMS

Livre pour quatuor IIIa, IIIb, IIIc for string quartet by Pierre Boulez was performed for the initial time, in Darmstadt.

The United States detonated a nuclear device about 300 kilometers above the Pacific Ocean to test the destructive usefulness of the electromagnetic pulse from such a near-space radiation event. This device was sent aloft atop an intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM). An auroral display was visible in Honolulu, some 1,200 kilometers away, for 7 minutes (the blast was bright enough that some of the street lights turned themselves off), and could also be seen in Auckland, 4,800 kilometers away. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE July 25, Wednesday: A Thor missile, being launched from Johnston Island in the Pacific during Operation Dominic needed to be blown up by its Safety Officer while still on the launchpad. The missile was carrying a 100- kiloton A-bomb to be exploded in the high atmosphere, so the launch area was of course heavily contaminated with plutonium. Radiation readings would rise as high as 1,000,000 CPM. (In three other tests of this same series something would go wrong enough during flight that the warhead would need to be blown apart by conventional explosives, and this would result in some contamination of some other Pacific islands.) ICBMS

Civil war threatened in Algeria when troops loyal to Vice President Mohammed Ben Bella took over Bone and Constantine. There was fighting in Constantine.

During a 3-person escape attempt to the west, East Berlin border guards shot and killed 1 of the 3.

Ausgerechnet und verspielt, a television opera by Ernst Krenek to his own words, was performed for the initial time, under the composer’s direction, over the airwaves of Osterreicher Fernsehen, originating in Vienna.

Edward Lansdale assessed Phase One of OPERATION MONGOOSE before the SG-A team, reporting some successes such as the infiltration of 11 CIA guerrilla teams into the island, including a team in Pinar del Río Province that had grown to as many as 250 men. Nonetheless, he warned, “time is running out for the U.S. to make a free choice on Cuba.”

July 26, Thursday: The US Public Health Service announced that its scientists had isolated the virus responsible for rubella.

On the 9th anniversary of the 26th of July Movement, Fidel Castro stated that it was no longer “mercenaries” who posed any threat to Cuba: the threat had become that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had “made up his mind” to invade the island by full force, he asserted — but meanwhile Cuba had acquired new weaponry that would destroy any such direct and massive invasion. ICBMS

August 17, Friday: When East Berlin construction workers attempted a break to the west, one escaped but the other, 18-year-old Peter Fechter, was shot by East Berlin guards and fell backward into East Berlin. As a crowd of enraged West Berliners attempted to reach out to him, and were threatened by East German guards with guns, Fechter cried out for help for 90 minutes. East German and West German police exchanged tear gas canisters as US soldiers stood by unable to intercede. Finally Fechter’s body was removed by the East Germans.

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy awarded the gold medal for distinguished federal civilian service to Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, a medical officer of the Food and Drug Administration. She had been the intrepid bureaucrat who had denied the application of the William S. Merrell Company to market thalidomide, and had continued to maintain that position for 14 months in the face of furious appeals by the business.

On the basis of additional information, CIA Director John McCone asserted at a high-level meeting that he had accumulated circumstantial evidence suggesting that the Soviet Union was constructing offensive missile installations in Cuba. Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara disagreed with Director McCone, arguing that the build-up he perceived in the evidence was merely “defensive.” ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE August 23, Thursday: In the early morning Irving Gifford Fine died of a heart attack at the age of 47 at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy called a meeting of his National Security Council to consider CIA Director John McCone’s concern that Soviet nuclear missiles were being sneaked into Cuba. Although Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara argued against the Director’s interpretation of the military build-up, the President directed that a contingency plan be drawn up to deal with an eventuality in which such missiles were deployed in such a manner. The President’s instructions were formalized instanter as National Security Action Memorandum #181. Kennedy directed that several additional actions and studies be undertaken “in light of the evidence of new bloc activity in Cuba.” Papers were to consider the pros and cons of a statement warning against the deployment of any nuclear weapons in Cuba; the psychological, political, and military effect of such a deployment; and the military options that might be exercised by the United States to eliminate such a threat. In addition, Kennedy instructed the Defense Department to investigate what could be done to yank those US Jupiter nuclear missiles out of Turkey. The President ordered that OPERATION MONGOOSE’s “Plan B Plus” –a program aimed at overthrowing Fidel Castro without overtly employing the US military– move forward “with all possible speed.” ICBMS

August 29, Wednesday: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy agreed to Soviet proposals that the current series of atomic tests by both countries be ended by January 1st.

The West German government estimated that 10,000 birth defects have been caused by thalidomide. Half the babies were still alive.10

A high-altitude U-2 surveillance flight provided conclusive evidence of the existence of SA-2 SAM Soviet missile sites at 8 different locations in Cuba. Additional reconnaissance shortly thereafter also positively identified, for the 1st time, coastal defense cruise missile installations. However, U-2 photography of the area around San Cristóbal, Cuba, where the 1st nuclear missile sites were later detected, revealed as yet no evidence of construction.

At a news conference, President Kennedy informed reporters: “I’m not for invading Cuba at this time ... an action like that ... could lead to very serious consequences for many people.” Kennedy repeated that he has seen no evidence that Soviet troops were stationed in Cuba and stated that there was “no information as yet” regarding the possible presence of air defense Soviet missiles in Cuba. ICBMS

10. In 2009, I would meet a number of these people. They were driving their motorized wheelchairs in circles in the cathedral square in Cologne, Germany, waving their flippers at the tourists (they were protesting the manner in which German society had been generally ignoring them). HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE August 30, Thursday: The government of South Africa published the identities of citizens forbidden under the anti- sabotage law from making any public statement.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Cuba’s Minister of Industries, and Emilio Aragonés Navarro, a close associate of Fidel Castro, met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at his dacha in the Crimea, and Guevara delivered Castro’s amendments to the Soviet/Cuban agreement governing the deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. When Guevara urged Khrushchev to publicly announce the missile deployment, the Soviet premier refused. The agreement document would never receive the signature of Khrushchev (possibly to preclude the Cuban government from leaking it). Following additional talks in Prague, Guevara and Aragonés would return to their island on September 6th. ICBMS

August 31, Friday: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was informed that the August 29th U-2 overflight of Cuba had confirmed the presence there of surface-to-air missile batteries.

Prime Minister Viggo Kampmann of Denmark resigned his post after having 3 days earlier suffered a heart attack.

Trinidad and Tobago, under Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Eric Eustace Williams, were proclaimed independent of Great Britain.

By late in this month there were increasing numbers of reports of Soviet missiles in Cuba, plus alleged sightings of MiG-21s and IL-28s. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was informed that the August 29th U-2 mission has confirmed that there were surface-to-air missile batteries in Cuba.

Senator Kenneth Keating advised the US federal Senate that there was evidence of Soviet “rocket installations in Cuba,” and urged that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy take action. Perhaps the Organization of American States could send an investigative team to the island? It seems likely that Keating was simply guessing on the basis of rumors and on the basis of reports that US intelligence officials were considering too “soft” to be actionable. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE September 7, Friday: Robert Sténuit of Belgium was brought back from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Sténuit had been lowered off the coast of France near Cap Ferrat, and had stayed inside a 3.5-meter-long pressurized cylinder designed by Edwin Link. Scheduled to remain below for 2 days, Sténuit was brought up after only one, but became the 1st living person to stay at least 24 hours in an underwater habitat on the ocean floor.

Former French Prime Minister Georges Bidault, who had fled from France to Italy after being indicted for anti- government activities, was taken into custody at Rome and ordered to leave Italy by transportation “to the frontier of his choice.”

The Buckfastleigh, Totnes, and South Devon Railway of England was discontinued.

Filming of Sergei Bondarchuk’s “War and Peace” began (this would require 6 years).

Karen Blixen (better known by her pen name “Isak Dinesen”) died at the age of 77. In 1937 she had written a memoir OUT OF AFRICA, that would become the basis in 1985 for a film of the same name.

Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin assured US Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson that “only defensive weapons are being supplied” to Cuba. ICBMS

The US Tactical Air Command established a working group to plan a coordinated air attack against Cuba, one that would be launched well in advance of any airborne assault and amphibious landing (Joint Chiefs of Staff military planners had, up to this point, made no provision for such a preliminary aggression).

The French Interior Ministry announced the capture of 5 conspirators in the assassination attempt of August 22d. Five conservative terrorists were convicted in a court in Troyes of the assassination attempt of September 8th, 1961 and received sentences of from 10 to 20 years. A 6th defendant was tried in absentia and sentenced to life in prison.

The New York Times reported that about 4,000 Soviet and other eastern European soldiers were currently serving in Cuba.

The conference of 17 nations discussing disarmament recessed in Geneva.

The National Assembly of Ghana extended the term of President Kwame Nkrumah to his natural life.

September 8, Saturday: The 1st consignment of Soviet R-12 (called SS-4 by NATO) offensive missiles arrived in Cuba, aboard the freighter Omsk. These medium-range ballistic missiles were ones that could be fitted with nuclear warheads that could strike targets within 1,300 miles of Cuba, which is to say, within the USA. ICBMS

Two companies of Communist Chinese troops crossed the McMahon Line that had marked the border between India and China, and confronted soldiers at the recently established Indian Army border post at Dhola.

Lieutenant Colonel Martin Loeffler made himself the highest ranking East German soldier, to date, to flee to West Berlin. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE September 11, Tuesday: An authorized Soviet government statement was released condemning US overseas bases and denying any intention to introduce offensive weapons into Cuba: “The arms and military equipment sent to Cuba are intended solely for defensive purposes ... there was no need for the Soviet Union to set up in any other country –Cuba for instance– the weapons it has for repelling aggression, for a retaliatory blow.” The Soviets publicly warned that a US attack on Cuba, or on Soviet ships carrying supplies to that Caribbean island, would be considered to constitute an act of war. In a statement read at the Foreign Office in Moscow, the government declared “One cannot now attack Cuba and expect that the aggressor will be free from punishment for this attack. If such an attack was made, this will be the beginning of unleashing war ... which might plunge the world into the disaster of a universal world war with the use of thermonuclear weapons.” ICBMS

Thurgood Marshall was confirmed by the US Senate as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 353 days after he had been nominated, by a vote of 56 over 14. Marshall, an African-American, had argued the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, and would later be elevated to the Us Supreme Court, and had already been serving for 11 months because President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had appointed him, subject to Senate approval, while Congress was not in session.

Jack Kerouac’s BIG SUR.

Paul Maher, Jr.’s KEROUAC: HIS LIFE AND WORK.

Convicted Soviet spy Robert Soblen died in a London hospital 5 days after a self-administered overdose of barbiturates (supposedly he had done this to avoid deportation to the United States).

When about 200 blacks in small groups were served without incident, lunch counters in 15 New Orleans stores were effectively desegregated (the plan had been negotiated in advance by black leaders and white store owners; the stores needed the business dollars of all races but, frustratingly, had been being constrained by the racial prejudices of their counter help).11

September 13, Thursday: Governor of Mississippi Ross Barnett delivered a 20-minute address on statewide television and radio urging state officials not to obey the federal court order to integrate the University of Mississippi, and placed his signature upon a legal document to implement a doctrine of “interposition,” whereby state law superseded a contrary federal government action. The Governor declared, “We will not drink from the cup of genocide. There is no case in history where the Caucasian race has survived integration.” Barnett then proclaimed, “I hereby direct each official to uphold and enforce the laws duly and legally enacted by the legislature of the State of Mississippi, regardless of this unwarranted, illegal and arbitrary usurpation of power,” adding, “There is no cause which is more moral and just than the protection of the integrity of our races.” For that black bogeyman James Meredith to disgrace the proud University of Mississippi would be an act of genocide against us good white folks.

On Grenada in the Caribbean, Herbert Blaize’s Grenada National Party won 6 of the 10 seats and Blaize was for the 2d time appointed Chief Minister.

First Fantasia on an In Nomine of John Taverner for orchestra was performed for the initial time, in Royal HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE Albert Hall, London, the composer Peter Maxwell Davies conducting.

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy stated at a news conference that Fidel Castro, “in a frantic effort to bolster his regime,” was attempting to “arouse the Cuban people by charges of an imminent American invasion.” That guy was simply making stuff up! The President reiterated that in his consideration, new movements of Soviet technical and military personnel to Cuba did not constitute a serious threat to the United States of America, and that “unilateral military intervention on the part of the United States cannot currently be either required or justified.” Nevertheless, the President again warned that should Cuba “ever attempt to export its aggressive purposes by force ... or become an offensive military base of significant capacity for the Soviet Union, then this country will do whatever must be done to protect its own security and that of its allies.” ICBMS

11. I notice that still, many decades later, there is an entire lack of response whenever I make a comment about the basic insincerity behind the lunch-counter integration of the 1960s — that this is a story not about the heroic triumph of righteousness over prejudice, but a story about the triumph of capitalist efficiency and profit-making opportunities over suboptimal social customs. The role of the guy in the black hat, the Lester Maddox, must always be played by an intransigent store owner. The people wearing the white hats, the nonviolent protesters, can never be portrayed as the unpaid assistants of capitalist need. It is still heresy to point out that the overwhelming economic motivation of these dime-store owners who were providing these in-store lunch counters was always primarily to increase the patronage of their business, and thereby increase their sales, and thereby increase their profits. That the driving imperative her was not justice but capitalism. It is still heresy to mention that the interests of the protesters and of the store owners were in perfect alignment, since the single best way to increase profits, since the big win for any retailer, is always to be attained through increasing your sales and profit margin, and that is to be done primarily by increasing your customer base, which is most readily accomplished by serving all races rather than merely a single race, by serving every conceivable customer rather than merely some subset of the customers. It is heresy to point out that the sticking point in the 1960s was not the intransigence of black-hat owners, but the intransigence of their white female counter help, underpaid desperate white trash who could not serve blacks because for them that would be the world turned upside down. From the standpoint of that generation of white waitresses, blacks were on earth to serve whites and most emphatically not vice versa. The key was Suzy. So the whole sit-in campaign, in order to succeed, had to be based on a fraud. The white female waitress, Suzy, must never be blamed, it was necessary to present her as being prevented from being decent by her evil black-hat employer, the bad guy who would fire her were she to dare to serve colored people. It could not be revealed, that all this was the fault of the Suzies, simply because to fault them would have totalized their intransigence rather than ameliorating it. We had a situation in which enraged white female counter workers were smashing dishes rather than washing them, once they had been eaten off of by a customer of color. That fraud, that all this was not Suzy’s fault, had to be perpetuated right up to the point at which the proprietor could make a case, that he was being “forced” to allow integration, “forced” to allow what his profit demanded. That he had no choice, those obnoxious sit-inners having simply been too persistent. Then he could go “I'm sorry, honey, I’ve done everything I could — but they are forcing me against my will to tell you that you must provide service to colored customers. Gosh I wish I could protect you but I can’t, not any longer.” And now, many decades later, we have an entire on-line industry of celebrating this heroic lunch-counter sit-in tale of triumph, and to protect that industry of self-righteous self-congratulation we must perpetuate the fraud, that the problem had been store owners so stupid and so self- defeating that they could not perceive their primary profit opportunity. Even decades and decades after the fact we still are forcing ourselves to believe the foundational lie, that the problem was other than poor white trash Suzy. No, no, that must not be noticed. We have our heroic protesters and we are going to stick with them. Nobody is ever to notice that this whole thing had been a put- up affair, a charade in which store owners and protesters were cooperating in playing assigned roles. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE September 15, Saturday: Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Aram, and Soviet Union Ambassador Nikolai Pegov, signed an agreement providing that Iran would not allow any foreign nation to set up rocket bases on its soil.

In Paris a military court convicted of terrorism 27 members of the Organisation de l’armée secrète, a French conservative dissident paramilitary organization during the Algerian War.

The Poltava, a Soviet large-hatch cargo ship, docked at the port of Mariel, apparently carrying the 1st Soviet medium-range missiles to reach Cuba. American electronic intelligence detected that Soviet high-altitude surface-to-air missiles had become operational. It had been an SA-2 (or S-75) Dvina missile that had downed the U-2 spy plane flown by Francis Gary Powers in 1960, and therefore the weapons, located near the port of Mariel, were capable of stopping further American attempts to verify a missile buildup. During the following week US intelligence sources would report what appeared to be unloading of MRBMs at that port and the movement of a convoy of at least 8 MRBMs to San Cristóbal, where the initial Soviet missile site was constructed. ICBMS

September 17, Monday: 9 new American astronauts, officially members of NASA Astronaut Group 2, were introduced at a press conference in Houston. These “New Nine” were Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, James McDivitt, Elliot See, Thomas P. Stafford, Edward H. White, and John W. Young. Armstrong would become the 1st man to walk on the Moon (Conrad would be 3d and Young 9th). Borman and Lovell would orbit the Moon; White would be the 1st American to “walk in space” but would die in the fire of Apollo 1, and See would die in a plane crash before he could be launched into space. ICBMS

The final prototype of the Mil Mi-8 helicopter, with 1,500 shaft horsepower engines, went on its initial test flight. This Soviet or Russian-built device would sell more units than any other helicopter in history.

Khalid al-Azm became Prime Minister of Syria for the 6th (and final) time, succeeding Bashir al-Azma (the Ba’ath Party would overthrow the Syrian government on March 8th, 1963 and al-Azm would be arrested).

BBC Wales Today was broadcast for the initial time.

In a Paris military court, 2 conservative terrorists were convicted of terrorist acts. One was sentenced to death and the other to life in prison.

In Ankara, 3 newspapers were seized by Turkish authorities — they had published pictures of former Prime Minister Adnan Menderes in commemoration of the 1st anniversary of his execution. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE September 19, Wednesday: Prince Saif Al-Islam Muhammad al-Badr became the new Imam of Yemen following the death of his 71-year-old father, Imam Ahmad bin Yahya, who was described at his death as “despotic,” “the perennial target of assassins,” and a man “said to have died from natural causes hastened by old wounds.” The new Imam was proclaimed as Imam Al-Mansoor Billah (his regime would last only a week before he would be overthrown).

In Las Vegas, where the Air Force Association was holding its annual convention, a full-scale mockup of the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar spaceplane was unveiled for reporters and the 6 pilots who would be 1st to fly it were introduced. According to the Associated Press, “Technical men familiar with sketches and photographs of the X-20 were startled by the vicious ugliness” of the plane. “With its upturned wingtips and long snout, the X-20 looks like its designer had somehow managed to cross a manta ray with a shark.” This Dyna-Soar project, scheduled for a 1965 launch, would be canceled after cost overruns without anything ever being built.

The 1st episode of “The Virginian,” starring James Drury, was shown on NBC as the 1st 90-minute weekly TV series. This would run 9 seasons, ending in 1971. On the show no-one would ever speak the name of the central character.

The United States Intelligence Board reported on the Soviet arms buildup in Cuba in Special National Intelligence Estimate 85-3-62, asserting that some intelligence indicated ongoing deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles to Cuba: (a) two large-hatch Soviet lumber ships, the Omsk and the Poltava, had been “riding high in the water” possibly due to low-weight military cargo; (b) intelligence accounts of sightings of missiles and a report that Fidel Castro’s private pilot, after a night of drinking in Havana, had boasted, “We will fight to the death and perhaps we can win because we have everything, including atomic weapons”; and (c) evidence of the ongoing construction of elaborate SA-2 air defense systems. The report asserted that the Soviet Union “could derive considerable military advantage from the establishment of Soviet medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles in Cuba....” However, it concluded that “the establishment on Cuban soil of Soviet nuclear striking forces which could be used against the US would be incompatible with Soviet policy as we presently estimate it .... [and the Soviets] would almost certainly estimate that this could not be done without provoking a dangerous U.S. reaction.” So, go figure. ICBMS

September 20, Thursday: Escorted by federal marshals, James Meredith arrived at Oxford, Mississippi in order to become the 1st African-American to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Governor Ross Barnett personally blocked his entrance into the admissions building. 2,000 jeering white students and 100 policemen were on hand to enjoy this spectacle.

Voting was conducted for the 1st Constituent Assembly since Algerian independence, with voters being given a choice of “yes” or “no” for the 196 candidates from the National Liberation Front, led by Ahmed Ben Bella.

A Senate resolution on Cuba sanctioning the use of force if necessary to curb Cuban aggression and subversion in the Western Hemisphere passed the federal Senate by a vote of 86 over 1. The resolution stated that the United States of America was determined “to prevent the creation or use of an externally supported offensive military capability endangering the security of the U.S.” and to “support the aspirations of the Cuban people for a return to self-determination.” Meanwhile, in the federal House of Representatives, a foreign aid appropriations bill was approved with 3 amendments designed to cut off aid to any country permitting the use HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE of its merchant ships to transport arms or goods of any kind to Cuba. ICBMS

Algeria held its 1st post-independence election. Candidates for the National Assembly were from a single list and all supported Ahmed Ben Bella.

In a national address, President Charles de Gaulle of France suggested a referendum on a constitutional amendment providing for direct popular election of the president.

Authorities in Southern Rhodesia banned the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union led by Joshua Nkomo.

Two different factions of the Argentine military battled each other, starting at the La Plata Anti-Aircraft Artillery School near Buenos Aires.

The MGB was introduced, which would become the best-selling sports car ever.

September 21, Friday: Igor Stravinsky returned to Russia after an absence of 48 years, as a guest of the Soviet Union. Stravinsky, his wife, and Robert Craft landed at Sheremetievo Airport, Moscow. This was the composer’s 1st visit to his homeland in 48 years.

The UN General Assembly approved a ceasefire agreement between Indonesia and the Netherlands, with UN military observers from 6 nations monitoring the agreement. A larger UN Security Force would arrive at West Irian on October 3d.

In a speech to the UN General Assembly, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko charged the United States of America with whipping up “war hysteria” and threatening to invade Cuba. Gromyko states that “any sober- minded man knows that Cuba is not ... building up her forces to such a degree that she can pose a threat to the United States or ... to any state of the Western Hemisphere.” Gromyko further warned that any US attack on Cuba or on Cuba-bound shipping would be taken as an act of war. ICBMS

The British music magazine New Musical Express published a story about two 13-year-old schoolgirls, “Sue” and “Mary,” releasing a disc on Decca, and adding that “A Liverpool group, The Beatles, have recorded ‘Love Me Do’ for Parlophone Records, set for October 5 release.”

Fighting continued in Argentina between rival factions of the military.

Tony Richardson’s film “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” was released in Great Britain.

Kanon for strings and two tape players by Krzysztof Penderecki was performed for the initial time, in Warsaw.

Songs for Ariel, excerpts for voice and piano of the incidental music to The Tempest by Michael Tippett, was performed for the initial time, at Fenton House, London. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE September 23, Sunday: The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, including its modern Philharmonic Hall, later Avery Fisher Hall, opened in New York City. The inaugural concert, which was televised live on CBS, featured Leonard Bernstein, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and a host of operatic stars such as Eileen Farrell and Robert Merrill.

“The Jetsons” –George, Jane, Judy, and Elroy– were introduced in a primetime cartoon of the same name at 7:30PM Eastern time on the ABC television network. Despite having only 24 episodes, the science fiction show, about a family living about 100 years in the future, would be rerun for 23 years until new episodes would be commissioned for a syndicated revival in 1985.

Unbeknownst to the world, Pope John XXIII was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer (he would die on June 3d, 1963).

The Soviet Union Council of Ministers approved the development of the Global Rocket 1 (GR-1) missile, with the goal of a weapon with a range of 12,500 miles, capable of hitting a target anywhere on Earth. The project would be canceled in 1964 in favor of the R-36 orbiting missile, designated as the SS-18 by NATO. ICBMS

Flying Tiger Line Flight 923 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean after 3 of its 4 engines failed. The L-1049H Super Constellation was on its way from the United States to West Germany when it ditched at sea with 76 people on board, of whom 28 were killed (the other 48 were rescued by the Swiss vessel Celerina). The crash investigation would determine that the accident had been caused by the failure of Engine #3, the accidental closing of a shutoff valve on Engine #1 by the flight engineer, and the failure of Engine #2 as the plane was proceeding to the nearest available airport.

Connotations for orchestra by Aaron Copland was performed for the initial time, at the inauguration of Lincoln Center, directed by Leonard Bernstein. The concert was televised by the CBS television network. Among the attenders are composers Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, Henry Cowell, Roy Harris, Samuel Barber, and the Center’s director, William Schuman, along with Rudolf Bing, Isaac Stern, Secretary-General of the United Nations U Thant, 1st lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and New York Mayor Robert Wagner.

September 28, Friday: US Navy air reconnaissance aircraft observing Cuba-bound ships photographed 10 large shipping crates on the deck of the Soviet vessel Kasimov. Studying the size and configuration of the crates, photoanalysts determined that the containers held Soviet IL-28 light bomber aircraft. The IL-28s were more than 12 years old and had by 1960 been removed almost entirely from active service in the Soviet Air Force. Technically capable of carrying a nuclear payload, the aircraft had never been assigned a nuclear-delivery role. ICBMS

Prime Minister Ahmed Ben Bella founded the 1st government of independent Algeria.

Yemeni radio falsely announced the death of its former ruler, Muhammad al-Badr (this dude had in fact escaped from the faction that took over his country, and found safety in Saudi Arabia).

A federal court in New Orleans found Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi guilty of contempt, and ordered him to comply with court orders or be fined $10,000 per day. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE The Canadian satellite Alouette, to be used in the study of the ionosphere, was put into obit by a US rocket launched from Point Arguello, California. This was the 1st artificial satellite designed and built by a nation other than the USA or USSR.

In Birmingham, Alabama a man claiming to be a member of the American Nazi Party struck the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. twice in the face. Neither King nor anyone around him retaliated. The man was taken into custody and would get 30 days in prison.

Toccata for the Sixth Day by William Bergsma was performed for the initial time, in New York’s Lincoln Center.

October 2, Tuesday: The United States of America announced that near Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean, it had just resumed atmospheric nuclear testing.

Peter Mennin replaced William Schuman as president of the Juilliard School, New York.

As a result of his meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the previous day, Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara sends a memo to the Joint Chiefs outlining 6 circumstances in which he could imagine that military action against Cuba might become necessary:

a. Soviet action against Western rights in Berlin.... b. Evidence that the Castro regime has permitted the positioning of bloc offensive weapons on Cuban soil or in Cuban harbors. ICBMS

c. An attack against the Guantanamo Naval Base or against U.S. planes or vessels outside Cuban territorial air space or waters. d. A substantial popular uprising in Cuba, the leaders of which request assistance.... e. Cuban armed assistance to subversion in other parts of the Western Hemisphere. f. A decision by the President that the affairs in Cuba have reached a point inconsistent with continuing U.S. national security.

Secretary McNamara asked that future military planning cover a variety of these contingencies and placed particular emphasis on plans that would assure Fidel Castro’s removal from power. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 13, Saturday: The 1st installment in the Saturday Evening Post of a novel FAIL-SAFE (in 1964 Sidney Lumet would make this atomic-warfare nightmare into a movie starring Henry Fonda, Dan O’Herlihy, and Walter Matthau, and in 2000 it would be recycled as a live TV play on CBS).

State Department Ambassador-at-Large Chester Bowles had a long conversation with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin. Bowles, after having been briefed by Thomas Hughes of the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told Dobyrnin that the United States “had some evidence” indicating that Soviet nuclear missiles were in Cuba. Dobyrnin, who had not been told of the missile deployment by the Kremlin, repeatedly denied that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics harbored any intention of placing such weapons in Cuba. ICBMS

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” by Edward Albee opened on Broadway.

October 14, Sunday: During the early hours of morning Major Richard S. Heyser flew a U-2 aircraft over western Cuba, from south to north. The reconnaissance mission was the 1st Strategic Air Command mission after authority for the flights had been transferred from the CIA to the US Air Force. Photographs obtained by the mission would provide, when analyzed, the initial hard evidence of Soviet medium-range ballistic missile sites being prepared on Cuban soil. ICBMS

October 15, Monday: On this morning quick-readout teams at the National Photographic Interpretation Center in Washington DC analyzed intel collected by Major Richard S. Heyser during his U-2 mission over Cuba. Late in the afternoon one of the teams found photographs of the main components of a Soviet medium-range ballistic missile in a field at San Cristóbal. Analysis of reconnaissance photos during the day also identified all but one of the remaining 24 SAM sites in Cuba. Photographs of San Julián airfield showed Soviet IL-28 light bombers being uncrated. A senior officer at the National Photographic Interpretation Center phoned CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence Ray Cline to inform him of these discoveries (they had previously tried to contact CIA Director John Alexander McCone but had been unable to reach him because he was en route to Los Angeles). Cline requested that the National Photographic Interpretation Center completely recheck the photographs and that they consult with missile experts outside of their agency. Cline asked that he be called again between 8:00PM and 10:00PM and informed of the results of these additional analyses. ICBMS

PHIBRIGLEX-62, a major 2-week US military exercise, was scheduled to begin. This maneuver was to have engaged 20,000 Naval personnel and 4,000 US Marines in an amphibious assault on Puerto Rico’s Vieques Island and the overthrow of its imaginary tyrant, “Ortsac” — not to be overly subtle, this was “Castro” spelled backward. However, due to the impending crisis, PHIBRIGLEX-62 was used primarily as cover for troop and equipment deployments aimed at increasing military readiness for a strike on Cuba.

Evening: Key Kennedy-administration officials were tracked down in Washington DC and briefed about the discovery of the Soviet missiles in Cuba. National Security Advisor McGeorge “Mac” Bundy, who was given the news by Ray Cline, decided to wait until morning to alert President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Bundy later stated that he chose to wait because it was not possible to prepare a presentation until morning and because he feared that the fact that there had been a hastily summoned meeting at night would leak, and jeopardize secrecy. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE The SG-A committee ordered the acceleration of covert activities against Cuba. In particular, the group agreed that “considerably more sabotage should be undertaken” and that “all efforts should be made to develop new and imaginative approaches with the possibility of getting rid of the Castro regime.”

Thousands of Flemish speakers marched on Brussels protesting imbalances in representation and language discrimination. There they battled French speakers and 19 people were injured and 50 arrested.

The Robert Shaw Chorale began a tour of the Soviet Union.

The Ballad of the Dead Brother, a musical play by Mikis Theodorakis to his own words, was staged for the initial time, in Athens. The work would produce protest, both artistic and political, from all points on the political spectrum.

Martin Buber wrote from Jerusalem in German, for publication in the Autumn edition of The Massachusetts Review: It is now nearly sixty years since I first got to know Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience.” I read it with the strong feeling that here was something that concerned me directly. Not till very much later, however, did I understand the origin of this feeling. It was the concrete, the personal element, the “here and now” of this work that won me over. Thoreau did not put forth a general proposition as such; he described and established his attitude in a specific historical-biographical situation. He addressed his reader within the very sphere of this situation common to both of them in such a way that the reader not only discovered why Thoreau acted as he did at that time but also that the reader –assuming him of course to be honest and dispassionate– would have to act in just such a way whenever the proper occasion arose, provided he was seriously engaged in fulfilling his existence as a human being. The question here is not just about one of the numerous individual cases in the struggle between a truth powerless to act and a power that has become the enemy of truth. It is really a question of the absolutely concrete demonstration of the point at which this struggle at any moment becomes man’s duty as man. By speaking as concretely as he does about his own historical situation, Thoreau expresses exactly that which is valid for all human history.

RESISTANCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

October 16, Thursday: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shown secret aerial photographs by McGeorge Bundy, of Soviet medium-range missile installations in Cuba. CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

The President immediately summoned a group of 14 advisors that would become known as “ExComm,” the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. ICBMS

11:50AM: The ExComm discussed alternatives. Some favored a blockade of Cuba, but most preferred some sort of military action. Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy passed this note to his brother the President, “I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor.”

Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev told US Ambassador Foy Kohler that the USSR had no military interests in Cuba and was helping the Cubans build a “fishing port.”

8:45AM: McGeorge Bundy informed President John Fitzgerald Kennedy that “hard photographic evidence” has been obtained showing Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. The President immediately called an 11:45AM meeting and dictated the names of the 14 or so advisers he wanted present. This was the group that becomes known as the “ExComm” — the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. Later that morning President Kennedy briefed his brother Robert, who expresses surprise. The President telephoned a Republican lawyer, John McCloy, who acted as one of his private advisers. This Republican recommended that the president take forceful action to remove the threat even if that involved not only an airstrike but also an invasion.

11:15AM: The President conferred for half an hour with Charles Bohlen, the former US ambassador to the Soviet Union who has just been appointed ambassador to France. Bohlen later recalled that at this early stage in the crisis, “there seemed to be no doubt in [Kennedy’s] mind, and certainly none in mine, that the United States would have to get these bases eliminated ... the only question was how it was to be done.” Bohlen would participate in the 1st ExComm meeting later that morning but would leave for France on the following day.

11:50AM: The 1st meeting of the President’s ExComm convened. Photographic evidence was presented, including pictures of Soviet missile sites under construction, with canvas-covered missile trailers. The devices were initially identified by photoanalysts as nuclear tipped SS-3 missiles on the basis of their length; by evening, the Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles were correctly identified as longer-range SS-4 missiles. No nuclear warheads were reported as seen in the area. CIA photoanalyst Sidney Graybeal informed the group that “we do not believe [the missiles] are ready to fire.” The 1st part of the noon meeting covered questions regarding the validity and certainty of the evidence, Soviet military capabilities in Cuba and what additional HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE US surveillance might be required. Further U-2 flights were ordered, and 6 U-2 reconnaissance missions were flown during the day. In the freewheeling discussion, participants covered a number of different options for dealing with the situation. The principle options discussed were:

(a) a single, surgical airstrike on the missile bases; (b) an attack on various Cuban facilities; (c) a comprehensive series of attacks and invasion; or (d) a blockade of Cuba.

Preliminary discussions leaned toward taking some form of military action.

Afternoon: Secretary Robert Strange McNamara, Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff held a luncheon meeting to begin preparing the military for any actions that might be ordered. At the State Department, additional discussions continued with Dean Rusk, Undersecretary of State George Ball, Adlai Stevenson, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Edwin Martin, Deputy Under Secretary of State U. Alexis Johnson, and State Department Soviet specialist Llewellyn Thompson.

The United States Intelligence Board met to examine the new U-2 photographs and to coordinate intelligence on the Cuban crisis. During the meeting, the USIB directed the Guided Missile and Astronautics Intelligence Committee to prepare an immediate evaluation of the Soviet missile sites. That group concluded that the missiles were clearly under Soviet control and that there was no evidence that nuclear warheads were present in Cuba. It also concluded that the missile installations thus far identified did not appear to be as yet operational.

The SG-A convened in the White House prior to the second ExComm meeting. According to Richard Helms’s notes, Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy expressed President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s “general dissatisfaction” with progress under the OPERATION MONGOOSE program. The SG-A discussed but rejected several alternatives for eliminating the newly discovered Soviet missile sites in Cuba, including a proposal to have Cuban émigrés bomb the sites.

6:30PM: At the 2d ExComm meeting, Marshall Carter stated that the Soviet missiles might be “fully operational within two weeks” although a single missile might achieve operational capability “much sooner.” After the intelligence report was presented Secretary Robert Strange McNamara outlined 3 broad options for action. The 1st was “political,” involving communications with Fidel Castro and General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev; the 2d was “part political, part military,” involving a blockade of weapons and open surveillance; the 3d was “military,” involving an attack on Cuba and the missile sites. The ExComm members debate but did not decide which option to use.

General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev received US Ambassador to the Soviet Union Foy Kohler for a 3-hour conversation on a variety of subjects. Khrushchev reassured Kohler that the Cuban fishing port the Soviet Union has recently agreed to help build would remain entirely non-military. Khrushchev added that the Cuban government had announced the agreement without consulting Soviet officials, and that when he had learned of the leak, he “cursed them and said they should have waited until after the U.S. elections.” Once again Khrushchev insisted that all Soviet activity in Cuba was defensive, and sharply criticized US bases in Turkey and Italy.

A U-2 spy plane returned with reconnaissance photos showing Soviet missiles being installed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 17, Wednesday: In the morning Adlai Stevenson wrote to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy warning that world opinion would equate the US nuclear missiles stationed in Turkey with Soviet stuff similarly in Cuba. Warning that US officials could not “negotiate with a gun at our head,” he stated, “I feel you should have made it clear that the existence of nuclear missile bases anywhere was negotiable before we start anything.” Stevenson suggested that personal emissaries should be sent to both Fidel Castro and General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev to discuss the situation. ICBMS

Further debate on the Cuban situation took place that morning at the State Department. Dean Acheson and John McCone attended such discussions for the initial time, though President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Vice President Johnson were absent. By this point Secretary Robert Strange McNamara has become the strongest proponent of the blockade option. The Secretary of Defense reported that a “surgical” airstrike option was militarily impractical in the view of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and that any military action would have to include attacks on all military installations in Cuba, eventually leading to an invasion. McNamara urged seeking alternative means of eliminating the Soviet missiles before embarking on such a drastic course of action. However, critics of the blockade, led primarily by Dean Acheson, pointed out that a blockade would have no effect on missiles already in position. Airstrike proponents also express concern that a US blockade would shift the confrontation from Cuba to the Soviet Union and that Soviet counteractions, including a Berlin blockade, might result. ICBMS

Around this point, Georgi Bolshakov, a Soviet embassy official who served as an authoritative back channel for communications between Soviet and US leaders, relayed a message from General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev to Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy that the arms being sent to Cuba were intended only for defensive purposes. Bolshakov had not been told by Khrushchev that the Soviet Union was actually in the process of installing medium-range ballistic missiles and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. By the time Bolshakov’s message reached President Kennedy, he has been fully briefed on the Soviet missile deployment.

An SS-5 intermediate-range missile site, the 1st of 3 to be identified, was detected in Cuba (the SS-5s have ranges of up to 2,200 nautical miles, more than twice the range of the SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles). The Guided Missile and Astronautics Intelligence Committee estimated that the SS-5 intermediate-range missile sites would not become operational before December but that 16 and possibly as many as 32 SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles could be operational in about a week. (No SS-5 missiles would actually reach Cuba at any time, although this would not be completely confirmed by US officials during the crisis.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 18, Thursday: 11AM: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s ExComm started to deliberate the moral acceptability of air strikes against the missile bases of Cuba. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, attending part of the meeting, recommended that the President order an airstrike on the Soviet missiles and other key Cuban military installations. Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy expressed a fear that strikes might be viewed by the world as “Pearl Harbor in reverse.” He continued to stress that the US has positioned an equivalent nuclear missile threat on the Soviet border, in Turkey.

Japs sneak up. We don’t sneak up. 2:30PM: More discussions took place, in Dean Rusk’s conference room at the State Department.

3:20PM: President Kennedy, who did not attend the talks at the State Department, conferred privately with Dean Rusk and Secretary Robert Strange McNamara.

During the day the President met privately with Dean Acheson for over an hour. When the president raised his brother’s concern over the morality of a “Pearl Harbor in reverse,” Acheson reportedly told the President that he was being “silly” and that it was “unworthy of [him] to talk that way.” Acheson again voiced his opinion that the surgical airstrike was the best US option. Acheson, however, was in the minority in dismissing the Pearl Harbor analogy. Although Paul Nitze also recalled thinking that the analogy was “nonsense,” others such as George Ball found it persuasive. In some cases, as with Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon, the moral argument became the deciding factor behind their support for the blockade.

5PM: Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko met with the President in the White House to assure him that Soviet assistance to Cuba was merely humanitarian and that any military assistance they were providing would be merely defensive (although the president was aware the foreign minister was lying he did not want to reveal anything about the U-2 photo recon evidence he had seen). Gromyko mentioned that General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev was planning to visit the United Nations following the November US elections and that he believed a meeting with Kennedy at that time would be useful. Kennedy agreed to meet the Soviet Premier, and Gromyko turned the discussion to Cuba, charging that this was merely about the United States “pestering” an island country. According to the minutes of the meeting, “Gromyko stated that he was instructed to make it clear ... that [Soviet military] assistance, [was] pursued solely for the purpose of contributing to the defense capabilities of Cuba.... If it were otherwise, the Soviet Government would never had become involved in rendering such assistance.” Without taking exception to Gromyko’s claim, Kennedy responded by reading a portion of his September 4th warning against the deployment of offensive weapons in Cuba. After a discussion of other issues, the meeting ended at 7:08PM. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE Following his chat with Gromyko, the President directed Llewellyn Thompson to inform Ambassador Dobrynin that a summit would not be appropriate. Kennedy then met with Robert Lovett, a former government official brought in to give advice in the crisis. Lovett warned that an airstrike would appear to be an excessive 1st step. He argued that a blockade was a better 1st step, although he expresses a preference for blocking the movement of all materials into Cuba except for food and medicine rather than limiting the quarantine merely to offensive weapons.

9:00PM: Meeting at the White House, the ExComm presented its recommendations to the President. By this point most members of the committee were supporting the blockade option. As this meeting progressed, however, individual opinions began to shift and the consensus behind the blockade broke down. Kennedy asked the group to continue deliberations.

Evening: Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy phoned his deputy, Nicholas deBelleville “Nick” Katzenbach, to request preparation of a brief establishing the legal basis for a blockade of Cuba. The legality of a blockade was also being examined independently at the State Department by Leonard Carpenter Meeker, deputy legal adviser, who would prepare “On Legal Aspects of Declaring a Blockade of Cuba.” (He was not convinced of the legality of a blockade and was certain that such a thing would never be approved by the United Nations Security Council. He suggested that the Organization of American States could bring forth a chance of legitimacy but that it would be very difficult to get the requisite 2/3ds vote to pass such a resolution. Instead he suggested that the United States fall back on the medical term “quarantine” in describing its actions. Whereas a “blockade” would be perceived as an act of war, a “quarantine” might not! In this way he would help defuse by far the most serious crisis of our modern era.)

The 1st of a series of daily “Joint Evaluation” intelligence reports was disseminated. The evaluation, the product of collaboration between the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee and the Guided Missile and Astronautics Intelligence Committee, stated that nuclear warheads could rise from Cuba perhaps within 18 hours.

October 19, Friday: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was being set up with 2 speeches, one about an air-strike, the other about a blockade. The President’s ExComm was at this point favoring a blockade, so the air-strike speech would be abandoned. When the press would begin to publish reports of missiles in Cuba, all that stuff would of course be laughed at by the Department of Defense. ICBMS

11:00AM: At the State Department, Nicholas Katzenbach and Leonard Carpenter Meeker provided the President’s ExComm with their legal opinions regarding a blockade. As the meeting progressed, it became apparent that sharp disagreements about how the United States should proceed still existed. In order to provide clear options to the President, the ExComm decided to set up independent working groups, one to develop the blockade option and one to develop the airstrike option, drafting speeches for each plan and outlining possible contingencies.

Early afternoon: Discussions continued in the ExComm. The papers developed by the separate working groups were exchanged and critiqued. In the course of this process, airstrike proponents began to shift their support to the blockade option. The airstrike speech was abandoned, and Theodore Sorensen agreed to try to put together a speech for the President on the blockade. Sorensen would complete the speech at 3:00AM.

8:40PM: Ural Alexis Johnson and Paul Nitze met to develop a specific timetable for carrying out all of the diplomatic and military actions required by the airstrike or the blockade plan. The schedule included raising HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE military alert levels, reinforcing the Guantánamo naval base, and briefing NATO allies. All timing revolved around “P Hour,” the time at which the President would address the nation to inform us all of our crisis.

Evening: Responding to questions about an article by Paul Scott and Robert Allen dealing with Soviet missiles in Cuba, a Defense Department spokesperson replied that the Pentagon had no information indicating that there were missiles in Cuba. Reports that emergency military measures were being implemented were also denied.

Special National Intelligence Estimate 11-18-62, entitled “Soviet Reactions to Certain U.S. Courses of Action on Cuba,” reported that a direct approach to General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev or Fidel Castro was unlikely to halt the ongoing deployment of Soviet missiles to Cuba. On the other hand, a total blockade of Cuba, the SNIE projected, would “almost certainly” lead to “strong direct pressures” elsewhere by the Soviet government. Any form of direct military action against Cuba would result in an even greater chance of Soviet military retaliation. In such a situation, the report noted, there existed “the possibility that the Soviets, under great pressure to respond, would again miscalculate and respond in a way which, through a series of actions and reactions, could escalate to general war....” This was read by the President and most of the main policy planners the following day (Special National Intelligence Estimate 11-19-62, produced on October 20th, would draw similar conclusions).

October 20, Saturday: The United States of America began preparation for a quarantine and possible invasion of Cuba. Large numbers of troops were moved into the southeast of the country while hundreds of vessels were sent into the Caribbean.

The 2d installment in the Saturday Evening Post of Eugene Burdick’s and Harvey Wheeler’s novel FAIL-SAFE (in 1964 Sidney Lumet would make this atomic-warfare nightmare into a movie starring Henry Fonda, Dan O’Herlihy, and Walter Matthau, and in 2000 it would be recycled as a live TV play on CBS).

During Operation Dominic a 60-kiloton A-bomb was detonated at an altitude of 147 kilometers, in the highest regions of our atmosphere. According to eyewitnesses instead of a fireball, there was merely a circular blue region inside a blood red ring, a phenomenon that disappeared in less than a minute. (Before the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which would prohibit any nuclear explosion in the atmosphere or in space, would go into effect in 1963, the US would explode 6 bombs in space and the USSR 4. As late as the 1970s the Soviets would be planning to nuke the surface of the planet Venus.) ICBMS

9:00AM: ExComm meetings continued at the State Department. Final planning for the implementation of a naval blockade was completed and Theodore Sorensen’s draft speech for President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was amended and approved. As Secretary Robert Strange McNamara left the conference room he reportedly phoned the Pentagon and ordered the readying of 4 tactical squadrons for a possible airstrike on Cuba. He explained to an official who overhears the conversation, “If the president doesn’t accept our recommendation, there won’t be time to do it later.”

2:30PM: The President met with the full ExComm group of planning principals. He noted that the airstrike plan as presented was not a “surgical” strike but a massive military commitment that could involve heavy casualties on all sides. As if to underscore the scale of the proposed US military attack on Cuba, one member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reportedly suggested the use of nuclear weapons, saying that in such an attack the Soviet Union would use its nuclear weapons. The President directed that attention be focused on implementing the blockade option, calling it the only course of action compatible with American principles. The scenario for HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE the full quarantine operation, covering diplomatic initiatives, public statements, and military actions, was reviewed and approved. Kennedy’s address to the nation was set for October 22d at 7:00PM. “P-Hour.”12

Adlai Stevenson, who has flown in from New York City, entered the discussion late. He proposed that the quarantine be accompanied by a US proposal for a settlement involving the withdrawal of US missiles from Turkey and the evacuation of the naval base at Guantánamo. The proposal was promptly attacked by several of the participants, who considered that it conceded too much. The President was among those critical of Stevenson’s proposal. According to minutes of the meeting, Kennedy “agreed that at an appropriate time we would have to acknowledge that we were willing to take strategic missiles out of Turkey and Italy if this issue was raised by the Russians.... But he was firm in saying we should only make such a proposal in the future.” After the meeting adjourned at 5:10PM, the President told Theodore Sorensen that he was canceling the remainder of his midterm election campaign trip. Kennedy instructed Sorensen to redraft the quarantine speech, although he noted that he would not make a final decision on whether to opt for the quarantine or an airstrike until he had consulted one last time with Air Force officials the following morning.

Late night: James Reston, Washington Bureau Chief for the New York Times, phoned George Ball and McGeorge Bundy to ask why there was such a flurry of activity in Washington DC. Granted a partial briefing on the Cuban situation, Reston was asked to hold the story in the interests of national security.

The intelligence community prepared another Special National Intelligence Estimate reviewing the possible consequences of certain courses of action that the United States could follow with regard to Cuba. It estimated that 16 launchers for SS-4 MRBMs were operational and that these operational missiles could be fired within 8 hours of a decision to launch. The inventory of other major Soviet weapons identified in Cuba by the document included:

(a) 22 IL-28 jet light bombers; (b) 39 MiG-21 jet fighters; (c) 62 less advanced jet fighters; (d) 24 SA-2 missile sites; (e) 3 cruise missile sites for coastal defense; and (f) 12 Komar cruise missile patrol boats.

A nuclear warhead storage bunker was identified at one of the Cuban missile sites for the initial time. US intelligence proved unable to establish definitively whether warheads were actually in Cuba at any time, however, and the ExComm believed it prudent simply to assume that they were. (Soviet sources have recently

12. Initially, J. Robert Oppenheimer had attempted to justify his role in the Manhattan Project on the grounds that this new big bomb might be a deterrent to future warfare, ushering in Immanuel Kant’s era of perpetual peace (perchance he also believed in the tooth fairy). During this year, however, after this pathetic ploy had been crushed by the weight of history, he was attempting a rather more elaborate self-justification according to which he was just another scientist: “It is a profound and necessary truth, that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE suggested that 20 of a planned deployment of 40 nuclear warheads reached the islands but that none of the warheads were ever actually “mated” to their missiles.)

The Peoples Republic of China launched a major offensive into India, in Ladakh and the Northwest Frontier Agency (Arunachal Pradesh), moving 130 kilometers without effective Indian opposition.

A stranger to myself for baritone, male chorus, two trombones and timpani by Ross Lee Finney to words of Camus was performed for the initial time, at Colgate University.

Trio for flute, violin and harp by Henry Cowell was performed for the initial time, at Michigan State University, Oakland.

Irving Berlin’s “Mr. President” opened on Broadway.

October 21, Sunday: 10:00AM: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy met with secretaries Rusk and Secretary Robert Strange McNamara. After a brief discussion the President gave final approval to the quarantine plan. Around this time McGeorge Bundy briefed White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger on the crisis for the initial time.

11:30AM: Although he was committed to the blockade, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy called General Walter C. Sweeney of the Tactical Air Command into the oval office and instructed him to be ready to carry out an airstrike against missile bases in Cubaany time after the morning of the 22d.

ICBMS General Sweeney told those present that to eliminate the Soviet missiles in Cuba, additional strikes would be necessary on, at a minimum, Soviet surface-to-air missile sites and MiG fighter plane airfields, so that altogether several hundred bombing sorties would be required. After carrying out all these strikes, Sweeney asserted, he could only guarantee that 90% of the Soviet missiles would be destroyed. Although Kennedy has apparently finalized plans for the quarantine before Sweeney’s briefing, he nonetheless directed that the military be prepared to carry out an airstrike anytime after the morning of October 22d.

2:30PM: The president convened a formal meeting of the National Security Council. Admiral George Anderson briefed the gathering on the quarantine plans and procedures that he had drawn up earlier in the day. Anderson explained that each ship approaching the quarantine line would be signaled to stop for boarding and inspection. If the ship did not respond a shot will be fired across its bow. If there was still no response a shot would be fired into the rudder to cripple the vessel. The President expressed concern that such an action might unintentionally destroy the boat, but Anderson reassured him that it was possible to cripple a ship without sinking it. Kennedy concluded the meeting by observing that the United States might be subjected to threats HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE in the following days but that “the biggest danger lay in taking no action.”

Midway through this ExComm session, Kennedy and Robert Lovett left the room briefly to hold a private conversation. Kennedy asked Lovett if he thought that Adlai Stevenson was capable of handling negotiations at the United Nations. Lovett replied that he did not think Stevenson was right for the job and recommended that the ambassador to the UN be assisted by John McCloy. Kennedy assented and Lovett arranged to have McCloy flown from Germany to the United States.

Despite White House precautions, several newspapers had by this point pieced together many of the details of the crisis. Pierre Salinger notified the President in 4 separate calls during the day that security was crumbling. To keep the story from breaking the President phones Max Frankel at the New York Times and Philip Graham at the Washington Post and asked Secretary Robert Strange McNamara to call John Hay Whitney, the publisher of the New York Herald Tribune (all 3 pledged to hold their stories).

China lodged a “most urgent” protest against a “massive” Indian incursion along its border.

Fluorescences for orchestra by Krzysztof Penderecki was performed for the initial time, in Donaueschingen.

October 22, Monday: On this day, in India, Prime Minister Nehru was addressing his nation, preparing them for a potential war with China.

The 1st US Jupiter missile site was formally turned over to the Turkish Air Force for maintenance and operation. Although the move was publicized in Turkey and probably detected by Moscow, US decision- makers apparently were not aware of the action. ICBMS

Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkovsky was arrested in the Soviet Union. From April 1961 to the end of August 1962, Penkovsky has been a spy for British and US intelligence services, providing them with material on Soviet military capabilities, including important technical information on Soviet medium-range ballistic missile and intercontinental ballistic missile programs. Penkovsky had been given a few telephonic coded signals for use in emergency situations, including one to be used if he was about to be arrested and one to be used in case of imminent war. When he learned he was about to be arrested, Penkovsky apparently elected to use the signal for an imminent Soviet attack (Western intelligence analysts did not believe Penkovsky’s final signal, so the ExComm would not be informed of Penkovsky’s arrest or its circumstances).

10:55AM: The State Department transmitted a special “go” message to most US diplomatic posts abroad instructing envoys to brief foreign heads of government or foreign ministers about the Cuban missile crisis.

11:00AM: Dean Acheson briefed Charles de Gaulle and delivered President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s letter on the Cuban situation. Acheson was not able to provide de Gaulle with a copy of Kennedy’s speech because only part of the text had arrived. After Acheson concluded his summary of the contents of the letter, de Gaulle declared, “it is exactly what I would have done.... You may tell your President that France will support him.” At about the same time, US Ambassador to Great Britain David Bruce briefed Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Lord Home, the British foreign minister. Bruce also failed to receive a complete copy of Kennedy’s speech and briefed MacMillan without it. MacMillan’s initial reaction upon seeing the photos of the Soviet missile sites reportedly was to remark: “Now the Americans will realize what we here in England have lived through for the past many years.” He hastened to assure Bruce that he would assist and support the United States of America in any way possible. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

The ExComm met with the President for a brief discussion. The President directed that personal messages be sent to commanders of Jupiter missiles in Italy and Turkey instructing them to destroy or render inoperable the Jupiters if any attempt was made to fire them without the President’s authorization. During the meeting, State Department Legal Advisor Abram Chayes successfully suggested changing the legal justification for the blockade presented in Kennedy’s speech. Instead of basing the action on the United Nations charter, which assured a country’s inherent right of self-defense in case of armed attack, Chayes suggested citing the right of the Organization of American States to take collective measures to protect hemispheric security. In addition, the President accepted Leonard Meeker’s suggestion that the limited nature of the “blockade” be stressed by deeming it a “quarantine.”

12 Noon: The US Strategic Air Command initiated a massive alert of its B-52 nuclear bomber force, guaranteeing that 1/8th of the force was airborne at any given time. The alert was to take place quietly and gradually and be in full effect by October 23d. B-52 flights began around the clock with a new bomber taking off each time another landed. Dispersal of the 183 B-47 nuclear bombers began, to 33 civilian and military airfields. For the 1st time in the history of the Strategic Air Command, all aircraft were armed with nuclear weapons.

2:14PM: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy ordered that as of 7PM, the start of his speech to the nation, US Military forces worldwide were to go to an increased alert posture, DEFCON-3.

Supreme Allied Commander, Europe Lauris Norstad was ordered to attempt to persuade the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to assume a comparable alert posture, but was authorized to “exercise his discretion in complying with this directive.” During the day General Norstad conferred with Harold MacMillan, who strongly argued against this “mobilizing” of European forces. Aware that an alert might weaken European support for the United States — and having received a personal message from the President stressing the need to keep the alliance together — the general refrained from demanding that European forces be put on the higher alert status.

3:00PM: The President reviewed the crisis in a formal meeting of the National Security Council. During the meeting, for the initial time attended by representatives from the Office of Emergency Planning, Kennedy formally established his ExComm committee.

5:00PM: 17 congressional leaders from both parties assembled at the White House for a briefing by the President, Secretary of State Rusk, and an intelligence officer. Most expressed support for the blockade plan. Some, however, led by Senator Richard B. Russell and Senator J. William Fulbright, argued that the quarantine would not compel the Soviet Union to remove the Soviet missiles from Cuba and that an airstrike or invasion should instead be employed.

6:00PM: Secretary of State Rusk met with Anatoly Dobrynin. Calling the Soviet missile deployment “a gross HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE error,” Rusk handed the Soviet ambassador an advance copy of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s speech. Rusk would later recall that Dobrynin, who had not been informed by Soviet leaders of the Cuban missile deployment, aged “ten years right in front of my eyes.”

US Ambassador to the Soviet Union Foy Kohler called the Kremlin to deliver a letter from President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the text of the speech. “I must tell you that the United States was determined that this threat to the security of this hemisphere be removed,” read the president’s letter.

6:26PM: The State Department received a letter addressed to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy from British Prime Minister Macmillan. MacMillan warned that “Premier Khrushchev, in reaction to the blockade, ... may try to escort his ships into the Caribbean and force you to attack them. This ‘fire-first’ dilemma has always worried us and we have always hoped to impale the Russians on this horn. We must be ready for retaliatory action against Berlin [as well as for] pressure on the weaker parts of the Free World defense system.” Late that evening the President phoned MacMillan. During the crisis, the two leaders would remain in close contact, speaking with each other over the telephone as often as 3 times a day.

7PM: President Kennedy began a 17-minute televised address to the nation. He informed the citizens of the presence of Soviet offensive ballistic missiles in Cuba. He stated that as one of his “initial steps,” a “strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment” was being put into effect. During the president’s speech, 22 interceptor aircraft went airborne in the event that the Cuban government’s reaction was military. Our President warned the Soviet government that the United States would “regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response against the Soviet Union.” US military forces worldwide, with the exception of the United States Air Forces in Europe, went to DEFCON 3. 22 interceptor aircraft went airborne. ICBM missile crews were alerted and Polaris nuclear submarines in port were dispatched to preassigned stations at sea. CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

According to dissident Soviet historian Roy Medvedev, General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev responded to the speech by “issuing orders to the captains of Soviet ships ... approaching the blockade zone to ignore it and to hold course for the Cuban ports” (Khrushchev’s order reportedly would be nullified at the prompting of Anastas Mikoyan as the Soviet ships were approaching the quarantine line on the morning of October 24th).

7:30PM: Assistant Secretary of State Edwin Martin conducted a further closed-door briefing for Latin American ambassadors at the State Department.

8:00PM: At about this hour Secretary of State Dean Rusk spoke to a meeting of all other ambassadors in Washington. Rusk reportedly told the group, “I would not be candid and I would not be fair with you if I did not say that we are in as grave a crisis as mankind has been in.”

A news item relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: The computer command and control system for the nuclear missiles of the time was an untested shambles. For instance, at Malstrom Air Force Base, near Great Fall, Montana, our defenders had been rushing to get a batch of new solid-fueled Minuteman 1 missiles up and operationally ready, just in case the President decided to fire them in the direction of the USSR. Each of the missiles carried a 1.3-megaton nuclear warhead. Now, ideally, there are all sorts of fail-safe devices and fail-safe procedures to safeguard such missiles from Colonel-Jack-Ripper types, a few of which do happen to exist in the USAF.13 These fail-safe devices and fail-safe procedures, such as dual control panels neither of which will operate unless there is agreement from the other, are designed to prevent one crazy HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE mofo from being able to start a nuclear war on his own hook. The rule is, only if that one crazy mofo is the President himself can such a thing be allowed to happen. At Malstrom there were no such fail-safe devices and there were no such fail-safe procedures, because, after all, the new missile capabilities were still in the process of installation and testing. Recognizing this danger, the military management of the silos though they had secured the firing panel for launching a pack of ten nuclear-warheaded missiles in a guarded vault an hour’s drive away from the silos. That would of course have rendered the situation relatively safe, or comparatively safe. But they had not actually accomplished what they were supposing they had accomplished. Actually, that firing panel they thought they had placed under the most intense security had been stashed right out there at the silo complex itself, and was still under the control of the potential mofos. Afterward, during an inquiry, one of our defenders, not himself a mofo, would testify that –had he had some reason to want to do so at the time– he could have launched the missiles and started a global nuclear war all by his lonesome.

Here’s another illustration of how much of an untested shambles our computer command and control system for the nuclear-tipped missiles was at the time. Our warning system detected a “missile” rising from Cuba, and specifically predicted that the target of this missile was Tampa, Florida. No missile of any description had actually been fired. This had been merely an operator error with a test tape! (And if we had reacted as we had planned to react, there would have been a very brief World War III. Fortunately, we all had our heads up our collective asses, or we had our hands trapped under our butts or something, and we simply sat and watched and went la-de-da well wha-da-ya-know as this spurious missile was, supposedly, rising toward the nuclear annihilation of Tampa.)

Had enough? Here’s yet another illustration of how much of an untested shambles our computer command and control system for the nuclear-tipped missiles was at the time. The nice folks out at Volk Field in darker Wisconsin thought they had detected a ground intruder on their turf, and so they scrambled a flight of F106 fighters armed with nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, up in the stratosphere, B52s loaded with atomic bombs were circling slowly, circling slowly, conserving fuel, on full alert, ready to head over the pole toward their assigned particular targets inside the USSR. An officer had to actually drive out onto the airstrip and deflect the fighter planes from takeoff by blinking his headlights off and on, to get the alerted pilots to stand down — because the ground intruder they had detected was not a Commie, not a spy, not a saboteur, but an ordinary garden- variety American black bear.14

Benjamin Britten was receiving the Freedom of the Borough of Aldeburgh.

Chamber Symphony for 10 players by Ralph Shapey was performed for the initial time, in McMillin Auditorium at Columbia University, conducted by the composer.

Trio for flute, cello and piano by Otto Luening was performed for the initial time, in New York (the piano part was played by Charles Wuorinen).

13. During this month a Cold-War novel FAIL-SAFE by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler was being serialized in the Saturday Evening Post (in 1964 Sidney Lumet would make this nuclear nightmare into a movie starring Henry Fonda, Dan O'Herlihy, and Walter Matthau, and in 2000 it would be recycled as a live TV play on CBS). 14. One wonders what combination of headlight blinks it requires to spell out “Hey, you guys, it’s just a damn bear!” HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 23, Tuesday: The Soviet government announced that any aggressive move by the USA against their friends in Cuba could result in global thermonuclear war. The USSR placed its military on alert. All leaves were canceled. ICBMS

The US issued a pronouncement that any nuclear warhead launched from Cuba would be considered as if it were a Soviet attack requiring global retaliation. Results of a Gallup pole indicated that 84% of the US public favor the blockade while only 4% opposed it. At the same time, roughly one out of every five Americans considered that the quarantine would lead to World War III.

The Organization of American States voted 19-0-1 to support a US quarantine of Cuba to prevent the shipment of offensive ballistic missiles. US military forces worldwide were put on alert. Fidel Castro termed the US quarantine “a violation against the sovereign rights of our country….”

8:00AM: TASS began transmitting a Soviet government statement. At the same time US Ambassador Foy Kohler was called to the Soviet Foreign Office and handed a copy of the statement with a letter from General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. This is what he was handed: I must say frankly that the measures indicated in your statement constitute a serious threat to peace and to the security of nations.... We reaffirm that the armaments which are in Cuba, regardless of the classification to which they may belong, are intended solely for defensive purposes in order to secure [the] Republic of Cuba against the attack of an aggressor. I hope that the United States Government will display wisdom and renounce the actions pursued by you, which may lead to catastrophic consequences for world peace.

10:00AM: At a meeting of the ExComm, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy approved plans for signing an official quarantine proclamation. In anticipation of a possible reaction to the blockade from the Soviet government, Kennedy directed John McCone to prepare an analysis of the effects of a comparable blockade on Berlin. The ExComm then examined the question of how the United States would respond were a U-2 spy plane to be shot down. If such an event occurred and “evidence of hostile Cuban action” had been established, the ExComm decided that the surface-to-air missile site responsible for the downing would be attacked and destroyed. Continued harassment of U-2 flights, it was agreed, would probably result in attacks on all the surface-to-air missile sites on the island. Following the ExComm meeting, President Kennedy established 3 subcommittees: on crisis communications, on advance planning, and on Berlin contingencies.

4:00PM: At a special meeting of the UN Security Council, Adlai Stevenson issued a sharply worded statement in which he characterized Cuba as “an accomplice in the communist enterprise of world domination.” Cuban representative Mario García Incháustegui responded by denouncing the quarantine as an “act of war,” and HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE Soviet representative Valerian Zorin called US charges of Soviet missiles in Cuba “completely false.” Zorin submitted a draft resolution demanding an end to US naval activity near Cuba and calling for negotiations to end the crisis.

5:40PM: Fidel Castro announced a combat alarm, placing Cuba’s armed forces on their highest alert. Cuban armed forces, following a massive mobilization effort, reached a size of 270,000 men.

6:00PM: The ExComm held a brief meeting prior to the president’s signing of the quarantine proclamation. The group made slight revisions to the proclamation and approved a new message to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. ExComm members were informed that an “extraordinary number” of coded messages had been sent to Soviet ships on their way to Cuba, although the contents of these messages were not known. In addition, John McCone stated that Soviet submarines had unexpectedly been found moving into the Caribbean. According to Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy, the President ordered the Navy to give “the highest priority to tracking the submarines and to put into effect the greatest possible safety measures to protect our own aircraft carriers and other vessels.”

6:51PM: A new message from President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was transmitted to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev via the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Kennedy, stressing that it was important that both sides “show prudence and do nothing to allow events to make the situation more difficult to control than it already is,” asks the Soviet Premier to direct Soviet ships to observe the quarantine zone. (Document 33, President Kennedy’s Letter to Premier Khrushchev, 10/23/62)

7:06PM: In a ceremony at the White House, the President signs Proclamation 3504, formally establishing the quarantine. The Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Forces was directed to enforce the blockade beginning at 10:00 the following morning.

8:35PM: Fidel Castro, in a 90-minute speech, told the Cuban people that Cuba will never disarm while the United States persisted in its policy of aggression and hostility. He refused to allow outside inspection of Cuban territory, warning that any inspectors had “better come ready for combat.”

Evening: At a Soviet embassy reception in Washington DC, Lieutenant General Vladimir A. Dubovik appeared to suggest that the captains of the Soviet ships heading for Cuba were under orders to defy the blockade. Ambassador Dobrynin, arriving late at the reception, declined to refute Dobovik’s comments, saying, “he is a military man, I am not. He is the one who knows what the Navy is going to do, not I.” US intelligence also noted a statement by the president of TASS during the day warning that US ships would be sunk if any Soviet ships were attacked.

At a debriefing for State Department officials, Edwin Martin emphasized to U. Alexis Johnson the importance of preventing exile groups from creating an incident in Cuba during the crisis. Martin suggested that Johnson raise the issue of halting covert activities with CIA Director of Plans Richard Helms as well as with the ExComm. The issue of ending OPERATION MONGOOSE activities and checking the action of independent Cuban émigré groups did not, however, appear to have been seriously discussed in the ExComm. OPERATION MONGOOSE activities were not in fact shut down until October 30th, too late to prevent a sabotage mission against Cuba from being carried out by CIA agents on November 8th.

9:30PM: Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy, at the suggestion of the president, met with Anatoly Dobrynin in the latter’s office at the Soviet embassy. According to his memorandum on the meeting, the attorney general called the Soviet missile deployment “hypocritical, misleading, and false.” Dobrynin told Kennedy that, as far as he knows, there were still no missiles in Cuba, and said that he was not aware of any HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE change in instructions to captains of Soviet ships steaming toward Cuba.

10:15PM: Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy related his conversation with Dobrynin to President Kennedy and British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore, who was meeting with the president. Robert Kennedy recalled that his brother 1st talked about the possibility of arranging an immediate summit with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, but then dismissed the idea as useless until Khrushchev “first accepted...U.S. determination in this matter.” Ambassador Ormsby-Gore then reportedly expressed concern that the naval quarantine line reportedly has been set at 800 miles from Cuba. Ormsby-Gore recommended drawing the interception line closer to the island in order to give the Soviet government more time to analyze their position. The President agreed and called Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara to shorten the line to 500 miles. It was unclear whether the 800-mile line was ever actually planned; diaries from the quarantine commander, Admiral Alfred Ward, show that he considered even a 500-nautical mile line “excessive.”

Low-level reconnaissance flights over Cuba began for the initial time, supplementing high-altitude U-2 photoreconnaissance. Navy and Air Force F-8U and RF-101 aircraft would fly some 158 low-level missions between October 23d and November 15th. The Soviet Union would respond to the low-altitude flights by employing camouflage where possible.

Moscow placed the armed forces of Warsaw Pact countries on alert. The Soviet government also deferred the scheduled release of troops in the Strategic Rocket Forces, air defense units, and the submarine fleet, and announced that “the battle readiness and vigilance of all troops” had been raised.

A Gallup poll survey taken on October 23d showed that 84 percent of the US public who knew about the Cuban situation favored the blockade while only 4 percent opposed the action. At the same time, roughly 1 out of every 5 Americans believed the quarantine would lead to World War III.

October 24, Wednesday: 6:00AM: A CIA report based on information as of 6:00AM states that communist reaction to the U.S. quarantine against Cuba has “not gone beyond the highly critical but noncommittal statement” issued by the Soviet government on October 23. Official world reaction was reported to be generally favorable, particularly in Latin America. Surveillance of Cuba indicates continued rapid progress in completion of IRBM and MRBM missile sites. No new offensive missile sites have been discovered, but nuclear storage buildings are being assembled with great speed. ICBMS

Early morning: Soviet ships en route to Cuba capable of carrying military cargoes appear to have slowed down, altered or reversed their courses. Sixteen of the nineteen Soviet ships en route to Cuba at the time the naval quarantine was announced, including five large-hatch vessels, reverse course and are returning to the Soviet Union. Only the tanker Bucharest continues toward the quarantine line. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Morning: William Knox, a U.S. businessman, has a 3 1/4-hour interview with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at Khrushchev’s request. Khrushchev states that it was now too late for the United States to take over Cuba, and that he will eventually give orders to sink a U.S. vessel enforcing the blockade if Soviet ships are stopped. (The Soviet Bloc Armed Forces and the Cuban Crisis: A Chronology July-November 1962, 6/18/ 63; Khrushchev’s Conversation with Mr. W. E. Knox, President Westinghouse Electric International, Moscow, October 24, 10/26/62)

9:35AM: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy has a brief conversation with his brother Robert, during which the president reportedly expressed deep concern that Soviet ships appeared ready to challenge the quarantine: It looks really mean, doesn’t it? But then, really there was no other choice. If they get this mean in our part of the world, what will they do next?” “I just don’t think there was any choice,” [Robert Kennedy] said, “and not only that, if you hadn’t acted, you would have been impeached.” The President thought for a moment and said, “That’s what I think—I would have been impeached.” It was quickly verified that the 20 Soviet ships closest to the quarantine line had either stopped dead in the water, or had reversed direction.

10:00AM: The ExComm meets to consider the situation in Cuba. According to Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy’s memoirs on the crisis, the meeting “seemed the most trying, the most difficult, and the most filled with tension.” Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara told the group that Soviet ships approaching the quarantine line showed no indications of stopping and that 2 Soviet ships, the Gagarin and the Komiles, were within a few miles of the line. Naval intelligence then reported that a Soviet submarine has moved into position between the ships. McNamara stated that the aircraft carrier USS Essex has been directed to make the 1st interception, and that antisubmarine tactics, including the use of small explosives, has been ordered to prevent the Soviet submarine from interfering with the blockade.

According to Robert Kennedy, the president asked, “Isn’t there some way we can avoid our 1st exchange with a Russian submarine—almost anything but that?” Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara replied, “No, there’s too much danger to our ships.... Our commanders have been instructed to avoid hostilities if at all possible, but this was what we must be prepared for, and this is what we must expect.”

10:25AM: Anew intelligence message arrived and John McCone announced: “We have a preliminary report which seems to indicate that some of the Russian ships have stopped dead in the water.” Dean Rusk leaned over to McGeorge Bundy and said, “We’re eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked.” The President directed that no ship be intercepted for at least another hour while clarifying information was sought.

11:24AM: A cable drafted by George Ball was transmitted to US Ambassador to Turkey Raymond Hare and US Ambassador to NATO Thomas Finletter, notifying them that the United States was considering a Turkey- for-Cuba missile trade. The cable stated that while the comparison of missiles in Turkey with those in Cuba was “refutable,” it was nonetheless possible that a negotiated solution to the crisis might “involve dismantling and removal” of the Jupiters. Each diplomat was requested to assess the political consequences of the removal of the Jupiters in a variety of different circumstances. Finletter would present his recommendations on October 25th.

2:00PM: In his 1st communication with President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev during the crisis, UN Acting Secretary General U Thant sent identical private appeals to the leaders, urging that their HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE governments “refrain from any action which may aggravate the situation and bring with it the risk of war.” U Thant’s plea, made at the request of more than 40 nonaligned states, called for voluntary suspension of arms shipments to Cuba together with voluntary suspension of the naval quarantine for between 2 and 3 weeks.

5:15PM: A Defense Department spokesperson announced publicly that some of the Soviet Bloc vessels proceeding toward Cuba appear to have altered their course.

Evening: TASS released an exchange of telegrams between Professor Bertrand Russell and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In his 1st public statement since the onset of the crisis, Khrushchev warned in his telegram that if the United States carried out its program of “pirate action,” the Soviet Union would have no alternative but to “make use of the means of defense against the aggressor.” Khrushchev also proposed a summit meeting with Kennedy to discuss how to end the conflict and “remove the threat of the unleashing of a thermonuclear war.”

9:24PM: The State Department received a letter for President Kennedy from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

10:52PM: The message from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was read to President Kennedy: “If you coolly weigh the situation which has developed, not giving way to passions, you will understand that the Soviet Union cannot fail to reject the arbitrary demands of the United States.” Khrushchev warned that the Soviet Union viewed the blockade as “an act of aggression” and that, as a consequence, he would not instruct Soviet ships bound for Cuba to observe the quarantine.

At the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, SAC increased its alert posture to DEFCON 2 for the first time in history. Thomas Powers, the commander-in-chief of SAC, believed, as he later wrote, that while discreet preparations had been appropriate before, it was now “important for [the Soviets] to know of SAC’s readiness.” Consequently, Powers decided on his own authority to transmit uncoded messages to Strategic Air Command commanders noting that SAC plans were well prepared and that the alert process was going smoothly.

At the request of the President, the Defense Department drafted 2 separate plans to increase civil defense preparations during a possible military engagement with Cuba. The 1st outlined civil defense measures that could be taken in the vicinity of targets close to Cuba under attack with conventional weapons, while the 2d suggested measures that could be taken in response to possible nuclear attack within medium-range ballistic nuclear missile range.

In Tokyo, 0’0” for any player, by John Cage, was performed for the first time, directed by the composer. The most important part of the score read, “IN A SITUATION PROVIDED WITH MAXIMUM AMPLIFICATION (NO FEEDBACK), PERFORM A DISCIPLINED ACTION.” For this simultaneous composition and first performance, Cage authored a manuscript. The work was dedicated to the young Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi and his wife Yoko Ono. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 25, Thursday: Chinese forces captured Towang, India near the border with Bhutan.

Uganda was admitted to the United Nations.

US Ambassador Adlai Stevenson demanded that Soviet ambassador Valerian A. Zorin admit or deny the presence of Soviet offensive missiles in Cuba. When Zorin refused to answer Stevenson stated “I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over if that is your decision.” Stevenson then presented photographic evidence to the Council of the existence of such missiles in Cuba. ICBMS

1:45AM: A message from President John Fitzgerald Kennedy for Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was transmitted to the US embassy in Moscow. Acknowledging Khrushchev’s letter of October 24th, the President wrote, “I regret very much that you still do not appear to understand what it was that has moved us in this matter....” Kennedy noted that he had received “solemn assurances” that no Soviet missile bases would be established in Cuba. When these assurances proved false, the deployment of missiles in Cuba “required the responses I have announced ... I hope that your government will take the necessary action to permit a restoration of the earlier situation.”

7:15AM: The aircraft carrier USS Essex and the destroyer USS Gearing hailed and attempted to intercept the Soviet tanker Bucharest. Since there was no reason to suspect the ship carried contraband, the Bucharest was allowed to continue its voyage to Cuba.

Morning: A syndicated column by the influential journalist Walter Lippman proposed a “face-saving” agreement whereby the United States would agree to remove Jupiters from Turkey in return for a withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. Many in the United States and the Soviet Union would mistakenly interpret this proposal as a trial balloon floated by the Kennedy administration.

10:00AM: During the morning ExComm meeting, President Kennedy authorized the development of a program to drop propaganda leaflets over Cuba. Although leaflets would be produced and approved by the ExComm, the program, later christened “Bugle Call,” would never actually be carried out.

2:19PM: In his reply to UN Secretary General U Thant’s letter of October 23d, President Kennedy avoided responding directly to U Thant’s proposal that Soviet arms shipments to Cuba and the US quarantine be suspended for several weeks. Concerned that acceptance of the proposal would allow Soviet military personnel to continue work on the missiles already in Cuba, Kennedy wrote only that he appreciated the “spirit” of U Thant’s message, adding that Adlai Stevenson was prepared to begin preliminary negotiations regarding the crisis. Also, during the day, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev wrote to U Thant to say that he welcomed and agreed with his proposal. Khrushchev noted that, like U Thant, he considered the Cuban crisis “highly dangerous and requiring ... immediate interference by the United Nations.”

2:26PM: At the prompting of the United States, U Thant sent a 2d message to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy asking them to avoid direct confrontations between Soviet and US vessels while the quarantine remained in effect. U Thant asked that Soviet ships keep out of the quarantine zone for a limited time and that the United States instruct its vessels “to do everything possible to avoid a direct confrontation with Soviet ships in the next few days.”

5:00PM: Dean Rusk reported on the political situation during an ExComm meeting. At the close of the meeting, CIA Director McCone indicated that some of the Soviet missiles deployed in Cuba had been rendered operational. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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5:43PM: The commander of US quarantine forces, Admiral Alfred Ward, ordered the USS Kennedy to proceed toward a Lebanese freighter, the Marucla. During the day the freighter has been selected by President Kennedy as the 1st ship to be boarded by quarantine forces. The USS Kennedy informed the Marucla that night by radio that the ship would be boarded the following morning.

6:41PM: The State Department received a cable from US Ambassador to NATO Thomas Finletter relaying Ankara’s position on the possible withdrawal of US Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Finletter reported that the Turkish representative to NATO had made it clear that his government set “great store” by the Jupiters, and that Turkey regarded the missiles “as a symbol of the alliance’s determination to use atomic weapons” against either a Soviet conventional or nuclear attack on Turkey. Finletter stated his belief that any arrangement that failed to substitute some other form of nuclear capability in Turkey would be rejected by the Turkish government. He added, “in my opinion we must be most careful in working out any horse trade of this type to be sure it does not set pattern for handling future Russian incursions in other parts of the world (perhaps in other Western Hemisphere countries).”

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum 199 authorizing the loading of multistage nuclear weapons on aircraft under the command of the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.

A CIA sabotage team, dispatched to Cuba to destroy facilities at the Matahambre copper mine in Cuba, was prevented from executing the sabotage attack by Cuban authorities.

Two new works were performed for the first time in the Beethovensaal der Stuttgarter Liederhalle: Polla ta dhina for children’s chorus, wind and percussion by Iannis Xenakis to words of Sophocles and Nach wie vor der Reihe nach for orchestra by Ernst Krenek.

October 26, Friday: After the “Fishbowl Bluegill Triple Prime” megaton A-bomb explosion at an altitude of some 49 kilometers, a toroidal cloud was seen to form in the upper atmosphere.

6:00AM: The CIA memorandum reporting current status noted that construction of intermediate-range and medium-range nuclear ballistic missile bases in Cuba was proceeding without interruption. ICBMS

10:00AM: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy informed the ExComm that he believed the quarantine by itself would not cause the Soviet government to remove the missiles from Cuba, and that only an invasion or a trade of some sort would succeed. After discussing the airstrike option again at some length, Kennedy agreed to apply further pressure by increasing the frequency of low-level flights over Cuba from twice per day to once every 2 hours. The ExComm also decided not to undertake any emergency civil defense programs at this time, although preliminary measures had been initiated.

Morning: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy ordered the State Department to proceed with preparations for a crash program aimed at establishing a civil government in Cuba after an invasion and occupation of the country. During the meeting, Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara reported to the president that the military believed that heavy casualties should be expected in an invasion; several days later, CINCLANT would estimate that up to 18,484 US casualties might occur during the 1st 10 days of fighting.

1:00PM: John Scali, State Department correspondent for ABC News, lunched with Aleksandr Fomin at the Occidental Restaurant in Washington at Fomin’s urgent request (they had met together on several previous HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE occasions). Fomin, officially the Soviet Embassy public affairs counselor, was known to be the KGB’s Washington station chief. Noting that “war seems about to break out,” he asked Scali to contact his “high-level friends” in the State Department to ascertain whether the United States would be interested in a possible solution to the crisis. According to Scali’s notes, Fomin’s proposal ran along the following lines: “[Soviet] bases would be dismantled under [U]nited [N]ations supervision and [C]astro would pledge not to accept offensive weapons of any kind, ever, in return for [a US] pledge not to invade Cuba.” Following the lunch, Scali went directly to the State Department to report on the meeting to Roger Hilsman.

1:18PM: The State Department received a cable from US Ambassador to Turkey Raymond Hare warning that Turkish officials would “deeply resent” any Turkey-for-Cuba missile trade. Hare expressed his opinion that the most satisfactory resolution to the crisis would avoid the Jupiter issue altogether but suggested that if the missiles had to be removed, it should be done gradually. Hare also acknowledged that an alternative solution could be the “dismantling of Jupiters ... on [a] strictly secret basis with Soviets.”

2:00PM: US Ambassador to Brazil A. Lincoln Gordon was requested to ask the Brazilian government to have the Brazilian ambassador in Havana, Luis Batian Pinto, meet privately with Fidel Castro to relay a message from the US government. The message that Pinto was to give to Castro included reassurances that the United States was unlikely to invade Cuba if the missiles were removed.

6:00PM: The State Department began receiving a message from the US embassy in Moscow containing a new, private letter from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The message arrived in 4 sections, with the final portion arriving at 9:00PM, some 12 hours after the text has been delivered to the US embassy. The letter, almost certainly composed by Khrushchev himself, was, in Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy’s words, “very long and emotional,” but it contains a proposal for a settlement: “I propose: we, for our part, will declare that our ships bound for Cuba are not carrying any armaments. You will declare that the United States will not invade Cuba with its troops and will not support any other forces which might intend to invade Cuba. Then the necessity of the presence of our military specialists in Cuba will disappear.”

6:45PM: John Scali told Dean Rusk and Roger Hilsman of Aleksandr Fomin’s proposal of 1:00PM. US officials assumed that Fomin’s message had been initiated by the Kremlin and interpreted Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s newly arrived letter in light of Fomin’s offer that the Soviet Union remove its missiles under UN inspection in return for a US non-invasion pledge (recent information from Soviet sources suggests that, contrary to US presumptions at the time, Fomin’s proposal had not in fact been authorized by Moscow).

7:35PM: Meeting again with Aleksandr Fomin, John Scali recited a message given to him by Dean Rusk: “I have reason to believe that the [US government] sees real possibilities and supposes that the representatives of the two governments in New York could work this matter out with U Thant and with each other. My impression is, however, that time is very urgent.” Fomin assured Scali that his remarks would be communicated immediately to the “highest Soviet sources.”

10:00PM: The ExComm reconvened in an extraordinary session to consider Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s letter. Further textual analysis of the letter was ordered, and Soviet specialists Helmut Sonnenfeldt and Joseph Neubert were directed to analyze the letter alongside the proposal from Aleksandr Fomin.

Night: Unknown to any of the ExComm members, Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy and Anatoly Dobrynin met at the Soviet Embassy, one of a series of secret meetings they held during the crisis (Dobrynin has since disclosed that when he defended the Soviet missile deployment by noting that the United States had stationed Jupiter missiles to Turkey, Robert Kennedy offered to introduce the Turkish missiles into HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE a potential settlement). The attorney general reportedly left the room to phone the president. When he returned he tells Dobrynin, “the president said that we are ready to consider the question of Turkey, to examine favorably the question of Turkey.” Dobrynin would report the conversation to the Kremlin.

Around this time, according to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, “we received information from our Cuban comrades and from other sources which directly stated that this attack [on Cuba] would be carried out within the next two or three days.” Khrushchev’s statement may refer to a cable from Fidel Castro that was transmitted on the evening of October 26th. Fearing that a US invasion was imminent, Castro reportedly composed the message –dictated in Spanish to Soviet Ambassador Alekseyev, who translated the letter into Russian– while spending the night in a bomb shelter in the Soviet embassy in Havana. Khrushchev apparently understood the cable both as a warning of an impending invasion and as an attempt to get Khrushchev to launch the missiles in Cuba against the United States. According to an unpublished portion of Khrushchev’s memoirs, Khrushchev recalled Castro warning that “an American invasion would take place within a few hours. Therefore, he was proposing to preempt the invasion and inflict a nuclear strike on the US.” (At the Havana Conference in January 1992, Castro would state that his letter had been mistranslated; that he had been suggesting that if Cuba was invaded, the Soviet Union would need to defend itself from attack by using nuclear weapons.)

Fidel Castro ordered Cuban anti-aircraft forces to open fire on any US aircraft overflying the island. According to one source, Castro’s order reportedly replaced his standing orders to fire only on groups of 2 or more low- altitude airplanes. When Soviet Ambassador to Cuba Aleksandr Alekseyev asked Castro to rescind this order, apparently he was rebuffed.

As a result of the increased frequency of low-level reconnaissance missions, additional military targets in Cuba were identified. Military planners consequently revised air attack targeting and plans. The airstrike plan came to include 3 massive strikes per day until Cuban air capability was destroyed. Some 1,190 bombing sorties were planned for the 1st day of operations.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev demanded from the US a removal of nuclear missiles in Turkey as well as a promise to not invade Cuba as preconditions for his removal of Soviet missiles on Cuba. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy replied that all work in Cuba must stop prior to any negotiations.

October 27, Saturday: Indian Prime Minister Nehru refused peace feelers pending the withdrawal of Chinese combat forces. Chinese troops advanced into Ladakh in the area of Damchok.

When 4 power stations of the US-owned Creole Petroleum Corporation were blown up around Lake Maracaibo, the Venezuelan government blamed communists.

The 3d and final installment in the Saturday Evening Post of the novel FAIL-SAFE (in 1964 Sidney Lumet would make this atomic-warfare nightmare into a movie starring Henry Fonda, Dan O’Herlihy, and Walter Matthau, and in 2000 it would be recycled as a live TV play on CBS). Meanwhile, on this day, Soviet diesel submarine B-59, in international waters outside the exclusion zone that the US had declared around Cuba, was being depth-bombed by charges from 11 US destroyers such as the USS Beale protecting the aircraft carrier USS Randolph (CVS-15)15 in an attempt to force the sub to the surface (the charges were small ones used for practice and the intent of the dropping of these charges was to cause the submarine to surface rather than to destroy it, but the people on the sub had no way to know this). Aboard this sub at depth, isolated from all radio communications, the three highest officers, considering that nuclear war might already have begun, followed to the letter the Soviet rules of engagement: they took a vote as to whether it was time to send off a nuclear- HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE warhead torpedo. Soviet rules of engagement required that the decision of the 3 be unanimous. Captain Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky voted to send off the warhead and political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov joined in this, but Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (who was already suffering from radiation sickness due to exposure to an overheating reactor) voted “Nyet” — and so at this point an intercontinental missile exchange between the superpowers did not get triggered. When the submarine ran low on battery power it surfaced among the American destroyers, made radio contact with Moscow, and headed toward home.

CLOSE CALLS

During a contractor checkout, a Titan I ICBM exploded in its silo near Chico, Califor- May 22, 1962 nia. The contractors and the crew of the silo were unharmed.

Soviet patrol diesel submarine B-59 almost launched a nuclear-tipped torpedo while under harassment by American naval forces. One of several vessels surrounded by American destroyers near Cuba, the sub had dived to avoid detection and been out of touch with Moscow for days. When the USS Beale dropped practice depth charges to signal the B-59 to surface, the Soviet commander considered that war had begun. The commander of the B-59 had a 10-Kiloton nuclear torpedo to use against an American aircraft carrier within range, the USS Randolph. The submarine political officer October 27, 1962 agreed but as low batteries affected the submarine’s life support systems, commander of the sub-flotilla Vasili Arkhipov voted “Nyet” and forced them to surface and radio for orders. On the same day an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba while a U-2 flown by US Air Force Captain Charles Maultsby strayed by navigational error 300 miles over the Chukotka Peninsula, causing Soviet MIGs to scramble and pursue. American F-102As escorted the U-2 into friendly airspace. These interceptors were armed with GAR-11 Falcon nuclear air-to-air missiles (each having a 0.25 kilo- ton yield) which their pilots were authorized to arm and launch.

About 190 nautical miles (220 land miles) east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, our nuclear submarine USS Thresher was in serious trouble due to improper welds that were allowing in seawater that was forcing a shutdown of its reactor. Poor design of April 10, 1963 its emergency blow system would prevent the ship from surfacing and the disabled ship would ultimately descend to its crush depth and implode, killing all 129 mem- bers of its crew. When the vessel would be raised, it would be discovered that some of its valves had been installed backward.

6:00AM: The CIA intelligence memorandum containing information compiled as of 6:00AM reported that 3 of the 4 MRBM sites at San Cristóbal and the 2 sites at Sagua la Grande appeared to be fully operational. The mobilization of Cuban military forces was reported to be continuing at a high rate, but the Central Intelligence Agency advised that Cuban forces remained under orders not to engage in hostilities unless

15. The USS Randolph (CVS-15), USS Independence (CVA-62), USS Okinawa (LPH-3), USS Thetis Bay (LPH-6), 15 destroyers, 3 submarines, 14 amphibious ships including the USS Bexar aboard which I was situated, with 4 mobile support ships, were part of PHIBRIGLEX 62, which proclaimed itself to be an amphibious exercise to train and exercise naval forces to conduct an amphibious assault and associated naval operations to the Virgin Islands (specifically, the island of Vieques). This was of course nothing but cover story: the task of our 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade would be to stage a regimental-level amphibious assault on the port of Santiago de Cuba, swing east through the Cuban mountain chain, and relieve the besieged US Marine garrison at Guantanamo Bay. At the time of this incident the USS Randolph was part of our landing force sailing in a holding circle south of Santiago de Cuba. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE attacked. ICBMS

9:00AM: Radio Moscow began broadcasting a message from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In contrast to the private message of the day before, the new message called for the dismantling of US missile bases in Turkey in return for the removal of the Soviet missiles in Cuba. While the broadcast was underway, the original copy of Khrushchev’s previous letter to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was delivered to the US embassy in Moscow. The letter was signed by Soviet Premier Khrushchev but probably not written by him. President Kennedy chose to respond to the more conciliatory letter of the previous night while ignoring the letter of this morning. He agreed that the quarantine of Cuba would end and pledged not to invade Cuba after the missiles were removed. 10:00AM: The ExComm met in the Situation Room at the White House. After the usual intelligence briefing by John McCone, the minutes of the meeting record that Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara reported on the positions of Soviet Bloc ships moving toward Cuba. He recommended that we be prepared to board the Grozny, which was now out about 600 miles. Under Secretary Ball pointed out that the Soviets did not know the extent of our quarantine zone. The President agreed that we should ask U Thant to tell the Russians in New York where we are drawing the quarantine line. The Russians would then be in a position to decide whether to turn back their tanker or allow her to enter the quarantine zone sometime later today.During the meeting, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s 2d message began to be received. The full text of Khrushchev’s formal letter had completed across a Foreign Broadcast Information Service ticker in the White House at 11:03AM The message stated in part: You are disturbed over Cuba. You say that this disturbs you because it is ninety miles by sea from the coast of the United States of America. But ... you have placed destructive missile weapons, which you call offensive, in Turkey, literally next to us.... I therefore make this proposal: We are willing to remove from Cuba the means which you regard as offensive...Your representatives will make a declaration to the effect that the United States ... will remove its analogous means from Turkey.... And after that, persons entrusted by the United Nations Security Council could inspect on the spot the fulfillment of the pledges made....

The new letter set the stage for a protracted ExComm discussion, which would continue throughout the day, about how to respond, with the President stating that to go to war with the Soviet Union instead of accepting a trade would be “an insupportable position.”

Around 10:15 to 11:00AM: A U-2 from a Strategic Air Command base in Alaska strayed into Soviet airspace over the Chukotski Peninsula on what was reported to be a “routine air sampling mission.” The U-2 pilot had apparently entered Soviet airspace as a result of a navigational error. The pilot radioed for assistance and a US F-102 fighter aircraft in Alaska scrambled and headed toward the Bering Sea. At the same time, Soviet MiGs took off from a base near Wrangel Island to intercept the U-2, which eventually managed to fly out of Soviet territory with no shots being fired. Alaskan Air Command records suggest that the fighter planes were armed with nuclear air-to-air missiles. According to one account, when Secretary of Defense McNamara heard that a U-2 was in Soviet airspace, “he turned absolutely white, and yelled hysterically, ‘This means war with the Soviet Union.’” President Kennedy’s laconic reaction upon hearing of the incident was simply to laugh and remark “there is always some [son of a bitch] who doesn’t get the word.”

Around noon: A U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba and its pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson, killed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE Anderson had flown one of the 1st U-2 missions responsible for detecting the Soviet missiles. The ExComm, when informed of the downing, assumed that the attack had been ordered by the Kremlin and speculated that the move was designed to escalate the crisis. (In fact, as Soviet and Cuban officials have recently revealed, the attack was the result of a decision made by local Soviet commanders. Although a Soviet major general, Igor I. Statsenko, would claim responsibility for the decision in 1987, other Soviet sources suggest that Lieutenant General Stepan N. Grechko and General Leonid S. Garbuz were the officers in Cuba who authorized the firing of the surface-to-air missile. After the incident Marshal Malinovsky mildly reprimanded the officers and ordered that no other U-2s be attacked.)

2:30PM: Several ExComm members assembled in George Ball’s conference room to consider possible options in light of the deteriorating crisis situation.

3:41PM: F8U-1P low-level reconnaissance planes took off for afternoon missions over Cuba. 2 of the 6 planes were forced to abort their mission due to mechanical problems. As the remaining planes flew over San Cristóbal and Sagua la Grande, Cuban troops opened fire with anti-aircraft guns and small arms. One of the US aircraft was hit by a 37mm anti-aircraft shell but managed to return to its base.

4:00PM: The ExComm was called back to the White House. President Kennedy ordered the immediate dispatch of a message to U Thant asking urgently whether he would ascertain if the Soviet government was willing to stop work on the bases while negotiations continue to find a solution to the crisis. In the middle of the meeting General Maxwell Davenport “Max” Taylor brought in a late report confirming that the missing U- 2 had been shot down over Cuba, probably by a surface-to-air missile. President Kennedy, however, decided not to retaliate but agreed that if any more surveillance planes were fired on over Cuba, the surface-to-air missile sites would be attacked. Kennedy’s order to call off the planned reprisal was reportedly received with HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE disbelief in the Pentagon.

CLOSE CALLS

Staff at the Strategic Air Command Headquarters (SAC HQ) simultaneously lost con- tact with NORAD and multiple Ballistic Missile Early Warning System sites. Since these communication lines had been understood to be redundant and independent from one another, the communications failure was interpreted as either a very November 24, 1961 unlikely coincidence or a coordinated attack. SAC HQ had the entire ready force pre- pared for takeoff before aircraft already aloft confirmed that there did not appear to be any attack. It was later found that the failure of a single relay station in Colorado in this supposedly redundant and independent system had been the sole cause of the problem.

Soviet patrol diesel submarine B-59 almost launched a nuclear-tipped torpedo while under harassment by American naval forces. One of several vessels surrounded by American destroyers near Cuba, the sub had dived to avoid detection and been out of touch with Moscow for days. When the USS Beale dropped practice depth charges to signal the B-59 to surface, the Soviet commander considered that war had begun. The commander of the B-59 had a 10-Kiloton nuclear torpedo to use against an American aircraft carrier within range, the USS Randolph. The submarine political officer October 27, 1962 agreed but as low batteries affected the submarine’s life support systems, commander of the sub-flotilla Vasili Arkhipov voted “Nyet” and forced them to surface and radio for orders. On the same day an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba while a U-2 flown by US Air Force Captain Charles Maultsby strayed by navigational error 300 miles over the Chukotka Peninsula, causing Soviet MIGs to scramble and pursue. American F-102As escorted the U-2 into friendly airspace. These interceptors were armed with GAR-11 Falcon nuclear air-to-air missiles (each having a 0.25 kilo- ton yield) which their pilots were authorized to arm and launch.

There was a massive power outage in the northeastern United States and several nuclear bomb detectors near major US cities –circuits intended to distinguish between November 9, 1965 regular power outages and power outages caused by a nuclear attack– malfunctioned due to circuit errors. They warned the Command Center of the Office of Emergency Planning of an attack and the office went to full alert.

Most of the long meeting, however, centered on formulating a response to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s most recent proposal. President Kennedy, in deliberations throughout the day, continually favored trading away the missiles in Turkey for those in Cuba as Khrushchev has offered — possibly because he secretly had hinted to the Soviet government through Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy and Anatoly Dobrynin on October 26th that the United States would agree to such a deal. However, most of the group argued that an open trade could fragment the NATO alliance. Alternative courses of action were suggested: Secretary of Defense McNamara argued that the Jupiters in Turkey should be removed, but only as a prelude to an invasion of Cuba; Maxwell Taylor forwarded the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommendation simply to initiate the airstrike and invasion plans; and the State Department drafted a letter flatly rejecting the Soviet proposal.

As the meeting progressed, the idea of ignoring Khrushchev’s new proposal and responding only to the October 26th letter (which did not mention the Jupiters) gradually began to emerge. President Kennedy, HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE initially hesitant to accept the idea because he did not believe Khrushchev would accept such a deal, finally agreed when Soviet specialist Llewellyn Thompson argued that Khrushchev might. Theodore Sorensen and Robert Kennedy left the meeting to compose the proposed response. After 45 minutes, they returned to present the draft. The president refined the letter, had it typed, and signed it. The letter was sent that evening (see entry for 8:05PM, below).

After the ExComm meeting broke up, a smaller group composed of President Kennedy, Secretary of Defense McNamara, Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy, Bundy, Rusk, Llewellyn Thompson, and Theodore Sorensen met in the Oval Office. The group agreed that the 2d letter to Khrushchev should be reinforced with an oral message passed through Ambassador Dobrynin. They further agreed that Dobrynin should be informed that if the Soviet missiles were not withdrawn, there would be military action against Cuba. If they were removed, however, the United States would be willing to give a non-invasion pledge. Dean Rusk suggested one further component to the message: an assurance that, while there could be no public or explicit deal over the Turkish missiles, the Jupiters would in fact be removed once the Cuban crisis was resolved. The proposal quickly gained the approval of the group and the president. Concern was so acute that the assurance not be leaked to the public or to NATO that not even other ExComm members were told of the additional assurances regarding the Jupiters.

4:15P.M: At Dean Rusk’s request, ABC News correspondent John Scali and Soviet embassy official Fomin met once again. When Scali asked Fomin why the October 26th proposal had been scrapped and the Jupiters introduced into the deal, Fomin explained that the change was a result of “poor communications.” He stated that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s new message had been drafted before his report on the favorable US reaction to the October 26th proposal had arrived. Furious at Fomin’s response, Scali shouted that Fomin’s explanation was not credible and that he thought it was simply a “stinking double cross.” An invasion of Cuba, Scali warned, was now “only a matter of hours away.” Fomin said that he and Ambassador Dobrynin were expecting a reply from Khrushchev at any moment and urged Scali to report to US officials that there was no treachery. Scali replied that he did not think anyone would believe Fomin’s assurances but that he would convey the message in any case. The two parted ways, and Scali immediately typed out a memo on the meeting which was sent to the ExComm.

7:45PM: Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy and Soviet Ambassador Antoly Dobrynin met. In his memoirs on the crisis, Kennedy would recall telling Dobrynin: ...We had to have a commitment by tomorrow that [the missile] bases would be removed. I was not giving them an ultimatum but a statement of fact. He should understand that if they did not remove those bases, we would remove them... He asked me what offer the United States was making, and I told him of the letter that President Kennedy had just transmitted to Khrushchev. He raised the question of our removing the missiles from Turkey. I said that there could be no quid pro quo or any arrangement made under this kind of threat or pressure, and that in the last analysis that was a decision that would have to be made by NATO. However, I said, President Kennedy had been anxious to remove those missiles from Turkey and Italy for a long period of time. He had ordered their removal some time ago, and it was our judgment that, within a short time after this crisis was over, those missiles would be gone.... Time was running out. We had only a few more hours—we needed an answer immediately from the Soviet Union. I said we must have it the next day. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

(Anatoly Dobrynin has recently contradicted Robert Kennedy’s account of the meeting in several ways. According to Dobrynin, Kennedy did not in fact threaten military action against the missile sites if the Soviet government did not remove the missiles. Second, Kennedy reportedly did not say that the Jupiters had been ordered removed earlier, instead he suggested that an explicit deal on the Turkish missiles could be struck.)

After the meeting with Dobrynin, the attorney general returned to the White House. At President Kennedy’s direction, Secretary of Defense McNamara instructed Secretary of the Air Force Eugene Zuckert to order to active duty 24 Air Force Reserve units totaling 14,200 personnel. Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy would later recall the mood at the White House: We had not abandoned hope, but what hope there was now rested with Khrushchev’s revising his course within the next few hours. It was a hope, not an expectation. The expectation was a military confrontation by Tuesday [October 29] and possibly tomorrow.... 8:05PM: President Kennedy’s letter to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev drafted earlier in the day was transmitted to Moscow. The final text read in part: As I read your letter, the key elements of your proposals—which seem generally acceptable as I understand them—are as follows: 1) You would agree to remove these weapon systems from Cuba under appropriate United Nations observation and supervision; and undertake, with suitable safe-guards, to halt the further introduction of such weapon systems into Cuba. 2) We, on our part, would agree—upon the establishment of adequate arrangements through the United Nations, to ensure the carrying out and continuation of these commitments (a) to remove promptly the quarantine measures now in effect and (b) to give assurances against the invasion of Cuba.

The letter was also released directly to the press to avoid any communications delays.

8:50PM: In response to U Thant’s request that Cuba stop work on the missile sites while negotiations continue, Fidel Castro indicates in a letter to the UN acting secretary general that he would order work to cease, provided the United States lifted the blockade. Castro also extended an invitation to U Thant to visit Cuba. (U Thant would accept the invitation on October 28th and travel to Havana on October 30th.)

9:00PM: U Thant informed Adlai Stevenson that Soviet representative Zorin had refused to accept information about the exact location of the quarantine interception area that the United States had passed on earlier in the day.

9:00PM: The ExComm again reviewed various options for the following day, including ordering an airstrike on the missile sites in Cuba and extending the blockade to include petroleum, oil, and lubricants. As the meeting came to a close, Secretary of Defense McNamara turned to Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy. The United States had better be “damned sure,” McNamara stated, that we “have two things ready, a government for Cuba, because we’re going to need one ... and secondly, plans for how to respond to the Soviet Union in Europe, because sure as hell they’re going to do something there.”

Evening: Unknown to other members of the ExComm, President Kennedy and Dean Rusk prepared a contingency plan to facilitate a public Turkey-for-Cuba missile trade. At Kennedy’s instruction, Rusk phoned HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE Andrew Cordier, a former UN undersecretary, and dictated a statement that Cordier was to give to U Thant upon further instructions from Washington DC. The statement was a proposal to be made by U Thant calling for the removal of both the Jupiter missiles in Turkey and the Soviet missiles in Cuba. During the day, Kennedy also asked Roswell Gilpatric to draw up a scenario for the early removal of the missiles from Turkey.

Night: Fidel Castro met with Soviet Ambassador Alekseyev for lengthy discussions in the Soviet embassy in Havana. Castro, Alekseyev would later report, had been briefed by him on each of the messages sent back and forth between Moscow and Washington DC during the crisis. Aleksandr Alekseyev would recall that despite Castro’s “characteristic restraint, he [Castro] also evaluated the situation as highly alarming.”

10PM: The US received word that the USSR agreed to remove its offensive missiles in Cuba. The US agreed to remove missiles in Turkey within 6 months, to end the quarantine, and to pledge not to invade Cuba.

October 28, Sunday: A national referendum in France voted in favor of President de Gaulle’s plan for the popular election of the president.

12:12AM: Instructions were sent to Ambassador Finletter to review the deepening crisis with the NATO allies. The cable notified Finletter that “the situation as we see it was increasingly serious and time is growing shorter...[T]he United States may find it necessary within a very short time in its interest and that of its fellow nations in the Western Hemisphere to take whatever military action may be necessary.”

6:00AM: The CIA’s daily 6AM update briefing sheet reported that Soviet technicians had succeeded in making fully operational all 24 medium-range nuclear ballistic missile sites in Cuba. Construction of 1 nuclear bunker reportedly was complete but none were believed to be as yet in operation, which is to say, none as yet were believed to contain any Soviet nuclear warheads. ICBMS

9:00AM: A new message from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, one that effectively terminated the missile crisis, was broadcast on Radio Moscow: “The Soviet government, in addition to previously issued instructions on the cessation of further work at the building sites for the weapons, has issued a new order on the dismantling of the weapons which you describe as ‘offensive,’ and their crating and return to the Soviet Union.” Upon receiving Khrushchev’s message, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy issued a statement describing the decision “an important and constructive contribution to peace.” In a separate letter to Khrushchev written almost immediately after the broadcast, he asserted that “I consider my letter to you of October twenty-seventh and your reply of today as firm undertakings on the part of both our governments which should be promptly carried out.”

Although there was a sense of relief and exultation among most of the ExComm members after word of Khrushchev’s decision had been received, several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were less enthusiastic. Admiral George Anderson reportedly complained that “we have been had,” while General Curtis LeMay suggested that the United States should “go in and make a strike on Monday anyway.” In the afternoon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff instructed military commanders not to relax their alert procedures, warning that the Soviet Union’s offer to dismantle the missile sites might well amount merely to an “insincere proposal meant to gain time.”

In Havana, Fidel Castro, who had not been consulted or informed of the decision beforehand, reportedly went into a rage upon hearing of the Soviet move, cursing Khrushchev as “son of a bitch, bastard, asshole.” A few days later, Castro would publicly state in a speech at the University of Havana that Khrushchev lacked HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE “cojones” (balls). After meeting with high military leaders during the morning, Castro apparently went to San Antonio Air Force Base in order to himself man an anti-aircraft weapon and perhaps be able to shoot down a US low-altitude aircraft (however, such US planes were not passing over that particular base).

11:00AM: Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy met with Anatoly Dobrynin at the Soviet ambassador’s request. Dobrynin noted that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev has agreed to withdraw the missiles, and he mentioned to the President’s brother that the Soviet leader had asked him to send his best wishes to him and the president.

The ExComm met. By this point, the full text of Premier Khrushchev’s message announcing the decision to dismantle the missiles in Cuba had been made available. Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara reported that the Soviet ship Grozny was standing still and that no other Soviet Bloc ships would be entering the quarantine zone during the day. President Kennedy directed that no air reconnaissance missions be flown during the day and that no action be taken against any Soviet Bloc ships with regard to the unresolved question of the IL-28 bombers in Cuba. Kennedy agreed that the United States should consider the IL-28 s “offensive weapons” and press for their removal, but he also suggested that the United States should not “get hung up” on such an issue.

Around noon: Fidel Castro declared that the US assurance of non-aggression against Cuba was unsatisfactory unless it included additional measures. He outlined several specific demands, later to be known as his “Five Points.” They included an end to the economic blockade against Cuba; an end to all subversive activities carried out from the United States against Cuba; a halt to all attacks on Cuba carried out from US military bases on the island of Puerto Rico; cessation of aerial and naval reconnaissance flights in Cuban airspace and waters; and the return of the Guantánamo naval base to Cuba.

1:00PM-3:00PM: According to information that would be given to U Thant by a Soviet commander several days afterward, instructions to dismantle the missiles in Cuba were received by the Soviet military in Cuba between 1PM and 3PM (actual dismantling of the sites would reportedly begin at 5PM).

1:04PM: At a background press briefing, Dean Rusk cautioned against any gloating at the Soviet decision, explaining that “if there is a debate, a rivalry, a contest going on in the Kremlin over how to play this situation, we don’t want ... to strengthen the hands of those in Moscow who wanted to play this another way.” Rusk also asserted, in a reference to inspection issues and the IL-28 bombers still in Cuba, “it is not yet the time to say this is over.”

4:07PM: The Joint Chiefs of Staff asked the Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Region to re-evaluate Oplan 316, the invasion plan of Cuba, and determine what modifications should be made to the plan in light of the most recent intelligence estimates on military equipment in Cuba. This military command was specifically directed to consider whether tactical nuclear weapons, air and ground or both, should be included in the arsenal of US forces invading Cuba.

5:00PM: Actual dismantling of the 24 medium-range nuclear ballistic missile sites in Cuba reportedly began.

Evening: John Scali met with Soviet embassy official Fomin for the 4th time during the crisis. Fomin told Scali, “I am under instructions to thank you. The information you provided Chairman Khrushchev was most helpful to him in making up his mind quickly.” Fomin then added, “And that includes your explosion of Saturday” — indicating that US anger, as conveyed by Scali, toward the broadening of Soviet demands had reinforced Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s decision to accept the U.S. proposal for ending the crisis. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE The Soviet embassy in Havana received a lengthy telegram from the Kremlin explaining the decision to withdraw the missiles. Any other move, the message argued, would have meant “global conflagration and consequently the destruction of the Cuban revolution.” The cable also stressed that “the Soviet government under no circumstances would refuse to fulfill its international duty to defend Cuba.” Soviet Ambassador Aleksandr Alekseyev passed on the telegram to Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, who reportedly was somewhat reassured by it.

In summary, on this day Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the missile sites and remove offensive weaponry from Cuba and the US agreed to remove offensive missiles from Turkey, and pledged not to invade Cuba. The removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba was publicly announced by Radio Moscow.

October 29, Monday: John Kenneth Galbraith, US ambassador to New Delhi, announced that the US was granting an Indian request for arms in its struggle against China.

While black student James Meredith (no relation) ate in the cafeteria, 200 white students at the University of Mississippi hurled bottles and firecrackers at armed US soldiers who had been delegated to guard him.

Morning: Soviet First Deputy Premier Vasily V. Kuznetsov met with U Thant. Kuznetsov, sent by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to New York City to work out the details of a settlement to the crisis, informed U Thant that the Soviet missiles were in the process of being dismantled and shipped out of Cuba. Kuznetsov proposed that when the dismantling was completed, the Soviet Union report to the Security Council, which would then authorize a UN team to visit Cuba for “on-site” verification.

As a result of an order from Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara to begin the process of removing Jupiter missiles from Turkey, an interdepartmental task force convened under Defense Department General Counsel John McNaughton. McNaughton reportedly opened the meeting by declaring that “those missiles are going to be out of there by April 1 if we have to shoot them out.” ICBMS

10:00AM: At the morning ExComm meeting, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy ordered that US Navy ships maintain their quarantine stations. Low-level reconnaissance flights were directed to resume, but no U-2 spy plane missions were authorized.

3:30PM: U Thant briefed Adlai Stevenson, John McCloy, and Charles Yost on his meeting with Vasily Kuznetsov earlier on that day. U Thant tried to convince the Americans that the quarantine should now be suspended but McCloy and Stevenson disagreed, linking the end of the quarantine to the actual removal of these offensive weapons from Cuba. They did agree, however, that the quarantine could be suspended for the duration of U Thant’s visit to Cuba, scheduled to begin on October 30th.

10:48PM: The Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Region informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff that, in view of reports that Cuban forces had nuclear-capable FROG short-range missiles, he intended to modify invasion plans so that US air and ground forces engaged in operations against Cuba would also be armed with tactical nuclear weapons. This command assured the Joint Chiefs of Staff that nuclear weapons would be fired only after Cuban or Soviet forces had initiated the use of nuclear weapons. The Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed to allow US invasion forces to be armed with nuclear-capable weapons but specified that the actual nuclear warheads should not be introduced into Cuba without further Joint Chiefs of Staff authorization.

The Soviet Union attempted to hammer out a formal agreement with the United States on the settlement of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE missile crisis. Anatoly Dobrynin brought Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy an unsigned letter from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev explicitly spelling out the terms of the arrangement, including Robert Kennedy’s pledge that the Jupiter IRBMs were to be removed from Turkey. The Attorney-General made no immediate response but took the letter with him to consider the proposal (when he would meet Dobrynin the following day, Kennedy would reject the idea of creating any written agreement involving the Jupiter missiles).

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had inadvertently opened the door to US demands that additional weapon systems be removed by telling Kennedy in his October 28th letter that he would remove “those weapons you describe as offensive.” Following the ExComm’s discussion of the IL-28 question on the 28th, State Department analyst Raymond Garthoff recommended in a memo that “in addition to the MRBMs and IRBMs, the IL-28s should definitely be included in the items the United States wanted withdrawn from Cuba.” Garthoff continued, however, that the United States could not “reasonably insist” on the withdrawal of MiG fighter aircraft, surface-to-air missiles or non-missile ground force weapons. Although the crisis has centered around the deployment of Soviet missiles, the United States used several arguments to support its contention that those bombers were also “offensive.” US negotiators pointed out that the quarantine proclamation explicitly included bomber aircraft, and they pointed to President Kennedy’s letter of October 22d, which objected not only to the “long-range missile bases” but also to “other offensive systems in Cuba.”

October 30, Tuesday: Dawn: The US quarantine of Cuba was suspended while UN Secretary General U Thant traveled to Havana to work out the details for inspections of the former offensive ballistic missile sites. ICBMS

3:00PM: Shortly after his arrival in Havana, U Thant and his aides met with Fidel Castro, Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado and Foreign Minister Raúl Roa. U Thant presented several verification proposals to ensure that the dismantling of the missiles was proceeding, including on-site inspection by a UN team, aerial inspection by UN reconnaissance planes, or verification by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Castro rejected each of these proposals as “intended to humiliate the Cuban State.”

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev sent President John Fitzgerald Kennedy a 16-page message covering the missile crisis, the naval quarantine, a nuclear test-ban treaty, and the Berlin question. The Kremlin leader requested that the United States of America lift the quarantine immediately, as well as the economic blockade of Cuba. He also suggested that the US withdraw from its base in Guantánamo, Cuba. On the issue of a test ban treaty, Khrushchev proclaimed that “we now have conditions ripe for finalizing the agreement on signing a treaty on cessation of tests of thermonuclear weapons.” Khrushchev also attempted to garner an agreement on Berlin that would exclude German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, because “the next crisis ... can be caused by the German question.”

Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy called Ambassador Dobrynin back to his office to discuss the letter Dobrynin had given him the day before spelling out the terms of the US/Soviet agreement resolving the Cuban missile crisis. Notes he prepared for the meeting reflect his position: Read letter—Studied it over night. No quid pro quo as I told you. The letter makes it appear that there was. You asked me about missile bases in Turkey. I told you we would be out of them—four to five months. That still holds.... You have my word on this & that is sufficient. Take back your letter — Reconsider it & if you feel it is necessary to write letters then we will also write one which you cannot enjoy. Also if you should publish HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE any document indicating a deal then it is off & also if done afterward will further affect the relationship.

Dobrynin acquiesced to Kennedy’s demand and withdrew the letter.

In Moscow, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko informed Foy Kohler that the Soviet Union wished to reach an agreement as quickly as possible on the basis of the Kennedy/Khrushchev exchange of letters. Gromyko also suggested that some type of formal agreement should “codify” obligations on both sides. All operations by “Task Force W,” which was the CIA’s action arm for OPERATION MONGOOSE activities, were called to an immediate halt. However, during the crisis, the director of that task force, William Harvey, had on his own authority ordered teams of covert agents into Cuba to support any conventional US military operation that might occur. At the end of the month, a new mission was about to be dispatched. One of the operatives, concerned about a covert operation so soon after a settlement to the missile crisis has been reached, sent a message to Attorney-General Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy to verify that the mission was in order. Angered to thus learn that CIA missions were continuing, the Attorney-General chastised Harvey and asked CIA Director McCone to terminate the operations. Edward Lansdale was subsequently sent to Miami to oversee the end of OPERATION MONGOOSE. However, 3 of 10 scheduled 6-man sabotage teams had already been dispatched to Cuba (on November 8th, one of these teams would carry out its assigned sabotage operation).

October 31, Wednesday: 10:00AM: The ExComm reviewed the lack of progress in the talks between U Thant and Fidel Castro. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy directed that reconnaissance missions were to resume on the following day unless significant progress could be made in the discussions. U Thant met with Castro, Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, and Roa for the 2d time during his stay in Cuba. Castro agreed to send the body of Rudolf Anderson, the pilot of the downed U-2 spy plane, back to the United States. Castro claimed that Anderson’s plane had been “brought down by Cuban anti-aircraft guns, manned only by Cubans, inside Cuban territory.” Complaining about continued US aerial reconnaissance, he warned that “the Cuban people can no longer tolerate such daily provocations,” and that Cuba would “destroy any plane any time which intruded in to Cuban airspace.” U Thant continued to be unable to obtain any sort of approval from Castro for any form of verification of the Soviet missile withdrawal. ICBMS

6:00PM: After hearing an update on U Thant’s mission to Cuba, President Kennedy ordered resumption of low-level reconnaissance and quarantine operations but continued the suspension of U-2 spy flights.

West German Justice Minister Wolfgang Stammberger resigned because he had not been informed in advance of the raid on Der Spiegel that had taken place on October 26th (Stammberger was a member of the FDP party, the junior coalition partner).

Belgium’s House of Representatives approved a bill to divide the nation into 2 sections on the basis of language.

November: Saudi Arabia abolished human slavery (well, that was good of them).

The United States of America had removed all its nuclear-tipped missiles from Turkey (well, that was good of us). ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 8, Thursday: The US Defense Department announced that its aerial surveillance indicated that all medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles in Cuba had been dismantled. ICBMS

Thomas Galloway Dunlop Galbraith, Joint Undersecretary for Scotland, tendered his resignation to British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan after publication of letters he wrote to William Vassall, presently imprisoned for espionage. The letters instructed Vassall to bring secret documents to Galbraith’s home in Scotland and included “personal requests and comments” (Vassall was a homosexual).

West German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss admitted that his ministry had been responsible for the arrest of Conrad Ahlers in Spain (Ahlers had been the author of an article in Der Spiegel, alleging that the West German military was unprepared). HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1963

January 17, Thursday: Italy agreed in principle to allow its freedom to be guaranteed by modern effective Polaris submarine-launched nuclear-warhead missiles rather than by those dumb old uncertain Jupiter land-based nuclear-warhead missiles. ICBMS

Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev visited the Friedrichstrasse crossing point of the Berlin Wall with East German leader Walter Ulbricht, to chat up the western tourists.

The French government demanded suspension of European Economic Community negotiations with Great Britain.

Capriccio for tuba and chamber orchestra by Gunther Schuller was performed for the initial time, in the Carnegie Recital Hall of New York, conducted by the composer.

January 20, Sunday: Turkey agreed in principle that, like Italy, it would allow its freedom to be guaranteed by modern effective Polaris submarine-launched nuclear-warhead missiles rather than by those dumb old uncertain Jupiter land-based nuclear-warhead missiles. ICBMS

UN troops occupied Baudouinville (Indonesia) and Kongolo (Nigeria), Katanga.

The Music Educators National Conference announced in Washington a six-year, $1,380,000 grant by the Ford Foundation to stimulate the creative aspects of music in US public schools. This would be directed by a committee chaired by Norman Dello Joio.

April 3, Wednesday: 30,000 people sat down in front of the US embassy in London in protest against the presence of Polaris nuclear-warhead missiles in Britain (on account of this offensive public misbehavior the Bobbies provided free public transportation to 31 of them, to the local lockup). ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE May 11, Saturday: Prime Minister Lester Pearson of Canada confirmed that his government would permit nuclear warheads atop US missiles stationed on its territory. ICBMS

Eugene “Bull” Connor, the Public Safety Commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama, called on white citizens to boycott any business that honored a racial integration agreement that had been announced on the previous day. “That’s the best way I know to beat down integration in Birmingham,” he stated. That night a bomb destroyed the front of the Birmingham home of the Reverend A.D. King, brother of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (the Reverend King, his wife, and their 5 children were uninjured). Another bomb was set off just before midnight at the A.G. Gaston Motel, an integrated motel which was serving as headquarters for their desegregation campaign (there, four people were injured and the motel extensive damaged). Police and firemen, arriving at the motel after the blast, were pelted with bottles and rocks.

Highway No.1 USA, an opera by William Grant Still to words of Arvey, was performed for the initial time, in Coral Gables, Florida, on the composer’s 68th birthday.

Three songs by Charles Ives, “On the Antipodes” and “Tom Sails Away,” both to his own words, and “September” to words of Rossetti after Folgore, were performed for the initial time, in the McMillin Theater of Columbia University.

June 20, Thursday: Taking into consideration the communications difficulties that were encountered during the Cuba Missile Crisis, a plan for a “Hot Line” was agreed to between the White House and the Kremlin (this involved no “red telephone,” instead relying upon Teletype equipment). This agreement provided the 1st official recognition of the inherent danger of nuclear weapons and the possibility of an inadvertent war arising from technical or human error. The “Hot Line” thus established is being tested every hour and the subsequent dissolution of the USSR has not been allowed to interfere with this vital safeguard. ATOM BOMB ICBMS

August 5, Monday: At Moscow, the signing of a Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty by the foreign ministers of the United States of America, Great Britain, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Nuclear tests were banned in the atmosphere, underwater, and in outer space. ICBMS

August 30, Friday: Taking into consideration the communications difficulties that were encountered during the Cuba Missile Crisis, a “Hot Line,” went into operation (this involved no “red telephone,” instead relying upon a Teletype machine configured with the Latin alphabet in Moscow and another Teletype machine configured with the Cyrillic alphabet in Washington DC). ATOM BOMB ICBMS

When Horace and Sarah Baker, the black couple, returned to their new home outside Philadelphia, the one that had prevously been fire-bombed, they were once again greeted by the white mob hurling objects and insults, but were protected by 50 state policemen. Seven people were arrested. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE November 22, Friday: A memorial window to John Ireland was unveiled in the Musicians’ Chapel of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, London.

C.S. Lewis died in Oxford at the age of 64. Aldous Huxley died of cancer in Los Angeles at the age of 69. ICBMS

The nuclear doomsday black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was in the final stages of preparation. The voice of Slim Pickins, reviewing his B-52’s “survival kit” which included a condom, $100 in gold coins, and a pair of nylon stockings, was altered so that instead of saying “Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff,” he seemed to say “Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.” Although the film was scheduled to be screened on this evening, the screening would be indefinitely postponed in consequence of another event of this day, in Dallas, Texas. Details follow:

6:30 AM: At the boarding house in Dallas, Texas at which he was residing because he had been thrown out by his wife, Lee Harvey Oswald rose.

7:15 AM: When Linnie Mae Randle saw Lee Harvey Oswald, he was carrying a long paper bag.

7:23 AM: Lee Harvey Oswald and Buell Wesley Frazier departed from 500 North Beckley Street and headed toward the Texas School Book Depository, where they needed to clock in at 8 AM. Oswald had a package, which he put in the back seat. The trip was mostly silent, with Frazier explaining to the FBI that Oswald wasn’t ever much of a conversationalist.

Approximately 7:50 AM: At the Texas School Book Depository, Buell Wesley Frazier watched as Lee Harvey Oswald entered with his package. Frazier would later insist that this package couldn’t have contained a rifle, even disassembled, because Oswald had it tucked between his cupped hand and his armpit.

Approximately 9:45 AM: Junior Jarman, a Texas School Book Depository employee, saw Lee Harvey Oswald looking out a window toward the motorcade route.

11:40 AM: Lee Harvey Oswald was seen on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository, near the windows.

11:45 AM: Lee Harvey Oswald remained on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository when other workers took the elevator to the 2d floor for their lunch break.

Approximately 11:55 AM: Lee Harvey Oswald assembled his rifle and, it is presumed, fashioned his “Sniper’s nest” next to a window on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

12:18 PM: Howard Brennan arrived near the Texas School Book Depository to watch the Presidential motorcade and soon noticed that there was a man in a 6th-floor window.

12:30 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald fired 3 rounds from the 6th-floor warehouse window at the open limousine carrying President John Fitzgerald Kennedy with former Secretary of the Navy John Bowden Connally, Jr. (the man whom Oswald had asked for help who had not provided any).16

16. Connally would remain convinced for the rest of his life, that despite what the Warren Commission thought, he had not in fact been struck by the 1st bullet. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was hit twice and would be pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital.17 Former Secretary of the Navy John Bowden Connally, Jr. was seriously injured but his survival was not at risk.

12:31:30 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald was confronted in the lunchroom of the Texas School Book Depository by Patrolman Marrion Baker. When Roy Truly, superintendent of the building, identified him as an employee, this policeman was satisfied.

12:33 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald exited the Texas School Book Depository, presumably by its front door.

12:40 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald boarded a bus to make his escape.

12:44 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald got off the bus as it became bogged down in traffic, requesting a transfer pass.

12:48 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald hailed a cab to be taken to 500 North Beckley Street, his rooming house.

12:54 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald exited the cab in the 700 block of Beckley Street.

1:00 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald arrived on foot at 500 North Beckley Street, his rooming house, and retrieved his pistol.

1:03 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald left his rooming house.

1:16 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald was sighted on the sidewalk by Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit, as a slender white male of approximately the right height and weight and age approximating a description that had been put out across the police radio. Oswald walked over to the police cruiser and apparently spoke with the policeman through an open vent window. The policeman got out and as he walked toward the front of the cruiser, was shot 4 times by Oswald. As Oswald left the scene he was observed to be shaking the empty cartridges out of his pistol and muttering either “poor damn cop” or “poor dumb cop.”

1:22 PM: The Dallas police radio carried a description of the suspect in the murder of Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit.

1:40 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald was observed by Dallas police and ducked into the Texas Theater without paying.

1:50 PM: After a struggle in the Texas Theater with Dallas police, Lee Harvey Oswald was subdued.

2:00 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald arrived at Dallas police headquarters.

2:16 PM: In the restaurant of the House of Representatives in Washington DC, having lunch, Speaker of the House John William McCormack was approached by reporters who advised him that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had just been shot. A minute later he was advised inaccurately that Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson had also been shot. A minute after that he was advised that Secret Service agents were on their way to protect him — because if both the President and the Vice-President were dead, he was next in line to be 17. It is said that everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when they received the news of this death. Driving a Volkswagen bus carrying Merce Cunningham and his dance company on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, John Cage pulled into a gas station to inquire why American flags were at half-mast. I, Austin Meredith, was in US Marine Corps winter green uniform in downtown San Diego, with a detail that was picking up a prisoner named Spain to take back up to Camp Pendleton for incarceration when a taxi driver rushed by shouting “Hey, that son of a bitch Kennedy has got shot!” ASSLEY HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE sworn in as President of the United States of America.

2:18 PM: Rising unsteadily from his chair, Speaker of the House John William McCormack experienced an attack of vertigo and sank back down. Soon, however, another Congressman called over to his table to inform him that there had been some misinformation, that actually Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson was unharmed.

2:30 PM: The Dallas police began to question Lee Harvey Oswald, initially in regard to the murder of Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit.

4:05 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald was taken to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters for the 1st lineup.

4:20 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald was returned upstairs from the basement of the Dallas police headquarters, for further questioning in the office of Captain John William “Will” Fritz.

6:20 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald was taken down to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters again for a 2d lineup.

6:35 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald was returned from the basement of the Dallas police headquarters upstairs, for additional questioning.

7:10 PM: The Dallas police formally arraigned Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder of Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit.

7:40 PM: Lee Harvey Oswald was taken down to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters again for a 3d lineup.

11:26 PM: The Dallas police formally arraigned Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

On the plane heading back to Washington, Vice President Johnson put his hand on a Bible and was sworn in HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE as President. He would be the 4th US president to attempt to cope with the situation in Vietnam and would oversee a massive escalation of the war while continuing to heed the advice of many of the same hawk apparatchiks who had been serving the Kennedy administration.

At that time the FBI had no statutory authority to investigate presidential assassinations. President Lyndon Baines Johnson, however, ordered the Bureau to investigate. The conclusion that would be arrived at would be that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. They would have arrived at that conclusion regardless of the facts that they developed — but I happen to believe that conclusion to have been not only the politically mandatory conclusion, but (quite coincidentally) also what had actually gone down there on Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Aldous Leonard Huxley died. Here is some of his legacy: • There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving — by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done. • Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. • You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. • Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. • There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that is your own self. • To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs. • It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice that “Try to be a little kinder.” • I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.

(I’m not sure what Jack Kennedy’s legacy was. Perhaps it was that during his era the President of the United States of America got to fuck whoever he wanted wherever he wanted — a legacy that would not remain the case as standards of media reticence changed, and would be entirely gone by the florut of President Bill Clinton.)

Martin H Manser’s THE FACTS ON FILE DICTIONARY OF ALLUSIONS (Facts On File, Incorporated, 2008) offers the following: shot heard round the world The shooting of a bullet or some other event that proves to have momentous international significance. The phrase has been applied to more than one such shot in history, but is particularly associated with the first shot of the American Revolution. It was fired on the morning of April 19, 1775, when a force of farmers and minutemen confronted British troops across a bridge at Concord, Massachusetts. An unidentified man fired the first shot without any order being given, and the first of many battles was joined. The phrase was later incorporated by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) in his HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE “Concord Hymn” (1836): “By the rude bridge that arched the flood, / Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, / Here once the embattled farmers stood, / And fired the shot heard ’round the world.” In 1914 another “shot heard round the world” was fired by Gavrilo Princip at Sarajevo, triggering World War I. In 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald fired a shot that was heard round the world. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1964

January 29, Wednesday: The 9h Winter Olympic Games opened in Innsbruck, Austria.

The Dutch royal family announced that Princess Irene, 2d in line to the throne, had become a convert to Roman Catholicism (the House of Orange had been wholly Protestant for more than 3 centuries).

Negotiations in Washington DC between Panama and the USA, led by the OAS Peace Committee, went into deadlock.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a film by Stanley Kubrick based on the 1958 suspense novel RED ALERT by Peter George (Terry Southern had helped Kubrick turn this suspense drama into black comedy), was released in the United States. The actor Peter Sellers was playing 3 roles, the role of Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, the role of President Merkin Muffley (based on Adlai Stephenson II), and the role of Dr. Strangelove.18

Dr. Strangelove performing the “quenelle” Originally Sellers had contracted to be in addition the pilot of the B-52 Stratofortress carrying the atom bombs, but when he sprained an ankle and couldn’t get into the cockpit this role had been reassigned to Slim Pickins.19 TIMELINE OF EXPLOSIONS ICBMS

18. The role of Dr. Merkwürdigliebe (Strangelove) was an amalgam of Herman Kahn, John von Neumann, and Wernher von Braun, and was not based as is commonly supposed upon Henry Kissinger. It is merely one of those preposterous but unstoppable urban legends, that actually Sellers played every role in this movie except for the secretary in bra and panties in the hotel suite (played by Tracy Reed, whose camera experience was having in the June 1962 issue of Playboy been the centerfold, “Miss Foreign Affairs”). 19. John Wayne turned down the opportunity, derogating the production as “pinko.” Pickins, who was never shown the script, played his role straight and learned only later that this had been presented as black comedy. George C. Scott proved so unwilling to take his character, General Turgidson, a role based on SAC commander Curtis LeMay, over the top, that Kubrick needed to trick him by asking him to “entertain the crew” in some shots that were mere “practice runs.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE April 21, Tuesday: A Transit 5BN-3 satellite carrying a General Electric SNAP-9A system for nuclear auxiliary power, that is, a nuclear reactor based upon Plutonium238, burned up in the atmosphere. The fissile material, all 2.1 pounds of it, thus “vaporized” and “dispersed widely.” According to an interview conducted in August 1988 with Dr. John Gofman, professor emeritus of medical physics at UC-Berkeley, this caused an increase in the rate of lung cancer. Most of what the public now knows about the accident comes from a report published on April 24-28, 1989 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency, and from the Swedish National Institute for Radiation Protection, based in Stockholm, entitled “Emergency Preparedness for Nuclear-Powered Satellites.” Where were you and what were you doing in 1964? If you were alive and aware in 1964 and yet remember nothing whatever about all this from your perusal of the newspapers — needless to say you have no reason to fault your memory. The strange thing is, I may or may not have witnessed this accident. At least, it was in 1964 that I was in the coastal hills of California during the night, inland from the Point Mugu rocket station, as a US Marine 1st lieutenant on night training maneuvers, when I witnessed one humongous rocket take off and arch out across the Pacific. The rocket went up for a certain distance and then lost its stability and began to pinwheel in the most spectacular manner. It gyrated for an extended period of time spewing comet-trails of rust-colored sparks before finally, as it began to spiral downward, the station’s security officer pressed the red button and abruptly ended its show. The entire thing took place in silence, and ceased long before the first of the roar came to us from that distance. When my spouse and I came later to live atop a hill in Irvine just south of Disneyland, I must say that although for color this Point Mugu rocket of 1964 wasn’t all that much, for activity and movement this rocket sure did beat out anything I have ever seen for an evening’s fireworks display over the Anaheim suburb to the north of our home. It is interesting to speculate that in addition to a display of incompetence and the waste of tax dollars, I was perhaps witness to the creation of a radioactive cloud which would drift silent and deadly across America. Of the 24 space missions flown to the present date by the USA at least 3 which have involved quantities of onboard nuclear materials have admittedly had accidents. Of the total of 39 space missions flown by the USSR at least 6 which have involved quantities of onboard nuclear materials, such as the Cosmos-954 which disintegrated over Great Slave Lake in 1978, have had accidents. –There may have been more from each nation, but this is what has been so far acknowledged. ASSLEY ICBMS

October 7, Wednesday: Sidney Lumet transformed Eugene Burdick’s and Harvey Wheeler’s 1962 atomic-warfare novel FAIL-SAFE into a nightmarish movie starring Henry Fonda, Dan O’Herlihy, and Walter Matthau (in 2000 this would be recycled as a live TV play on CBS). ICBMS

December 15, Tuesday: An Italian crew launched San Marcos 1 into orbit aboard a US rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia. This was the 1st artificial satellite constructed wholly outside either of the 2 space powers. ICBMS

The Canadian House of Commons approved a government plan to replace the red ensign flag with one featuring a red maple leaf in a white stripe with 2 red stripes at each end (and some people say there is no such thing as progress).

Lovers: A Narrative in Ten Scenes for harpsichord, oboe, cello and percussion by Ned Rorem was performed for the first time, in Carnegie Recital Hall, New York. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1965

April 3, Saturday: An American campaign against North Vietnam’s transport system was initiated. In a month-long offensive Navy and Air Force planes would strike at bridges, road and rail junctions, truck parks, and supply depots.

We put into orbit SNAP-10A, the initial nuclear reactor out there (it’ll whiz around this planet for some 4 millennia, or until something goes badly wrong). ICBMS

The human population of this planet was at about 3.2 billion, by way of contrast with the present more than doubling to greater than 7.2 billion mouths.A tenth of the world’s 1965 population would have been 320 million, which is the present population level of the United States of America. W.H. Auden inquired, in “As it Seemed to Us” in The New Yorker (pages 159-194), “How can we contemplate the not so distant future with anything but alarm when no method both morally tolerable and practically effective has yet been discovered for reducing the population of the world to a tenth of its present size and keeping it there?”

November 9, Tuesday: There was a massive power outage in the northeastern United States and several nuclear bomb detectors near major US cities –circuits intended to distinguish between regular power outages and power outages caused by a nuclear attack– malfunctioned due to circuit errors. They warned the Command Center of the Office of Emergency Planning of an attack and the office went to full alert. ICBMS

CLOSE CALLS

A fire at the plutonium-processing Rocky Flats Plant in Golden, Colorado exposed a October 11, 1965 crew of 25 to up to 17 times the legal limit for radiation.

There was a massive power outage in the northeastern United States and several nuclear bomb detectors near major US cities –circuits intended to distinguish between November 9, 1965 regular power outages and power outages caused by a nuclear attack– malfunctioned due to circuit errors. They warned the Command Center of the Office of Emergency Planning of an attack and the office went to full alert.

An A-4E Skyhawk with its B43 nuclear bomb fell off our aircraft carrier USS Ticond- eroga while the ship was underway from Vietnam to Yokosuka, Japan. Plane, pilot, December 5, 1965 and nuke came to rest at a depth of 16,200 feet somewhere (it is presumably best that nobody find out exactly where this happened). HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1966

July 21, Thursday: Gemini 10 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. During its 3-day flight it had achieved docking with an Agena rocket and had then used that vehicle for propulsion. Astronaut Michael Collins had performed a space walk and had retrieved a meteroid detection box off of the Agena. This had been, at 764 kilometers above the surface of the Earth, the farthest travel as yet into space by a manned vehicle. ICBMS

October 27, Thursday: China announced that it had become able to deliver a nuclear weapon by guided missile. ICBMS

The United Nations General Assembly ended the South African mandate over South West Africa (Namibia), and brought the area under direct UN control. South Africa would refuse to withdraw and would continue its control. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1967

January 27, Friday: A Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, banned something that nobody had ever even thought of doing, to wit, the placing of nuclear weapons in earth orbit. ICBMS READ THE FULL TEXT

May 23, Tuesday: When a powerful solar flare accompanied by coronal mass ejection interfered with multiple NORAD radars over the Northern Hemisphere, this was taken to be intentional jamming of the radars by the Soviets, accompanying an attack on the USA. We came uncomfortably close to launching nuclear bombers for a counter-strike. ICBMS

CLOSE CALLS

Shortly after refueling, the Soviet nuclear icebreaker Lenin’s cooling system started to leak. They sledgehammered their way through its concrete and metal biological 1967 shield but then, with the leak fixed, they couldn’t repair this sledgehammer damage: all 3 of the vessel’s reactors would need to be removed, and replaced with 2 OK-900 reactors. This would take them until early 1970.

When a powerful solar flare accompanied by coronal mass ejection interfered with multiple NORAD radars over the Northern Hemisphere, this was taken to be inten- May 23, 1967 tional jamming of the radars by the Soviets, accompanying an attack on the USA. We came uncomfortably close to launching nuclear bombers for a counter-strike.

A fire broke out in the navigator’s compartment of a B-52. The bomber crashed 7 miles from Thule Air Base, Greenland, rupturing its nuclear payload of 4 H-bombs. Bomb fragments would be recycled at Pantex in Amarillo, Texas. Contaminated ice January 21, 1968 and debris would be buried somewhere in the United States of America, perhaps out- side of Aiken, South Carolina. The incident, for which we were sorry, outraged our ally Denmark, as Greenland is theirs and they had explicitly forbidden any nuclear weapons within their territory.

“What was to be a blessing we have made a curse. We do not see our hand in what happens, so we call certain events melancholy accidents when they are the inevitabilities of our projects, and we call other events necessities because we will not change our minds.” — Stanley Cavell, THE SENSES OF WALDEN, U of Chicago P, 1981, page 82 HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

September 10, Sunday: US planes bombed Campha, North Vietnam. This was the 1st time we had attacked port facilities.

A referendum in Gibraltar called for continued British rule by a vote of 12,138-44.

Glenn Seaborg, chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, announced that scientists at the University of California – Berkeley had created the heaviest isotope yet observed, mendelevium-258, element 101.

The US space probe Surveyor 5 made a soft landing on the Moon and begins to analyze its soil. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1968

May 18, Saturday:One of our rockets, carrying a SNAP-19B2 reactor, had to be aborted at launch — but fortunately, its radioactive materials would be retrieved still intact. ICBMS

Prime Minister Nguyen Van Loc of the Saigon government and his cabinet resigned. President Thieu appointed Tran Van Huong to replace him.

In Prague, Soviet prime minister Aleksei Kosygin promised that the USSR accepted the democratization of Czechoslovakia.

President de Gaulle returned to France to deal with the widespread strikes and protests. Subway and bus service ended in Paris, taxis were greatly reduced. Workers occupied the shipyards at St.-Nazaire. Police took over the international telephone and telegraph exchange.

Moralities, scenic cantatas by Hans Werner Henze to words of Auden after Aesop was performed for the first time, in Cincinnati.

Seven Japanese Love Poems for voice and piano by Shulamit Ran to traditional words, was performed for the first time, in Judson Hall, New York.

October 11, Friday: Five Soviet citizens were sentenced in a Moscow court to prison terms and exile for taking part in a demonstration opposing the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The French National Assembly adopted an education reform bill in response to the events of the previous May. This provided for the decentralization of the country’s universities.

The founding convention of the separatist Parti Québecois opened in the city of Quebec. It was a merger of the Mouvement Souveraineté-Association with the Ralliement National.

Apollo 7 was launched into space from Cape Kennedy, Florida. this was the 1st test of the vehicle designed to bring humans to the moon (and back). ICBMS

Funktion Gelb for tape by Gottfried Michael Koenig was performed for the initial time, in Berlin.

Linoi for clarinet and piano by Harrison Birtwistle was performed for the initial time, in the Purcell Room, London.

Four of the Five Pieces for piano by Arthur Berger were performed for the initial time, in New York.

Reverie and Rondo for orchestra by Ulysses Kay was performed for the initial time, in Flint, Michigan. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 22, Tuesday: On this day Private 1st Class Robert Carlos Pahcheka of Indiahoma, Oklahoma, of H Company, 2d Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine Division, USMC and Private 1st Class Kenneth Allen Pahl of Minneapolis, Minnesota, of C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division, United States Army, were killed in Vietnam.

On this night Republican presidential candidate Richard Milhous Nixon instructed H.R. Haldeman (his closest aide and future chief of staff, who would be a key member of the Watergate cover-up crowd in the White House) that he wanted him to “monkey wrench” (that is, to sabotage) President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s current efforts to begin negotiations to wind down the war in Vietnam (we know this, because Haldeman wrote Nixon’s instruction down, and because we have now transcribed Haldeman’s notes).

The Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences produced an argument against the stated aims of the USSR in having invaded their nation.

After 163 orbits and 12 days in space, Apollo 7 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean south of Bermuda. ICBMS

After a 12-day boycott most students in Quebec returned to classes, because administrators had agreed to meet with them about their demands. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE December 21, Saturday: At 7:51AM Apollo 8 blasted off from Cape Kennedy to convey 3 astronauts to the moon, and back. ICBMS

Help! Help! The Globolinks!, an opera by Gian-Carlo Menotti to his own words, was performed for the initial time, at the Hamburg Staatsoper.

December 24, Tuesday: At 9:49AM UTC the crew of Apollo 8 –Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders– became the 1st beings from the planet Earth (so far as we know) to orbit that planet’s moon. As they did, they broadcasted live television images of the event. It was the greatest show off earth. ICBMS

December 25, Wednesday: At 6:10AM UTC, after 10 orbits in 20 hours, Apollo 8 left moon orbit and headed home. ICBMS

December 28, Saturday: At 4:51AM, Apollo 8 returned safely to earth after orbiting the moon. This had been, at 855,000 kilometers, the longest space flight so far. After traveling that distance they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, about 1,600 kilometers southwest of Hawaii, 6.5 kilometers from the main recovery ship. ICBMS

In retaliation for the attack of 2 days earlier, Israeli forces raided Beirut International Airport. They destroyed 13 planes belonging to the airlines of 3 Arab nations (this seemed like a good idea at the time). HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1969

March 5, Wednesday: When a couple of Viet Cong opened fire on the car of Tran Van Huong in Saigon, they were subdued by his security force. The Prime Minister had not been injured.

Aboard Apollo 9, 2 of the astronauts moved from the Command Module into the Lunar Module. ICBMS

March 6, Thursday: Saigon came under heavy shelling by Communist forces, killing 22 and injuring 35.

Palestinian terrorists exploded a bomb in the cafeteria of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, injuring 29.

Astronaut Richard Schweickart exited the Lunar Module of Apollo 9 for a 40-minute “walk” in space. ICBMS

March 7, Friday: 100,000 demonstrated outside the Chinese embassy in Moscow.

The 2 astronauts inside the Lunar Module of Apollo 9 detached it from the Command Module and piloted it independently for more than 6 hours. After their return to the Command Module this Lunar Module was jettisoned, along with its unshielded SNAP nuclear reactor. ICBMS

May 18, Sunday: The Apollo 10 manned moon mission blasted off from Cape Kennedy. ICBMS

Streams in the Desert for chorus and orchestra by Howard Hanson to words from the Bible was performed for the initial time, at Texas Technology College, Lubbock, Texas, the composer conducting.

May 24, Saturday: Having jettisoned the lunar module, Apollo 10 left lunar orbit. ICBMS

A raid by Biafran war planes on Benin destroyed a Nigerian fighter and some civilian aircraft.

A federal judge ordered the sheriff of Alameda County to cease and desist from beating and torturing prisoners arrested in civil-disobedience protests. At the urging of the Berkeley city council, most National Guard troops were removed from the city. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE July 19, Sunday: Apollo 11 went into orbit around the moon. ICBMS

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India ordered the nationalization of the 14 largest banks in the country which controlled 75% of the private deposits.

July 20, Monday: Muhammad Hidayat Ullah replaced Varahagiri Venkata Giri as acting President of India. Giri resigns in order to run for president.

At 17:47PM (on the UTC Universal Time Clock) the lunar module of Apollo 11 in lunar orbit separated from its command module. ICBMS

At 20:17PM UTC the lunar module of Apollo 11 touched down on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility.

July 21, Tuesday: At 2:56AM (on the UTC Universal Time Clock) Neil Armstrong, a human being from the planet Earth, stepped down onto the surface of the Moon. He was followed 20 minutes later by his companion Edwin Aldrin. ICBMS

Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, playwright Viktor Rosov, and author and playwright Vasily Aksyonov were dropped from the editorial board of the magazine Yunost.

At 17:54 on the UTC, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin blasted off in their lunar module from the moon’s surface, bringing back toward Earth with them a solar wind sampler, photographs, and about 25 kilos of rocks.

At 21:35 on the UTC, behind the moon and out of sight and communication with the earth, the lunar module of Apollo 11 carrying Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin and about 25 kilos of moon rocks successfully docked with the command module of Apollo 11.

Racial violence in Columbus, Ohio resulted in one death while 36 were injured, and 434 taken into custody.

July 22, Wednesday: At 4:56AM (on the UTC Universal Time Clock) Apollo 11 blasted itself out of lunar orbit in the approximate direction of the planet Earth. ICBMS

El Salavador troops in Honduras failed to meet a deadline for withdrawals behind their border, and demanded protection for the thousands of Salvadorans living in Honduras.

In York, Pennsylvania one person had died 37 had been injured, and 19 had been taken into custody during a race riot. The National Guard was mobilized to control this situation. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 19, Sunday: At 0654 UTC the lunar module of Apollo 12 set down on the moon in the Ocean of Storms. At 1145 UTC mission commander Charles (Pete) Conrad stepped on to the lunar surface. At 1214 UTC he was joined there by Alan Bean. They explored the area for 4 hours, traveling as far as 400 meters from their vehicle and setting out several scientific data collection devices. ICBMS

A report by the European Commission on Human Rights concluded that the Greek military government practiced torture as a matter of policy and regularly denied its citizens their human rights. It further concluded that contrary to the claim they had made there had been no real Communist threat at the time of their 1967 coup.

Beauty and the Beast, a ballet by Thea Musgrave to a scenario by Graham after Barbot Villeneuve, was performed for the initial time, in Sadler’s Wells Theater, London.

Valentine for double bass by Jacob Druckman was performed for the initial time, in Composer’s Theater, New York City.

Contrafactum for orchestra by Charles Wuorinen was performed for the initial time, in The Auditorium of the University of Iowa, Iowa City.

The Greek government revealed that Mikis Theodorakis had been imprisoned again, at Oropos north of Athens.

Vice President Spiro Agnew, speaking in New Orleans, offered that the Vietnam War moratorium of 4 days earlier had been “encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.”

Study no.2 “Coulée” for organ György Ligeti was performed for the initial time, in Basilika Seckau, Graz. ...pianissimo... for orchestra by Alfred Schnittke was performed for the initial time, in DonaueschinGeneral

War Scenes, a cycle for voice and piano by Ned Rorem to words of Whitman, was performed for the initial time, in Constitution Hall, Washington DC. The work was dedicated “to those who died in Vietnam, both sides, during the composition: 20-30 June 1969.”

November 7, Friday: West Germany’s 1st satellite, the 71-kilogram “Azur,” was lifted into orbit by a United States rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE November 24, Monday: In ceremonies in Washington, President Richard Milhous Nixon and Soviet President Nikolai V. Podgorny signed a nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Apollo 12 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean 650 kilometers southeast of Pago Pago, having effected the 2d landing on the moon. ICBMS

Funktion Indigo for tape by Gottfried Michael Koenig was performed for the initial time, in Utrecht.

Chamber Symphony by T.J. Anderson was performed for the initial time, in Nashville. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1970

Lyndon LaRouche, Jr. would during this decade become interested in the possible uses of lasers and other directed energy weapons against incoming nuclear warheads. ICBMS

The Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini delivered lectures on Islamic government, lectures that were published in Iraq and would be smuggled into Iran.

April 3, Friday: Bratislava Pravda reported that former Foreign Minister Jiri Hajek and other high ranking figures of the pre-invasion government and party had been expelled from the Communist Party.

“Night of the Four Moons for alto, alto flute, banjo, electric cello, and percussion to words of Garcia Lorca” was performed for the initial time, in Springfield, Pennsylvania (this work had been composed by George Crumb exclusively during the flight of Apollo 11, July 16th-24th, 1969). ICBMS

April 11, Saturday: Bodies from a massacre of Vietnamese civilians begin appearing in the Mekong River in the southeast of Cambodia.

The 3d manned mission to the moon, Apollo 13, blasted off from Cape Kennedy. Aboard were James Lovell, Fred Haise, and John Swigert. ICBMS

Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York signed a bill allowing abortion on demand in the 1st 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Day after day, a song for voice and piano by Frank Bridge to words of Tagore, was performed for the initial time, at the Royal College of Music, London. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE April 14, Tuesday: In Japan, Canon, Inc. introduced the pocket calculator.

Viet Cong forces captured Krek from Cambodian government troops. Cambodian Prime Minister Lon Nol issued an urgent appeal for arms to fight communists.

At 0307 UTC at a distance of 205,000 miles from earth, an oxygen tank in the service module of Apollo 13 exploded. The crew reported “Houston, we’ve got a problem.” The 3 astronauts moved temporarily into the Lunar Module to use its power and fuel. They would round the moon and head back to earth, jetisoning the LM with its SNAP nuclear power reactor in such manner that, rather than being left safely behind on the surface of the moon, this SNAP and its atomic contamination would plunge into the Pacific Ocean. To salvage 3 lives, and the reputation of our space program, we were going to contaminate the largest ocean on the home planet with 3.9 kilograms of Plutonium-238 — and we were going to do this without so much as thinking about it. ICBMS

Music for Expo ‘70 for mulitchannel tape by Pauline Oliveros was performed for the first time, in Osaka.

Kingdom Come for circus band, orchestra and organ by Henry Brant was performed for the first time, in Oakland, California. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE April 17, Friday: The Creation op.111 for solo voices, chorus and orchestra by Vincent Persichetti, to his own words, was performed for the initial time, in Alice Tully Hall, New York.

Lingua III: In the Can for 40 actors, slides, film and tape by Kenneth Gaburo was performed for the initial time, at the University of Oregon.

“Houston, you have a problem.” The SNAP-27 radioisotope thermoelectric generator used on the Apollo-13 mission “was successfully targeted to deposit intact in the Tonga Trench in the South Pacific, where it is effectively isolated from man’s environment,” according to page 205 of the FINAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT FOR THE ULYSSES MISSION (TIER 2), issued by the Office of Space and Applications, Solar Systems Exploration Division, NASA, in June 1990. TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS

Which is to say, 3.9 kilograms of Plutonium-238 are now lying in a lump on the ocean floor, allegedly south of the island of Fiji at a depth of 3 1/2 miles (repeated requests of the US government, that it provide access to the factual observations and reports upon which this allegation has ostensibly been based, have been ignored, and thus we have never had any way to evaluate the truthfulness of this interested claim). HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE The canister of this device had not been designed to withstand seawater and the material it encloses will emit radiation for approximately the next two millennia. ICBMS

“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”

— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955) HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1971

January 31, Sunday: Pakistan granted asylum to the 2 Kashmiri plane hijackers in Lahore.

Israeli forces attacked 2 Palestinian guerrilla strongholds in southern Lebanon, destroying a regional headquarters.

Telephone service began between East and West Berlin.

At 4:03PM, Apollo 14 blasted off from Cape Kennedy carrying 3 men on a mission to the moon. ICBMS

When gunfire broke out during a protest march by hispanics in Los Angeles, deputies fired into the crowd. One person was killed and 21 injured, and $200,000 damage is done.

Juilliard Serenade/Tempo Libero II for chamber orchestra by Bruno Maderna was performed for the initial time, in New York.

February 5, Friday: 0918 UTC: Alan Shepherd and Edgar Mitchell from Apollo 14 became the 5th and 6th humans to stand on the moon. They hit the 1st golf ball on the moon. ICBMS

The Spanish government ended martial law in the Basque province of Guipuzcoa.

Attacks by republicans with gasoline bombs against British troops continued in Belfast.

February 6, Saturday: 5 people were killed in a night of rioting in Belfast.

After 2 walks on the moon, the Apollo 14 astronauts blasted off from the lunar surface to rejoin the command module in orbit. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE February 9, Tuesday: San Fernando Earthquake, M6.7

Norwegian reporter Per Egil Hegge was expelled from the Soviet Union (Alyeksandr Solzhenitsyn had dictated his Nobel acceptance speech to a group that included Hegge).

Members of the European Economic Community agreed on plans to create an economic and monetary union within ten years.

Five civilians were killed on a mountain road near Enniskillen, Northern Ireland by a booby trap apparently intended for British soldiers.

Speaking in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Senator Sam Ervin announced that the United States Passport Office kept a secret file containing more than 240,000 American citizens. The government acknowledged the existence of this file but claimed that it was entirely innocent in that it contained only American citizens “known or suspected” to be “communists or subversives.”

The astronauts aboard Apollo 14, Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean south of Samoa, bringing with them 44 kilograms of moon rocks. ICBMS

March 30, Tuesday: The US deployed its Poseidon Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile. ICBMS July 26, Monday: At 9:34AM in Cape Kennedy, Apollo 15 blasted off. ICBMS

Anti-government terrorist incidents took place in 4 cities in Argentina. In Cordoba, 23 bombs had been placed throughout the city, 15 of which exploded. In Rosario, 2 bombs exploded at an exclusive golf club. In Baccar, near Buenos Aires, guerrillas took over a milk transport truck and handed out the milk to residents of the town. In Tucuman, terrorists killed 2 policemen and detonated a bomb in a railroad station.

July 30, Friday midnight: The Chicago Union Stockyard offed its last pig and went out of business.

Dzemal Bijedic replaced Mitja Ribicic as President of the Federal Executive Council of Yugoslavia.

President Rafael Caldera of Venezuela signed legislation nationalizing the nation’s oil industry.

At 22:16 UTC, Apollo 15, with astronauts David Scott and James Irwin, landed at the Mare Imbrium as astronaut Alfred Worden remained in orbit around the moon. ICBMS

July 31, Saturday: A Lunar Roving Vehicle was deployed on the moon for the initial time, by astronauts David Scott and James Irwin. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

August 1, Sunday: The Apollo 15 astronauts engaged in a 2d day of lunar exploration. ICBMS

Flooding of the Red River killed 100,000 people in North Vietnam.

August 2, Monday: The US acknowledged that we had some 30,000 CIA-sponsored irregulars operating in Laos.

The government of Sudan expelled the Bulgarian ambassador and the counselor of the Soviet embassy for complicity in a recent coup attempt.

After a 3d exploration of the lunar surface, David Scott and James Irwin blasted off and rejoined Alfred Worden in orbit. ICBMS

US Secretary of State William Rogers announced that his country would no longer opposes membership in the United Nations by the Peoples Republic of China — but also it would insist that the Taiwan government remain in the organization.

Helio Bicudo, prosecutor in Sao Paulo who indicted several policemen involved in conservative death squads, was sacked by the government.

Transitions, a Fantasy for Ten Instruments by T.J. Anderson was performed for the initial time, at Tanglewood near Lenox, Massachusetts.

August 3, Tuesday: In the Vaucluse Mountains, the initial ballistic nuclear missiles ever deployed by France became operational. ICBMS

August 5, Thursday: Turkey and China established diplomatic relations.

Alfred Worden became the initial astronaut to “go for a walk in space,” so to speak, when he ventured outside Apollo 15 between the earth and the moon. ICBMS

The National Assembly of Portugal abolished official press censorship, although it retained penalties for publications that were deemed to be “against the national interest.”

Engelbert Kreuzer was sentenced by a court in Regensburg to 7 years in prison for his role in more than 30,000 murders at Babi Yar outside Kiev during World War II (2 others were excused from trial on account of poor health). ANTISEMITISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE August 7, Saturday: At a meeting in Wellington, New Zealand, the South Pacific Forum was founded by Australia, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Nauru, New Zealand, Tonga, and Western Samoa.

Apollo 15 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii. ICBMS

The Fields of Sorrow for two sopranos, winds, vibraphone and two pianos to words of Decimus Ausonius was performed for the initial time, in Dartington, conducted by its composer Harrison Birtwistle.

September: The communications difficulties that had been encountered during the Cuba Missile Crisis had caused the creation of a “Hot Line,” between Washington DC and Moscow (this involved no “red telephone,” but Teletype machines connected both by cable and radio). At this point the cable and radio circuits were supplemented by 2 US Intelsat satellites and two Soviet Molniya II satellites. ATOM BOMB ICBMS

September 30, Thursday: Agreement on Measures to Reduce the Risk of Outbreak of Nuclear War between the United States of America (USA) and the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics (USSR). READ THE FULL TEXT ICBMS

The Oval Office tapes captured President Richard Milhous Nixon commenting to Attorney-General John N. Mitchell that appointing a woman to the Supreme Court would gain him an additional percent or 2 of the vote in 1972: “So I lean to a woman only because, frankly, I think at this time, John, we got to pick up every half a percentage point we can.” He elaborated on the fact that this would be with the opposition of Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, as well as being against his own inclinations: “I don’t think a woman should be in any government job whatever. I mean, I really don’t. The reason why I do is mainly because they are erratic. And emotional. Men are erratic and emotional, too, but the point is a woman is more likely to be.” SEXISM

November 5, Friday: Concerto for violin, cello and orchestra by Roger Sessions was performed for the initial time, in New York.

Conservative youths destroyed a Madrid art gallery featuring 24 engravings by Pablo Picasso (the engravings were part of an exhibit that had honored Picasso’s 90th birthday on October 25th).

An attempt by western European nations to launch a test satellite from French Guiana failed because there were explosions in the rocket shortly after launch. ICBMS

Young Caesar, a puppet opera by Lou Harrison to words of Gordon and the composer, was performed for the initial time, at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1972

An accidental re-entry of an experimental US reactor caused the entire spacecraft to vaporize. This single incident was later calculated to contribute about 10% of the total amount of plutonium fallout produced by all the world’s atmospheric tests (the incident has been written up by Michio Kaku, physics professor at the City University of New York). TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS ICBMS

This accident is of course not included in the timeline of nuclear detonations: TIMELINE OF EXPLOSIONS

“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”

— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955)

April 20, Thursday: North Vietnamese forces captured a stretch of Route One in Cambodia, northwest of Saigon.

Having touched down in the Descartes highlands of the moon, at 02:23 UTC John Young and Charles Duke of Apollo 16 became the 9th and 10th humans to set foot on that surface. ICBMS

Lord Byron, an opera by Virgil Thomson to words of Larson, was performed for the initial time, in the Juilliard Theater of New York City. After being rejected by its commissioner, the Metropolitan Opera, the director of the Juilliard School, Peter Mennin, offered the venue to Thomson. The director was John Houseman, who led the school’s theater department. Reviews were strongly mixed.

April 21, Friday: President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan signed a new interim constitution and was sworn in as president under it.

Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke exited their lunar module. They spent over 6 hours exploring the surface of the moon. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE April 22, Saturday: 4 North Vietnamese divisions struck across the Cambodian border into the Central Highlands of South Vietnam.

Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke spent 7 hours and 23 minutes exploring the surface of this planet’s moon. ICBMS

“The natives were restless.” Protests against the lengthy and painful war in Indochina took place across the United States of America (30,000-60,000 marched in New York City, 30,000/40,000 in San Francisco, and more than 10,000 in Los Angeles). As usual, this had no effect at all on our government — although it must have been intensely satisfying for that government’s subjects.

Jubilate Deo for chorus and organ by William Walton was performed for the initial time, at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.

April 23, Sunday: Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke spent 5 hours and 40 minutes exploring the surface of the moon. They then blasted off from the moon and rejoined fellow astronaut Ken Mattingly orbiting the moon. ICBMS

A referendum in France favored expansion of the EEC by a vote of 68&-32%. However, only 60% of the electorate voted.

Fool’s Fanfare for male speaker, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, ukulele and 2 percussionists by Peter Maxwell Davies to words of Shakespeare, was performed for the initial time, in Southwark Cathedral, London, the composer conducting. Also premiered was Epilogue for baritone, horn, 4 trombones and 6 tam-tams by Harrison Birtwistle to words of Shakespeare.

April 27, Thursday: North Vietnamese forces advanced to within 5 kilometers of Quangtri.

Kwame Nkrumah died in Bucharest.

Vietnam peace talks resumed in Paris a month after President Richard Milhous Nixon had suspended them.

At 19:45 UTC Astronauts Don Young, Charles Duke and Ken Mattingly returned to earth aboard their spacecraft Apollo 16, in the Pacific Ocean southeast of Christmas Island, within 2 kilometers of their target. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE May 24, Wednesday: When 2 car bombs exploded at the US Army European headquarters in Heidelberg, 1 person was killed and 7 injured.

Pioneer 10 became the 1st Earth vehicle to cross the orbit of Mars. ICBMS

George W. Bush asked for a transfer to Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama so he would be able to work in the Senate campaign of a family friend, Winton “Red” Blount Jr. Although his unit would not approve this transfer, the reserve pilot would go anyway.

YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT EITHER THE REALITY OF TIME OVER THAT OF CHANGE, OR CHANGE OVER TIME — IT’S PARMENIDES, OR HERACLITUS. I HAVE GONE WITH HERACLITUS.

May 26, Friday: The SALT I Antiballistic Missile Treaty limiting both offensive and defensive nuclear weapons was signed by President Richard Milhous Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow.20 ICBMS Men on the Moon “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

20. In December 2001 the US would officially withdraw from this major arms control accord of the nuclear era. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

November: Negotiations began toward a a SALT II Antiballistic Missile Treaty. ICBMS

December 7, Thursday: At a public event in Manila, Carlo Dimailig attacked Philippine 1st lady Imelda Marcos with a knife and managed to slash her hands. The knife wounds would require 75 stitches. His gunshot wounds, from her guards, were immediately fatal.

India and Pakistan reached agreement on a truce line in Kashmir and the withdrawal of forces behind it.

At 12:33AM, with 3 astronauts aboard, Apollo 17 blasted off from Cape Kennedy. ICBMS

The Belgian Parliament approved the expansion of the EEC to include Great Britain, Ireland, and Denmark.

Voter s in Ireland overwhelmingly agreed to remove the Roman Catholic Church from special status in the constitution. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1973

August 17, Friday: Secretary of Defense James Rodney Schlesinger announced that our enemy the Soviet Union has successfully tested a MIRV (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicle). He was having grave doubts about the adequacy of our nation’s assured nuclear destruction strategy. Would we be able to kill all of them before they killed all of us — or were all of us going to die at the very same time? ICBMS

Phillips Petroleum Company admitted having made a $100,000 illegal contribution to President Richard Milhous Nixon’s Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CREEP). Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (MMM) also admitted having made a $30,000 illegal contribution to CREEP.

North/White for orchestra and snowmobile by R. Murray Schafer was performed for the initial time, in Vancouver.

December 3, Monday: Viet Cong rockets destroyed 18,000,000 gallons of fuel stored near Saigon, almost half the government’s civilian fuel supply.

The British public began a run on gasoline.

The Greek government banned driving on alternate Sundays.

The American space probe Pioneer 10 passed close above the surface of the planet Jupiter. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1974

Summer: Washington DC was secretly abuzz about some remarks President Richard Milhous Nixon had made in a White House meeting, but these were remarks that would not reach the public media until an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on February 7th, 1976 followed by an article in the Washington Post by Murray Marder on February 9th “Nixon ‘A-Threat’ Clarified.” Representative Charles Grandison “Charlie” Rose III (Democrat, North Carolina) was spreading it around the Capitol that the President had said “I can go in my office and pick up the telephone and in 25 minutes, millions of people will be dead.” Representative Clem Rogers McSpadden (Democrat, Oklahoma) was spreading it around the Capitol that the President had said “I can pick up the phone and 70 million Russians can be killed in 20 minutes.” Clarifying this, these Representatives would point out that they had not considered the remark to have been an attempt to deliver a threat, Representative Rose explaining that “my concern at the time was why he found it necessary to make the statement at all.” Senator Alan Cranston (Democrat, California), who had not himself been present at this meeting, would recall 2 Congressmen informing him that the words the President had uttered had been “At any moment, I could go into the other room and press a button and 20 minutes later 60 million people would be dead.” During February 1976 Senator Cranston would also inform the press that subsequent to hearing such accounts of the White House conversation, he had gone to Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger with a concern about “the need of keeping a berserk President from plunging us into a holocaust.” He would relate that it was his understanding that the President had made the statement after averring to these congressmen that his work in maintaining world peace was far more important than any “little burglary.” ICBMS

November 24, Sunday: After 2 days of meetings in Vladivostok, Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and President Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. reached a preliminary agreement to limit the number of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, including those capable of launching multiple independently targeted warheads (MIRV). ICBMS

American anthropologists Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discovered the remains of AL 288-1, a female Australopithecus afarensis, near Hadar, Ethiopia. Over the following 3 weeks their team, which included French geologist Maurice Taieb and French paleontologist Yves Coppens, would unearth almost half of a skeleton estimated to be 3,200,000 years old. The skeleton showed characteristics of both human and ape. They would refer to this prehistoric person as “Lucy.”

Despite denials by the Irish Republican Army, 6 men from Northern Ireland were charged with the Birmingham pub bombings of November 21st. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1975

July 17, Tuesday: The Popular Democratic Party left the Portuguese government. There remained only two parties in power: the Communists and their close ally, the Portuguese Democratic Movement.

An Irish Republican Army bomb killed 4 British soldiers in Armagh, Northern Ireland.

At 1709 on the UTC clock, Soviet and American spacemen linked their Apollo and Soyuz crafts and joined hands in low orbit around the planet Earth. ICBMS

Satiric Dances for a Comedy by Aristophanes for band by Norman Dello Joio was performed for the initial time, in Concord, Massachusetts (the work had been commissioned by the Concord Band in honor of the bicentennial of the Battle of Concord).21

21. In certain circles, a battle is considered something to commemorate (go figure). HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1976

February: On Little Oyster Bay at the outskirts of a bad-luck small town in Tasmania south of Hobart, Kettering, in the middle of the night, a man awoke to witness a “plane” coming down on the shore of Little Oyster Cove, with a widespread glow spreading across the area. When he went in his night-robe to investigate, he found “an extraordinary dome-shaped object.” “Windows around the object gave off a bright light. The exterior looked like aluminium [sic].… Through the three or four windows, the witness saw a tall cylindrical object [which he likened to a ship’s compass mounting] and ‘motionless grey [sic] shapes’… perhaps entities.” As the witness drew close he could hear a humming noise, like that of an electric motor. The object slowly rose from the ground humming, increased its speed, became a dot in the sky, and disappeared. “The whole incident lasted about seven minutes.” The next morning this witness noticed that the grass on which the UFO had rested was scorched in a circle. This grass died and was replaced by a “tougher-cutting grass.” As a speculation, since once upon a time someone suspected that there was real gold among the feldspathoid rocks near Kettering, these aliens may have been after Kettering’s gold, and had been, as a number of humans had been, sadly disappointed, and had flown away. In any event, this flying-saucer sighting would be turned into an 8-episode television miniseries that was not less interesting than the famous Hollywood movie “The Boy with Blue Hair” in which after swimming in an over-treated swimming pool a swimmer’s hair had a mysterious tint until someone figured out that the tint was due to all that chlorine.

It was during this month that the American nation became aware of a scary remark that President Richard Milhous Nixon had made in a White House meeting while being impeached during the summer of 1974. The remark surfaced in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on February 7th, 1976 followed by an article in the Washington Post by Murray Marder on February 9th “Nixon ‘A-Threat’ Clarified.” Representative Charles Rose (Democrat, North Carolina) had recalled after the meeting that what the President had said was “I can go in my office and pick up the telephone and in 25 minutes, millions of people will be dead.” Representative Clem McSpadden (Democrat, Oklahoma) had recalled after the meeting that what the President had said was “I can pick up the phone and 70 million Russians can be killed in 20 minutes.” Clarifying this, these Representatives would point out that they had not considered the remark to have been an attempt to deliver a threat, Representative Rose explaining that “my concern at the time was why he found it necessary to make the statement at all.” Senator Alan Cranston (Democrat, California), who had not himself been present at this meeting, told the media that he recalled 2 Congressmen informing him that the words the President had uttered had been “At any moment, I could go into the other room and press a button and 20 minutes later 60 million people would be dead.” Senator Cranston recalled that subsequent to hearing such accounts of the White House conversation, he had gone to Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger with a concern about “the need of keeping a berserk President from plunging us into a holocaust.” It had been his understanding that the President had made the statement after averring to these congressmen that his work in maintaining world peace was far more important than any “little burglary.” ICBMS

News items relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: • Bill Gates wrote software routines for BASIC that enabled the Altair to use diskettes for storage. • David Bunnell published an open letter from Bill Gates to microcomputer hobbyists, complaining about software piracy. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1977

The movie “Star Wars” was released.

Dan Haggerty played “Grizzly” Adams in a 29-episode TV series.

Off Kamchatka in one of the close calls for this year, Soviet submarine K-171 accidentally released a nuclear HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE warhead. Not to worry, after a search involving dozens of ships and aircraft the warhead was recovered.

CLOSE CALLS

An explosion at the Plutonium Finishing Plant in Hanford, Washington blew out a quarter-inch-thick window of lead glass, showering worker Harold McCluskey with nitric acid and radioactive glass. The worker would be isolated for 5 months while ingesting an experimental drug to flush radioactivity — he had received the largest August 1976 dose of 241Am ever inhaled (500 times greater than the government occupational standard). By 1977 his radiation count would decline by about 80% and when a decade later he would die at the age of 75, the death would be recorded as having been due to natural causes.

Off Kamchatka, Soviet submarine K-171 accidentally released a nuclear warhead. 1977 After a search involving dozens of ships and aircraft the warhead was recovered.

At Jaslovské Bohunice, Czechoslovakia, a corroding reactor released intense radioac- February 22, 1977 tivity (the plant would need to be total decommissioned).

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had issued National Security Action Memorandum #160, in 1960, establishing a special very secret, very difficult Permissive Action Link (PAL) code be provided prior to the launching of any US nuclear missile. This was just to make certain that a global nuclear interchange had receiver proper prior authorization (was the characterization in “Doctor Strangelove” a description of the mistrust that US General Horace M. Wade experienced in regard to US General Thomas Power?). The intent of the new PAL code was to make the launch of such a missile “about as complex as performing a tonsillectomy while entering the patient from the wrong end.” To defeat this failsafe device, Dr. Bruce G. Blair pointed out in an article published in this year, the Strategic Air Command had for the following 17 years been requiring its launch crews to verify at each change of shift, that the special secret nuclear launch PAL code on each device remained set at 00000000. He pointed out also that in the silos he had himself worked in, merely 4 persons acting in tandem could easily activate a nuclear launch. He described how easy it would be to authorize a launch without Presidential authority. He noted that virtually anyone was able to gain permission to tour a launch facility, without any significant background checking. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1978

January 24, Tuesday: At 11:53AM Greenwich Mean Time, a Soviet Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite, Kosmos 954, intended to track our nuclear submarines and powered by an onboard nuclear reactor, failed to separate from its booster rocket and disintegrated on reentry above Canada’s Great Slave Lake. 68 pounds of U235 were dispersed over a wide area. 50 chunks and approximately 4,000 smaller particles would be collected from smoking potholes in the tundra. Perhaps 75% of the radioactive material, or 51 pounds, had been vaporized. ICBMS

By recounting only the record for US rockets in its publications and omitting what it knows about rockets from the USSR, NASA has managed not to take into consideration the long-term contamination, despite the fact that this accident has left 124,000 square kilometers of Canada’s surface contaminated with plutonium long- HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE term

ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE (the USSR eventually would share in the radwaste cleanup to the extent of 3,000,000 Canadian dollars). TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS

CLOSE CALLS

At Jaslovské Bohunice, Czechoslovakia, the reactor had become so corroded that it February 22, 1977 released intense radioactivity into the plant area. The plant had to be total decommis- sioned.

At 11:53AM Greenwich Mean Time, a Soviet Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite, Kosmos 954, intended to track our nuclear submarines and powered by an onboard nuclear reactor, failed to separate from its booster rocket and disintegrated on reentry above Canada’s Great Slave Lake. 68 pounds of U235 were dispersed over a wide area. 50 chunks and approximately 4,000 smaller particles would be collected from January 24, 1978 smoking potholes in the tundra. Perhaps 75% of the radioactive material, or 51 pounds, had been vaporized. By recounting only the record for US rockets in its pub- lications and omitting what it knows about rockets from the USSR, NASA has man- aged not to take into consideration the long-term contamination, despite the fact that this accident has left 124,000 square kilometers of Canada’s surface contaminated with plutonium long-term. The USSR would pay CAD$3,000,000 for Canada’s help.

When the crew of the submarine USS Puffer mistakenly opened a valve, up to 500 May 22, 1978 gallons of irradiated water spilled into Puget Sound in the State of Washington.

“What was to be a blessing we have made a curse. We do not see our hand in what happens, so we call certain events melancholy accidents when they are the inevitabilities of our projects, and we call other events necessities because we will not change our minds.” — Stanley Cavell, THE SENSES OF WALDEN, U of Chicago P, 1981, page 82 HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1979

June 18, Monday: In the Hofburg of Vienna, Austria, United States President Jimmy Carter and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev signed the “SALT II” Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. ICBMS

A draft constitution for the Islamic Republic of Iran was announced.

Sandinista rebels named a 5-man junta to act as a provisional government.

Solstice of Light for tenor, chorus and organ by Peter Maxwell Davies was performed for the initial time, in St. Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney.

November 9, Friday morning: At Colorado’s North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) a computer- room monkey hung the wrong tape, a training scenario simulating a Soviet attack on the United States. NORAD notified national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski that a Soviet submarine had launched 250 ballistic missiles toward the USA and that the President would need to retaliate within 3 to 7 minutes. This caused the scrambling of 10 interceptors and takeoff of the President’s “doomsday plane.” NORAD computers changed the number of incoming missiles to 2,200. Strategic Air Command was notified and nuclear bombers prepared for takeoff. Presumably, intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) crews went on alert. Within 6 to 7 minutes satellite and radar systems confirmed that this had been a false alarm: no known submarine could carry such an enormous number of ballistic missiles. US State Department adviser Marshall Shulman would comment “false alerts of this kind are not a rare occurrence. There is a complacency about handling them that disturbs me.” In the months following there would be 3 more such false alarms at NORAD, 2 of which would be due to faulty computer chips. ICBMS

CLOSE CALLS

At Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, operator errors and a severe loss of coolant March 28, 1979 caused a core meltdown with release of radioactive gases.

At Colorado’s North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) a computer- November 9, 1979 room monkey hung the wrong tape, a training program simulating a Soviet attack on the United States. Before the mistake was identified, all hell almost broke out.

When a Soviet submarine near the Kuril Islands launched 4 missiles, one was March 15, 1980 detected by an American early warning sensor as heading toward the United States. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE December 12, Wednesday: NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, decided that by 1983 it was going to be deploying 572 medium-range nuclear missiles (to protect us from harm, that’s why). ICBMS

Rebel South Korean troops took martial law administrator General Chung Seung Hwa and 16 other senior officers prisoner at the Defense Ministry in Seoul. They were accusing these officers of having been involved in the killing of President Park.

Rhodesia officially returned to colonial status under Great Britain as a prelude to majority rule. Lord Soames arrived in Salisbury as the new British governor. Great Britain lifted all sanctions against the country.

President Jimmy Carter ordered most Iranian diplomats to leave the United States of America.

Babylon the Great is Fallen op.40 for chorus and orchestra by Alexander Goehr was performed for the initial time, in Royal Festival Hall, London.

December 24, Monday: Premier Leonid Brezhnev of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics began deployment of the 40th Army in an invasion of Afghanistan (what “Afghanistan” means is “Vietnam, in mountains of dry dirt”).

The SALT II Treaty was removed from consideration by the United States Senate. (“You can always trust a Russian — to be Russian.”) ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1980

March 15, Saturday: When a Soviet submarine near the Kuril Islands launched 4 missiles, one was detected by an American early warning sensor as heading toward the continental United States. ICBMS

CLOSE CALLS

Inside the Saint Laurent A2 reactor at Loir-et-Cher in France, a malfunctioning cool- March 13, 1980 ing system caused fuel elements to fuse together. The fuel assembly being ruined, there would need to be an extended shutdown.

When a Soviet submarine near the Kuril Islands launched 4 missiles, one was March 15, 1980 detected by an American early warning sensor as heading toward the United States.

At Little Rock Air Force Base’s Launch Complex 374-7 in Southside north of Damas- cus, Arkansas, at about 6:30PM an airman dropped the socket off his socket wrench into a missile silo. The 9-pound piece of metal bounced down some 80 feet and struck the side of the Titan-II rocket’s 1st-stage hypergolic fuel tank, which sprang a leak. September 18/19, 1980 The area was evacuated. At about 3:00AM this detonated, killing an airman and destroying the complex. The rocket’s W53 nuclear warhead bounced about 100 feet from the entry gate but its safety mechanism operated and there wasn’t any spread of radioactive material.

June 3, Tuesday: At 1:26 AM the display system at the command post of the Strategic Air Command near Omaha, Nebraska indicated that 2 submarine-launched ballistic missiles were moving toward the United States. At 1:26 AM plus 18 seconds the display system indicated an increased number of launches. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) at Colorado Springs sent out warnings that the USSR was launching nuclear strikes against the USA. Then the original warning screens cleared. Quickly, however, another warning display at the Strategic Air Command indicated the launch of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles in the direction of the United States. ICBMS

After that, in the Pentagon building in Washington DC, displays alerted that submarine-launched ballistic missiles had been launched. All alert crews were ordered to proceed to their preloaded B-52 bombers, start their engines, taxi into position, and be prepared for takeoff. Battle-control aircraft likewise prepared for HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE takeoff. Land-based missile crews went to a higher stage of alert. In Hawaii, the airborne command post of the Pacific Command took off, in order to relay messages to US warships as necessary. President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski received a communication that 2,200 missiles were heading toward the United States. The Federal Aviation Administration prepared to order every airborne commercial airliner to land. After a tense 3 minutes and 12 seconds it became clear that this was a false alert, and the kerfuffle was canceled. The cause, the progressive failure of a single integrated circuit chip in the communication system, costing 46 cents, would be detected by sending numerous test messages of the same format as attack messages, but indicating in the “number of missiles detected” field that 0 had been detected — whenever the chip failed, the program was inserting random numbers into the “number of missiles detected” field.

“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”

— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955)

June 6, Friday: Computers at the North American Air Defense Command in Colorado Springs sent out bogus warnings for a 2d time, that the USSR has launched nuclear missiles against the USA (this time the error was quickly discovered and coped with). ICBMS

Trois etudes campanaires for keyboard carillon or piano by Betsy Jolas was performed for the first time, in Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois (carillon).

Israel invaded Lebanon.

July 15, Sunday: The United States government reported its evaluation that the light signals that had been recorded over the South Atlantic on September 22d, 1979 had probably not originated from any sort of near-space nuclear detonation. ATOM BOMB ICBMS

September 18, Tuesday, 6:30 PM: At Little Rock Air Force Base’s Launch Complex 374-7 in Southside north of Damascus, Arkansas, an airman using a socket wrench to do routine maintenance in an underground USAF Titan-II missile silo dropped a 9-pound socket, which bounced down about 80 feet before it struck the skin of the rocket’s 1st-stage fuel tank. Of course the hypergolic fuel began to spray like water out of a garden hose, and an immediate evacuation alert was sounded — abandoning a W53 nuclear warhead atop this leaking rocket. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE September 19, Wednesday: At about 3:00 AM, at Little Rock Air Force Base’s Launch Complex 374-7 in Southside north of Damascus, Arkansas, an explosion in the missile silo heaved the weapon’s W53 nuclear warhead into the air intact, and it bounced about 100 feet outside the facility perimeter. The warhead was secured with none of its radioactive materials leaking. Only one airman had been killed, but the complex had been destroyed.22 ICBMS

CLOSE CALLS

When a Soviet submarine near the Kuril Islands launched 4 missiles, one was March 15, 1980 detected by an American early warning sensor as heading toward the United States.

At Little Rock Air Force Base’s Launch Complex 374-7 in Southside north of Damas- cus, Arkansas, at about 6:30PM an airman dropped the socket off his socket wrench into a missile silo. The 9-pound piece of metal bounced down some 80 feet and struck the side of the Titan-II rocket’s 1st-stage hypergolic fuel tank, which sprang a leak. September 18/19, 1980 The area was evacuated. At about 3:00AM this detonated, killing an airman and destroying the complex. The rocket’s W53 nuclear warhead bounced about 100 feet outside the facility perimeter but its safety mechanism operated and there wasn’t any spread of radioactive material.

When a nuclear power plant in Ontario, New York suffered a “severe failure” and January 25, 1982 released radioactive steam into the atmosphere, although workers in the plant were evacuated nearby residents were not.

22. This was a 9-megaton device. The entire explosive potential of all the bombs dropped during World War II inclusive of the A- bombs that descended upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been like 3 megatons. –You can readily imagine what just about happened to the state of Arkansas during the administration of Governor Bill Clinton. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE The Belgian government voted to accept US nuclear missiles (in the event of collapse of the arms reduction talks). HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1981

The world’s atomic testing continued: TIMELINE OF EXPLOSIONS

The case of Dwayne Sexton, who as a child had been irradiated as part of NASA-sponsored research aimed at discovering the potential effects of radiation exposure on astronauts, gained fleeting attention when the mother of the child attempted to link the death of her son to these experiments. ICBMS

Mother Jones ran a cover story on this Sexton case. Albert Gore, a Democratic congressman of Tennessee where the experiments had taken place, followed up with hearings on the Oak Ridge Total Body Irradiation Program. Neither Mother Jones nor the Gore hearings attempted to make any link between this Sexton case and the experiments conducted by Dr. Eugene L. Saenger at the University of Cincinnati or with the broader program of secret medical experiments with radiation upon human subjects.

March 26, Thursday: University students in Pristina, Kosovo, Yugoslavia again rioted.

The Social Democratic Party of Great Britain formally came into existence. It currently boasted 14 MPs and high approval ratings.

The West German Bundestag voted to support the decision of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to deploy new medium-range nuclear missiles. ICBMS

The Turfan Fragments for orchestra by Morton Feldman was performed for the 1st time, over the airwaves of Swiss-Italian Radio. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE May: In Falfurrias, Texas, a veterinary noticed that a “heifer in excellent flesh,” suddenly one morning was unable to rise — and was dead by noon.

He sent samples of the cow’s flesh to Texas A&M at College Station, and Texas A&M would supply the bacterium to the bacteriological warfare folks in Fort Detrick, Maryland. (Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to kill a million people before noon? This is the “Ames” strain of anthrax, that the Army would weaponize, that would be mailed to various people in America during September 2001.) BIOTERRORISM

The USSR began, as part of its central military planning, something they referred to as Operation RYaN, which was short for Ракетно-ядерное нападение (Raketno-Yadernoe Napadenie, Nuclear Missile Attack), “measures to strengthen intelligence work in order to prevent a possible sudden outbreak of war by the enemy.” If the USA was ever to make a 1st nuclear strike, clearly they had no intention of dying alone. ICBMS

June 19, Friday: The European Ariane rocket was successfully launched from Kourou, French Guiana and placed 2 satellites in orbit. ICBMS

Lullaby for Lucy for chorus by Peter Maxwell Davies to words of George Mackay Brown was performed for the initial time, in St. Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 10, Saturday: Heads of state and government from around the world, including three former US presidents and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, attended the funeral of Anwar el-Sadat in Cairo.

250,000 people marched in Bonn in opposition to NATO plans to deploy medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe. ICBMS

The IRA exploded a bomb in a van in London, as a bus carrying British soldiers was passing (2 were killed and about 40 injured).

A Birthday Fanfare for 7 trumpets and percussion by William Walton was performed for the initial time, in Recklinghausen, at the home of the dedicatee, Karl-Friedrich Still. Still was a neighbor of the composer on Ischia.

October 24, Saturday: Hundreds of thousands of people marched on this day and the following one in major cities in western Europe, to protest NATO plans to deploy medium-range nuclear weapons, and to protest President Ronald Wilson Reagan’s concept of a “limited” nuclear war in Europe. ICBMS

November 16, Monday: Dutch Prime Minister Andreas Van Agt announced that his government was putting off a decision about whether to deploy nuclear armed cruise missiles. ICBMS

President Ronald Wilson Reagan formally approved a secret plan to send $20,00,000 to the conservative rebels attempting to overthrow the government of Nicaragua.

November 21, Saturday: Over 300,000 people marched peaceably in Amsterdam to demand that the Dutch government not participate in a planned modernization of NATO nuclear forces. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ICBMS

The first 3 parts of Mitternachtsstük for speaker, solo voices, chorus and instruments by Mauricio Kagel to words of Robert Schumann were performed for the initial time, in the Théâtre Municipal, Metz.

Clarinet Quintet by Harrison Birtwistle was performed for the initial time, in St. Paul’s Hall, Huddersfield. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1982

March 16, Tuesday: The USSR announced a unilateral freeze on the deployment of new nuclear missiles in Europe. The Reagan administration termed this a propaganda ploy. ICBMS

The Turkish government revealed that in all, since the military takeover of September 1980, 15 people had died under torture.

In a Newport, Rhode Island court, Claus von Bulow was convicted of twice trying to kill his wife with insulin injections.

Passacaglia for solo cello by William Walton was performed for the initial time, in Royal Festival Hall, London.

April 6, Tuesday: The British government announced a ban on imports of Argentine goods and called on its European partners to do the same.

US Secretary of State Alexander Haig, a man of few words, announced that the Reagan administration was not going to make any promises, to never be the first to use nuclear weapons. ICBMS

June 12, Saturday: Israel declared a cease-fire with the PLO but of course this broke down within hours.

Argentine fire damaged a British ship off Stanley, killing 9. In the Falkland Islands, the battle of Mount Longdon.

An international convocation at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan featured prominent peace activists from around the world, and afterward these participants marched up Fifth Avenue to Central Park, where 750,000 people had assembled for the largest civil disobedience nuclear disarmament demonstration in US history. ICBMS

The European Monetary System raised the value of the West German mark and the Dutch guilder while devaluing the Italian lira and the French franc.

June 29, Tuesday: Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) began in Geneva. ATOM BOMB ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE December 7, Tuesday: Huntsville, Texas led us on our journey toward human decency: Charles Brooks became the first prisoner in the United States of America to be executed in the compassionate manner known as lethal injection (before they stuck in the needles, to make sure he didn’t get an infection, he watched as his elbow pit was scrubbed with a disinfectant pad).

The Danish parliament froze payments toward the deployment of US nuclear missiles in Europe.

The US House of Representatives cut funding for deployment of the MX missile. ICBMS

Aaron Copland made his final appearance as a conductor, with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. He directed two of his early works: An Outdoor Overture, and Symphony for Organ and Orchestra. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1983

The Odyssey command module for the Apollo-13 mission, with its scorched heatshield, was placed on display in Paris. See, see, it was just as we have been assuring you, the throw weight of intercontinental ballistic missiles is all about the peaceful exploration of space! ICBMS

February: News items relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology: Microsoft established a subsidiary company in West Germany.

A Top Secret telegram that has been preserved was sent out during this month by the Soviet Operation RYaN, or Ракетно-ядерное нападение (Raketno-Yadernoe Napadenie, Nuclear Missile Attack), their program by which if the USA were ever to make a 1st nuclear strike, they would be dying alongside us rather than dying alone. Attached to this telegram was a list of 7 “immediate” and 13 “prospective” real-time reports for KGB agents to be making, such as: potential places of evacuation and shelter for Westerners, an appraisal of the level of blood held in their blood banks, observation of places where their nuclear decisions were made and places in which nuclear weapons were being stored, surveillance of key nuclear decision-makers, lines of communication, surveillance of the heads of churches and banks, and surveillance of security services and military installations. They were to keep their eyes and ears open for any signs of unusual activity, that might signal that the West was planning a 1st nuclear strike. ICBMS

Following the sudden death of 62 horses in Times Beach, Missouri in 1971, owners had suspected the waste oil used to tamp down dust in their stable and had brought their suspicion to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which had begun investigating the area. Then, from 1971 to 1976, the same waste oil had been used on the area’s gravel roads to hold down dust. In 1979 a company had confessed that it was mixing dioxin- laden waste oil with its conventional waste oil. In 1982 the Environmental Protection Agency had identified levels of dioxin in Times Beach soil about 300 more than considered safe. During this month the US government therefore bought out the town for $33,000,000, and began to relocate its 2,200 residents. The subsequent clean-up would cost the US government $110,000,000, of which $10,000,000 was paid by the company that had sold the contaminated oil product. SECRET MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE February 7, Monday: Iran began another large offensive against Iraq, this one at Fakeh, west of Dizful. Within weeks it would grind into a stalemate.

Recuperating from pneumonia, Vaclav Havel was released from imprisonment and transferred to a public hospital.

68 pounds of U235 came down from one of the USSR’s Cosmos 1402s into the South Atlantic Ocean. Disposition of this radioactive material is not known. ICBMS

This accident is of course not included in the official timeline of atomic testing: TIMELINE OF EXPLOSIONS

CLOSE CALLS

Soviet Project 705 Alfa-class hunter/killer nuclear-powered submarine K-123 was in the Barents Sea when there was a leak inside its reactor’s steam generator and the August 8, 1982 reactor began to emit its liquid lead-alloy coolant. Approximately a couple of tons of this liquid lead irreparably damaged the reactor compartment. Repair would require the following 9 years.

Soviet spy satellite Kosmos 1402 had been orbiting since August 30th, 1983 and had failed to boost its nuclear power core into a higher “parking orbit” before it burned February 7, 1983 up on re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere on January 23d, 1983. On this day that remaining radioactive lump of 68 pounds of U235 plunged into the South Atlantic Ocean.

Several weeks after the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 over Soviet airspace, a satellite early-warning system near Moscow reported the launch of an American Minuteman ICBM. Then it reported the launch of 4 more such missiles. Convinced September 26, 1983 that a real American attack would involve more missiles, Lieutenant Colonel Stan- islav Petrov of the Air Defense Forces insisted that this was a false alarm until ground radar confirmed that he was correct.

“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”

— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955) HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE March 23, Wednesday: President Ronald Wilson Reagan announced his SDI Strategic Defense Initiative (commonly termed “Star Wars”), something that had been recommended to him by good ’ol boy Lyndon LaRouche, Jr. Although the US federal administration would formally request that 18 nations take part in research for the Star Wars Initiative, and the Thatcher government in Britain would agree to participate, Australia, Norway, and Denmark would turn the USA down cold. ICBMS

Wisely so! –For the USSR had since 1981 maintained as part of its central military planning something called “Operation RYaN,” otherwise known in Russian as the Ракетно-ядерное нападение (Raketno-Yadernoe Napadenie, Nuclear Missile Attack). There was in existence an entire stable of intelligence operatives, covert and overt, more than 200 of them in the KGB alone, who were constantly sending to the USSR their observations of activities in the West — datapoints such as activities observed near potential places of civilian evacuation and shelter, recent increases in the level of blood held in Western blood banks, activity noted near places where nuclear decisions might well be made such as the number of cars parked in nearby parking lots, levels of activity near locations where nuclear weapons were believed to be stored, surveillance of the whereabouts of known key Western nuclear decision-makers, surveillance of levels of activity on lines of communication, reconnaissance in regard to the heads of churches and banks, and in general, surveillance of general levels of activity at security services and military installations. President Reagan’s SDI Star Wars Initiative produced, in this cadre of cold war strategizers, a condition of sheer panic. The Soviets feared that the purpose of SDI was to render the USA homeland invulnerable to a Soviet 1st-strike nuclear missile attack, and that this new invulnerability would tempt the US to launch its own 1st-strike nuclear missiles against the USSR — since US fear of retaliation had suddenly been removed from the calculation. With the deployment of Pershing-II missiles (nuclear-capable missiles designed to launch from virtually anywhere in West Germany from road-mobile vehicles), it became very critical that the flight time from West Germany to Moscow was merely 6 to 8 minutes. It was reasonable to suppose that under cover of a current training exercise, “Able Archer,” a 1st strike on the Soviet Union was being prepared. The Soviet computer program relied on a “database of over 40,000 weighted elements” to identify “inherently unstable political situations in which a deterioration of Soviet power might tempt a US first strike,” and the output from this program was in the form of a ratio between US power and USSR power. In this ratio, US power was assigned a weight of 100, and the program would calculate a weight for the USSR. Apparently the desired margin for the USSR was 70%, and, so long as that score was 60% or higher, the Soviet Union could consider itself strong enough not to fear that the US would undertake a nuclear 1st strike. The “critical threshold” was politically established as a score of 40%: “Below this level, the Soviet Union would be considered dangerously inferior to the United States ... the security of the USSR could not be guaranteed,” which would be a green light for the initiation of nuclear war.

By the following year, Operation RYaN would be producing scores of 45%, scores that would be keeping a whole bunch of Soviet operatives from sleeping soundly at night.

Spring: Kurt Vonnegut, a native of Indianapolis, Indiana, preached at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The subject of his homily has since become Chapter XV of his book, FATES WORSE THAN DEATH: AN 23 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COLLAGE OF THE 1980S (New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1991). An excerpt of that chapter follows: FATES WORSE THAN DEATH: HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COLLAGE OF THE 1980S

“I will speak today about the worst imaginable consequences of doing without hydrogen bombs. “Scientists, for all their creativity, will never discover a method for making people deader than dead. So if some of you are worried about being hydrogen-bombed, you are merely fearing death. There is nothing new in that. If there weren’t any hydrogen bombs, death would still be after you... “But suppose we foolishly got rid of our nuclear weapons, our Kool-Aid, and an enemy came over here and crucified us. Crucifixion was the most painful thing the ancient Romans ever found to do to anyone. They knew as much about pain as we do about genocide. They sometimes crucified hundreds of people at one time. That is what they did to all the survivors of the army of Spartacus, which was composed mostly of escaped slaves. They crucified them all. There were several miles of crosses.24 “If we were up on crosses, with nails through our feet and hands, wouldn’t we wish that we still had hydrogen bombs, so that life could be ended everywhere: Absolutely. “We know of one person who was crucified in olden times, who was supposedly as capable as we or the Russians are of ending life everywhere. But He chose to endure agony instead. All He said was, ‘Forgive them, Father — they know not what they do.’ “He let life go on, as awful as it was for Him, because here we are, aren’t we? “But He was a special case. It is unfair to use Jesus Christ as an exemplar of how much pain and humiliation we ordinary human being should put up with before calling for the end of 23. I am including this preaching by Vonnegut in my file on the Eastern State Penitentiary, because Kurt would begin to elaborate here a quite tendentious account of Quaker history, that 19th-Century American Quaker foolishness and unworldliness involved the conceit that maddening long-term solitary confinement would possess a magic power as a curative. He would be referring to “the penitentiary system, an invention of American Quakers.” What I want you to take careful notice of is the fact that Kurt for all his lovable storytelling has never been a practitioner of the craft of the historian. When he asserts that he has found out something that nobody else has found out –a piece of true history– there is no reason in the world to believe him. He has no credentials, he has no credibility, in such an area. He has never studied Quaker history, has never been a close reader of Quaker pamphlets; he has never studied Philadelphia history, has never studied the history of American prisons, etc. He knows a lot but not about the way things used to be. He’s often right but sometimes attitudes are merely attitudes. He’s projects an intriguing personality but he’s also a pain in the ass — ask him to draw you a picture of his asshole. 24. Vonnegut’s calculations seem a bit off here. There were 6,000 crosses, and crosses simply cannot be placed less than a yard from one another! To the contrary, for maximum impressiveness they would have distributed those 6,000 crosses all along the Appian Way for the entire distance from Capua to Rome — which would put the average distance between crosses at about 120 running feet. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE everything. “I don’t believe that we are about to be crucified. No potential enemy we now face has anywhere near enough carpenters... “But what if they [the Pentagon] said, instead, that we would be enslaved if we did not appropriate enough money for weaponry?... “And slavery would surely be a fate worse than death. We can agree on that, I’m sure. We should send a message to the Pentagon: ‘If Americans are about to become enslaved, it is Kool-Aid time.’ “They will know what we mean. ICBMS

“Of course, at Kool-Aid time all higher forms of life on Earth, not just we and our enemies, will be killed... “I have never seen a human slave, though. But my four great- grandfathers saw slaves. When they came to this country in search of justice and opportunity, there were millions of Americans who were slaves... “If the Soviet Union came over here and enslaved us, it wouldn’t be the first time Americans were slaves. If we conquered the Russians and enslave them, it wouldn’t be the first time Russians were slaves. “And the last time Americans were slaves, and the last time Russians were slaves, they displayed astonishing spiritual strengths and resourcefulness. They were good at loving one another. They trusted God. They discovered in the simplest, most natural satisfactions reasons to be glad to be alive. They were able to believe that better days were coming in the sweet by- and-by. And here is a fascinating statistic: They committed suicide less often than their masters did. “So Americans and Russians can both stand slavery, if they have to — and still want life to go on and on. “Could it be that slavery isn’t a fate worse than death? After all, people are tough. Maybe we shouldn’t send that message to the Pentagon - about slavery and Kool-Aid time. “But suppose enemies came ashore in great numbers because we lacked the means to stop them, and they pushed us out of our homes and off our ancestral lands, and into swamps and deserts. Suppose that they even tried to destroyed our religion, telling us that our Great God Jehovah, or whatever we wanted to call Him, was as ridiculous as a piece of junk jewelry. “Again: This is a wringer millions of Americans have already been through — or are still going through. It is another catastrophe Americans can endure, if they have to — still, miraculously, maintaining some measure of dignity, or self- respect. “As bad as life is for our Indians, they still like it better than death. “So I haven’t had much luck, have I, in identifying fates worse than death? Crucifixion is the only clear winner so far, and we aren’t about to be crucified. We aren’t about to be enslaved, either — to be treated the way white Americans used to treat HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE black Americans. And no potential enemy that I have heard of wants to come over here to treat all of us the way we still treat American Indians. “What other fates worse than death could I name? Life without petroleum?... “My guess is that we will not disarm, even though we should, and that we really will blow up everything by and by. History shows that human beings are vicious enough to commit every imaginable atrocity, including the construction of factories whose only purpose is to kill people and burn them up.... “What can save us? Divine intervention, certainly - and this is the place to ask for it. We might pray to be rescued from our inventiveness, just as the dinosaurs may have prayed to be rescued from their massiveness. “But the inventiveness which we so regret now may also be giving us, along with the rockets and warheads, the means to achieve what has hitherto been an impossibility, the unity of mankind. I am talking mainly about television sets. “Even in my own lifetime, it used to be necessary for a young soldier to get into fighting before he became disillusioned about war. His parents back home were equally ignorant, and believed him to be slaying monsters. But now, thanks to modern communications, the people of every industrialized nation are nauseated by the idea of war by the time they are ten years old. American’s first generation of television viewers has gone to war and come home again — and we have never seen veterans like them before.... “Thanks to modern communications, the poor, unlucky young people from the Soviet Union, now killing and dying in Afghanistan, were dead sick of war before they ever got there.... “Thanks to modern communications, the same must be true of the poor, unlucky young people from Argentina and Great Britain, now killing and dying in the Falkland Islands... Thanks to modern communications, we know that they are good deal more marvelous and complicated than that, and that what is happening to them down there, on the rim of the Antarctic, is a lot more horrible and shameful than a soccer match. “When I was a boy it was unusual for an American, or a person of any nationality for that matter, to know much about foreigners. Those who did were specialists — diplomats, explorers, journalists, anthropologists. And they usually knew a lot about just a few groups of foreigners, Eskimos maybe, or Arabs, or what have you. To them, as to the schoolchildren of Indianapolis, large areas of the globe were terra incognita.... “So we now know for certain that there are no potential human enemies anywhere who are anything but human beings almost exactly like ourselves. They need food. How amazing. They love their children. How amazing. They obey their leaders. How amazing. They think like their neighbors. How amazing. “Thanks to modern communications, we now have something we never had before: reason to mourn deeply the death or wounding of any human being on any side in any war. “It was because of rotten communications and malicious, racist HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE ignorance that we were able to celebrate the killing of almost all the inhabitants in Hiroshima, Japan, thirty-seven years ago. We thought they were vermin. They thought we were vermin. They would have clapped their yellow hands with glee and grinned with their crooked buckteeth if they could have incinerated everybody in Kansas City, say. “Thanks to how much the people of the world now know about all the other people of the world, the fun of killing enemies has lost its zing. It has so lost its zing that no sane citizen of the Soviet Union, if we were to go to war with that society, would feel anything but horror if his country were to kill practically everybody in New York and Chicago and San Francisco. Killing enemies has so lost its zing that no sane citizen of the United States would feel anything but horror if our country were to kill practically everybody in Moscow and Leningrad and Kiev. “Or in Nagasaki, Japan, for that matter. “We have often heard it said that people would have to change, or we would go on having world wars, I bring you good news this morning: People have changed. “We aren’t so ignorant and bloodthirsty anymore.... “I dreamed last night of our descendants a thousand years from now,...I ask them how humanity, against all odds, managed to keep going for another millennium. They tell me that they and their ancestors did it by preferring life over death for themselves and others at every opportunity, even at the expense of being dishonored. They endured all sorts of insults and humiliations and disappointments without committing either suicide or murder. They are also the people who do the insulting and humiliating and disappointing.... “I give them a quotation from that great nineteenth-century moralist and robber baron, Jim Fisk, who may have contributed money to this cathedral. “Jim Fisk uttered his famous words after a particularly disgraceful episode having to do with the Erie Railroad. Fisk himself had no choice but to find himself contemptible. He thought this over, and then he shrugged and said what we all must learn to say if we want to go on living much longer; ‘Nothing is lost save honor.’ “I thank you for your attention.”

Also known as “Doomsday Critic Laureate,” Vonnegut introduced the above when he was writing FATES WORSE THAN DEATH, his naive sermon seven years after he had preached it. For the postscript of his sermon from the cathedral pulpit: “On the subject of how casual technology had made us about war, I should have called attention to the transmogrification of my birthday, November 11, from Armistice Day to Veterans Day ... and by the time I was preaching in St. John’s, the message of November 11 was that there were going to be lots more wars, and that we were ready for them this time (were we ever!), and that not just boys but girls, too, should want to grow up to be veterans (don’t be left out!) “We hadn’t yet killed more than a thousand Panamanians in the HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE process of kidnapping their Head of State (a paid CIA agent) on suspicion of drug trafficking, or I sure would have talked about that. I would have reminded people my age what Captain J.W. Philip said to his crewmen aboard the Battleship Texas in Santiago Bay in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. (American public school kids used to know his words by heart. I bet they don’t anymore.) Shellfire from the Texas had set the Spanish Cruiser Vizcaya ablaze from stern to stern. And Captain Philip said, “Don’t cheer, boys, those poor devils are dying.” War back then, while perhaps necessary and surely exciting, was also a tragedy. It is still a tragedy, and can never be otherwise. “(Yes, and while I was doing the final editing on this book, which was written in the summer of 1990 and is supposed to about the 1980s, we experienced our great victory over Iraq. I will simply repeat what a woman said at supper a week after we stopped shooting and bombing and rocketing: ‘The atmosphere of this country now is like a big party in a beautiful home. Everybody is polite and bubbly, but there is this awful stink coming from somewhere, and it’s getting worse and worse. And nobody wants to be the first to mention it.’)”

Vonnegut has nothing but the highest praise for his cathedral host who had lived and preached in Indianapolis for many years and has been his and his wife’s friend and traveled with him. In response to a pregnant woman who asked him if he thought it was wrong to bring a child into such an awful world, he said, “What made living almost worthwhile for me was all the saints I met, and I named Bishop Moore.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE September 26, Monday: Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were high because the Soviet military had just shot down a Korean Air Lines jet that had strayed over Soviet airspace, causing the deaths of all 269 civilian passengers and crew on board. Lieutenant-Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was the officer on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker near Moscow that housed the command center of the Soviet early warning satellites, code-named “Oko,” when the system inaccurately signaled the launch of a US Minuteman intercontinental ballistic nuclear-warhead missile. He had to decide within 20 minutes whether the report was accurate and whether it would be appropriate to press his red button to launch Soviet nuclear missiles. ICBMS

The system reported the launch of 4 more such missiles. Petrov considered the alarm to be false and refrained from pressing his red button. Finally ground radar confirmed that the alarm was false. The cause of the alert had been the rays of the sun reflecting off the tops of clouds. Had any of his military officer colleagues been on duty at the time, it seems clear that the outcome of this would have been very different, and in fact Petrov would be reprimanded for having neglected to record the incident in his war diary as it was happening (his defense would be that he had only two hands). He had made the right call but would have a severe stress reaction after this incident and be assigned a lesser post, and spend several months in hospitals, before being pensioned out of the Soviet military in order to provide care needed by his ill wife.

CLOSE CALLS

When a Soviet submarine near the Kuril Islands launched 4 missiles, one was March 15, 1980 detected by an American early warning sensor as heading toward the United States.

A satellite early-warning system near Moscow reported the launch of an American Minuteman ICBM. Then it reported the launch of 4 more such missiles. Convinced September 26, 1983 that a real American attack would involve more missiles, Lieutenant-Colonel Stan- islav Petrov of the Air Defense Forces insisted that this was a false alarm until ground radar confirmed that he was correct.

At Athens, Alabama, safety violations, operator error, and design problems at Browns September 15, 1984 Ferry Unit 2 would eventuate in a 6-year shutdown.

October 29, Saturday: 200,000 people demonstrated throughout Denmark against the deployment of US medium- range nuclear missiles. ICBMS

Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard of Grenada was captured by invading troops.

Aether for violin and piano by Roger Reynolds was performed for the 1st time, at the Library of Congress, Washington DC.

November 22, Tuesday: The German Bundestag voted to deploy US Pershing II and other missiles with nuclear warheads within German borders. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE November 23, Wednesday: The USSR withdrew from negotiations to limit medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe. ICBMS

Battling PLO factions accepted a ceasefire proposal by Saudi Arabia. This would save the city of Tripoli, Lebanon from further destruction.

78 years after it was composed, From the Uplands to the Sea for voice and two pianos by Arnold Bax was performed for the first time, over the airwaves of BBC Radio 3, during the centennial of the composer’s birth.

Parts of the Polish Requiem for 4 solo voices, chorus and orchestra by Krzysztof Penderecki were performed for the first time, in Washington on the composer’s 50th birthday. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1984

Professor Freeman J. Dyson’s WEAPONS AND HOPE.

(According to this learned man, the corrective for too many, too deadly weapons must be many more, much more deadly weapons. Pedal to the metal, folks!)25 ICBMS

By this year President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s 1963 Equal Pay Act had been in full force and effect for more than a decade. After I had escaped from the Iranian revolution, I had made my way to Silicon Valley. At Tandem Computers in Cupertino, my cubicle was next to the cubicle of Jane Wyman. I was a “techwriter” and she an “editor.” My pay was therefore almost precisely twice hers. I received a job offer with significantly better compensation, at a just-founded Silicon Valley startup called Sydis Computer Systems, and informed my supervisor that due to the fact that Tandem had in my employment contract stipulated that I would be provided with a home computer but he had reneged on that obligation, I was providing them with two weeks notice. Later on that same memorable day Jane and I sat down together with him and pointed out that she and I had been not only working in adjoining cubicles, but had been being assigned precisely the same work. His

25. I, Austin Meredith, ran in a 10-kilometer race in Palo Alto, California and noticed this nuclear weapons scientist and his wife jogging along as a pair, wearing matching T-shirts with the logo “Disturbing the Universe with Weapons and Hope.” (They both came across the finish line well ahead of me. The race was sponsored by a chiropractic clinic, which of course had its equipment set up after the finish line. I stood in line for their free examination and they put a pelvic-girdle level device around my waist and had me stand on a platform with plumb lines hanging from this device — although this was a little embarrassing for me in public. The chiropractor expressed amazement that I had just completed the race. “You shouldn’t be running with a tipped pelvis like that.” I didn’t inform him that my tipped pelvis had by this point almost completely corrected itself, and that my spine was still getting straighter and straighter.) Afterward I went to Professor Dyson’s lecture at Stanford University. He opinioned that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not done the job that needed to be done, because we now misappreciate how very destructive a modern A-bomb is. We need for a third city to be nuked now, he asserted, in order to tune up our appreciation of such weaponry. In his lecture he kept using the term “maximize,” so after the lecture I raised my hand and asked him whether, in using that term, sometimes he actually meant not “maximize” but “optimize.” “There’s a difference?” he wondered, and smirked and gave out a little barking laugh — and went directly on to recognize the next raised hand in the audience. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE explanation to us was that due to my background I had technical skills in the computer industry, whereas hers was a mere humanities background and she was being compensated accordingly. I pointed out to him that my BA had been in Philosophy and she pointed out to him that her PhD was in Literature, as well as that she had been techwriting for a number of years whereas I had, since escaping the Iranian revolution, been doing this sort of computer work for approximately one. At a knickknack store on El Camino Real I purchased two lapel buttons with an appropriate humorous logo, a piece of humor that she accepted in good grace. Two weeks later at my exit interview with the Personnel Department of Tandem, I noticed that the chic young lady had pre- checked the block on her form “Do Not Rehire,” and that her notion seemed to be that I was being processed for termination for cause. She was surprised to be advised that Tandem had not honored its employment contract, but made no comment.

ASSLEY

May 10, Thursday: King Juan Carlos landed in Moscow at the beginning of the 1st visit of a Spanish head of state to the Soviet Union. The trip marked the restoration of full diplomatic ties between these nations.

The International Court of Justice ruled unanimously that the United States must immediately desist from mining Nicaraguan waters. It issued a restraining order to protect Nicaraguan sovereignty.

East Germany announced it would not take part in the Summer Olympics of 1984 in Los Angeles.

The Danish Parliament voted to cut off funding for deployment of US nuclear missiles in the country. ICBMS

A US federal judge ruled that 9 people had contracted cancer because the United States government improperly conducted above-ground nuclear tests in the 1950s.

President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti banned all political activity. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE May 20, Sunday: Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov announced that his country had increased the number of nuclear-armed submarines off the coast of the US. He alleged that this was in response to NATO deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe. ICBMS

Swiss voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have opened bank records to investigators.

Naama for harpsichord by Iannis Xenakis was performed for the initial time, in Luxembourg.

On Light Wings for piano quartet by Gunther Schuller was performed for the initial time, in Atlanta. Also premiered was Variations for piano quartet by Karel Husa.

August 11, Saturday: President Ronald Wilson Reagan, running for re-election, while preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio, jested into what he presumed to be an OFF microphone: We begin bombing in five minutes. ICBMS

August 13, Monday: Two days before, President Ronald Wilson Reagan, running for re-election, while preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio, had jested into what he had presumed to be an OFF microphone: “We begin bombing in five minutes.” According to the New York Times, on this day a low- level Soviet military officer ordered an alert of troops in the Far East — only to have that alert canceled about half an hour later by higher authority. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1985

April 7, Sunday: Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev announced a freeze in deployment of Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles, calling on the US to do the same. The Reagan administration would refuse. ICBMS

April 8, Monday: The British and German governments rejected the Gorbachev freeze on Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles, as did NATO. ICBMS

September 17, Tuesday: Le Monde reported that intelligence and military officials had lied to French investigators in the “Rainbow Warrior” affair. The paper asserted that the folks who had planted the bombs had been French agents and had been operating with the knowledge of the Defense minister.

A secretary in the office of West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl defected to East Germany.

Palestinian terrorists heaved a couple of grenades into a café in Rome, injuring 38.

President Ronald Wilson Reagan announced that he was not going to bargain away his Strategic Defense Initiative in exchange for concessions by the Soviets on nuclear arms. ICBMS

September 30, Monday: At disarmament talks in Geneva, the USSR proposed a 50% cut in strategic nuclear weapons, along with an end to the US Strategic Defense Initiative. ICBMS

Four Soviet citizens (3 diplomats and a doctor) were kidnapped in Beirut. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1986

February 24, Monday: Philippine President Marcos declared a state of emergency. Juan Ponce Enrile formed a provisional government led by Corazon Aquino.

President Ronald Wilson Reagan proposed a 3-year phaseout of all US and Soviet medium range nuclear missiles. ICBMS

Texas Air Corporation purchased Eastern Airlines for $600,000,000. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 3, Friday: Phillipe Petitt returned to the Niagara Falls, after an extended career with the Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Baily Circus as a highwire stuntsman, with a film crew shooting the Imax movie “Niagara Miracle, Myths and Magic.” On a 50-foot wire 170 feet above the Canadian shore, he re-enacted for the camera the feats of Blondin.

While sneaking along 480 miles east of Bermuda, the Soviet Yankee-I-class nuclear-powered submarine K- 219 equipped with 16 SS-N-6 ballistic missiles (missiles which could loft in total approximately 34 nuclear warheads for detonation across the United States of America) experienced an explosion in missile tube #6 (what happened was that ocean water leaked through the missile hatch cover and in the missile tube reacted with residue from the missile’s liquid UDMH with IRFNA fuel, something that had already happened earlier in another of the missile tubes on this submarine). The submarine coped with this by opening the hatch and allowing the missile with its 2 nuke warheads to slide out into the ocean. At least 3 of its crewmembers, however, were fatalities. What the Soviet Union would claim was that the leak had been caused by a collision with the United States Navy’s submarine USS Augusta, although this would be denied by the USA. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev secretly discussed the incident with President Ronald Reagan. ICBMS

CLOSE CALLS

At Hamm-Uentrop in West Germany, the experimental THTR-300 reactor released May 4, 1986 small amounts of fission products into the surrounding area.

While sneaking along 480 miles east of Bermuda, the Soviet Yankee-I-class nuclear- powered submarine K-219 equipped with 16 SS-N-6 ballistic missiles (missiles which could loft in total approximately 34 nuclear warheads for detonation across the United States of America) experienced an explosion in missile tube #6 (what happened was that ocean water leaked through the missile hatch cover and in the missile tube reacted with residue from the missile’s liquid UDMH with IRFNA fuel, something that had already happened earlier in another of the missile tubes on this submarine). The submarine coped with this by opening the hatch and allowing the missile with its October 3, 1986 2 nuke warheads to slide out into the ocean. At least 3 of its crewmembers, however, were fatalities. What the Soviet Union would claim was that the leak had been caused by a collision with the United States Navy’s submarine USS Augusta, although this would be denied by the USA. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev secretly discussed the incident with President Ronald Reagan. On October 6th the submarine, the hull of which had been breached, while under tow, would sink to the bottom on the Hatteras Abyssal Plain of the Atlantic Ocean at 18,000 feet, taking along with it its remaining 32 nuclear warheads.

In Delta, Pennsylvania, Peach Bottom units 2 and 3 needed to be shut down due to March 31, 1987 cooling malfunctions and unexplained equipment problems.

(On October 6th the submarine, the hull of which had been breached, while under tow, would sink to the bottom on the Hatteras Abyssal Plain of the Atlantic Ocean at 18,000 feet, taking along with it its remaining 32 nuclear warheads.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 12, Sunday: President Ronald Wilson Reagan and Premier Mikhail Gorbachev met for a 2d day. A comprehensive nuclear weapons treaty was stymied by Reagan’s insistence on the Strategic Defense Initiative. ICBMS

November 28, Friday: The 131st B-52 bomber with subsonic air-launched cruise missiles possessing A-bomb warheads was deployed — exceeding the limit of 130 that had been established by the SALT II Treaty. The United States of America was in violation. ATOM BOMB ICBMS

December: The initial 10 “Peacemaker” intercontinental ballistic missiles became operational. ATOM BOMB ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1987

February 28, Saturday: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called for an agreement on eliminating medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe, not linked to the US Strategic Defense Initiative. The proposal took the western powers by surprise. ICBMS

A court in Paris convicted Lebanese national Georges Ibrahim Abdallah for having killed an American and an Israeli diplomat in 1982.

Airs and Graces for violin by Jonathan Lloyd was performed for the initial time, in the Purcell Room, London.

Sonata a cinque for bass trombone, clarinet, violin, cello and piano by George Perle was performed for the initial time, at the 92nd Street Y, New York.

Varied Trio for violin, piano, percussion, harp and bells by Lou Harrison was performed for the initial time, in Hertz Hall, Berkeley, California.

April 14, Tuesday: In a meeting with US Secretary of State George Schulz in the Kremlin, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev offered to eliminate intermediate nuclear missiles in Europe. ICBMS

June 16, Tuesday: In response to Soviet proposals, the USA suggested the global elimination of intermediate range nuclear missiles. ICBMS

Citicorp, the largest bank in the United States, announced it would completely pull out of South Africa by July.

Bernhard Goetz, who shot 4 young men who attempted to rob him on a New York subway, was acquitted in a New York court on 12 of 13 counts against him, including attempted murders and assault. He was, however, found guilty of carrying a loaded, unlicensed weapon in a public place.

July 22, Wednesday: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said that his country agreed to the worldwide elimination of intermediate-range nuclear missiles. ICBMS

The US Navy began to escort newly US-flagged Kuwaiti tankers through the Persian Gulf.

September 18, Friday: President Ronald Wilson Reagan announced that the USSR and the USA had agreed to ban medium-range nuclear missiles. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE December 8, Tuesday: Acclamation for chorus by John Tavener was performed for the first time, for the arrival of His All Holiness, the Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios I at Canterbury Cathedral.

President of the United States of America Ronald Wilson Reagan and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev signed an Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. ATOM BOMB ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1988

Kenneth L. Carroll became Clerk of the Third Haven, Maryland monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (he would serve in that capacity until 2001).

The communications difficulties that had been encountered during the Cuba Missile Crisis had caused the creation of a “Hot Line,” between Washington DC and Moscow (this involved no “red telephone,” but Teletype machines and FAX machines connected by cable, radio, and satellite). At this point enough confidence in the FAX machines had built up that the rapid-communication system threw out its old Teletype equipment. ATOM BOMB ICBMS

At the age of 92, Tufts University awarded Friend Floyd Schmoe an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.26 Also, the Japanese government presented him with the Hiroshima Peace Prize and he was made an Honorary Citizen of that nation.27 Meanwhile the world’s atomic testing continued: TIMELINE OF EXPLOSIONS

The above award came with a cash prize of some $5,000 and the problem would arise of how to dispose of this since it would have been unseemly to have personally benefited. The Schmoes would need to cast about for some way to make an appropriate use of this money. Floyd would decide to petition the city of Seattle WA to allow him to use the money, and his own labors, to transform a tiny weedy and rocky garbage-strewn piece of city property at the north end of Seattle’s University Bridge overlooking Lake Union into a “peace park,” one in commemoration of those who had died as a consequence of our 1945 A-bomb that was a near miss on the city of Hiroshima (a direct hit, however, on the Catholic cathedral, and on a POW camp known to contain many Americans). THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY SADAKO SASAKI

February 25, Thursday: Roh Tae Woo replaced Chun Doo Hwan as President of the Republic of Korea.

East Germany and Czechoslovakia began the removal of Soviet short range nuclear missiles in accordance with their treaty of December 1987. ICBMS

President Eric Arturo Delvalle of Panama attempted to remove General Manuel Antonio Noriega from office.

26. Eat your heart out, all you other folks who never managed to finish your dissertation. 27. It is to be noted that when another foreigner, Reginald Horace Blyth, who had similarly been awarded the Emperor’s Order of the Sacred Treasures in the 4th Class, had asked in 1957 to be made a citizen of Japan — that request had been turned aside. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE May 27, Friday: The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union legalized private cooperatives.

A new agreement in Beirut ended the fighting between rival Shiite militias. Syrian troops moved in to the southern suburbs to enforce it. In 3 weeks of fighting, more than 300 had been killed, more than 1,000 injured, and tens of thousands had been forced from their homes.

The United States Senate ratified an Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty. ICBMS

May 28, Saturday: The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union ratified the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty. ICBMS

Wachsfigurenkabinett, five chamber operas by Karl Amadeus Hartmann to words of Bormann, was performed completely for the first time, in München, 58 years after its composition. The five were Leben und Sterben des heiligen Teufels, Der Mann, der vom Tode auferstand, Chaplin-Ford-Trott, Fürwahr, and Die Witwe von Ephesus (the first of these five had been performed in 1930).

For Cello Solo by Leon Kirchner was performed for the initial time, in Charleston, South Carolina. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1991

July 31, Wednesday: Gunmen attacked a Lithuanian customs station. Six people were killed.

Soviet President Gorbachev and President George Herbert Walker Bush signed the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Moscow. Each side was limited to 6,000 nuclear warheads. ICBMS

August 10, Saturday: The Chinese government announced it would sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. ICBMS

September 27, Friday: The United States announced that it would eliminate all tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and Asia, nuclear cruise missiles on naval vessels, and 450 ICBMs. ICBMS

Lev Sergeyevich Theremin (Leon Theremin) was present at a concert at Stanford University in his honor. This was his first trip to the United States in 53 years. He spontaneously broke into Midnight in Moscow.

October 5, Saturday: In response to the initiative of President George Herbert Walker Bush last week, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced an immediate one-year moratorium on nuclear testing, destruction of all ground-based tactical missile warheads, cancellation of deployment of mobile ICBMs, freezing of the production of multiple-warhead missile launchers, and the beginning of a reduction in ICBM warheads to 5,000. ICBMS

December 25, Wednesday: Mikhail Gorbachev turned over the nuclear weapons codes to President Boris Yeltsin of Russia. He gave a speech on national television and then resigned as President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR ceased to exist. ICBMS

December 30, Monday: The 11 leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States announced that Soviet nuclear weapons would be placed under a centralized command. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

1992

March 24, Tuesday: The START treaty was ratified by the Senate. Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus agreed in principle to the START treaty. ICBMS

At the Sosnovy Bor nuclear plant in Leningrad Oblast near St. Petersburg, Russia, radioactive iodine escaped into the atmosphere through a ruptured fuel channel.

CLOSE CALLS

At Lusby, Maryland, when Calvert Cliff Units 1 and 2 were inspected, cracks were March 17, 1989 discovered in their pressurized heater sleeves.

At the Sosnovy Bor nuclear plant in Leningrad Oblast near St. Petersburg, Russia, radioactive iodine escaped into the atmosphere through a ruptured fuel channel and March 24, 1992 the resulting cloud passed over northeastern Europe. Russian officials indicated that there was no cause for alarm.

Norway launched a Black Brant XII research rocket to study the aurora borealis. Beforehand they had been careful to notify Russia and a number of other nations. However, Russian radar operators were not informed and, when they detected the January 25, 1995 launch, Russian President Boris Yeltsin made himself the 1st world leader to activate a nuclear briefcase. Russian strategic ballistic missile submarines were put on alert to prepare a possible retaliation but, as soon as it became clear there was no larger attack and that this rocket posed no threat, military forces were able to stand down.

“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”

— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955) HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE May 23, Saturday: Giovanni Falcone, Italy’s chief anti-Mafia investigator, his wife, and their police escort, were assassinated in Sicily.

Representatives of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan signed protocols in Lisbon pledging them to compliance with the START limits on nuclear weapons. ICBMS

Tropic for clarinet, violin, two guitars, double bass and percussion by Peter Sculthorpe was performed for the first time, in Brighton, Great Britain.

Costaso, a dramatic work by William Grant Still, was performed for the initial time, in Pasadena, California.

June 16, Tuesday: Russian President Boris Yeltsin and President George Herbert Walker Bush agreed in Washington to large reductions in long range nuclear weapons. ICBMS

Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was indicted for perjury to Congress for his part in the cover- up of the Iran-Contra scandal.

December 29, Tuesday: Prime Minister Milan Panic of Yugoslavia lost a confidence vote in the federal parliament and was removed from office.

The United States and Russia announced an agreement on a treaty that would reduce their strategic nuclear arms by 2/3ds. ICBMS

Fernando Collor de Mello resigned as President of Brazil shortly after the Senate convened an impeachment trial. He would be succeeded by Itamar Franco. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1993

January 3, Sunday: The 2d Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) was signed by Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and Yeltsin in Moscow. The treaty required both parties to cut long-range nuclear-warhead missiles by 2/3ds. The treaty proscribed land-based multiple-nuclear-warhead missiles. ICBMS

March 12, Friday: North Korea announced it was going to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. ICBMS

A bomb went off at the Bombay stock exchange killing 50 people. Within 90 minutes, ten more bombs went off at banks, government offices, hotels and an airline office. India blamed Pakistan.

The Russian Congress of Peoples Deputies repudiated the agreement of last December allowing President Yeltsin decree powers.

UN commander Philippe Morillon met the Bosnian commander of Srebrenica, Naser Oric. He promised humanitarian aid and to do everything possible to get a cease fire. Bosnian civilians surrounded his vehicles and refused to allow him to leave without his guarantee of security. Morillon walked on to a balcony and publicly proclaimed that he will never abandon them. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1994

Jinzaburo Takagi received the Ihatobe Award in recognition of his work to expose the incredible and inescapable dangers surrounding our nuclear technology. Meanwhile the world’s atomic testing continued: TIMELINE OF EXPLOSIONS

A Cincinnati Enquirer investigation identified 32 of the University of Cincinnati patients who had been used as guinea pigs in military research into the effects of plutonium. The newspaper’s researchers were able to do this primarily by matching initials and other details found in the research reports with the names provided by relatives who were contacting the newspaper’s radiation hotline. Several families hired lawyers to sue the University of Cincinnati, the researchers, and the city of Cincinnati, which at the time owned General Hospital. SECRET MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

Several attempts to smuggle nuclear material from C.I.S. were stopped. Secret nuclear testing on humans was revealed by both the U.S. and C.I.S. The Strategic Defense Initiative program was scaled back. Emphasis began to be placed upon a SCUD-like missile defense. North Korea, suspected to be building nuclear weapons, threatened to withdraw from the IAEA, but global pressure resolved –or seemed to resolve– the crisis. ATOM BOMB

A documentary TV presentation was filmed, titled “Apollo 13: To the Edge and Back,” directed by Noel Buckner and Rob Whittlesey. In it, at the point of separation of the Lunar Module (with its SNAP-27 reactor containing 3.9 kilograms of Plutonium-238) from the Re-Entry Capsule, one of the 3 astronauts commented that he would have liked to take it home with him to set up in his back yard. Just like the Tom Hanks movie to be made in the following year, no mention is made of the environmental radiation contamination hazard of bringing that SNAP reactor back to the surface of the earth. ICBMS

“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”

— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955)

January 10, Monday: Ukraine agreed to destroy all its nuclear warheads and long range missiles. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE September 3, Saturday: In the first visit of a Chinese head of state to Moscow since 1957, President Jiang Zemin and President Boris Yeltsin signed agreements to reduce the number of troops on their common border and to stop aiming nuclear weapons at each other. ICBMS

Incidental music to Wilson’s play Come in Under the Shadow of the Red Rock by Philip Glass was performed for the initial time, in Gibellina, Sicily.

On Stellar Magnitudes for mezzo-soprano, flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, piano, violin, and cello by Brian Ferneyhough was performed for the initial time, at Royaumont. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1995

January 25, Wednesday: Zhan Vasilev Videnov replaced Reneta Ivanova Indzhova as Prime Minister of Bulgaria.

An Australian National Parks and Wildlife ranger confirmed that he had sighted a live Thylacinus cynocephalus or Tasmanian tiger. Charlie Beasley had been identifying birds in bushland in Tasmania’s north- east when he noticed what he reported to be unmistakably a juvenile thylacine across a gully. He watched in amazement through his binoculars for 2 minutes and reported that the black stripes across its back were clear.

At 9:28 AM in Moscow, a briefcase containing a device termed “the nuclear football” was passed to Russian President Boris Yeltsin. The screen of the device was conveying the intelligence that at 9:24 AM, 4 minutes earlier, a missile had begun to rise in the vicinity of the Norwegian Sea that appeared to be proceeding in the direction of Moscow. Yeltsin had 4,700 nuclear warheads under his authority. If he pressed a button an immediate nuclear retaliation could be launched upon targets around the world. General Mikhail Kolesnikov, Chief of the General Staff, had such a device as well and was similarly monitoring the situation. Judging by the radar sighting of stages of the rocket falling away as it ascended, this was likely to be an intermediate-range missile in the “Pershing II” class, maintained by NATO all over Western Europe. General Kolesnikov urging President Yeltsin to press the button. They had less than 6 minutes before it would be too late. As they watched HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE the progress of the missile they noticed that its trajectory was not proceeding toward Russian territory and their tension began to ease. (Actually it was a weather rocket launched to study the aurora borealis. Actually, Norway had followed normal procedures and alerted Russia before launching this rocket, but this reassuring message had not been communicated within the war command.) ICBMS

CLOSE CALLS

At the Sosnovy Bor nuclear plant in Leningrad Oblast near St. Petersburg, Russia, March 24, 1992 radioactive iodine escaped into the atmosphere through a ruptured fuel channel.

Norway launched a Black Brant XII research rocket to study the aurora borealis. Beforehand they had been careful to notify Russia and a number of other nations. However, Russian radar operators were not informed and, when they detected the January 25, 1995 launch, Russian President Boris Yeltsin made himself the 1st world leader to activate a nuclear briefcase. Russian strategic ballistic missile submarines were put on alert to prepare a possible retaliation but, as soon as it became clear there was no larger attack and that this rocket posed no threat, military forces were able to stand down.

When a leaking valve forced shutdown of Waterford, Connecticut’s Millstone February 20, 1996 Nuclear Power Plant Units 1 and 2, multiple equipment failures were found.

An editorial in the American Legion’s home town vigorously called for Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Director Martin Harwit firing: “Americans who love their country are increasingly disgusted with the carping of elitists dedicated to tearing down national morale, insulting national pride and debasing national achievements.”

In regard to the Enola Gay exhibit, “History and Hokum,” by Rose Kennedy, Indianapolis Star, A12 WORLD WAR II HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1996

July 17, Wednesday: The Community of Portuguese Language Countries was instituted between Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, and São Tomé and Principe.

Trio for violin, clarinet and piano by Gian Carlo Menotti was performed for the initial time, in Spoleto.

During an air militia training exercise over Long Island Sound, a Trans World Airlines plane on a flight from New York to Paris was suddenly chopped into two pieces just in front of its wing and plunged into the sea off Long Island. All 230 aboard died, yet there was no evidence of any explosion. Various observers on the ground described a rocket rising from the horizon toward the airplane in the sky overhead. (There exists a weapon in our arsenal that we had developed in order to intercept incoming USSR bombers in such manner as to prevent their pilots from firing their standoff rockets armed with nuclear warheads. That weapon is a rocket that, as it approaches its target from beneath, fires straight forward out of its nosecone a coiled steel cable with weights at the ends, a coiled steel cable that extends and begins to whip through the air like a South American bola, intersecting the incoming Russian plane and severing it into two pieces, one containing the pilots and the piece containing the weaponry, so that the rockets with atomic warheads cannot at the last instant be fired. Such a weapon, which does exist in our arsenal, if inadvertently deployed during such a routine air militia training exercise, would produce precisely the disaster that in fact did occur on this day.)

ICBMS

November 16, Saturday:When the Russian Mars probe’s Mars 96 rocket fell back to earth there began an 11-day period during which the US Space Command was maintaining that the 0.44 pounds of Pu238 aboard this probe had been “safely deposited” on the floor of the Pacific. At the end of this 11-day period of United States government lies the Boston Globe revealed the true extent of the ecological disaster, which is that this probe had burned up on its way down through the atmosphere, over the mountains of northern Chile and Argentina. ICBMS RUSSIAN PLUTONIUM LOST OVER CHILE AND BOLIVIA28 On November 16, 1996, Russia’s Mars 96 space probe broke up and

28. Covert Action Quarterly, Spring 1997, “Space Probe Explodes” by Karl Grossman. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE burned while descending over Chile and Bolivia, scattering its remains across a 10,000-square-mile area. The probe carried about a half pound of deadly plutonium divided into four battery canisters, and no one seems to know where they went! Gordon Bendick, Director of Legislative Affairs for the National Security Council, states there are two possibilities. Either the...”canisters were destroyed coming through the atmosphere [and the plutonium dispersed], or the canisters survived reentry, impacted the earth, and...penetrated the surface... or could have hit a rock and bounced off like an agate marble.” This amount of plutonium has the potential to cause devastating damage. According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, president emeritus of Physicians for Social Responsibility, “Plutonium is so toxic that less that one millionth of a gram is a carcinogenic dose.” She states: “One pound, if uniformly distributed, could hypothetically induce lung cancer in every person on earth.” Dr. John Gofman, professor emeritus of radiological physics at the University of California, Berkeley confirms the increased hazard of lung cancer which would occur if the probe burned up and formed plutonium oxide particles. On November 17, when the U.S. Space Command announced the probe would reenter the earth’s atmosphere with a predicted impact point in East Central Australia, President Clinton telephoned the Australian Prime Minister John Howard and offered “the assets the U.S. has in the Department of Energy,” to deal with any radioactive contamination. Howard placed the Australian military and government on full alert and warned the public to use “extreme caution” if they came in contact with the remnants of the Russian space probe. In the first of a series of blunders, the day after the space probe had fallen on South America, the Space Command remained focused on Australia. Later they reported the probe had fallen in the Pacific just west of South America. A Russian news source put the site in a different patch of the Pacific altogether. Major media in the United States reported the probe as having crashed “harmlessly” into the ocean. On November 18, 1996, The Washington Post ran the headline: “Errant Russian Spacecraft Crashes Harmlessly After Scaring Australia.” On November 29, U.S. Space Command completely revised its account. It changed not only where, but also when the probe fell. The final report placed the crash site not west of South America, but directly on Chile and Bolivia. The date of the crash was also revised from November 17 to November 16, the night before. Apparently U.S. Space Command had initially tracked the booster stage of the Russian craft, and not the actual probe itself. The New York Times mentioned the incident on page 7 under “World Briefs” on December 14, 1996. The Russian government has been uncooperative, still refusing to give Chile a description of the canisters to aid in retrieval efforts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”

— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955)

November 26, Tuesday: The last of the nuclear warheads stationed in Belarus were removed to Russia, completing the planned denuclearization of the smaller successor states to the Soviet Union and leaving Russia to be the sole inheritor of the nuclear arsenal of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. ATOM BOMB ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1997

Our national birthday, Friday the 4th of July: The US Pathfinder spacecraft landed on Mars in the region of Ares Vallis and President William Jefferson Clinton commented that “On this important day, the American people celebrate another exciting milestone in our nation’s long heritage of progress, discovery, and exploration.” The lander deployed a robotic vehicle to explore the planet. ICBMS

The Boston Pops observed the centennial of John Philip Sousa’s immortal “Stars and Stripes Forever.” CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY

December 22, Monday: The U.S. imploded its last Minuteman II missile silo. ATOM BOMB ICBMS

President William Jefferson Clinton received a tumultuous welcome as he visited Sarajevo.

A report by the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva noted an “escalation of repression” by the Chinese in Tibet. They asserted that China was engaged in an “all-out war” against the Dalai Lama.

20-25 gunmen with machetes invaded the Indian village of Acteal in Chiapas state, Mexico, killing 45 residents and wounding at least 25 others. Local officials and other members of the governing PRI party would be charged with the crimes. (The village had supported Zapatista rebels.)

Despite delays while judge, defendant, and defense attorneys met in chambers apparently in regard to difficulties between Theodore John Kaczynski and his defenders, after 5 weeks of selection the 12-person-and- 6-alternates jury that was to hear the UNABOM case had been chosen out of the pool of 600 citizens. Quin Denvir, leading the defense, indicated that he was pleased with the 9 women and 3 men selected to decide his client’s fate. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1999

February 21, Sunday: Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India and Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan signed documents pledging that their nations were taking steps to reduce the threat of nuclear conflict. ICBMS

April 11, Sunday: India tested an intermediate range ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. ICBMS

The military of Niger named Daouda Malam Wanke as president.

In the New York Times Magazine, on page 66, appeared an article by Paul Berman titled “The Real Divide.” Berman proposed that it is a mistake to presume the basic political struggle in our nation to be one between rich and poor, or between white Americans and Americans of color, or between “right” and “left,” or between haves and wanna-haves. It is certainly not between Republican Tweedledees and Democratic Tweedledums! No, according to Berman’s analysis, our basic political struggle is and ever has been a struggle between those of an attitude which he terms the “insider” attitude, and an attitude which he terms the “outsider” attitude. President William Jefferson Clinton was not impeached because he lied under oath, was not impeached because he was from Arkansas, was not impeached because he had almost-sex with an intern, was not impeached because he was a 60s-era pot-smoking, draft-dodging, free-loving hippie yuppie, etc. No, he was impeached by Insiders similar to the Reverend Cotton Mather and the Moral Majority for being, like President Andrew Jackson and the others of Scotch-Irish origin, an Outsider.

Well — that’s evidently this author’s concept.

The interesting thing about this, for us, is that in developing this analysis of American political life, Paul Berman has found it necessary to classify Henry Thoreau as an insider! Here is the context of that evaluation: What accounts for such a thing — an emotional confluence of conservatives and a number of elite liberals [in the condemnation of Bill Clinton]? The explanation, it seems to me, has to do with the countercultural values that everyone is said to be fighting over. Anyone can natter on about sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. But the counterculture, it ought to be remembered, has a spiritual side too. It was a cult of truth — a cult that got its start among the Puritans of New England long ago and came down to modern times through the writings of people like Henry Thoreau and the cultural attitude of the Unitarian Church and innumerable other ways. It was an impulse to rebel against everything false, tricky and hypocritical, in favor of everything direct, unvarnished and authentic. that kind of impulse was never going to look kindly on a man like Clinton, with his wiles and his hidden love life. And so, during the past year conservatives loathed Clinton because they were anti-60s, and a number of elite liberals loathed Clinton because they were, in some respects, pro-60s. And their loathing was the same. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE Henry the insider! – something for us to chew on.

August 11, Wednesday: During the week between August 11th and August 18th a series of astronomical events were scheduled: on this day there would occur the last total solar eclipse of the millennium, on the following night the annual Perseid meteor shower would star, on the 17th and 18th NASA’s Plutonium-bearing Cassini space probe would swing around the earth, on the 18th there would be the Grand Cross planetary formation — and meanwhile, the comet Lee would be touring the inner solar system. If you factor into this the Julian calendar used by astrological forecasters, within which frame of reference some of these events are taking place prior to the end of the month of July, you can stir up quite a bit of apocalyptic paranoia. Some were expecting that a previously unknown asteroid or comet would become visible during the eclipse, and would then strike the Earth. The clothing designer Paco Rabanne, on the basis of his incredibly prescient understanding of human attire, was able to infer that on this day the Mir satellite was going to crash into Paris. ICBMS HERE COME DA JUDGE! ASTRONOMY August 18, Wednesday: The End of the World as foreseen by Charles Criswell King (AKA “The Amazing Criswell”) in his 1968 bestseller CRISWELL PREDICTS: FROM NOW TO THE YEAR 2000. He had written that: The world as we know it will cease to exist ... on August 18, 1999.... And if you and I meet each other on the street that fateful day ... and we chat about what we will do on the morrow, we will open our mouths to speak and no words will come out, for we have no future. Why August 18? –Uh, because it was Criswell’s birthday? (Abanes, Richard. END-TIME VISIONS. NY: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998, page 43) MILLENNIALISM

Many had been fearful that the Cassini space probe, with a load of 72.3 pounds of Plutonium, would crash into the Earth as it whipped by on August 18th. Some went so far as to point out that this amount of plutonium, if vaporized in the atmosphere would poison a third of the world’s population, thus fulfilling the prophecy of REVELATION 8:11 concerning a star named Wormwood — supposedly a metaphor for radiation poisoning (“Chernobylnik” is the Ukrainian word for a purple-stemmed subspecies of the wormwood plant). HERE COME DA JUDGE!

But, big surprise, Cassini passed by the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere, its load of Plutonium intact, without a hitch. ICBMS August 28, Saturday: When The Guardian, quoted Geoffrey Francis Fisher. Baron Fisher of Lambeth on the prospect of nuclear war, the former Archbishop of Canterbury was in characteristic good humor: The very worst the Bomb can do is to sweep a vast number of people from this world into the next into which they must all go anyway. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE October 15, Friday: The 1st of the US’s 150 Minuteman III Missile silos was destroyed (to destroy them all would require about 2 years). ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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21ST CENTURY

2000

January 18, Tuesday: The US subjected itself to a National Missile Defense test, and quite failed that test. At an altitude of 140 miles our defensive missile flashed past its target –a simulated incoming ICBM with nuclear warheads– without ever getting close enough to have done it any damage. ATOM BOMB ICBMS

“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”

— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955)

April: A $4,085 check was posted by the federal government of the United States of America to the Treasurer General of the Republic of Cuba. The money represented this year’s rent for the US’s oldest overseas naval base, Guantánamo Bay, a 45-square-mile sliver on the southeast coast of the island originally acquired as a coaling station for US vessels and exceedingly unlike any other military installation in the world. This check would not be cashed by its addressee. No such check would ever again be cashed (the last such payment that had been accepted, had been all the way back in 1959). Eventually even the postal address to which these checks continue to be mailed year after year would no longer be a deliverable Cuban postal address — and nevertheless the checks would be posted.

The Whites, a family of ascetic Doomsday cultists living near Jerusalem, had expected the End to take place in March or April after the Ark of the Covenant was to reappear in a cave in the Old City in Jerusalem. They claimed that there was a mistake in the chronology of the Hebrew calendar and that the year 6001 will begin this Spring (actually, September 11, 1999 to September 30, 2000 is Hebrew year 5,760).

The Russian Federation ratified the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II). ATOM BOMB ICBMS

April 9, Sunday: In 1964 Sidney Lumet had transformed Eugene Burdick’s and Harvey Wheeler’s 1962 atomic- warfare novel FAIL-SAFE into a nightmarish movie. On this night Walter Bernstein recycled the material as an 86-minute live prime-time TV play on CBS, hosted by Walter Cronkite and starring Richard Dreyfuss as the President, George Clooney as Colonel Jack Grady, and Harvey Keitel as a Brigadier General. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2001

December: On May 26, 1972 in Moscow, President Richard Milhous Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev had signed a SALT I Antiballistic Missile Treaty. At this point, however, the United States officially withdrew from this major arms control accord of the nuclear era. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2003

January: The Economist reported “American intelligence agents have been torturing terrorist suspects, or engaging in practices pretty close to torture.”

When North Korea withdrew from the International Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it became obvious that the Clinton administration’s Agreed Framework, so carefully sabotaged by congressional Republicans, had slowed but not halted Kim Jong-il’s nuclear plans. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2004

September 30, Thursday: According to a report by David Ruppe of ABC News, headlined “U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba,” in the early 1960s the US military had among other things been drafting plans to themselves terrorize our cities, in order to provoke the US public into supporting another military invasion of Cuba: ICBMS In the early 1960s, America’s top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba’s then new leader, communist Fidel Castro. America’s top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantánamo Bay and blame Cuba,” and, “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.” Details of the plans are described in BODY OF SECRETS (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America’s largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes. The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years. “These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing,” Bamford told ABCNEWS.com. “The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants.” Gunning for War The documents show “the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government,” writes Bamford. The Joint Chiefs even proposed using the potential death of astronaut John Glenn during the first attempt to put an American into orbit as a false pretext for war with Cuba, the documents show. Should the rocket explode and kill Glenn, they wrote, “the objective is to provide irrevocable proof ... that the fault lies with the Communists et all Cuba [sic].” The plans were motivated by an intense desire among senior military leaders to depose Castro, who seized power HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE in 1959 to become the first communist leader in the Western Hemisphere — only 90 miles from U.S. shores. The earlier CIA- backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles had been a disastrous failure, in which the military was not allowed to provide firepower. The military leaders now wanted a shot at it. “The whole thing was so bizarre,” says Bamford, noting public and international support would be needed for an invasion, but apparently neither the American public, nor the Cuban public, wanted to see U.S. troops deployed to drive out Castro. Reflecting this, the U.S. plan called for establishing prolonged military –not democratic– control over the island nation after the invasion. “That’s what we’re supposed to be freeing them from,” Bamford says. “The only way we would have succeeded is by doing exactly what the Russians were doing all over the world, by imposing a government by tyranny, basically what we were accusing Castro himself of doing.” ‘Over the Edge’ The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military. Whether the Joint Chiefs’ plans were rejected by McNamara in the meeting is not clear. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there was virtually no possibility of ever using overt force to take Cuba, Bamford reports. Within months, Lemnitzer would be denied another term as chairman and transferred to another job. The secret plans came at a time when there was distrust in the military leadership about their civilian leadership, with leaders in the Kennedy administration viewed as too liberal, insufficiently experienced and soft on communism. At the same time, however, there were real concerns in American society about their military overstepping its bounds. There were reports U.S. military leaders had encouraged their subordinates to vote conservative during the election. And at least two popular books were published focusing on a right- wing military leadership pushing the limits against government policy of the day. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee published its own report on right-wing extremism in the military, warning a “considerable danger” in the “education and propaganda activities of military personnel” had been uncovered. The committee even called for an examination of any ties between Lemnitzer and right-wing groups. But Congress didn’t get wind of Northwoods, says Bamford. “Although no one in Congress could have known at the time,” he writes, “Lemnitzer and the Joint Chiefs had quietly slipped over the edge.” Even after Lemnitzer was gone, he writes, the Joint Chiefs continued to plan “pretext” operations at least through 1963. One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantánamo naval base — an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war. “There really was a worry at the time about the military going off crazy and they did, but they never succeeded, but it wasn’t for lack of trying,” he says. After 40 Years Ironically, the documents came to light, says Bamford, in part because of the 1992 Oliver Stone film JFK, which examined the possibility of a conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy. As public interest in the assassination swelled after JFK’s release, Congress passed a law designed to increase the public’s access to government records related to the assassination. The author says a friend on the board tipped him off to the documents. Afraid of a congressional investigation, Lemnitzer had ordered all Joint Chiefs documents related to the Bay of Pigs destroyed, says Bamford. But somehow, these remained. “The scary thing is none of this stuff comes out until 40 years after,” says Bamford. Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2005

August 3, Wednesday: Norm Dixon placed an article “Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Worst terror attacks in history” in Green Left Weekly reporting recent discoveries made by Peter Kuznick, Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at the American University in Washington DC, and Mark Selden, a Cornell University historian. The atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not been done out of military necessity, not at all! FAKE NEWS

That had been merely a cover story, a cover story repudiated in fact in advance by the military commanders themselves. This use of our atomic bombs had been entirely diplomatic. The destruction of these Japanese cities had had no more to do with Japan than it had to do with ending World War II. It had been a mere diplomatic negotiation ploy, one aimed at the USSR, a communication kick-starting the Cold War with what amounted to the warning: “We have a horrific new bomb, and also, we have the necessary will and ruthlessness to drop it on you — so in the years to come you need to be very careful only to push us so hard, and not harder.” The 2 historians were preparing to announce their evidence at an upcoming history conference in England, leading to the conclusion that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had in fact been the opening 2 shots of the Cold War. Before they even had a chance to present their evidence at this conference, however, other historians began to seek out the media, and denounce the conclusion these colleagues had reached as simply “preposterous”: August 6 and August 9 will mark the 60th anniversaries of the US atomic-bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Hiroshima, an estimated 80,000 people were killed in a split second. Some 13 square kilometres of the city was obliterated. By December, at least another 70,000 people had died from radiation and injuries. Three days after Hiroshima’s destruction, the US dropped an A- bomb on Nagasaki, resulting in the deaths of at least 70,000 people before the year was out. Since 1945, tens of thousands more residents of the two cities have continued to suffer and die from radiation-induced cancers, birth defects and still births. A tiny group of US rulers met secretly in Washington and callously ordered this indiscriminate annihilation of civilian populations. They gave no explicit warnings. They rejected all alternatives, preferring to inflict the most extreme human carnage possible. They ordered and had carried out the two worst terror acts in human history. The 60th anniversaries will inevitably be marked by countless mass media commentaries and speeches repeating the 60-year-old mantra that there was no other choice but to use A-bombs in order to avoid a bitter, prolonged invasion of Japan. On July 21, the British New Scientist magazine undermined this chorus when it reported that two historians had uncovered evidence revealing that “the US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ... was meant to kick-start the Cold War [against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USA’s wartime ally] rather than end the Second World War.” Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at the HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE American University in Washington stated that US President Harry Truman’s decision to blast the cities was “not just a war crime, it was a crime against humanity.” With Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in New York, Kuznick studied the diplomatic archives of the US, Japan and the USSR. They found that three days before Hiroshima, Truman agreed at a meeting that Japan was “looking for peace.” His senior generals and political advisers told him there was no need to use the A-bomb. But the bombs were dropped anyway. “Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war,” Selden told the New Scientist. While the capitalist media immediately dubbed the historians’ “theory” “controversial,” it accords with the testimony of many central US political and military players at the time, including General Dwight Eisenhower, who stated bluntly in a 1963 Newsweek interview that “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Truman’s chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, stated in his memoirs that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” At the time though, Washington cold-bloodedly decided to sweep away the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children to show off the terrible power of its new superweapon and underline the US rulers’ ruthless preparedness to use it. These terrible acts were intended to warn the leaders of the Soviet Union that their cities would suffer the same fate if the USSR attempted to stand in the way of Washington’s plans to create an “American Century” of US global domination. Nuclear scientist Leo Szilard recounted to his biographers how Truman’s secretary of state, James Byrnes, told him before the Hiroshima attack that “Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might and that a demonstration of the bomb may impress Russia.” Drunk from the success of its nuclear bloodletting in Japan, Washington planned and threatened the use of nuclear weapons on at least 20 occasions in the 1950s and 1960s, only being restrained when the USSR developed enough nuclear-armed rockets to usher in the era of “mutually assured destruction,” and the US rulers’ fear that their use again of nuclear weapons would led to a massive anti-US political revolt by ordinary people around the world. ICBMS

Washington’s policy of nuclear terror remains intact. The US refuses to rule out the first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict. Its latest Nuclear Posture Review envisages the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear “rogue states” and it is developing a new generation of “battlefield” nuclear weapons. Fear of the political backlash that would be caused in the US and around the globe by the use of nuclear weapons remains the main restraint upon the atomaniacs in Washington. On this 60th anniversary year of history’s worst acts of terror, the most HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE effective thing that people around the world can do to keep that fear alive in the minds of the US rulers is to recommit ourselves to defeating Washington’s current “local” wars of terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2008

January 1, Monday: The communications difficulties that had been encountered during the Cuba Missile Crisis had caused the creation of a “Hot Line,” between Washington DC and Moscow (this involved no “red telephone,” but FAX machines connected by cable and satellite). At this point the system switched over from FAX to email and chat utilities. ATOM BOMB ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2009

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the landslide victor in presidential elections, sparking protests by supporters of candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who unsuccessfully appealed the results to Iran’s Guardian Council. “Hey, guys, your candidate lost, it’s not the end of the world!”

According to prophetess Lori Adaile Toye of the I AM America Foundation, a series of Earth changes beginning in 1992 and ending in 2009 would have caused much of the world to be submerged, and only 1/3d of America’s population would have been able to survive. Guess we dodged the bullet on that one! MILLENNIALISM

At this point the United States of America had somewhere between 9,400 and 10,400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics somewhere between 12,950 and 13,950. That’s enough to make the rubble bounce! In addition, the People’s Republic of China had somewhere between 184 and 240, France in the vicinity of 300, the United Kingdom 160, Israel somewhere between 60 and 200, India some 60 or 70, Pakistan about 60, and North Korea 5 or perhaps 6. ICBMS

Professor John E. Mueller pointed out, however, in ATOMIC OBSESSION: NUCLEAR ALARMISM FROM HIROSHIMA TO AL-QAEDA (Oxford UP), that we might as well cease declaiming about nuclear weapons and eat our corn muffin and get some sleep. The problem we are having is a problem with our rhetoric, a problem of scare tactics, rather than with the proliferation of such a technology. Actually, he indicated, atomic weapons are “difficult to obtain, militarily useless, and a spectacular waste of money and scientific talent.” (Professor Mueller is well known for his opinion that “War has almost ceased to exist” and gave a blockbuster interview on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show on October 31, 2006.)

“If anything bad can happen, it probably will.”

— Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, 1955) HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE February 10, Tuesday: For obvious reasons the United States of America and Russia have no trust in each other, and thus have never been able to share information as to the exact location and orbits of their satellites in earth orbit. On this day at 16:56UTC the US’s Iridium 33 commercial communications satellite collided with an abandoned piece of space junk that had once been Russia’s Kosmos-2251 military communications satellite, at orbital velocity 490 miles above Siberia, instantly generating some thousand items of orbiting space debris larger than 4 inches plus many smaller objects such as nuts and bolts. ICBMS

By the sheerest coincidence, on this day at the Pentagon in Washington DC, by Department of Defense Directive #8000.01, oversight responsibilities for Department-of-Defense information management activities became the responsibility of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration (to be abbreviated as “ASD(NII)”), also known as the Department of Defense Chief Information Officer (to be abbreviated as “DoD CIO”). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2010

October 23, Saturday: For approximately 45 minutes commanders at a US Air Force base in Wyoming were deprived of most forms of command, control, and security monitoring over 50 nuclear ICBMs. The missiles had been ICBMS

taken offline because a suspected hardware problem was causing multiple errors in their control computers. Although these commanders would insist that the missiles had remained secure and had never been susceptible to outside attempts to gain control, a former Air Force launch officer, Bruce G. Blair, has pointed out that there’s simply no way to ensure that such isolated missiles are not hijacked and launched by disloyal missile crews, or even by hackers.

CLOSE CALLS

Norway launched a Black Brant XII research rocket to study the aurora borealis. Beforehand they had been careful to notify Russia and a number of other nations. However, Russian radar operators were not informed and, when they detected the January 25, 1995 launch, Russian President Boris Yeltsin made himself the 1st world leader to activate a nuclear briefcase. Russian strategic ballistic missile submarines were put on alert to prepare a possible retaliation but, as soon as it became clear there was no larger attack and that this rocket posed no threat, military forces were able to stand down.

For approximately 45 minutes commanders at a US Air Force base in Wyoming were deprived of most forms of command, control, and security monitoring over 50 nuclear ICBMs. The missiles had been taken offline because a suspected hardware problem was causing multiple errors in their control computers. Although these commanders October 23, 2010 would insist that the missiles had remained secure and had never been susceptible to outside attempts to gain control, a former Air Force launch officer, Bruce G. Blair, has pointed out that there’s simply no known way to ensure that such isolated missiles are not hijacked and launched by disloyal missile crews, or even by hackers.

At Fukushima, Japan a tsunami flooded and damaged 5 active nuclear reactors (a 6th reactor was shut down at the time), drowning 2 workers. Backup electrical power March 12, 2011 generators were submerged and this caused overheating, meltdowns, and evacuations. During the cleanup a worker would die suddenly while carrying equipment. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2013

January 24, Thursday: North Korea announced continuance of nuclear testing and long-range rocket launches leading toward an “upcoming all-out action” that would target the “sworn enemy of the Korean people,” the United States of America. ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2016

March: In December 2006 the Pentagon had eliminated LSD screening from its standard drug-testing procedures for military personnel, considering that this had become unnecessary. However, in this month, at the US Air Force’s high-security FE Warren Base, a group of 14 airmen of our nuclear intercontinental missile silo force, the 90th Missile Wing, were caught engaging in LSD parties. Their 90th Missile Wing is charged with operating a third of the 400 Minuteman-3 intercontinental ballistic missiles that stand “on constant alert” in underground silos scattered across the northern Great Plains. Among other places, their LSD getaways were taking place at a state park about 20 miles from their silos. They were caught because they video-recorded themselves. It was discovered that had been going on for some time. Airman Basic Kyle S. Morrison managed to cut a plea bargain and in return for serving as an informant, would be sentenced to merely 5 months confinement, 15 days of hard labor, and loss of $5,200 in pay. An Air Force spokesperson, Lieutenant-Colonel Uriah L. Orland, assured the public that this drug influence had occurred only during off-duty hours. “There are multiple checks to ensure airmen who report for duty are not under the influence of alcohol or drugs and are able to execute the mission safely, securely and effectively,” he averred, despite the fact that the military had long since dispensed with LSD testing of its personnel. Airman 1st Class Nickolos A Harris was discovered to have been the provider of the drug, purchased from civilian sources. He pleaded guilty to the use and distribution of LSD, and to the use of ecstasy, cocaine, and marijuana and was sentenced to 12 months confinement and other penalties, but was not dismissed from the service. ICBMS

March 9, Wednesday: North Korea announced it had miniaturized a nuclear warhead to fit atop its ballistic missiles. (And stop calling me “Shorty”!) ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2017

January 1, Sunday: Dear Leader Kim Jong-un went on TV to assert that North Korea would soon test an intercontinental ballistic missile. ICBMS

January 8, Sunday: Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced on “Meet the Press” that the US military would of course shoot down any North Korean ballistic missile fired at the United States of America or any of its allies. ICBMS

July 4, Tuesday: North Korea claimed to have successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach “anywhere in the world.” ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE July 20, Friday: During a 2-hour Pentagon meeting with the US’s highest ranking national security leaders such as for instance the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Donald Trump was shown a briefing slide that charted our steady reduction in the number of nuclear weapons since the peak of our arsenal back during the late 1960s. That chart of course is classified, but presumably it was something like the following, brought up to date as of 2017: ICBMS

His reaction to this downward slope, showing that we now were relying on some 4,000 nuclear warheads, roughly the same as Russia, was that what he desired was a nearly tenfold increase. We ought to have more even than the 30,000 we had in the early 1960s, plus more of other weapons, plus more boots on the ground. As the President left the meeting he told reporters it had been “absolutely great.” After Trump departed, Rex Tillerson commented to the remainder of the officials still present that the President was a “fucking moron,” although nobody is certain what the Secretary of State had meant by such a remark.

Film directed by Huey Coleman “Henry David Thoreau, Surveyor of the Soul,” 7PM, Morgan Library on Madison Avenue in New York City.

July 25, Tuesday: According to Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency, if we were to attempt to remove their Dear Leader Kim Jong-un North Korea would release a nuclear strike at “the heart of the US.” ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE August 7, Monday: When the UN Security Council unanimously adopted new sanctions in response to Pyongyang’s long-range ballistic missiles tests of the previous month, North Korea accused the United States of America of attempting to “drive the situation of the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war.” ICBMS

August 8, Tuesday: President Donald Trump discussed using force against North Korea during a briefing on the opioid crisis at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. He didn’t seem to be taking into consideration that from Kim Jong-un’s point of view, developing a nuclear delivery capability might seem like the best option. A variation of this way of thinking about nuclear weapons had led the USA and the USSR to the strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction during the Cold War. When Saddam Hussein abandoned Iraq’s nuclear program, we invaded and overthrew him and searched him out in his hidey-hole, and he was hanged. After Libya gave up on its nuke program we overthrew Muammar Gaddafi, and in 2011 he was searched out in a culvert and inventively killed. Our history suggests that trying to appease us doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. ICBMS

August 9, Wednesday: President Donald Trump tweeted that if North Korea continued to threaten the US, it would “face fire and fury like the world has never seen,” etc. The immediate response by Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency was to the effect that their military was “examining the operational plan” to strike areas around the US territory of Guam with medium-to-long-range strategic ballistic missiles. ICBMS

August 11, Friday: After North Korea said it would launch a missile strike on Guam and Trump responded with a tweet that this would mean “big, big trouble in North Korea,” that island’s office of homeland security issued a bulletin to Guam’s civilians. The local Office of Homeland Security’s suggestions included: “Do not look at the flash or fireball — it can blind you,” and –as if that had been insufficiently ludicrous– “Do not use conditioner in your hair because it will bind radioactive material to your hair.” ICBMS

(No, I didn’t make the above up. You can’t make this stuff up.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE December 19, Tuesday: Brian E. Crim’s OUR GERMANS: PROJECT PAPERCLIP AND THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE (Johns Hopkins) reviewed the postwar special handling awarded to Wernher von Braun and his colleagues from Führer Adolf Hitler’s V-2 program. When Braun elected to surrender to a private of the U.S. 44th Infantry Division on May 2, 1945, aware that the Bolshevik menace was to become the new substitute archenemy of the American military/industrial complex, he offered to design for us a high-tech weapons program that would protect us from that next-generation bogeyman. He was able to reconstitute most of his German operation Stateside (minus of course that slave labor force). We airbrushed his record and brought him to our breast, bypassing for him the necessary “de-Nazification” drill. WORLD WAR II ICBMS

The “Twitter” social network decided it needed to implement a range of new rules to reduce what it deemed abusive content, and suspended the accounts of some well-known white nationalists (however, for some reason it failed to suspend the account of well-known white nationalist Donald John Trump). The President issued a tweet declaring a new national security strategy to back up the “America First” message of his 2016 campaign: “AMERICA IS COMING BACK AND COMING BACK STRONG.”

At the Palin family home in Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin’s 28-year-old son Track assaulted his father Todd, causing bleeding from the head. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2018

January 13, Saturday: An operator of an early-warning system in the State of Hawaii, the Emergency Alert System and Commercial Mobile Alert System over television, radio, and cellphones, a system operating independently of the US’s continental military defense system, decided at 8:07AM local time on his own that he was going to send out a general alert of an incoming North Korean nuclear warheads: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”

This alert went out on TV broadcasts as an audio message with a scrolling banner. The banner read “If you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter in a building. Remain indoors well away from windows. If you are driving, pull safely to the side of the road and seek shelter in a nearby building or lie on the floor. We will announce when the threat has ended.” ICBMS HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE The originator of the message was a 10-year employee who, it would be discovered, had a record of twice before having gotten confused between real life and mere procedural drilling. That employee would assert that he believed there to have been an actual emergency and would claim not to have heard his supervisor repeat “Exercise. Exercise. Exercise.” Directed to cancel the alert, he sat not responding until a nearby employee grabbed away his computer mouse and clicked to cancel. It required a full 38 minutes before correction messages went out. The employee would be reassigned to a position away from the emergency warning system during an internal investigation, and would be terminated on January 26th on the basis of a work record of previous reluctance to obey instructions. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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2019

March 8, Friday: I took the occasion to explain to Dr. David Moore how I had retreaded myself as a Quaker: • The planned agenda for this session of psychotherapy was how it was that, eventually, I threw over my intention to satiate my fury at the world. • That discussion would need to begin with some historical background about the US Civil War (since this is one of the many, many things we excellent folks have elected to forget about). We’ve all heard about the many, many limb amputations caused by the Minié bullet — but what our historians have never confessed to their adoring public is that this period projectile had been, basically, a shit bucket. What we had been firing at one another was little packets of our own personal germs. Any time one of these thingies penetrated the flesh, the limb needed to come off right away and drop into the growing pile of amputations underneath the surgeon’s table. It doesn’t matter what we now pretend with our “re-enacters” and grand heroic tales: that struggle had been, fundamentally, germ warfare aided by projectile technology. (It is said that in every war they kill you a new way, which is a considerable oversimplification: the truth is in every war they kill you in the old ways but also in one or another new way.) • The above historical background material would need to continue by making Dr. Moore aware of the World War II anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) warfare facility in Vigo, Indiana, just over the horizon from my grandfather’s farm on which I was at that time, by of course the sheerest coincidence, contracting badger tuberculosis (Mycobacterium bovis) and my twisted spine. That anthrax bomb facility had been run by the Indiana Ku Klux Klan on behalf of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. (Vigo County is where my grandfather Charlie Mattox came from.) Our over-the-top world war plan was to render the homeland of Germany uninhabitable for centuries. We then changed our minds about this only because General George Smith Patton, Jr.’s 3d Army unexpectedly crossed the Rhine and then the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen was unexpectedly found still virtually intact. The anthrax delivery planes never took off from Britain to render Germany uninhabitable because we then cold-blooded decided that we would be able to use the German nation as cannon-fodder against onrushing hordes of Commies. It doesn’t matter what we now pretend about how the Germans are our friends and all that: actually we allowed them to remain alive when we came to suppose that postwar they might be useful. • This would continue with the Indiana Boys School at Plainfield, Indiana just up the National Highway, which was continually being pointed to by my family as a likely home for godforsaken youngsters such as myself. Charles Manson was at that time an inmate of that benevolent institution and now we all know what it did to him. • This would need to continue with my encounter in Harvard with Theodore John Kaczynski, later to achieve renown as UNABOMER. Then it would need to continue with the later period in his and my lives during which he in his cabin on his mountain in his state, and I in my cabin on my mountain in my state, were simultaneously trying to figure out how to correct this world. We each had a manifesto that we were striving to get published. His was a crazed thing about how we would all have been OK, had it not been for the invention of fire or some other technological thingie, and he sought publication by crafting clever and threatening little bomb apparatuses. Mine was “Devolution,” which I did manage to get peer-published but then had zero impact on anyone’s mind — because even in science, it is not the truth that matters but what people want to believe, which is whatever will help their lives work for them. So now Ted is in SUPERMAX because he is and always has been crazy and because he acted out his craziness, and I am in analysis, because I am HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE and always have been sane and have been able to arrive at my elder age basically without ever having hurt anyone. • This session would continue with a description of the training I was offered at the Marine Officers Basic Course in Quantico, on how to continue to do battle despite being trapped behind enemy lines, how to fabricate weapons of opportunity from materials at hand, and also with their training in what they were terming “NBC warfare.” (It might have been discrete, for them to have thought twice about offering such tutorials.) • This session would continue with a description of the weaponry I helped the General Electric Armament System Department manufacture at Burlington, Vermont, weaponry which included not only a Gatling-principle air-to-ground machine gun but also a re-entry stabilizer platform for multiple independently targeted nuclear warheads. ICBMS • This session would continue with a description of the extreme radiation to which I was exposed as an employee of General Electric Nuclear Energy Division, at the GETR1 reactor in Pleasanton, California — radiation which, fortunately, I have happened to survive except for occasional bouts with skin cancer. Radiation fully 5 times more intense than the radiation that workers are being subjected to in the cleanup of Fukushima Daiichi, and not only 5 times more intense, but repeated quarter-year after quarter-year for a number of years. –Radiation to which I was subjected because I was, as a divorced and hounded deformed man, of course considered expendable. • This session would need to continue with the determination of the Child Welfare people in San Jose, California that it would be inexcusable for them to allow my 4 children to be exposed to the fact that their father was a deformed man, something that might well do harm to their self-esteem. Then, having driven me away by their threats of false prosecution, driven to Iran during the Khomeini Revolution and into virtual slavery without a salary, they would continue by building a plausible case to my children, that their father had deserted them because he did not love them and was not a responsible person — and therefore they were entitled, just like their mother, to detest their father, who maybe was not even their biological parent. • It will need to continue with my being sentenced to 3 years in prison for criminal child neglect, once I had managed to escape from my Iranian captivity. It will continue with my being described in open court in the presence of my children as the “worst deadbeat dad in the history of the State of California.” It will continue with my children berating me in terms selected by their mother, terms such as “shitass,” terms that were all blatant references to my spinal deformity. • It will need to continue with my children’s mother informing them that I was sexually incompetent, being unable to get anything more than my glans in between the lips of her vagina. –That I was not their father but that actually they had different anonymous fathers, being merely the products of a series of her one-night stands during this unfortunate marriage. • What I would be leading up to in the above is the content of my mentation in the early 1980s while hiding in the Sierra Nevada mountains and subsisting on acorns. This was mentation that was merely mentation, involving no actions or preparations for actions. It amounted to no more than mental tricks, to techniques by which I was attempting to more or less cope with my personal situation without ever actually going across the line and doing anything harmful. I had not as yet mentioned these contents of my mentation to Dr. Moore, despite the fact that I did understand that he as a psychotherapist would be very much interested in such details. I needed to do this catchup work, so he could have a fuller portrait of me. • What I was “scheming,” if that is the proper word, up in the mountains in hiding, was a campaign I might undertake, to explore with the world as it presently is a negative aspect of their Golden Rule: “Better not do unto others what you would not want them to do unto you.” My mentation had to do with what I had come to understand during my childhood near Vigo, Indiana about anthrax — about what an effective tool it would be, by which an isolated individual might educate the world in HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE this negative aspect of their Golden Rule. I could do what I had been so carefully tutored in doing in the Marines, and continue the battle despite being trapped behind enemy lines. I could subject each municipality in which I had lived as a child, in strict sequence city after city, to an anthrax attack killing thousands, after which I would post one or another teasing note, along the lines of “Has someone been harmed so badly by what has been done to them, that they would deliberately do this to you? Who might it be? What might have been done to them?” The guessing-game would be for them to figure out who it was who was committing these atrocities, and then figure out how it was that this person had been so terribly hurt that he or she would be willing to perpetrate such dreadful harm. The sole clue in this guessing-game was to be the precise sequence of the communities attacked, beginning with the locale of my birth, LaCrosse, Kansas, and continuing through such locales as Grass Valley, California, Olney, Illinois, Clay City and Veedersburg and Lincolnville and Wabash, Indiana, Corpus Christi and Austin, Texas, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Triangle, Virginia, Vista, California, Sharonville, Ohio, Stowe and Bristol, Vermont, and Fresno and Tollhouse, California, and ending finally with a generalized assault on Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. • My thought included that before I killed hundreds of thousands, or millions, in the vicinity of Silicon Valley with anthrax, I could steal some money and buy my children an ocean liner cruise to the Galápagos Islands — to have them out of the area during my grandest slaughter. • My sudden awareness that we are all going to die together and that this extinction is inevitable and will be prompt, as expressed in my paper “Devolution,” threw a kink into my thinking. I no longer needed to be published as I had already been published and nobody had paid any attention, continuing instead to believe whatever inanities it was that was helping their lives to work for them. Why bother to kill a bunch of people, I asked myself, who are soon going to die together anyway? Is my personal satisfaction actually so very relevant to anything, big-picture-wise? • The above was a course of mental coping which, eventually, after my spine had rotated and I had met my new bride, I elected not to transform into a course of action. Helping this new BFF was, actually, all I personally needed. • Whether or not I actually came close to transforming the above mental coping into a course of action is something that I simply cannot decipher. The transition away from my vengeance fantasies was then facilitated by becoming a Quaker. Being a member of such a group, you see, means always having somebody quintessentially self-righteous watching you to ensure you are behaving properly, and having that layer of extra protection became something of value to me. It simply didn’t matter, if some Quakers who breathe their own exhaust come to suppose that they are the holiest of hot shit — I didn’t join up with them because I was a nice guy but because, not being a nice guy, I happened also to be well aware of that. • And now, QED, I’m pushing 82 and in a loving, nurturing home, with everything I need and every impulse to behave myself. ASSLEY HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2019. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: April 9, 2019 HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

MEN ON THE MOON ICBMS GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.