Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 15. januar 2010 / Time Line January 15, 2010
Version 3.514. Januar 2010, 16. Januar 2010
01/15/2010
Martin Luther King-dagen i USA.
Martin Luther King fødselsdag i 1928 fejres som national
helligdag i USA efter 1982.
01/15/2010
The Air Force versus Hollywood: Documentary on "SAC Command Post"
Tried to Rebut "Dr. Strangelove" and "Fail Safe"
Cold War Documentaries Present the Air Force's Spin on Airborne
Alert, the "Missile Gap," and Nuclear Command and Control; Films
Premiered On-line in the National Security Archive's Nuclear
Vault
http://www.nsarchive.org/nukevault
Washington, DC, January 5, 2010 - To refute early 1960s novels and
Hollywood films like "Fail-Safe" and "Dr. Strangelove" which raised
questions about U.S. control over nuclear weapons, the Air Force
produced a documentary film--"SAC [Strategic Air Command] Command
Post"--to demonstrate its responsiveness to presidential command
and its tight control over nuclear weapons.
Never used publicly by the Air Force for reasons that remain
puzzling, "SAC Command Post" is premiered online today on the
National Security Archive Web site. Produced during 1963-1964, this
unclassified film tried to undercut Dr. Strangelove's image of a
psychotic general ordering nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union
by showing that nuclear war could not be "triggered by unauthorized
launch." To reinforce an image of responsible control, "SAC Command
Post" presents a detailed picture of the communications systems
that the Strategic Air Command used to centralize direction of
bomber bases and missile silos. With the film's emphasis on SAC's
readiness for nuclear war, higher authorities may have finally
decided that it was off-message in light of the Johnson
administration's search for stable relations with Moscow.
"SAC Command Post" is one example of the Air Force's sizable
documentary film output, which includes a number of documentaries
on that service's role in researching, developing, deploying, and
operating nuclear weapons systems, as well as in tracking the
nuclear activities of adversaries. The films inevitably embody some
of the Air Force's spin, promoting views, policies, and programs
that were then on its agenda. In this special collection for the
"Nuclear Vault," the National Security Archive presents two other
documentaries highlighting Air Force nuclear-related activities
during the crisis years of the Cold War. They are:
* "Project Headstart" (1959), original classification status
unknown, which depicts SAC's first airborne alert test by bombers
operating out of Loring Air Force Base (Maine) in the fall of 1959.
Designed to keep nuclear-armed bombers in the air so they could
head towards Soviet targets at a moment's notice, airborne alert
was an accident waiting to happen. In 1966 and 1968 crashes of
nuclear-armed B-52s in Spain and Greenland caused international
incidents.
* "Development of the Soviet Ballistic Missile Threat" (1960),
originally classified "secret," illustrates the role of Air Force
intelligence in the "missile gap" debates in the years before the
1960 presidential election. Like other government intelligence
organizations, the Air Force hyped up the Soviet ICBM threat, not
recognizing how far ahead of the Soviet Union the United States
already was.
These films are from DVD reproductions of the original footage
stored in the collections maintained by the National Archives'
Motion Pictures Unit, College Park, MD. A number of Air Force films
from the 1960s, including secret Strategic Air Command reports,
remain classified. The National Security Archive's Nuclear
Documentation Project has requested them for declassification
release.
01/15/2010
Army Releases December Suicide Data
DOD News
The Army released suicide data today for the month of December.
Among active-duty soldiers, there were ten potential suicides: one
has been confirmed as suicide, and nine remain under investigation.
For November, the Army reported 11 potential suicides among
active-duty soldiers. Since the release of that report, three have
been confirmed as suicides, and eight remain under
investigation.
There were 160 reported active-duty Army suicides during 2009. Of
these, 114 have been confirmed, and 46 are pending determination of
manner of death. During 2008, there were 140 suicides among
active-duty soldiers.
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