And the secrets of the Titan II had recently been compromised. Christopher M. Cooke, a young deputy commander at a Titan II complex in Kansas, had been arrested after making three unauthorized visits and multiple phone calls to the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. Inexplicably, Cooke had been allowed to serve as a Titan II officer on alerts for five months after his first contact with the Soviet embassy was detected. An Air Force memo later said the information that Cooke gave the Soviets-about launch codes, attack options, and the missile's vulnerabilities-was "a major security breach . . . the worst perhaps in the history of the Air Force.
( Eric Schlosser )
[ Command and Control: Nuclear ]
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