Word: commandant
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Marine-barracks bombing in Beirut, in which 241 servicemen died, was a tragedy of a new order for a Corps that had long ago grown inured to more than its share of casualties on the battlefield. Afterward the investigation by the Long commission faulted the Marine command for its lack of defensive preparations and for its ill-fated decision to house the men in a single barracks. The invasion of Grenada did little to burnish the Corps's fabled reputation as the "first to fight." Owing to the demands of interservice glory sharing, only 36 minutes after the Marines landed...
Nevertheless Shultz, who last week accepted ultimate chain-of-command responsibility for the embassy problems, was in the difficult position of flying into Moscow accompanied by a special communications van to help replace the compromised facilities at the U.S. embassy. Even the "Winnebago," as it became known, may not protect him. When checking the supposedly secure trailer in Washington for emissions at frequencies believed used by the sophisticated Soviet bugs planted in the U.S. embassy, technicians found, according to one, that the Winnebago "radiated like a microwave." Similar vans have long accompanied U.S. Presidents abroad, raising the possibility that their...
Tensions escalate. The military goes on alert. A Soviet-American showdown seems probable. When a nuclear attack upon the U.S. is considered imminent, authority to use nuclear weapons is automatically "predelegated" to various military commanders. For a nation that mistakenly assumes only the President's finger is ever on the button, this little-known fact will come as a disconcerting discovery. In his first novel, State Scarlet (Putnam; $18.95), David Aaron, a top staffer at the National Security Council during the Carter Administration, uses fiction to show how the nation's command, control and communications system, known...
...stealing a backpack-size nuclear bomb and threatening to detonate it unless the President withdraws nuclear forces from Europe. When the Kremlin hears about this, it activates its own crisis machinery, and the two sides inexorably proceed toward a macho nuclear confrontation. The chief of the Strategic Air Command warns that the C 3 system can absorb only a couple of hundred "hits" and still function. The National Security Adviser, who wants to prepare American missiles for launch even without the President's approval, argues, "If the Soviets strike first at our command and control, we may not be able...
...realize, Mr. President," an aide says, "that you're not the only one who can release nuclear weapons." Launch authority devolves on the President's 15 constitutional successors (including, ultimately, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the Secretary of Transportation) and also on the National Military Command Center, the Strategic Air Command, and a "looking glass" airborne command center. "They all can launch if you're incapacitated," the aide tells the President. Then, ominously, he adds, "As a practical matter, sir, they can also launch even...