Why is the media silent on the continuing shakeup in the US nuclear command?
Bill Van Auken ■ The US mass media and the country’s political officials have shown a remarkable lack of interest in what the Pentagon acknowledged earlier this week was the unprecedented simultaneous firing of two senior commanders at two separate Air Force Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) bases and the administrative disciplining of a third. ■ Major news outlets, to the extent that they carried the story at all, relied solely on the item prepared by the Associated Press, and for the most part buried even that. The AP got the story by calling the Air Force public information office. No follow-up was done by the New York Times, the Washington Post or any other major newspaper or television network to probe the significance of these disciplinary actions in terms of the extreme state of crisis that has pervaded Washington’s nuclear strike force for well over a year. ■ Why the silence? By tacit agreement, clearly secrets are being kept about the real state of affairs within a military command whose nuclear war-fighting mission constitutes one of the single greatest threats to the survival of humanity. ■ The crisis in the US nuclear war command has now been unfolding for over one year, involving the sudden sackings of top commanders and senior officers, as well as the snaring of fully 20 percent of the ICBM missile launch crew members in a cheating scandal and the implication of several others in the use of illegal drugs.