Eric Schlosser: What the government doesn’t want you to know about nukes
The author on the disturbing similarities between nuclear near-misses, fast food and pot
BY LINDSAY ABRAMS


“I’m trying to share important information that powerful bureaucratic systems don’t want the public to know,” says journalist Eric Schlosser. The author of “Fast Food Nation” and “Reefer Madness,” Schlosser is known for starting important conversations about things we didn’t even realize we should be talking about.

“Command and Control,” his newest exposé, turns the gaze to America’s arsenal of nuclear weapons — and blows the lid off the many, many times when we came this close to accidental catastrophe. That we didn’t, Schlosser writes, has less to do with sound technology and safety measures than plain dumb luck. And that we still don’t know how lucky we were –and continue to be — can be attributed to deliberate government obfuscation.

Schlosser spoke with Salon about the continued threat of nuclear weapons, the fast food movement’s progress and the challenges of battling bureaucracy. The interview has been lightly edited for space and clarity.

I was wondering if you could start by just giving us a brief overview of the Damascus incident. I know it’s a very complicated story.

Well, yeah. But it’s the reason that I wrote the book. Someone in the Air Force told me the story many years ago, and I just couldn’t get it out of my head.

There was routine maintenance being done on a Titan II missile and the socket fell off a wrench that a workman was using on a platform near the top of the missile. The socket bounced on the platform — he grabbed to try to catch it, and it slipped into the space in between the platform and the missile. It fell down the silo, bounced, ricocheted, hit the side of the missile and caused a fuel leak, which then put the whole missile and missile silo in jeopardy of an explosion.

On top of that missile was the most powerful nuclear warhead that had ever been deployed by the United States on a missile.

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