National Security Archive Update, January 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

For more information contact:
William Burr - 202/994-7032

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.

http://www.nsarchive.org/nukevault

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THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.