Are You Willing To Get
Nuked' Over Israel???

2/8/00

CBS' 60 Minutes II brings us the staggering 'report' below.

I can't believe they failed to note that the only
reason we bomb Iraq is to protect Israel.
Which set up the failure to ask why the U.S.
should be willing to get nuked' over Israel.

And, that 2 bombings right before Russian Duma
votes on START II makes it obvious that Dollar Bill
is deliberately trying to provoke an arms race.

Retired General Eugene Habiger is worried about
growing nuclear distrust between America and Russia.

(CBS) Tension between the United States and Russia is greater now than at any time since the end of the Cold War. But about the only people who seem alarmed by it are the American nuclear soldiers - or missiliers - and their Russian counterparts.

For the past two years, CBS News Producer George Crile has had unprecedented access to the missiliers of both countries. Now he and Dan Rather report on the missiliers and efforts to defuse some of the tension between the two countries.

At 1 a.m. on a pitch black night, a dense fog settled over Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. On one remote hilltop, a group of missiliers - gathered to take part in a full-blown test of American military might.

A missile was about to be launched. And missiliers, from bases all around the country, were there to take part in the event they call "The Glory Trip." Two of their colleagues were 70 feet underground in a fortified bunker in a nuclear missile launch facility. The two missiliers - Captain Rich Namath, 25, and Lieutenant Michelle Del Toro, 23, have won the honor of launching an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Nuclear launch officers have rehearsed the procedure for decades. But this night was not a rehearsal. It was a live launch, albeit without the nuclear payload.

They launch a Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile - 60 feet tall and weighing 200 tons. Built to carry three thermonuclear warheads that can hit and destroy any three cities in the world in just half an hour, the Minuteman 3 is the mainstay of America's nuclear arsenal.

Exactly 28 minutes and 39 seconds after launch, the Glory Trip ended with the three warheads, none of them armed, exploding over the Quadulan Islands in the South Pacific. According to the Air Force, all three struck right on target.

If the Cold War is over, why is the United States still doing such tests?

"The Cold War was a unique war," says Eugene Habiger, a retired four-star general who has a great deal of experience with that conflict. He began his career 40 years ago as a B-52 pilot and served on the frontlines of America's nuclear forces until he retired a year and a half ago.

"When the war ended, the loser didn't really lose. We still had this massive military might on both sides staring each other in the face," he says.

Both sides still have the capacity to destroy the planet, Habiger says. When the Cold War ended, America and Russia agreed to cut in half their arsenals of 12,000 nuclear weapons. But soon enough, relations with Russia began to disintegrate, and no further reductions were authorized.

This dismayed Habinger, who in 1996 was put in charge of the United States' nuclear missiles. Four years ago both sides had about 6,000 nuclear warheads each, he says. Since then, there have been no decreases. "The fact that we have not been able to get down to lower and lower levels of nuclear weapons is troubling to me," he says.

For the men and women working at a missile silo hidden in the wheat fields of Wyoming, this destructive power is a daily reality. "What we could do is possibly end civilization as we know it," says Captain Bob Highley. "And that's not something we all want to do. And being rational professionals, we do everything in our power to prevent that."

The 10 missiles in Highley's silo each carry 10 warheads. Just one thermonuclear warhead - the kind America uses to arm its ICBMs - carries more destructive power than 20 of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima.

"It's fairly quiet on alert, so you have a lot of time for reflection," Highley says. "So we'll sit there. And we might talk about sports; we might talk about a movie we just saw. But there's something inside of us that just tells us that we need to look at why we are here."

Keeping America nuclear ready costs $28 billion dollars a year.

If there's one event that underscores how little things have changed since the Cold War ended, it's a celebration that brings together rival teams of missiliers, each with its own mascots, from bases across the country. Teddy Roosevelt and his rough riders from Minot, the missile base in North Dakota are pitted against the Mountain Man from Maelstrom in Montana. The teams compete to show who is best prepared - to launch a nuclear war.

The missiliers know that their old mission hasn't changed - that America's nuclear forces are still on alert. "There is only one thing that can bring the United States to its knees, as we know our great nation today," Habiger says. "And that's that nuclear capability that the Russians possess."

Halfway round the world, 30 minutes as a missile flies, Russia also has a secret nuclear world. Russia may be bankrupt but it still finds money for a brand new intercontinental ballistic missile: the Topol M.

Last year, Crile went along as Russian missiliers went through a drill. A truck with a missile launcher moved through the woods on full-combat alert - ready to stop, tilt its rockets to the sky and launch within minutes of receiving an order.

Habiger says that the Topol M is a very accurate missile, capable of hitting a U.S. city in less than 30 minutes when launched from Russia. Both sides can launch their missiles within minutes, he says.

The Russian drill resembles the United States'. Two Russian missiliers practiced the rapid launch of 10 ICBMs with 100 warheads - just as their American counterparts do.

A Top-Secret Exchange Program
U.S. Generals Visit Russian Command Russian
Counterparts Go To U.S. Silos Will Tensions Lessen?

Russian General Yakovlev, during his visit to the U.S. nuclear command

(CBS) On March 15, 1998, a top-secret flight arrived at America's nuclear command center in Omaha, Neb. A month earlier, Boris Yeltsin had threatened World War III if President Clinton bombed Iraq.

The head of the U.S. nuclear forces, four-star general Eugene Habiger, had begun a different brand of secret diplomacy; he had brought Russia's nuclear commander, General Yakovlev, into America's nuclear war room. 60 Minutes II Producer George Crile was watching.

The scene was extraordinary. "Welcome to my command center," Habiger told Yakovlev.

"This is where we would convene in the event of a crisis. I think you will agree it's very much like yours," he continued. "I'm going to put you in my chair just as you put me in your chair. And I give you the same warning: Please do not touch anything." Both men laughed.

Habiger then took his visitor to the Air Room, where the targets in Russia are chosen. There were no restrictions, Habiger says: "I felt like there are nine commanders in chief in the United States' military structure; we're big boys. If we can't figure out what we can say, and what we can't say, maybe we have no business being in that job."

Habiger also showed Yakovlev the "TACAMO" plane, an elaborate flying command post, built to direct the final battle, even if America has already been decimated. TACAMO stands for take charge and move out.

The crew of TACAMO prepares for the final battle every single day, as if it might happen at any moment. "Right out of high school, 18 years old, the first question right before I started my job is 'Do you have a problem launching a nuclear-loaded aircraft that could cause the destruction of the world?'" remembers one crewman. "I said, 'No sir.'"

For five days General Habiger led General Yakovlev on a sweep across the country, from the missile fields of Nebraska and Wyoming to the ballistic submarine base in Washington state - even to the NORAD Early Warning Command in Cheyenne Mountain, Colo., where the nerve center of America's nuclear empire is built deep into a mountain.

Why show the Russian everything? To gain his trust and to remind him that America's Cold War fighting machine is in good working order. The specific objective was to persuade the Russian legislature to ratify a nuclear arms reduction treaty.

The Start Arms Reduction Treaty II, which would reduce warheads to 3,000 to 3,500 per side, was signed by President Bush and Yeltsin in 1993. But five years later, in 1998, the Russian Duma had not yet ratified the treaty. With a vote due to come up, the Russian and American military leaders decided to try to help the process along.

That treaty would eliminate America's most lethal weapon: the Peacekeeper. Each Peacekeeper has 10 warheads and is 20 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

Says Habiger, who retired a year and a half ago: "We have reached the point where the senior military generals responsible for nuclear forces are advocating, more vocally, more vehemently, than our politicians, to get down to lower and lower weapons."

By the end of the tour, that mission seemed to be accomplished. At a farewell celebration, Yakovlev said that he now would be able to make a case for the passage of the missile reduction treaty.

Two months after that tour, the Russian commander gave Habiger a look at Russia's nuclear empire. The tour started in distinct Russian style with vodka toasts. Across the vast expanse of Russia, General Habiger saw the weapons built with America in mind: a Typhoon ballistic submarine able to take out a continent in less than an hour; a train, with hidden missiles, capable of launching 30 warheads on the move; and a massive nuclear warhead storage facility.

Habiger also saw General Yakovlov's secret underground war room on the edge of Moscow. The Russians did a drill to show Habiger their mobile Topol launch system. "To see those missiles come out, I'll tell you, that ran chills up and down my back," he remembers.

At the end of the tour, Habiger challenged the Russians to engage in an old bomber pilot ritual - as if they were all members of the same fraternity. The ingredients? A raw egg and a bottle of Jeremiah Weed bourbon. "When you complete this ritual, you will be a warrior, on a higher level," Habiger told his erstwhile enemies.

Habiger brought along his heir apparent, Admiral Richard Miese, to participate in the bonding experience with the Russians. Says Habiger: "It's confidence building, and how do you build confidence? You build friendship. When you build confidence, good things happen."

The goal of all this good feeling never came to pass, however.

On Dec. 16, 1998, the United States bombed Iraq. The attacks came three days before the Russian parliament was to vote on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II. Once again, the treaty was expected to pass.

But because of the bombing, the treaty was shelved. And in the months that followed, U.S.-Russian relations went from bad to worse as NATO, with Washington leading the way, expanded by adding three former Eastern European countries to its ranks.

Habiger says that these moves confused his new friends. "The Russians continue to shake their heads," he says. "They would ask me, 'Now let me get this right, NATO is a Cold War organization? The Cold War's over. Why in the world do you still have NATO?' I didn't have a very good answer for them."

"We're doing a heck of a lot of harm to the Russians - or with the Russians - by continuing to poke this NATO stick in their eye," says Habiger.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II came up for another vote in the Russian parliament on March 16, 1999. Once again, it didn't pass. The night before the vote, NATO began bombing Kosovo. Had that not happened, the treaty would probably have passed, Habiger says.

Shortly after the war in Kosovo began, General Yakovlev deployed 10 new Topol missiles and mounted the largest nuclear exercise since the end of the Cold War.

At the same time, the Russian missilers were ordered to break all contact with their American friends. Habiger says that he is worried.

"It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that when you shut off that kind of a relationship, you're going down a path that's not pleasant," Habiger says. "And (it's) not conducive to progress."
Copyright 2000, CBS Worldwide Inc., All Rights Reserved.

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