I grew up in the nuclear age. My grade school had duck-and-cover air raid drills, and as the Cold War intensified nuclear weapons had a pervasive impact on popular culture with films such as Seven Days in May and the black comedy Dr. Strangelove.
It was in this environment in 1964 that the Navy assigned me to Sandia Base, a joint-forces nuclear weapons headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Even though my duties were administrative, much of our work was classified Top Secret. At the end of each day, every piece of paper (and even the typewriter ribbons) went into a safe. Every office was checked and doublechecked to make sure no classified information was in desk drawers or wastebaskets. One of my chores was to make the final security check of the admiral’s office after he left for the day, including opening every drawer of his desk. Security teams conducted random inspections at night, and there were consequences if they found an unlocked safe or a combination jotted on a calendar pad.
Working with such tight security was surprisingly painless once I got used to it. The base did a clever job of boosting security awareness with slogans on posters, napkins and coffee coasters. At one point they had a guy in a suit of armor walking the halls shouting security slogans. Hi there, Sergeant Adams. Shh—I’m supposed to be Sir Guard.
Many of the walls in the headquarters building were decorated with color photos of nuclear detonations. I found this disconcerting at first but soon got accustomed to looking at mushroom clouds every day. Hey, that’s a pretty one!
Even though our work was secret, everybody in Albuquerque knew what Sandia Base was all about. I was the duty officer one night when the Shriners put on a noisy fireworks display in town, and we got lots of phone calls. No, sir, we are not testing nuclear weapons here. One caller asked in a hushed voice: Is everything all right?
The duty office had an extra telephone for the nuclear weapons hotline. It was an ominous-looking RED phone with a light that flashed whenever it rang. The phone was special because every military unit worldwide that handled nuclear weapons had instructions to call that number immediately in the event of a nuclear accident or incident such as the 1966 crash of a B-52 bomber in Palomares, Spain.
There was nothing special about the phone line, however. It was an ordinary, local telephone number, and once in a while someone would dial it by accident. This would scare the bejesus out of the duty officer, who would follow instructions by picking up the red phone and saying: Do you have a nuclear accident or incident to report? Which would scare the bejesus out of the hapless civilian who just wanted to order a pizza. What size bomb was it, lady? Pepperoni?