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Crew naps with nuclear codes

Breach by Air Force triggers investigation

By Lolita C. Baldor and James MacPherson | Associated Press

July 25, 2008

Three ballistic missile crew members in North Dakota fell asleep while holding classified launch code devices this month, triggering an investigation by military and National Security Agency experts, the Air Force said Thursday.

The probe found that the missile launch codes were not compromised, but the July 12 incident comes on the heels of several nuclear weapons missteps by the Air Force that had put the service under intense scrutiny.

"This was just a procedural violation that we investigated," said Air Force Col. Dewey Ford, a spokesman at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. "We determined that there was no compromise."

Ford said the Minot Air Force Base, N.D.-based crew had code devices that were no longer usable because new codes had been installed in the missiles.

The lapse was serious enough, however, to prompt an investigation by the 91st Missile Wing, in conjunction with codes experts at the 20th Air Force, U.S. Strategic Command and the National Security Agency.

Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a sweeping shake-up of the Air Force leadership, blaming them for failing to fully address a series of nuclear-related mishaps.

At the time, Gates said his decisions to sack the Air Force secretary and chief of staff were based mainly on the blistering conclusions of an internal report on the mistaken shipment to Taiwan of four Air Force fusing devices for ballistic missile nuclear warheads.

He also linked the underlying causes of that slip-up to the August incident in which a B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear warheads and flown from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base, La.

No one has yet been punished in this latest Minot incident.

The three crew members were in the missile alert facility about 70 miles from Minot.

Officials said the three officers were behind locked doors and had with them the old code components, which are classified devices described as large, metal boxes.

Ford said they were waiting to get back to base "and they fell asleep."

It is not clear how long they were asleep.

There are periodic code changes, and there was a crew of four on duty.

The investigation concluded that the codes remained secured in their containers, which have combination locks that can be opened only by the crew.