Philip Coyle, an analyst with the Center for Defense Information and a former assistant secretary of defense from the Clinton administration period, has a troubling question about the recent nuclear weapon incident in the US.



He wants to know if the six nuclear-tipped Advanced Cruise Missiles that were improperly removed from a guarded bunker at the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and flown in launch position on a wing pod of a B-52H Stratofortress bomber on Aug. 29-30 to Barksdale AFB were programmed with targeting information.



He also wants to know if the Air Force and Pentagon, which last Friday concluded an investigation into that shocking incident (no nuclear weapons have been flown on a bomber over US territory for 40 years on presidential orders, and since 1991 no nuclear weapons are even supposed to be loaded for practice on a parked plane), ever checked the missiles' computer guidance systems.



No mention of target programming on the missiles, which were originally designed to fly low and fast to their targets to evade Soviet radar and interceptors, was made at the Pentagon press conference, at which the whole incident was explained away as a big "mistake." which It was announced that five officers and 65 enlisted people were "fired" from their positions as a result of the incident, but no specific information was given about what they had done, or not done, that led to their firings.





DAVE LINDORFF is an investigative reporter and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006, and now out in paperback).