Stephen Schwartz

In the 1950s and 1960s, had dozens of forward bases surrounding the Soviet Union (to allow us to attack more quickly than from the United States. But those bases were very vulnerable.

To arm the atomic bombs deployed at the SAC forward base there.

The Georgetown Preparatory School 1985 yearbook page for Neil Gorsuch, which includes four black and white photographs, including his senior photo, a list of his achievements and positions, and various quotes.

In fact, Gorsuch liked Kissinger‘s quote so much he also used it in his 1985 yearbook entry for Georgetown Preparatory School (which also “jokingly” noted he was the founder and president of the Fascism Forever Club):

The Columbia University 1988 yearbook entry and black and white entry and photograph for Neil Gorsuch: Neil Gorsuch Political Science Editor, Founder, "The Federalist Paper," Phi Gamma Delta “The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer.” — Henry Kissinger August 29, 1967 [Gorsuch's birthday]

Tellingly, future Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch chose to include this “joke”—which Kissinger made so frequently that it was cited in the Congressional Record in 1973 in opposition to his nomination as secretary of state—as part of his undergraduate entry in Columbia University’s 1988 yearbook.

An excerpt from the official minutes of a meeting at the Turkish foreign minister's office in Ankara, Turkey, on Monday March 10, 1975, from 5:20-6:30 p.m. The subjects were "aid cut-off" and "Cyprus." Esenbel: "The Europeans should find ways to meet quick needs: for example, the Air Force needs spare parts. For other items that they can't find in the stocks, maybe you could make a deal with the Dutch or others to send it here. [US Ambassador William B.] Macomber: "That is illegal." Kissinger: “Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.' [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I'm afraid to say things like that. We'll make a major effort.”

Today in 1975, during a meeting with Turkey’s Foreign Minister Melih Esenbel in his office in Ankara, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said candidly, “Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’”

A black and white photograph of a Mark-6 atomic bomb sitting on a rolling dolly on display in a museum. The bomb's bulbous shape and large tail fins give it a look similar to the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945.

The DoD ultimately declared the plutonium pits irretrievably lost in mid-September 1956 and asked the Atomic Energy Commission to replace them, which it did the next month. Insertable pits were standard for atomic bombs at the time, like the Mark-6, which had eight yield settings (8-160 kilotons).

The cover of the 1991 book "A History of USAFE - United States Air Force Europe" by Cees Steijger," showing a color photograph of a jet fighter ascending almost vertically into the sky, with two inset black and white photographs showing other propeller-driven aircraft.

A few people speculated the crew could have defected to the Soviet Union, but there was no evidence to support that. The author of this 1991 book claims the B-47 circled repeatedly looking for the tanker, then ran out of fuel and crashed into the Mediterranean Sea somewhere south of Turkey.

At the time it disappeared, the B-47 was due west of Oran, Algeria and east of Tangier, Morocco, and was just one hour from Ben Guerir. It also had enough fuel to fly for another four and a half hours (or about 2,500 miles). Bad weather in the region delayed an aerial search for two to three days.

The B-47 was one of a group of four aircraft flying nonstop to Ben Guerir. Preparing for a second refueling over the Mediterranean, it descended into heavy clouds at 14,000 feet. With poor visibility, the crew requested the tanker’s location, but the tanker never made radio or radar contact.

A color photograph of a B-47 jet bomber in flight.

A color photograph of a gray metal “birdcage” on display in a museum. A birdcage was used to store and transport a single plutonium capsule or core for early atomic bombs (before sealed pit designs were perfected and deployed). The spherical capsule was kept in the pressurized and neutron-absorbing cylindrical reservoir in the center. The welded tubing surrounding the reservoir kept capsules far enough apart from each other to prevent a criticality accident (an accidental, short-lived chain reaction that, while not a full nuclear explosion, could release enough radiation to kill or seriously injure anyone nearby).

70 years ago today, a B-47 bomber ferrying two plutonium pits from MacDill AFB, Florida, to Ben Guerir AFB, French Morocco, disappeared in heavy clouds over the Mediterranean Sea while trying to rendezvous with a refueling tanker. An extensive 10-day search failed to find aircraft, crew, or cargo.

A photograph of the cover of the March 10, 1947, issue of Newsweek ("The Magazine of News Significance"), featuring a large color photograph of Einstein sitting in a striped upholstered armchair in his office in front of a bookshelf and a desk piled with books while holding a pipe in his left hand while gesturing with his right, a piece of paper resting on his lap, with the caption, “Einstein: Godfather of the Atomic Age.”

A photograph of the first two pages of the Einstein cover story in Newsweek, featuring four small black and white photographs of Einstein at various stages in his life. The quote appears in the second full paragraph of the third column on the first page: “Last week, in the booklined study of his Princeton home, Einstein discussed with NEWSWEEK the ominous prospect [of atomic bombs destroying civilization] and the question of what to do about it. Asked whether he would have written that letter to Roosevelt if he could have foreseen the results, he declared: 'Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing for the bomb.' The progress of science, he conceded, would have released atomic energy sooner or later without his intervention, but 'our situation would have been much better if the emergency had not come about so quickly.'”

In the edition of Newsweek dated today in 1947, Albert Einstein said, “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing for the bomb.” Einstein never actually worked on the atomic bomb, only alerting President Roosevelt to its potential in 1939.

The cover of Robert C. Mikesh's 1973 monograph published by the Smithsonian Institution Press, "Japan's Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America," showing a drawing of a ballon bomb prior to launch.

Page 67 of Robert C. Mikesh's 1973 monograph, "War Casualties on United States Soil." An excerpt: "Strict censorship in the newspapers and on radio concerning the paper bombing balloons prevented this vital intelligence information from reaching the Japanese. It also kept many Americans uniformed of the possible hazards associated with this unusual weapon. The area over which the bombs landed was so vast, considering their relatively small number, that the probability of personal contact was quite small. The law of averages did run out, however, on 5 May 1945 when a bomb from a balloon exploded and killed six people- four weeks after the Japanese had ended the balloon offensive. The tragedy occurred in the Gearhart Mountain area just inside Lake County about sixty-five miles east- northeast of Klamath Falls, Oregon. The Reverend and Mrs. Archie Mitchell of Bly, Oregon, on that day took five children with them on an outing. While the Reverend Mr. Mitchell was moving the car, Mrs. Mitchell and the children found a strange object lying in the woods. They called to Mitchell, now a mere 40 feet away, and he shouted a warning, for he had heard rumors of Japanese balloons. Almost simultaneously one of the bombs detonated, killing Mrs. Mitchell and the children. The explosion produced a crater 12 inches deep, 15 inches wide, and 36 inches long. The incendiaries and demolition block were badly damaged by the blast, but did not explode. Those killed were: Mrs. Elsie Mitchell; Jay Gifford, 12, son of Mr. and Mrs. J.N. Gifford; Eddie Engen, 13, son of Mr. and Mrs. Einar Engen; Sherman Shoemaker, 12, son of Mr. and Mrs. J.L. Shoemaker; and Joan Patzke, 11, and Dick Patzke, 13, daughter and son of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Patzke. Forestry men who quickly gathered after the incident said the victims appeared to have been clustered around the balloon and someone must have tugged it enough to detonate a bomb. ..." This page includes a black and white photograph of a small monument.

Page 68 of Robert C. Mikesh's 1973 monograph. An excerpt: " ... In May 1949, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a House-passed bill to pay $20,000 to the bereaved families. The bill, first introduced by Represen- tative William Lemke, Republican, North Dakota, granted $5,000 to the widower of Mrs. Mitchell, and $3,000 to the parents of each of the children. Senator Guy Gordon, Republican, Oregon, and other proponents of the measure said that the public had not been warned of the danger from the airborne bombs, although the armed services knew that several had reached this country. The Weyerhaeuser Company, of Klamath Falls, Oregon, established the historic spot as a patriotic shrine, to be known as the Mitchell Recreation area. The dedication centered around a native-stone monument bearing a bronze plaque with the names of the victims. Other developments included outdoor fireplaces, ap- propriate signs for the memorial, and a protective iron fence around the site of the tragedy and monument. Thus, the United States paid another lasting tribute to its war dead." This page includes two black and white photograhs of the Mitchell Reservation Area and the bronze plaque on the stone monument erected there in honor of the people killed: "Dedicated/ to those/ who died here/ May 5, 1945/ by/ Japanese/ bomb explosion." Following the list of six names, it continues: "The only place/ on the/ American continent/ where death resulted/ from enemy action/ during World War II."

Read Robert Mikesh’s fascinating monograph about this little-known aspect of WWII history (which was also the only WWII foreign attack to kill anyone in the continental United States, though strict US censorship about the balloons was a contributing factor) below. repository.si.edu/server/api/c...

Figure 39, "General arrangement of Japanese paper bombing balloon," from page 39 of the monograph linked in the next post, showing a detailed drawing of a Japanese balloon bomb with all the components labeled.

A black and white archival photograph of the B-reactor at the Hanford Reservation in Washington State (center left) during World War II, showing the boxy concrete reactor building with a tall exhaust stack, two adjacent water towers, and numerous small nearby support buildings, all sitting on a flat, arid landscape.

Today in 1945, one of the approximately 9,300 balloon bombs launched by Japan briefly interrupted off-site electrical power to the Hanford Reservation in Washington State, causing the B-, D-, and F-reactors—which were making plutonium for the Fat Man atomic bomb destined for Nagasaki—to scram.

Well that’s a clear and definitive answer (not):

“We could call it a tremendous success right now, as we leave here I could call it. Or we could go further. And we’re gonna go further.“

The Apprentice: Lethal Edition

(Has any US president taken war and the assassination of foreign leaders less seriously?)

“The things I’m doin’, nobody else was gonna do.“

No shit! Because nearly all your predecessors respected the Constitution and the courts, were guided by strong political, moral, and ethical principles, and didn’t insist on surrounding themselves with incompetent and unscrupulous sycophants.

I spy two candidates for that title.

Hegseth insists that even though many key Iranian leaders have been targeted and assassinated and essential infrastructure destroyed, this isn’t a “regime change” war because there’s no intention to go in and remake Iranian society. That will be entirely up to the Iranian people.

A brilliant plan!

It just works.

Various comedic elements that would soon make their way into THHGTTG (including actors Simon Jones and Mark Wing-Davey) can be seen in “Out of the Trees,” a 1976 failed pilot for a Monty Pythonesque sketch comedy series co-written by Adams, Graham Chapman, and Bernard McKenna, broadcast just once.

A graphic of large friendly capital letters (red outlined in gold) reading "DON'T PANIC."

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

A color portrait photograph of Douglas Adams showing him resting his head on his right hand, his left eyebrow cocked in ... amusement? A soft glow of light surrounds his dark hair.

“Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

(Sadly, Adams died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 49 on May 11, 2001.)

A screenshot of the linked Internet Archive web page, featuring a stylized black and white "Don't Panic" logo (a hitchiker's thumb superimposed over a planet with a ring) next to a playlist of the 32 episodes of the entire series.

That’s right, the entire enterprise began as an improbable, sonically-unique, science fiction-comedy radio play, before it was adapted into a series of popular books, a 1981 BBC2 TV series, a 1984 video game, and a 2005 film.

Listen to the full radio series at this link: archive.org/details/hhgt...

A color graphic showing a kind of Venn diagram with three circles, one labeled (in red letters) "Life," one labeled "The Universe," and one labeled "Everything." In the center, shared by all three circles, is the number 42 (red outlined in yellow). Next to the number are yellow graphics of a whale (left) and a dolphin (right), while below it are graphics of two mice (all on a field of dark blue). An image of a galaxy appears behind the 42, the whale, and the dolphin.

Tonight in 1978, the first episode of Douglas Adams’s wildly original radio series “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the United Kingdom. (The first US broadcast was on June 7, 1981, on the NPR series Playhouse, which I heard on Santa Monica station KCRW).

Screenshot of the linked National Security Archive website, "Project Azorian: The CIA's Declassified History of the Glomar Explorer."

For more about the audacious Project AZORIAN and the Glomar Explorer, see this @nsarchive.bsky.social 2010 electronic briefing book, which included a redacted version of a 50-page article from fall 1985 edition of the CIA's in-house journal Studies in Intelligence: nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/eb...

A black and white overhead photograph taken from an airplane showing the K-129 submarine (bearing the hull number 722) underway on the surface of the ocean.

A color map showing the location of the recovery site of the K-129 submarine in the north Pacific Ocean 1, 560 nautical miles (2,890 kilometers) northwest of Hawai'i

The cover of the book "Project AZORIAN: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129," by Norman Polmar and Michael White. It shows a painting depicting the underside of the Glomar Explorer with its "moon pool" open and the giant mechanical claw or "Capture Vehicle" used to raise a portion of the submarine from the ocean floor being lowered from it on a thick cable.

An annotated color graphic titled "Azorian System Concept" showing drawings of the Glomar Explorer and the Capture Vehicle, with various parts of both labeled.

Today in 1968, the Soviet Golf II-class ballistic missile submarine K-129 sank with all 98 hands and 3 SS-N-5 SLBMs while on patrol approximately 2,890 km northwest of Oahu, Hawai’i. In 1974, the CIA’s secret Project AZORIAN partially salvaged the sub using the purpose-built Hughes Glomar Explorer.

Sixty years ago today—50 days after a 1.45 Megaton B28 thermonuclear bomb fell from a B-52G bomber flying over southern Spain and disappeared into the Mediterranean Sea, spurring a massive underwater search—US Ambassador to Spain Angier Biddle Duke went swimming in an effort to dispel public fears.

If at first you don’t succeed …

I think that's the case as well, but the point is we don't really know, no one is willing to constrain or contradict Trump, and he can effectively do whatever he wants.

Also (from 2020) ...