At a Ploughshares Fund-University of Maryland forum on Monday, former Secretary of Defense William Perry told the audience about receiving a telephone call from NORAD at 3:00 a.m., telling him that 200 ICBMs were heading toward the U.S. It was, of course, a false alarm, but the incident shaped his views on our “hair trigger” alert system. “The threat of nuclear attack was never, ever academic to me.”
October 6, 2008 - By Alexandra Bell