EVERYONE IN AMERICA SHOULD READ THIS ! / EXECUTIVE ORDERS If you want to see the truth to this, click on the link at the bottom. It is the White House link. Click on Executive orders. It will list them starting with the last one signed. The last one was signed on January 17, 2014. The first one BO signed was on January 21, 2009, Presidential Records, right after he "took over". There is a column on the right side of the page listed by month. Click on a month and see what was signed that month. The link starts at the top with February 2014, nothing yet, and goes all the way to January 2009. It is mind boggling and very concerning, the number he has signed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, the next time someone says, "oh, all Presidents issue executive orders", enlighten them! For the SHOCK of your life, take 1 minute to comprehend what you read below. During our lifetimes, all Presidents have issued Executive Orders. For various reasons, some have issued more than others. These things will directly affect u.s. all, in years to come. Question is: Do YOU care enough to send this, 'shocking info,' to people you love and others? NUMBER OF EXECUTIVE ORDERS ISSUED by U.S. Presidents in the last 100 years: Teddy Roosevelt - 3 All Others until FDR - 0 FDR - 11 in 16 years Truman - 5 in 7 years Ike - 2 in 8 years Kennedy - 4 in 3 years LBJ - 4 in 5 years Nixon - 1 in 6 years Ford - 3 in 2 years Carter - 3 in 4 years Reagan - 5 in 8 years Bush - 3 in 4 years Clinton - 15 in 8 years George W. Bush - 62 in 8 years Obama - 923 in 3 1/2 years! More than 1000+ and counting Executive Orders in 6 years.. Read some of them below � unbelievable! Next step -dictatorship. (Looks like we are there already!) If you don't get the implications, you're not paying attention. How come all the other presidents in the past 100 years have not felt it necessary to INCREASE GOVERNMENT�S POWER OVER THE PEOPLE with more than 1,000 Executive Orders? This is really very scary. And most Americans have absolutely no idea what is happening. YES, THERE IS A REASON THAT THIS PRESIDENT IS DETERMINED TO TAKE CONTROL AWAY FROM THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE. Even some Democrats in the House have turned on him, plus a very small number of Democrat Senators have questioned him. Rightfully so. - WHAT IS OBAMA REALLY TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH???? Remember what he told Russia 's Putin: "I'll be more flexible after I'm re-elected". Now look at these: EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 -- allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports. EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 -- allows the government to seize and control the communication media. EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 -- allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals. EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 -- allows the government to take over all food resources and farms. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 -- allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 -- allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 -- designates the registration of all persons. Postmaster General to operate a national registration. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 -- allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 -- allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 -- allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049 -- assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 -- specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310 -- grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President. EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921 -- allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. Financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months. Feel free to verify the "executive orders" at will.....and these are just the major ones. I'm sure you've all heard the tale of the "Frog in the Pot"... Watch Obama's actions, not his words! By his actions he will show you where America is headed. Obama has issued executive orders that seek to "harmonize" U.S. Economic regulations with the rest of the world. These executive orders are yet another incremental step that is pushing us closer to a North American Union and a one world economic system. Obama used the stage at the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King�s I have a dream speech to announce two new executive orders infringing on your second amendment rights.. The first bans the importation of antique military firearms for sale to sportsman and collectors.. He intentionally mislabels them military grade weapons to deceive the sheeple, but make no mistake . . . the order was written specifically to ban the importation of surplus M1 carbines, M1 Garands, 1903 Springfields and other antiques coveted by collectors and sport shooters. This order is the death knell for the civilian marksmanship program. Congress had previously passed the sportsman protection act in 1986 which among other things guaranteed that the importation of the historic relics for collectors and the CMP would not be impeded by unreasonable regulations..But Emperor Obama does not bend to the will of the people or the rule of law.. He will impose on his subjects what he wishes, when he wishes. Kind of like Papa Joe Stalin or the short Austrian with the funky mustache! Unfortunately, most Americans have absolutely no idea what is happening. The American people need to understand that Barack Obama is constantly looking for ways to integrate the United States more deeply with the rest of the world. The globalization of the world economy has accelerated under Obama, and this latest executive order represents a fundamental change in U.S. economic policy. Now federal regulators will be required to "harmonize" their work with the international community. If THIS IS DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE, THEN PROVE TO YOURSELF IT'S WRONG - Google it! http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/executive-orders

King Arthur and the Witch: Young King Arthur was ambushed and imprisoned by the monarch of a neighboring kingdom. The monarch could have killed him but was moved by Arthur's youth and ideals. So, the monarch offered him his freedom, as long as he could answer a very difficult question. Arthur would have a year to figure out the answer and, if after a year, he still had no answer, he would be put to death. The question?...What do women really want? Such a question would perplex even the most knowledgeable man, and to young Arthur, it seemed an impossible query. But, since it was better than death, he accepted the monarch's proposition to have an answer by year's end. He returned to his kingdom and began to poll everyone: the princess, the priests, the wise men and even the court jester. He spoke with everyone, but no one could give him a satisfactory answer. Many people advised him to consult the old witch, for only she would have the answer. But the price would be high; as the witch was famous throughout the kingdom for the exorbitant prices she charged. The last day of the year arrived and Arthur had no choice but to talk to the witch. She agreed to answer the question, but he would have to agree to her price first. The old witch wanted to marry Sir Lancelot, the most noble of the Knights of the Round Table and Arthur's closest friend! Young Arthur was horrified. She was hunchbacked and hideous, had only one tooth, smelled like sewage, made obscene noises, etc. He had never encountered such a repugnant creature in all his life. He refused to force his friend to marry her and endure such a terrible burden; but Lancelot, learning of the proposal, spoke with Arthur He said nothing was too big of a sacrifice compared to Arthur's life and the preservation of the Round Table. Hence, a wedding was proclaimed and the witch answered Arthur's question thus: What a woman really wants, she answered....is to be in charge of her own life. Everyone in the kingdom instantly knew that the witch had uttered a great truth and that Arthur's life would be spared. And so it was, the neighboring monarch granted Arthur his freedom and Lancelot and the witch had a wonderful wedding. The honeymoon hour approached and Lancelot, steeling himself for a horrific experience, entered the bedroom. But, what a sight awaited him. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen lay before him on the bed. The astounded Lancelot asked what had happened The beauty replied that since he had been so kind to her when she appeared as a witch, she would henceforth, be her horrible deformed self only half the time and the beautiful maiden the other half. Which would he prefer? Beautiful during the day....or night? Lancelot pondered the predicament. During the day, a beautiful woman to show off to his friends, but at night, in the privacy of his castle, an old witch? Or, would he prefer having a hideous witch during the day, but by night, a beautiful woman for him to enjoy wondrous intimate moments? What would YOU do? What Lancelot chose is below. BUT....make YOUR choice before you scroll down below. OKAY? Noble Lancelot said that he would allow HER to make the choice herself. Upon hearing this, she announced that she would be beautiful all the time because he had respected her enough to let her be in charge of her own life. Now....what is the moral to this story? The moral is..... If you don't let a woman have her own way.... Things are going to get ugly

These are the type people that make up our military. All military pilots are trained with the knowledge, that they will be ordered to fly collision courses with enemy aircraft i.e. nuclear bombers; in the face of no alternative, threat assesment and thier ability to intercept . This is the first time I have heard this story. A great story of dedication, bravery and commitment to protecting America! Pilots often claim that the two worst things that can happen to a pilot are: ( 1 ) Walking out to the aircraft knowing this will be your last flight or ( 2 ) Walking out to the aircraft NOT knowing this will be your last flight. This pilot's story adds another possibility.... The events of September 11, 2001, put two F-16 pilots into the sky with orders to bring down United Flight 93 . Late on that Tuesday morning of September 11th, Lt. Heather "Lucky" Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders, "Bring down United Airlines Flight 93." The day's fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it. "I genuinely believed that was going to be the last time I took off," says Maj. Heather "Lucky" Penney, remembering the September 11 attacks and the initial U.S. reaction. The one thing she didn't have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft. Except her own plane. So that was the plan. Because the surprise attacks were unfolding, in that innocent age, faster than they could arm war planes, Penney and her commanding officer planned to fly their jets straight into a Boeing 757. "We wouldn't be shooting it down. We'd be ramming the aircraft," Penney recalls of her charge that day. "I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot." For years, Penney, one of the first generation of female combat pilots in the country, gave no interviews about her experiences on September 11 (which included, eventually, escorting Air Force One back into Washington's suddenly highly restricted airspace). But 10 years later, she is reflecting on one of the lesser-told tales of that endlessly examined morning: How the first counterpunch the U.S. Military prepared to throw at the attackers was effectively a suicide mission. "We had to protect the airspace any way we could," she said last week in her office at Lockheed Martin, where she is a director in the F-35 program. Penney, now a major but still a petite blonde with a Colgate grin, is no longer a combat flier. She flew two tours in Iraq and she serves as a part-time National Guard pilot, mostly hauling VIPs around in a military Gulfstream. She takes the stick of her own vintage 1941 Taylor craft tail-dragger whenever she can. But none of her thousands of hours in the air quite compare with the urgent rush of launching on what was supposed to be a one-way flight to a midair collision. First of her kind! She was a rookie in the autumn of 2001, the first female F-16 pilot they'd ever had at the 121st Fighter Squadron of the D.C. Air National Guard. She had grown up smelling jet fuel. Her father flew jets in Vietnam and still races them. Penney got her pilot's license when she was a literature major at Purdue. She planned to be a teacher. But during a graduate program in American studies, Congress opened up combat aviation to women and Penney was nearly first in line. "I signed up immediately," she says. "I wanted to be a fighter pilot like my dad." On that Tuesday, they had just finished two weeks of air combat training in Nevada. They were sitting around a briefing table when someone looked in to say a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York. When it happened once, they assumed it was some yahoo in a Cessna. When it happened again, they knew it was war. But the surprise was complete. In the monumental confusion of those first hours, it was impossible to get clear orders. Nothing was ready. The jets were still equipped with dummy bullets from the training mission. As remarkable as it seems now, there were no armed aircraft standing by and no system in place to scramble them over Washington. Before that morning, all eyes were looking outward, still scanning the old Cold War threat paths for planes and missiles coming over the polar ice cap. "There was no perceived threat at the time, especially one coming from the homeland like that," says Col. George Degnon, vice commander of the 113th Wing at Andrews. "It was a little bit of a helpless feeling, but we did everything humanly possible to get the aircraft armed and in the air. It was amazing to see people react." Things are different today, Degnon says. At least two "hot-cocked" planes are ready at all times, their pilots never more than yards from the cockpit. A third plane hit the Pentagon, and almost at once came word that a fourth plane could be on the way, maybe more. The jets would be armed within an hour, but somebody had to fly now, weapons or no weapons. "Lucky, you're coming with me," barked Col. Marc Sasseville. They were gearing up in the pre-flight life-support area when Sasseville, struggling into his flight suit, met her eye. "I'm going to go for the cockpit," Sasseville said. She replied without hesitating, "I'll take the tail." It was a plan. And a pact. 'Let's go!' Penney had never scrambled a jet before. Normally the pre-flight is a half-hour or so of methodical checks. She automatically started going down the list. "Lucky, what are you doing? Get your butt up there and let's go!" Sasseville shouted. She climbed in, rushed to power up the engine, screamed for her ground crew to pull the chocks. The crew chief still had his headphones plugged into the fuselage as she nudged the throttle forward. He ran along pulling safety pins from the jet as it moved forward. She muttered a fighter pilot's prayer - "God, don't let me [expletive] up"- and followed Sasseville into the sky. They screamed over the smoldering Pentagon, heading northwest at more than 400 mph, flying low and scanning the clear horizon. Her commander had time to think about the best place to hit the enemy. "We don't train to bring down airliners," said Sasseville, now stationed at the Pentagon. "If you just hit the engine, it could still glide and you could guide it to a target. My thought was the cockpit or the wing." He also thought about his ejection seat. Would there be an instant just before impact? "I was hoping to do both at the same time," he says. "It probably wasn't going to work, but that's what I was hoping." Penney worried about missing the target if she tried to bail out. "If you eject and your jet soars through without impact... " she trails off, the thought of failing more dreadful than the thought of dying. But she didn't have to die. She didn't have to knock down an airliner full of kids and salesmen and girlfriends. They did that themselves. It would be hours before Penney and Sasseville learned that United 93 had already gone down in Pennsylvania, an insurrection by hostages willing to do just what the two Guard pilots had been willing to do: Anything, and everything. "The real heroes are the passengers on Flight 93 who were willing to sacrifice themselves," Penney says. "I was just an accidental witness to history." She and Sasseville flew the rest of the day, clearing the airspace, escorting the president, looking down onto a city that would soon be sending them to war. She's a single mom of two girls now. She still loves to fly. And she still thinks often of that extraordinary ride down the runway a decade ago. "I genuinely believed that was going to be the last time I took off," she says. "To conquer a nation, first disarm its citizens." - Adolph Hitler

Turner Radio Network RSS Feed Stats Content View Hits : 2435390 BOMBSHELL: Snowden downloaded entire roster of U.S. government - all names, home addresses and other personal info of **all** officials and gov't employees -- including law enforcement -- plus bankers, corporate boards of directors and more! Thursday, 06 February 2014 20:28 February 6, 2014 -- (TRN) -- Edward Snowden, the former contractor at the National Security Agency took with him multiple "Doomsday" packages of information when he departed the country and began revealing how intensely the US Government is spying on its own citizens. He has the personal home info for all Elected Officials, Law Enforcement, Judges, Bankers, Corporate Boards of Directors and more! At a classified briefing for members of Congress which took place on Wednesday, members found out that Snowden took with him: •a complete roster of absolutely every employee and official of the entire US Government. •The names, home addresses, unlisted personal home telephone and personal cellular phone numbers, dates of birth and social security numbers of every person involved in any way, with any department of the US Government. •The files include elected officials, Cabinet appointees, Judges, and **ALL** law enforcement agency employees including sworn officers. •Similar files with the personal information of EVERY government contractor and all employees of that contractor! •Similar files with all the personal information of EVERY Bank Corporation, their operating officers and their Boards of Directors, including all current and former members of the Federal Reserve •Similar files with all the personal information about anyone holding any type of license from the Government such as Doctors, Lawyers, Stock Brokers, Commodities Traders . . . . and many more. •Similar files with all the personal information of EVERY non-bank Corporation in the U.S., including their operating officers and Boards of Directors. Snowden has made it clear that if he is arrested, if he vanishes, or if he "dies" from any cause whatsoever, ALL of the information in his possession will be published publicly. TRN has confirmed that, working through Julian Assange and his "WikiLeaks" organization, copies of the encrypted data have already been distributed to more than one-thousand, two hundred (1200) web sites around the world. Those sites have agreed to conceal the information until such time as contact with Snowden is "lost." Once contact is lost, the sites have been told they will receive the Decryption keys via CD ROM, E-mail and P2P / Bit-Torrent file transfer. Once the decryption keys are sent, the sites have been instructed to wait a specific amount of time to confirm Snowden's disappearance, arrest or death and upon expiration of that time period, to publish the decrypted materials. Making the situation all the more dire for the government is that Snowden has made clear he will release some of the information under certain "other" circumstances. For instance, if Martial Law is declared in the US or if any elections are canceled for any reason, all the government employee info goes out. If an economic collapse takes place, all the Banker/Stock Broker/Commodities Trader information goes out. If Corporations start hyper-inflating prices, all the information about them, their officers and Board of Directors will go out. Snowden literally has the most powerful people in the United States in an inescapable stranglehold. If any of the things articulated above take place, everyone throughout the country will know exactly who to blame and exactly where they live. One can only speculate that under the right conditions, it might not be long until those responsible for the problems of our country, faced consequences for their actions; consequences delivered one at a time, in the dark of night, when there is no help . . . . and no escape. Leading members of the House Armed Services Committee emerged from the classified briefing “shocked” at the amount of information he reportedly took with him beyond the NSA surveillance programs. Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairman of the Armed Service panel’s Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee and also a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the briefing on the defense consequences of Snowden’s leaks was “very highly classified,” and therefore details couldn’t be discussed. Thornberry did say that lawmakers “left the briefing disturbed and angered” after hearing that the leaks by the former Booz Allen Hamilton employee “went well beyond programs associated with the NSA and data collection.” He characterized the leaks as so severe that they “compromise military capability and defense of the country” and “could cost lives” — while they “will certainly cost billions to repair.” “His actions were espionage, plain and simple,” Thornberry said. Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) read his statement rather than making comments on the fly “because of the seriousness of this issue and the sensitivity” of the information they’d just heard. “Ed Snowden isn’t a whistleblower; he’s a traitor,” McKeon said. No matter what opinion people hold of the data collection programs, he added, people should be “shocked and outraged to find that a substantial amount of the information has nothing to do with the NSA.” SOURCE: Partial sourcing from: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/02/05/lawmakers-disturbed-and-angered-after-classified-briefing-reveals-extent-of-snowden-defense-leaks/

The Littlest Boy Twenty years after Hiroshima, elite American troops trained to stop a Soviet invasion -- with nuclear weapons strapped to their backs. BY Adam Rawnsley AND David Brown|THE MAGAZINE Sandia Laboratories Archive video Share + 3.3k Shares As Capt. Tom Davis stands at the tailgate of the military cargo plane, the night air sweeps through the hold. His eyes search the black terrain 1,200 feet below. He grips the canvas of his reserve parachute and takes a deep breath. Davis and the men who make up his Special Forces A-team are among the most highly trained soldiers in the U.S. Army. It's 1972, and Davis isn't far removed from a tour in Vietnam, where he operated along the Cambodian border. His communications sergeant served in Command and Control North, which was responsible for some of the most daring operations in the heart of North Vietnamese territory. But none of the men has ever been on a mission like this before. Their plan: drop into Eastern Europe, make their way undetected through forested mountains, and destroy a heavy-water plant used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Leading up to the operation, during four days of preparation, Army regional experts briefed them on routes of infiltration and anticipated enemy patrols. The team pored over aerial photographs and an elaborate mock-up of the target -- a large, slightly U-shaped building. It's situated in a wide, open area with a roving guard, but at least the team won't have to sneak inside. Hanging awkwardly from the parachute harness of Davis's intelligence sergeant is a 58-pound nuclear bomb.Hanging awkwardly from the parachute harness of Davis's intelligence sergeant is a 58-pound nuclear bomb. With a weapon this powerful, they can just lay it against a wall, crank the timers, and let fission do its work. Davis had planned to follow in the footsteps of his family's prominent jurists -- his father was a lawyer; his grandfather a federal court judge -- until a notice from the draft board arrived during his first year of law school. Rather than be drafted, Davis signed up for officer candidate school and volunteered for Special Forces, graduating from the demanding "Q course" as a second lieutenant. From there, it was on to Vietnamese language school and off to the war in Southeast Asia, where he served as a civil affairs/psychological operations officer. As a first lieutenant, Davis got his own A-team. His team sergeant suggested they volunteer for training with what the Army called Special Atomic Demolition Munitions -- tactical nukes designed to be used on the battlefield in a war with the Soviets. "What the hell. Why not?" he responded. Their company commander forwarded their names and the team was accepted for training. A parachutist tests jumping into water with a SADM, which is attached to the line hanging below him. Sandia National Laboratories archive photo As the plane approaches the drop zone, the jump commands come quickly, shouted over the frigid, deafening wind. "Check static lines!" The men sound off for equipment check from the back of the chalk forward. "Stand by!" The light turns green, and each man is tapped out: "Go!" the soldiers, each carrying something on the order of 70 pounds of gear in addition to 30 pounds of parachute rigging, don't so much jump from the plane as waddle off the back of it and fall to the ground at about 20 feet per second. At half-second intervals, their silhouettes emerge from the rear of the plane, their deflated parachutes streaming behind like comets' tails. Canopies catch air and expand, and the team speeds downward, fast enough to avoid being spotted (or shot at) but just slow enough not to be killed when the men collide with the ground. Once the team has landed and released and cached their parachutes, they skulk to a predetermined rally point hidden in trees and shadows, where they unseal the special jump container and assess its contents for damage, making sure their payload is intact and not leaking radiation. Then they slip the bomb into a rucksack, bury the container, and set out through the mountains, moving only at night so as not to be seen. It takes them about two days to make their way to the target. On D-day, they set the device at the plant -- and run. A diagram from an Army manual shows how ADMs could “assist in enemy entrapment.” FP scan from FM 5-26 manual Share + 3.3k Shares Capt. Davis's "mission" was, of course, an exercise. In reality, he and his men parachuted not into Eastern Europe, but near the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire. The heavy-water plant was actually a shuttered paper mill in the nearby town of Lincoln, and the bomb was a training dummy. The mission wasn't real, but the job was. For 25 years, during the latter half of the Cold War, the United States actually did deploy man-portable nuclear destruction in the form of the B-54 Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM). Special Forces used the delivery container pictured above to protect bombs during parachute jumps. The container and the weapon inside were extremely heavy, adding 90 pounds to a paratrooper's load. Sandia National Laboratories archive photo Soldiers from elite Army engineer and Special Forces units, as well as Navy SEALs and select Marines, trained to use the bombs, known as "backpack nukes," on battlefronts from Eastern Europe to Korea to Iran -- part of the U.S. military's effort to ensure the containment and, if necessary, defeat of communist forces. Throughout the standoff with the Soviet Union, the West had to wrestle with the fact that, in terms of sheer manpower and conventional armaments, Warsaw Pact forces had their NATO counterparts woefully outnumbered. For the United States, nuclear weapons were the great equalizer. In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower went a step further, unveiling the "New Look," which sought to deter Soviet aggression on the cheap by threatening to respond to any attack with a nuclear onslaught of apocalyptic proportions -- a doctrine known as "massive retaliation." In this way, Ike thought he could hold back communism abroad and the military-industrial complex at home. The strategy had a major flaw, however. Though massive retaliation was economical, it allowed the United States almost no flexibility in how it responded to enemy aggression. In the event that communist forces launched a limited, non-nuclear attack, the president would have to choose between defeat at the hands of a superior conventional force or a staggeringly disproportionate (and potentially suicidal) strategic nuclear exchange that would kill hundreds of millions of people. To provide options between "red" and "dead," the United States soon embraced the concept of limited nuclear war.To provide options between "red" and "dead," the United States soon embraced the concept of limited nuclear war, championing tactical atomic weapons designed for use in combat. If Warsaw Pact forces ever bolted from East Germany and Czechoslovakia toward Western Europe, the United States could resort to nukes to at least delay the communist advance long enough for reinforcements to arrive. These "small" weapons, many of them more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, would have obliterated any battlefield and irradiated much of the surrounding area. But they provided options. Cold War strategy was filled with oxymorons like "limited nuclear war," but the backpack nuke was perhaps the most darkly comic manifestation of an age struggling to deal with the all-too-real prospect of Armageddon. The SADM was a case of life imitating satire. After all, much like Slim Pickens1 in the iconic finale of Dr. Strangelove, American soldiers would strap on atomic bombs and jump out of airplanes as part of the opening act of World War III. 1 Slim Pickens as Major "King" Kong rides into oblivion. Archive photo via OpenNet Share + 3.3k Shares The 1950s and '60s were a golden age of nuclear weapons design. Scientists and technicians at the Los Alamos and Sandia nuclear weapons laboratories succeeded in miniaturizing the so-called "physics packages" at the core of atomic bombs from the nearly 10,000-plus-pound behemoth used in the first-ever nuclear test to smaller warheads that could fit atop a missile. And their colleagues in rocketry surged ahead in developing land- and submarine-launched ballistic missiles that, together with bombers, soon made up the nuclear "triad" supporting strategic deterrence against the Soviets. From the Army's perspective, the problem was that bombers and missiles were managed by the Air Force and the Navy, leaving the ground force out of arguably the most significant development in the history of war, even as its soldiers would be chiefly responsible for stopping a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Fortunately for the Army, many U.S. strategists still saw nukes simply as bigger conventional bombs, and America's post-Hiroshima mastery of the cutting-edge science of atomic destruction had filled weapons designers more with a sense of the possible than the prudent. The result was a series of odd creations that made their way into the Army's arsenal, from atomic artillery to nuclear-tipped air-defense missiles. In a 1969 study, the U.S. Army tows an M-60 tank from a crater created by a simulated half-kiloton ADM blast to test the difficulty the weapons would pose to the movement of enemy forces. Photo from 1969 Army study "Project Tank Trap" The Army began rolling out atomic demolition munitions (ADMs) in 1954. The early iterations were cumbersome weapons, weighing hundreds of pounds and requiring several men to carry them with the help of trucks and helicopters. They were intended mostly for what you might call nuclear landscaping -- to create irradiated, impassible craters or to collapse mountainsides into narrow passes in order to obstruct likely invasion routes and bottleneck enemy forces. One engineer recalls setting up an ADM in the middle of a forest: "The idea was to blow these trees across a valley to create a radioactive physical obstacle for vehicles and troops to get by," he said. The Army's countermobility field manual taught soldiers to use ADMs for "stream cratering," in which atomic explosions near small waterways would "form a temporary dam, create a lake, cause overbank flooding, and produce an effective water obstacle" for enemy forces.1 An Army field manual for the Employment of Atomic Demolition Munitions. FP scans from FM 5-26 manual If worst came to worst, the Army's atomic engineers planned to deny advancing forces the use of friendly infrastructure by destroying allied bridges, tunnels, and dams. Railroad yards, power plants, airports -- all were ripe targets for preemptive nuclear destruction. But the Army wanted a more proactive nuclear role as well. Army partisans argued that the doctrine of massive retaliation left America unprepared for the full spectrum of conflict. Documents from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) show that America's nuclear weapons developers were happy to support the Army's quest for tactical nukes. In 1957, according to an AEC history, Sandia Corporation President James McRae lamented that "indiscriminate use of high-yield nuclear weapons inevitably created adverse public opinion." Since the future of war lay in an "unending succession of brushfire wars, rather than large-scale conflicts," McRae recommended that "greater emphasis should be placed on small atomic weapons," which could be used in "local ground combat." McRae's urgings paved the way for the development of the Davy Crockett, a sub-kiloton-yield nuclear rocket that could fit on the back of a jeep. In 1958, when the Army came knocking for an atomic demolition munition that could be carried by a single soldier, the AEC looked to the Crockett's lightweight Mark 54 warhead for its solution. The resulting weapon would be a smaller, more mobile version of the ADMs. The Army, though, would have to share the device with the Navy and Marine Corps. The AEC's final product -- the B-54 Special Atomic Demolition Munition -- entered the U.S. arsenal in 1964. It stood 18 inches tall, encased in an aluminum and fiberglass frame. It rounded to a bullet shape on one end and had a 12-inch-diameter control panel on the other. According to an Army manual, the weapon's maximum explosive yield was less than 1 kiloton -- that is, the equivalent of a thousand tons of TNT. To protect the bomb from unauthorized use, the SADM's control panel was sealed by a cover plate secured by a combination lock. Glow-in-the-dark paint applied to the lock allowed troops to unlock the bomb at night. As Soviet forces advanced into such countries as West Germany, the SADM would allow Special Forces units (dubbed "Green Light" teams) to deploy behind enemy lines to destroy infrastructure and matériel. But their mission wouldn't have been limited to NATO countries alone. What many nuclear historians don't realize is that Special Forces Green Light teams were also prepared to use SADMs on territory of the Warsaw Pact itself in order to thwart an invasion. The teams prepared to destroy enemy airfields, tank depots, nodes in the anti-aircraft grid, and any potentially useful transportation infrastructure in order to mitigate the flood of enemy armor and to allow allied air power to punch through. According to an internal report, the Army also considered burying SADMs next to enemy bunkers "to destroy critical field command and communications installations." Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces were trained to reach their targets by air, land, and sea. They could parachute behind enemy lines from cargo planes or helicopters. Teams specializing in scuba missions could swim the bomb to its destination if necessary.Teams specializing in scuba missions could swim the bomb to its destination if necessary2. (The AEC built an airtight, pressurized case that allowed divers to submerge the bomb to depths of up to 200 feet.) One Special Forces team even trained to ski with the weapon in the Bavarian Alps, though not without some difficulty. "It skied down the mountain; you did not," said Bill Flavin, who commanded a Special Forces SADM team. "If it shifted just a little bit, that was it. You were out of control on the slopes with that thing." Special Forces thus turned to teams trained in special high-altitude parachute jumps and scuba diving to deliver the weapon. Team leaders were allowed to choose which of their men would receive training on the weapon in order to make sure their units could pass the Army's periodic, demanding nuclear surety inspections. "The people with the best records, the people with the most experience, usually ended up on the SADM team because they had to pass the surety inspection," said Flavin. To receive SADM qualification, soldiers also had to be screened through the Defense Department's personnel reliability program to make sure they were trustworthy and mentally stable. Some men approached for the mission were gung-ho; others were less so. Colonel Tom Davis (ret.) led a SADM team while serving in the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne). Photo courtesy of Tom Davis "Of course everybody would volunteer. That wasn't a problem," said Capt. Davis. "We did it because, hey, it was gee-whiz. It was a neat thing to do, and I wanted to learn about it." But when Green Light team member Ken Richter began interviewing potential candidates, he said, not everyone was as enthusiastic: "I had a lot of people that I interviewed for our team. Once they found out what the mission was, they said, 'No, thanks. I'd rather go back to Vietnam.'" When he was introduced to the weapon, Richter could hardly believe what the AEC had come up with. "I think that my first reaction was that I didn't believe it," he said. "Because everything that I'd seen prior to that, World War II, showed this huge weapon. And we were going to put it on our backs and carry it? I thought they were joking." Soldiers receive classroom instruction in the use of Medium Atomic Demolition Munitions or "MADMs." MADM -- SADM's big sister -- weighed in at a hefty 400 pounds and required a team of engineers to carry it with the help of a help of a helicopter or truck. The MADM had a larger, variable yield of 1-15 kilotons and could be triggered by timers, wire, or radio. From the Collection of Larry Fukalek, retired ADM engineer, 2th Engineer Battalion, 7th Infantry Division They were not. Special Forces SADM teams like Davis's were given a weeklong course comprising eight to 12 hours of instruction each day in a cinder-block classroom at Fort Benning, Ga. The teams would also receive periodic refresher training from the Special Forces SADM committee, composed of SADM-qualified senior noncommissioned officers, and they were subject to regular inspections to evaluate their fitness in handling nuclear weapons. But given the stakes, the training did not always inspire tremendous confidence. For a nuclear weapon, the bomb was compact and light, but as infantry equipment went, it was still heavy and ungainly, its weight often suddenly shifting against a carrier's back. "When [the jumpmaster] said, 'Go,' they kinda tossed me out of the airplane with it on me," recalled Danny Powers, a communications sergeant with a SADM team. When hauling the weapons on foot, things were even more difficult. Dan Dawson, an ADM engineer, remembers how difficult it was to run with a backpack nuke. During a training exercise, his unit simulated a mission to blow up a railroad tunnel but found it difficult to move a SADM across a patch of open ground. "To get [the SADM backpacker] across this open area in a hurry, two of us, one on each side, had to support him under his arms and trot with him across this open area. You could carry it, but you couldn't run with it." In addition, the two-man rule, which to this day dictates that no individual service member have the ability to arm a nuclear weapon, demanded that Green Light teams divide the code that unlocked the cover plate. But that could present a challenge if the wrong man got killed en route to the target. "Here you were with this hunk of shit in your bag and no good place to go," Flavin said. "So we said, 'Eh, I don't think we can allow that to happen,'" and his men agreed to share the code in the event of a real mission. It was not as if the men could leave the SADM behind if a mission went bad. The weapon's unique power meant that it could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands, and the cover plates, secured by a single combination lock, didn't provide much protection if enemy forces captured a SADM team. "A crowbar can pop that thing off," said Flavin. So the teams trained to scuttle the weapon. "We always had to carry the appropriate amount of explosives so we could destroy it without it going off," Powers explained. "It might scatter nuclear waste, but it would not go up like a real mushroom cloud." If the team reached the target, the men would remove the lock-secured cover plate and set the timers. They would then reach into the safe well -- a small compartment in the top left of the control panel -- and pull out a hand-sized explosive charge used to trigger the bomb's nuclear chain reaction. After placing the charge in the armed position and flipping the switch, they would beat a hasty retreat. Of course, in the hours or minutes before detonation, the bomb would be exposed to discovery and tampering from enemy troops, so some Special Forces teams were told they had to keep eyes on the weapon until just minutes before it detonated. The "proper" distance to ensure both the security of the weapon and the safety of the team varied by nuclear surety inspector, recalled Frank Antenori, who served as an Army nuclear weapons maintenance technician for a Special Forces team before earning decorations for valor as a Green Beret in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some inspectors told teams to get out of the area as soon as the weapon was in place; others insisted that the team had to stay within visual range of the weapon until it blew. Even at a "safe" distance, SADM teams would still find themselves uncomfortably close to a detonation. "We're outside the vaporization range," said Antenori, "but well within the 'I will feel the wonderful warm wind that will blow by when it goes off in a second' range." Heightening the absurdity of intentionally huddling near a nuclear weapon that was about to explode was the fact that the men could not know exactly when it would explode. Probably to make the weapon resistant to electromagnetic pulses from any nearby nuclear explosions, as one might expect at the outset of war with the Soviets, the AEC had fashioned the SADM largely devoid of electronics. Instead, the device relied on two mechanical timers that, unfortunately, became less accurate the longer they were set for, potentially going off as early as eight minutes ahead of schedule or as many as 13 behind. Army field manuals warned that it was "not possible to state that [the timers] will fire at a specific time," so SADM teams were trained to predict the general window in which the weapon would go off. Nevertheless, Powers said, "we always figured we'd go through all these meticulous procedures on this device, set the timer for several hours to get away, but really when we turned that button, we were going to disappear." If the Green Light teams were lucky enough to be alive after the weapon detonated, the odds were still heavily stacked against their survival. Behind enemy lines and cut off from support at the start of the Third World War, they would have to rely on their wits and their escape and evasion training to avoid being captured or killed. Some provisions were made for them: Special Forces fleeing a SADM detonation could seek out weapons and supply caches hidden across Eastern Europe and marked on special maps. "When the [Berlin] Wall came down, we serviced and pulled some of those [caches] out," recalled Flavin. "I was surprised; the weapons and everything were still good to go." Julius Reinitzer, known to his colleagues as "The Bear." A Czechoslovak-born Special Forces sergeant, Reinitzer advised SADM troops about how to stay alive behind enemy lines. Photo courtesy of Ilona Reinitzer In addition to their caches, some SADM teams had access to another secret weapon to help them get home: a Czechoslovak-born Special Forces sergeant by the name of Julius Reinitzer. As a teenager, Reinitzer twice busted out of a Nazi labor camp in Poland. He would later link up with U.S. military intelligence, hopping across the Czechoslovak border to set up resistance networks. After his arrest and imprisonment in communist Czechoslovakia for espionage, again he escaped. Back in the free world, Reinitzer joined the U.S. Army, earning American citizenship and becoming a Green Beret. "The Bear," as he was known, grew to be an in-demand tutor to Special Forces teams, including Flavin and his men, who were looking for a master class in the delicate art of living life on the run behind the Iron Curtain. Still, the notion that Green Light missions were in all likelihood one-way trips didn't escape members of the Special Forces world. Flying through enemy airspace, operating covertly behind the lines, sneaking up on hostile forces with a nuclear weapon, and waiting uncomfortably close to the bomb before it exploded -- the missions were nothing short of preposterous. As Flavin put it: "There were real issues with the operational wisdom of the program, and those who were to conduct the mission were sure that whomever thought this up was using bad hemp." Humor cushioned the grim realities of working with atomic demolition munitions. The ADM engineer units created patches and logos adorned with mushroom clouds. An unofficial motto sprung up among them: "Nuke 'em 'til they glow, and shoot 'em in the dark." The joking was made easier by the fact that some thought that the chances of the chain of command authorizing a mission were slim. "In our hearts, we knew nobody was going to give control of these to a bunch of big old boys running around the countryside. We just didn't believe it was ever going to happen.""In our hearts, we knew nobody was going to give control of these to a bunch of big old boys running around the countryside," said Davis. "We just didn't believe it was ever going to happen." Aside from the "operational wisdom" of the program, as Flavin dryly put it, some Special Forces teams questioned whether their delivery aircraft, much less the weapon itself, would even reach them in the chaos and destruction of the Third World War's opening act. The SADM units rarely, if ever, had access to the live weapons themselves, which were held in tightly controlled storage depots, like the Army's facility in Miesau, West Germany. In the event of war, the weapons would be flown from their storage depots to nearby airfields and the Special Forces SADM teams waiting for them there. Flavin summed up the challenges well: "So you had to get us somewhere. You had to get the weapon somewhere. You had to get the airplane somewhere. And all of this had to be done when? Supposedly before the other side knew that they were going to attack, I guess." Political sensitivities posed an obstacle as well. NATO allies, particularly West Germany, were understandably apprehensive about the idea of U.S. forces lighting off scores of small nuclear weapons on their territory. Engineers were supposed to use the weapons only after local populations had been evacuated, but that requirement didn't settle nerves. Burying the weapons underground would help limit radioactive fallout, but the Federal Republic publicly balked when the United States asked for permission to pre-dig emplacement holes for nuclear weapons near its transportation infrastructure. A How-To Guide to the Backpack Nuke Images from an Army field manual on employment of Atomic Demolition Munitions 2 Watch: This 1969 film reel shows a Navy Underwater Demolition Team in Key West practicing anchoring a SADM training device to the seafloor.Video obtained by the authors from the National Archives and Records Administration 3 Watch: This Sandia Laboratories training film shows how to unlock a SADM, set its timers, and arm the weapon.Video obtained by the authors through a Freedom of Information Act request Archive photos via OpenNet Share + 3.3k Shares In the end, none of the doubts about the SADM were ever answered. In 1984, 20 years after the weapon's creation, the public got a sense of the bomb and its capabilities when William Arkin and colleagues sketched out a description of the SADM from military documents and manuals for the Natural Resources Defense Council. His revelations provoked some outrage in Congress and shock in the media, but the weapon's days were already numbered. As Cold War tensions abated, the United States began recalling SADMs to the continental United States. The weapon was officially retired in 1989, with the departments of Defense and Energy declaring that it was "obsolete" and that "there was no longer an operational requirement" for it. With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, George H.W. Bush made deep cuts to nonstrategic nuclear weapons across all the services. Six years later, some details about the weapon were officially declassified. But the operational details of how the U.S. military intended to use backpack nukes -- including missions on Warsaw Pact territory, the demands the weapons put on the men tasked with deploying them, and the risks that their missions entailed -- have only now come to light through interviews, documents declassified through Freedom of Information Act requests, and newly obtained military manuals. What was once a top-secret weapon is now a draw for tourists.What was once a top-secret weapon is now a draw for tourists. Today, visitors to the U.S. government's National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque, N.M., can get their picture taken in front of a SADM parachute container. The Special Atomic Demolition Munition has gone from being a deadly serious, if eccentric, weapon to an item of Cold War kitsch. SADM control panel. Archive scan via OpenNet In the light of historical distance, it's tempting to dismiss the SADM as an aberration born of Cold War hysteria. But the United States still keeps tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, albeit in the form of the less adventurous B61 air-dropped bomb. More frighteningly, other countries are increasingly embracing them as instruments of national defense. Pakistan, for example, reportedly keeps nuclear weapons forward deployed, and authority for their use pre-delegated to troops in the field -- an effort to compensate for India's much larger army. And in a reversal of fortune, now that Russia finds itself in a position of conventional inferiority vis-à-vis NATO, Moscow has elevated the role of tactical nuclear weapons in its strategic doctrine. For the Army's SADM veterans, however, their nuclear past is long behind them. Some had doubts about the mission; others embraced it. Regardless, they each bore the burden of the Cold War's worst nightmares -- on their backs.♦ Adam Rawnsley is a D.C.-based writer covering technology and national security. David Brown is the author of Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry.