Annie Jacobsen: evaluation

Transcript context

…What would you do if you were the commander of STRATCOM in that situation? What would you do? Because I think my gut reaction right now, if you just throw me in there, I would refuse orders. Okay, so good question. I asked that exact question to one of my very helpful sources on the book, Dr. Glen McDuff, who is at Los Alamos and who for a while was the classified… They have a museum that’s classified within the lab, and he was the historian in charge of it. He’s a nuclear weapons engineer. He worked on Star Wars during the Reagan era. And he does a lot having to do with the history of Los Alamos. By the way, because I’ve reported on nuclear weapons for 12 years now, and Oppenheimer movie had a very, to me, positive impact on Los Alamos’ transparency with people like me. They had a real willingness to share information. I think before perhaps they were on their heels feeling they needed to be on the defensive, but now they’re much more forthcoming. They were super helpful. I can tell you the origin story of the football, which they declassified for the book. But I asked this question to Dr. Glen McDuff in a different manner. I said, “Is there a chance that the STRATCOM commander would defy orders?” And he said, “Annie, you have a better chance winning Powerball.” Why do you think? What’s his intuition behind that?…

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