US air chiefs sacked for nuclear blunders
Pastor Dale Morgan
US air chiefs sacked for nuclear blunders*
* Elana Schor and agencies in Washington
* The Guardian,
* Friday June 6 2008
The US air force's two most senior officers were sacked yesterday after
repeated blunders in nuclear weapons handling, including the mistaken
shipment of detonators to Taiwan and the bungled transport of six deadly
cruise missiles by unsuspecting pilots.
The air force chief of staff, General Michael Moseley, and civilian
secretary Michael Wynne were asked to resign by senior Pentagon
officials in advance of a report that is expected to pass embarrassing
judgment on the nuclear errors.
The resignations had been expected amid simmering tension between the
defence secretary, Robert Gates, and air force leaders. Gates has
blasted the air force as not fully committed to the conflicts in Iraq
and Afghanistan, urging it to send more of the unmanned planes known as
Predators into the war.
"Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it's been like
pulling teeth," Gates said in a speech this spring to the air force academy.
Yet the deciding factor in the military shakeup appears to be two
nuclear slip-ups by the air force, which Moseley and Wynne have led
since 2005. The air force admitted in March to sending Taiwan nuclear
fuses that it believed were helicopter batteries, a gaffe that one
senior defence official called "disconcerting".
A bigger mistake came 10 months ago, when six nuclear missiles were
flown from North Dakota to Louisiana without any of the air force
officials on board knowing about their hazardous cargo. The incident was
deemed so serious that President George Bush was immediately notified.
The air force unit that flew the six missiles failed a safety inspection
only last month, according to the Washington Post.
Moseley was also reprimanded by Pentagon auditors in April for pushing
ethical boundaries in his friendship with two private contractors who
won a $50m (£26m) contract in 2005 to produce flight shows for the air
force.
The Pentagon inspector general found in April that the contract to
promote the Thunderbirds aerial stunt team was tainted by improper
influence and preferential treatment. No criminal conduct was found.
Moseley was not singled out for blame, but the investigation laid out a
trail of communications from him and other air force leaders that
eventually influenced the awarding of the contract. Included in that
were friendly emails between Moseley and an executive in the company
that won the bid.
"It is my sense that General Moseley's command authority has been
compromised," Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat on the
Senate armed services committee, said at the time.
Replacements for the two leaders were not immediately announced. Forcing
out both the uniformed and civilian chiefs of a military service is a
rare move, but Gates sacked the army secretary last year amid a scandal
over the mistreatment of injured soldiers at the Walter Reed hospital in
Washington.
Bush was aware of the resignations but "played no role" in the process,
according to the White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.