Nuclear Secrets So Dangerous the FBI Protected Him For Life

[00:00:00]Is America prepared for a biological war?

[00:00:02]>> Absolutely not. And biological war can never happen. And this is what I would talk about with nuclear war, where I would say nuclear war is insane. And every person I ever interviewed told me that. And these were people in nuclear command and control that retired. It's the end game. And biological war is the same situation. It is an end game. COVID needs to be re-examined as a lesson.

[00:00:26]What can we learn from this?

[00:00:29]>> Let's switch gears here real quick. I've got a hot question for you.

[00:00:32]>> 100%.

[00:00:35]>> July 25th, 1946, Bikini Atoll.

[00:00:39]>> Wow.

[00:00:39]>> There are only seven atomic bombs on the entire planet, and the US is about to spend one blowing up its own ships underwater to see what happens. That bomb was called Baker, and it became the first time humanity really understood what fallout was. The ships that survived the blast were so radioactive they had to abandon the cleanup because it was killing the sailors doing it.

[00:01:03]Bikini's still uninhabitable today, 80 years later.

[00:01:08]Can you walk us through Baker? Because this is the moment we learned a nuke doesn't just destroy, it poisons everything for generations.

[00:01:16]>> Yeah, it's a it's a it's a fascinating moment moment in time that's being discussed there. And journalists detail, just because I have spent my life interviewing people who have actually been there.

[00:01:31]>> Really?

[00:01:31]>> It's what gives me a little bit of an authority.

[00:01:35]And I mean that in like as an author.

[00:01:38]You know, I'm I wasn't there like you were in the war theater. I never have been, but I interviewed So, the man who wired that bomb, who wired the Baker bomb.

[00:01:48]He armed, wired, and fired it. His name is Alfred O'Donnell.

[00:01:53]He's now dead.

[00:01:55]But I interviewed him for my book Area 51, which was sort of my first foray into nuclear weapons. And O'Donnell was with a small team of engineers called EG&G.

[00:02:07]And so even more interesting is that O'Donnell walked me through how do you like I said to him, how do you why how do you arm wire wire arm and fire a nuclear weapon?

[00:02:21]To which he said, well, that's really classified, but I can give you the layman's version of it, okay? Because that, by the way, is what prohibits most rogue groups from being able to acquire a nuclear weapon. They don't have the arming and firing device.

[00:02:42]That's what's so jealously guarded. It's incredibly complex. Al O'Donnell never left the country.

[00:02:48]He never left the country because he would be kidnapped. And he had a minder until he died.

[00:02:55]Like an FBI minder keeping eyes on him.

[00:02:58]Kind of always watching us whenever I was interviewing him, having lunch with him at the Chinese restaurant. He had a lot of secrets. He wired 186 nuclear weapons for the government in the Marshall Islands and in Nevada.

[00:03:13]And what I learned about that Baker bomb is that um in those days, we've been talking about how science and technology have advanced, there was no remote wiring system the way there is now. I mean, it did exist, but it wasn't ubiquitous, right?

[00:03:32]So, now you do this and you blow something up at a distance or you do this and you blow So, they had cables.

[00:03:40]If you've ever seen that photograph of that it's like ships in the atoll and you see this mushroom cloud and coming up out of the water.

[00:03:48]>> I haven't, actually.

[00:03:49]>> Oh, it's an incredible photo.

[00:03:51]>> We'll put it up on screen.

[00:03:52]>> An incredible photo.

[00:03:54]And O'Donnell took me through how they had to lay cable from the arming facility to the actual bomb.

[00:04:06]>> Wow. So, they How How far were they?

[00:04:09]>> They were They were not far away. This is like in those days where um you know, they they would they would set the situation up. They had some remote control, right? So, they would go out on a ship further out from the atoll, maybe 25 mi away.

[00:04:25]But um and they would do some remote firing. But the the actual device had to be attached to its armed system onshore.

[00:04:36]Which is just kind of an unfathomable detail in today's world.

[00:04:41]>> How was he psychologically?

[00:04:44]How many sailors died?

[00:04:46]>> Well, that was the first atomic test after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I mean, you know, that was a really pivotal moment in history because there was a kind of decision of like maybe we're going to sort of not go nuclear.

[00:05:03]And you know, there was lots of debate in the international community whether it should be monitored and and the Navy stepped in and was like, you know, we're in business here.

[00:05:15]And then the nuclear arms race took off with that Baker bomb.

[00:05:23]And there were more than 100 atmospheric nuclear tests that happened after that.

[00:05:30]And the size of that test, by the way, was tiny compared to what would have come later because that was an atomic weapon.

[00:05:39]There was only atomic weaponry in those days. It would be in It wouldn't be until the very early 1950s that the thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, would be invented. And the hydrogen bombs are what are megatons.

[00:05:55]>> Mhm.

[00:05:55]>> The atomic weapons were still in the kiloton range.

[00:05:58]So, while that bomb looks huge, you'll see in the photo, it's not, you know, Castle Bravo or Ivy Mike, the megaton weapons that were going off later.

[00:06:09]So, psychologically, how was O'Donnell?

[00:06:11]I mean, you know, it it took a toll on those individuals, but also were so conditioned, some might say programmed, to believe And no, I'm going to say conditioned because Russia was such a threat, you know.

[00:06:26]>> Mhm.

[00:06:27]>> I mean, totalitarian communism was just a looming threat. And everyone that worked within the military industrial complex in those days knew it, was conditioned to be extremely fearful of it, and was determined to beat it.

[00:06:47]And, you know, people have their opinions now, but having interviewed a lot of Cold War warriors, I completely reserve judgment on that and just go with what they what they talk about about how serious that threat was.

[00:07:02]>> Wow.

[00:07:05]Last question.

[00:07:06]>> Yeah.

[00:07:07]>> Is America prepared for biological war?

[00:07:12]>> I mean, absolutely not. Absolutely not.

[00:07:15]And biological war can never happen, you know, it can never happen. This is what I would talk about with nuclear war, where I would say, you know, nuclear war is insane. And every person I ever interviewed told me that. And these are people in nuclear command and control that retired.

[00:07:30]You can never have a nuclear war.

[00:07:34]Civiliza- It's a It's a It's the end game. And biological war is the same situation. It is an end game. We cannot have one. COVID needs to be re-examined as a as a lesson. What can we learn from this? And what can we never do again with those mis- same mistakes? And how do we educate people so that they aren't so that they can have conversations like we're having a little you know, airing a little bit on the like, "Oh my god, this is a disaster."

[00:08:05]So that you realize how do I participate in the dialogue so that it can never happen.

[00:08:10]You know, it can never happen.

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