MM#253--Broken Arrow 1--The Quebec Incident

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. In keeping with our new tradition, let's go to our first pull quote right away. The following day, november 10th, an even wadier event took place that would again disturb Truman's concentration. That night, a Boeing B-50 Superfortress took off from Goose Bay Air Base in Labrador, canada. Flying over the St Lawrence River, the heavy bomber ran into trouble, first one, then another of its four engines failed. Protocol required that the pilot immediately jettisoned its cargo, and so he did, Right over the river, not far from the city of Rivere Douloupe, quebec, 250 miles northeast of Montreal. The cargo in question happened to be a Mark IV atomic bomb, a revised version of the fat boy that had obliterated Nagasaki five years earlier. The crew set the squat 5.5 ton device to detonate at an altitude of 2,500 feet. Mercifully, the bomb was missing its plutonium core, so no nuclear reaction occurred, but the resulting explosion was massive nevertheless, and it rained more than 100 pounds of moderately radioactive uranium over a wide arc of the Quebec countryside. The shattering blast woke residents on both shores of the river for many miles. Soon afterward, the stricken bomber managed to land at Lorring Air Force Base in Maine. American and Canadian officials immediately moved to cover up the incident, telling reporters that what residents had heard was merely a 500 pound quote practice bomb conventional, not atomic that had been intentionally and safely detonated, not until the 1980s, when the United States Air Force acknowledged this was a case of a lost nuclear bomb there would be several during the Cold War An incident category known in military parlance as a broken arrow For President Truman. It was yet another distraction, another twist in a spectacularly nerve-wracking week. This incident was described in a quote that we just heard from the Book on Desperate Ground by Hampton Sides. Subtitle is the Marines at the Reservoir, the Korean War, the Korean War's greatest battle, and it's a fascinating book, all about the Korean War, which we have the 70th anniversary coming up in a couple of weeks. I was reading this book, but this incident is a frightening reminder of the dangers posed by nuclear arms and, especially during the Cold War, the nuclear arms race. Now let's think about the facts of this incident. On November 10, 1950, an American Boeing B-50 Superfortress carrying an atomic bomb, a Mark IV atomic bomb, was forced to dump its cargo over the St Lawrence River when two of its four engines failed. The bomb, missing its plutonium core, exploded on impact and rained uranium over a wide area of the country of Canada, in the state of Quebec, and in the immediate aftermath of the accident, us and Canadian officials attempted to cover up the incident, and actually did so successfully for 30 years, by claiming it was a practice bomb instead of an atomic bomb. Now, is that not just crazy? Now it was over 30 years later, in the 1980s, that the US government actually came clean, and more than that, the US and Canadian governments actually conspired to keep this information from the public. So in doing some basic searching on the web, you'll discover that we've had over 32 of these broken-arrow events since the 1950s. In order to conceal the truth about what happened, us and Canadian officials had to conspire together and isn't that just great. Now we have two countries conspiring together. Now this tragedy serves as evidence of how dangerous life could be during this period of history. But even more alarming is that, like I said before, there's been 32 similar events according to the research conducted on the web. Now I'll put a link in the show notes to this website atomicarchivecom almanac of broken arrows. Now this all begs the question how should state secrets be handled in a representative republic? Now, you would hope that handling the handling of state secrets will be done in a careful and responsible manner, with the utmost respect for the safety and security of those affected by such decisions. In our system of government, article 1 of the US Constitution puts the federal legislature, aka Congress, as the most closely tied to the people and is the correct check on the tyranny of the executive and judicial branches. So what happens when the American public loses trust in the federal legislature, aka Congress? Well, we're living through that now. So in today's mojo minute, for our country to flourish, it is essential that lessons are learned from such events as broken arrow events in order to mitigate similar incidences occurring in the future. And, more importantly, we need robust oversight from our congressional leaders. And boy, if that hasn't been done. In over 50 to 75 years, the oversight responsibility of Congress has become so weak that we could say there is no oversight at all. Yes, government officials come before congressional committees, but Congress itself has neutered itself. It is completely weak and ineffective. And yes, we as a country, we need a robust military defense, and I think an overwhelming majority of the American public believes that. But to conceal the information for over 30 years, so we don't have transparency. That seems a little rich, and for congressional authorities to barely sink their teeth into these events is an indictment of the times in which we live. Ultimately, when it comes to dealing with sensitive information, vast more transparency should always come first, especially with government oversight. And in our next mojo minute we will see what happened just 30 years later and if the United States Congress has learned anything from these broken arrow events, most especially if it has gotten any better with their robust oversight capability. We'll see you in our next mojo minute. And, by the way, ps, don't hold your breath on that robust congressional oversight.