Caging the Nuclear Genie; An American Challenge for Global Security

Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997. Fourth printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/very good. 24 cm, xi, [1], 163, [1] pages. Illustrations. Appendices. Notes. Index. With Compliments Of the Author bookplate signed by the author affixed to flyleaf. Signed letter to Congressman Thomas Allen, dated April 9, 1998 on author's personal letterhead laid in. Arguing that the time has come to dispense with incremental approaches to arms control, Admiral Stansfield Turner, the former head of the CIA and an experienced senior military commander, proposes a practical yet safe plan that would move the world into a new and secure millennium. Turner analyzes how many nuclear weapons are really needed to maintain our national security, regardless of how many weapons of mass destruction other nations may have. He offers a dramatic, unilateral American initiative to place all the world's nuclear warheads in strategic escrow" whereby none would be ready for immediate use; to initiate a pledge of no first use" and call on other nations to do the same; and to build national defenses against nuclear attack when they become cost-effective. Specifically, Admiral Turner details how a plan for weapons reduction could be carried out for biological and chemical weapons and what tactical and strategic differences exist between de-escalation of nuclear and non-nuclear weapons. The Turner Plan achieves genuine international security and has the potential to achieve wide, bipartisan support. Stansfield Turner (born December 1, 1923) is a retired admiral in the United States Navy who was Director of Central Intelligence from 1977 to 1981 and President of the Naval War College from 1972 to 1974. He was also a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Policy. Turner graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with the Class of 1947 and attained a commission in the United States Navy in June 1946 (during World War II, classes were graduated in three years). He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University while serving in the Navy, earning a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1950. During his naval career he served as commanding officer of an ocean mine sweeper (MSO), executive officer of the destroyer USS Morton (DD-948) in 1961 and 1962, and as commanding officer of the Guided Missile Cruiser USS Horne (DLG-30) . He later commanded Cruiser-Destroyer Flotilla 8 as a rear admiral, leading a task group in 1970-71 consisting of the aircraft carriers Independence and John F. Kennedy monitoring the Soviet Fifth Eskadra in the Mediterranean. Later he served as NATO Commander in Chief, Allied Forces Southern Europe, headquartered in Naples. Under Turner's direction, the CIA emphasized technical intelligence (TECHINT) and signal intelligence (SIGINT) more than human intelligence (HUMINT). In 1979, Turner eliminated over 800 operational positions in what was called the Halloween Massacre. In a memoir/analysis published in 2005, Turner expressed regret for the dismissals. Reform and simplification of the intelligence community's multilayered secrecy system was one of Turner's significant initiatives. During Turner's term as head of the CIA, he became outraged when former agent Frank Snepp published a book called Decent Interval which exposed incompetence among senior U.S. government personnel during the fall of Saigon. Turner accused Snepp of breaking the secrecy agreement required of all CIA agents, and then later was forced to admit under cross-examination that he had never read the agreement signed by Snepp. Regardless, the CIA ultimately won its case against Snepp at the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court forced Snepp to turn over all his profits from Decent Interval and to seek preclearance of any future writings about intelligence work for the rest of his life. The ultimate irony was that the CIA would later rely on the Snepp legal precedent in forcing Turner to seek preclearance of his own memoirs, which were highly critical of President Ronald Reagan's policies. Upon leaving the agency, Turner became a lecturer, writer, and TV commentator, and served on the Board of Directors of several American corporations. Turner served as a member of the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island's Marine Advisory Council. Turner has written several books, including Secrecy and Democracy - The CIA in Transition in 1985, 'Terrorism and Democracy' in 1991, Caging the Nuclear Genie - An American Challenge for Global Security in 1997, and 2005's Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence, in which he advocates fragmenting the CIA.Thomas Hodge "Tom" Allen (born April 16, 1945) is a former member of the United States House of Representatives representing Maine's 1st congressional district, and the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2008. Allen lost to incumbent Senator Susan Collins. His book Dangerous Convictions: What's Really Wrong with the U.S. Congress came out in 2013.