Bogus Security Alerts Hit National Weather Service

kobee writes "The National Weather Service is adding a confirmation dialog to their system for issuing regional EAS (Emergency Alert System) warnings, after it accidently alerted parts of Florida and Georgia to a bogus radiological emergency Wednesday. Wired News reports an NWS operator 'entered the code "RHW" instead of "RWT," keying a radiological hazard warning instead of a required weekly test.' Something similiar occured in Las Vegas the day before."

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Radio stations, public ignored '71 nuke alert also

[mbstone]

'NUCLEAR ALERT' PROVES FALSE

By Paul L. Montgomery,
New York Times, Feb. 21, 1971

A "human error" yesterday put Americans on an emergency alert of the type that would be used in a nuclear attack.

It was 40 minutes before the error was cleared up at the National Emergency Warning Center at Cheyenne Mountain, Colo.

An employee at the center, in a confusion over punched tapes that are prepared in advance, put on the wire to the country's radio and television stations at 9:33 A.M. a message saying that the President had declared a national emergency and that normal broadcasting was to cease "immediately."

The message contained the code word "hatefulness," which was to be used only in the event of a real alert.

In the subsequent turmoil, a number of stations around the country went off the air after telling listeners of the "emergency." Others quickly checked and found that the transmission was an error and continued normal broadcasting.

"I saw the authenticated message and thought, 'My God! It's Dec. 7 all over again!'" said Chuck Kelly of WWCM in Brazil, Ind., who took his station off the air for 22 minutes.

The National Emergency Warning Center frantically tried to cancel the message several times, but it was not until 10:13 A. M. that it found the proper code word-"impish"--to indicate that the cancellation was authentic.

The false alert did not affect any of the country's military arms because the error originated with the office charged with informing civilians of impending disaster. However, Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird ordered an immediate investigation.

Louis I. Smoyer, chief of the warning center, said that the error occurred when a civilian operator at the center put on the wire a tape for a real alert instead of a test tape.

The operator, W. S. Eberhardt, who has worked 15 years at the center, said afterward: "I can't imagine how the hell I did it."

Because the false alert looked exactly like the real one, and because many broadcasting stations did not follow the procedures called for in a real emergency, the incident raised questions about the effectiveness of the civilian warning system.

A spokesman for the Office of Civil Defense in Washington, asked if the system would work in a real emergency as it did yesterday, replied, "That's one of the things I've always wondered about."

The warning center is part of the nuclear alert complex in the base of Cheyenne Mountain, 10 miles south of Colorado Springs. The center,
protected by thick concrete and mounted on springs to allay nuclear shock, is operated by the Office of Civil Defense. Communications in the center are staffed by civilian employees of the Army Strategic Communications Command.

In an actual nuclear alert, the warning of impending attack would come from the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) in the mountain, which operates the radar warning systems ringing the United States and Canada.

The warning would then be transmitted to the American and Canadian Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Governments of the two countries, to the Polaris missile fleet, to the Strategic Air Command, and to the National Emergency Warning Center, which is the link with the civilian population.

Under Civil Defense strategy, the radio and television stations are the primary means of warning civilians that an attack is impending.

The warning center is directly connected into the Associated Press and United Press International radio news wires, which go to the country's stations. The circuit is tested at least twice a week, and there is an elaborate system of codes so that what happened yesterday supposedly could not happen.

Every three months, each radio station is sent a list of the code words for each day that must be included in a message from the warning cent