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US Nuclear Commander Suspended Over Gambling
mdsolar writes "The No 2 officer at the military command in charge of all US nuclear war-fighting forces has been suspended and is under investigation by the naval criminal investigation command for issues related to gambling, officials said on Saturday. The highly unusual action against a high-ranking officer at US strategic command was made more than three weeks ago but not publicly announced. Air force general Robert Kehler, who heads Strategic Command, suspended the deputy commander, navy vice admiral Tim Giardina, from his duties on September 3, according to the command's top spokeswoman, navy captain Pamela Kunze. Giardina is still assigned to the command but is prohibited from performing duties related to nuclear weapons and other issues requiring a security clearance, she said."
One of the issues was apperently, counterfit chips.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/strategic-command-suspension-linked-probe-counterfeit-poker-chips/story?id=20413148
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"Push the button.... don't push the button... Lemme just flip a coin!"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"Just don't take real people out of the loop and hand over control to joshua"
Joshua was the password, you moron!
M.A.D. was always a gamble
Too bad you're paying for overpriced air when you buy a bag...
Drumroll...
That's how I felt after reading your post!
Thank you, thank you! I'll be here all week. Tip your waitress.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
and the unofficial name of the system.
The only winning move is not to play...
...you can't fight in here: this is the war room!
What was he betting on? The outcome of WWIII? Well, I certainly hope he put his money on the right team.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Also, here's the current military pay scales:
http://www.dfas.mil/militarymembers/payentitlements/militarypaytables.html
The guy is making around 12K a month.
That's got to be a serious habbit to resort to using fake chips.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
We really want a guy who owes the Mob 200K in gambling debts being leaned on to turn over top-secret information to erase his gambling debts. It's pretty easy for someone with an addiction like that to snowball from handing out a floor-plan to an office containing harmless stuff to handing over access codes or whatever. One of the things about being in a position where you're entrusted with the safety and lives of your countrymen is that no one should be able to have leverage over you. It's one thing if someone threatens to kill your family if you don't give them XYZ information - you can go to the appropriate agency for protection or whatever needs to be done and it will get handled, no matter how high and hard it needs to be escalated.
It's entirely different if it's over gambling debts. Especially if you've caved before. Your career is over and you might go to prison. Some people, especially the kind that are gambling addicts, simply cannot see the long-term ramifications or can justify damn near anything to themselves. That makes them extremely dangerous in any position that has the word "nuclear" and "commander" in it's title.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
Goldie, how many times have I told you guys that I don't want no horsin' around...
ooooops, wrong movie.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
P.O.E.
Whopper was the computer (spelled differently with abbreviation periods).
Learn to love Alaska
Just don't take real people out of the loop and hand over control to joshua
That'd be a WHOPR of a mistake. ;)
...is based on the assumption that, for the rest of eternity, no one group of people with access to nuclear weaponry will get trigger-happy.
Hilarious.
To the idiot mods: Don't you know about WarGames?
Turn in your geek card.
"The highly unusual action against a high-ranking officer at US strategic command was made more than three weeks ago but not publicly announced."
This is only "highly unusual" because it is being reported throughout the mainstream media. But anyone who has been through an FBI/CIA interview knows that gambling issues are something that they probe for quite a bit. I doubt he was the first person fired or reprimanded that week for gambling.
Want to work in the defense industry? Then don't gamble or bet on sports because it is a red flag that often disqualifies people from employment or association. The higher up you go the more they'll pry into your personal life. Asking friends from college or even high school if you ever gambled (or had a drinking problem, used drugs, etc.).
No worries. United States Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper is in control.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Too bad you're paying for overpriced air when you buy a bag...
The weight of the contents are printed right there on the bag for you. I like it when chips come in a bag that's inflated a bit, adds a little padding during shipping.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I can hit this part with a hammer and it won't go off... any takers?
"I'm not horsing around, that's how it decodes..."
(The first draft of the film script had Goldberg reveal the code as "L.S.M.F.T...")
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I don't believe gambling is the reason. I think it is more likely he is being suspended for another reason, but they don't want this "other" reason to be made public.
That's just the cover story. He's really been cooking meth.
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
In this case, the Vice Admiral's title was quite a tell.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
You would not want them to chip!
Have gnu, will travel.
Now deal me in.
Right movie, wrong story. ;)
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
If it's only been actually cheating while serving your team, like Bonds, McQuire, Rodriguez or the other cheats, then you could be in. But gambling? No HoF for you.
DaveyJJ
More precisely, the acronym is W.O.P.R
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
But it's WOPR, they're just spelling pedants.
I'm glad someone else looked it up. I knew what it was, but it's better with a cite. Thanks.
Learn to love Alaska
It would be quite the deterrent!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
No worries - I just remember it because that's what we named our first VMWare farm installation. ;)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
No brand or flavour would be edible if it were not for the packaging.
- The 'air' is pure nitrogen, it keeps the contents fresh for months rather than hours.
- The inflated bag protects the contents from being crushed during transport.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Obviously, he needs to be removed from his super-duper secret duties if the possibility of blackmail is significant but let's hope the poor fellow gets straightened out. Gambling is so terrible because first you go through disposable money, then the milk money and finally the money to which you have access but is not yours. My grandfather lost a house thanks to cards and horses; a friend's marriage broke up because her husband's business partner was a gambler. One day the fellow went to work and found his own office padlocked because his partner's gambling debts.
I hope it works out for the guy.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Yup. I was a defense contractor back in the 80s. While you couldn't be gay in the uniformed military, you could still have a security clearance and be a contractor or in the NSA or CIA - but you couldn't be in the closet, because that might be used for blackmail, especially in states where it was still illegal to be gay. So there were some famous researchers who'd had to come out to their families.
They asked about a lot of other things; they didn't mind that some of my coworkers had used drugs back in college and then stopped, but they really freaked out when one guy said he'd smoked dope, liked it, and might well do it again :-) (It took an extra six months for his clearance to come through.) And they really cared a lot about people who had relatives in Communist countries, not because they were worried that Cousin Ivan might have corrupted you into being a Commie, but because the KGB might threaten to kill your grandma if you didn't give them the secret plans. In my case, they asked a bunch of questions one year about my involvement in the Libertarian Party, because some of them weren't quite familiar with the concept that there were more than two political parties (plus the Commies, and they'd kind of forgotten about George Wallace.)
A friend of mine in the Air Force had a buddy who'd put down that his previous job experience included working at a candy store back home in the Bronx, and the guy who ran the place said he'd never heard of him. Had to have his dad go tell Cousin Luigi that it was the Feds checking on his security clearance for the service, not anybody checking into the numbers game that might or might not have been running out of the back room.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Tails I'll nuke, heads I don't.
There's plenty of ways to get the information at wholesale price. The guy in TFA was caught by the sort of oversight that is almost impossible to arrange for the sprawling outsourced agencies that Snowden described.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/nyregion/fbi-tapes-give-glimpse-into-world-of-high-stakes-gambling.html
Back in the 80s, you didn't need a polygraph for a vanilla Secret or Top Secret clearance, and I didn't have any of the spooky clearances or DEA clearances so I don't know what they did. I don't think the nuke people needed them either, but we didn't do nukes. I think the only particular lifestyle restriction I had was that I couldn't travel to communist countries without notifying the Feds first.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
...or if you're gaming in a legal establishment with counterfeit chips.
+1 Disagree
Look, I don't see a problem with him gambling. *Unless* he bet on war. That would be just a no-no and would go against all established tradition. If this scumbag bet on war, then he deserves a lifetime ban on war and any war-affiliated events. He should also be permanently barred from induction to the War Hall of Fame.