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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.
and the unofficial name of the system.
...you can't fight in here: this is the war room!
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.
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.
"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.).
Gambling, hookers, and blow all scale to however much money you have.
This is basic security clearance stuff. It you're doing anything that gives someone leverage over you (outside of your job), you don't get to know anything important. Seems reasonable to me.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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
I can hit this part with a hammer and it won't go off... any takers?
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
So no girlfriends or wives then?
You can have either, but not both.
More precisely, the acronym is W.O.P.R
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Pretty much. The simple rule is this. If you have secrets than you can not be trusted to keep the nations secrets.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
He was betting that he wouldn't get caught trying to play with counterfeit chips, and that whoever provided him with them wouldn't try to blackmail him later. He definitely lost the first bet...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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
Actually this goes beyond your security clearance. To be around and handle nukes you are subject to the Personnel Reliability Program. There are a whole manual's worth of things that can get you knocked out of PRP but don't mean anything concerning your Nuclear security clearance. A gambling addiction? Yeah that'd get you knocked off. Being treated by steroids, or any drug that has psychiatric effects will do it too. As I well know from personal experience. Still have the clearance, can't work even under the two-man rule.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
What makes you think this is about his boss? This is about the favors he might have to do to pay off a six figure debt that he built up because he couldn't quit when he was down.
The problem is not the TSA or the NSA. The problem is the USA.
You're completely out of your depth here, as you apparently aren't aware of the numerous and nasty cases of service members walking around with TS clearances who got into financial trouble and decided it was somehow a good idea to attempt to sell classified materials to foreign powers to make up for their losses.
I'm speaking as someone who served, and someone who was in service when a particular submariner was caught doing exactly what I just described. He's far from alone in his transgressions, and such offenses have occurred on both the enlisted and commissioned sides.
Stop talking about things you have no experience with.
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That reminds me. Wasn't North in the Navy? Didn't he sell a huge quantity of weapons to Hezbolla less than a year after they killed over a hundred US Marines? I really am astonished that he's still got an actual job with the government instead of rotting in prison or in a grave. Snowdon, Manning etc are saints in comparison.
Worse, he was a USMC Lieutenant Colonel.
I will note for the record that I draw a heavy line between Manning and Snowden. The former I would like to see executed, the latter I'd like to have a beer with. Anyone interested in the civil liberties of US citizens would understand the fundamental distinction between the two named persons.
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