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."

Comments

Chips

[Frosty Piss]

One of the issues was apperently, counterfit chips.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/strategic-command-suspension-linked-probe-counterfeit-poker-chips/story?id=20413148

Gentemen,

[Zanadou]

...you can't fight in here: this is the war room!

Re:Pay Scales

[lgw]

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.

Re:Bulffing with nukes

[Austrian Anarchy]

In this case, the Vice Admiral's title was quite a tell.

Re:Pay Scales

[ShanghaiBill]

So no girlfriends or wives then?

You can have either, but not both.

Secrets vs. Security Clearances

[billstewart]

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.

Re:Pay Scales

[Full of shit]

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.