The Whiteman Scenario

A fictional dramatization based on actual events. On the eve of the Nixon resignation, the Soviet Union took an action that elevated the Strategic Air Command and the North American Air Defense Command to just short of full combat alert status. Under normal circumstances , there would have been a direct escalation of responses on both sides that could have taken us to the brink of nuclear launch. On this evening, though, there was an uncharacteristic hesitation on the part of normally hawkish US leadership. The book speculates that the hesitation was a reluctance to break an iron clad DO NOT DISTURB order from the president. This reluctance, it suggests, was fear that the event could have a rational explanation which would vanish in a conflagration of nuclear exchanges if Nixon, in his depressed and panicked state, interpreted the event as an attack (and a way out of the Watergate debacle.) The actions of an observant off-duty missile launch officer cause the Joint Chiefs and SAC commanders to back down from an immanent launch. The events of the book compress a series of many such actual events into the evening before the resignation.