Lost Nukes Headed to Iran?

Remember that B-52 that accidentally took some nukes on a joyride? The whole episode doesn’t make much sense to Larry Johnson, a former employee of the CIA and the State Department’s counterterrorism office, who wonders if it’s more than a coincidence that the plane landed at Barksdale Air Force Base, which a former B-52 pilot friend tells him is “a jumping off point for Middle East operations.”

(h/t: Pete Zacchino)

TPM Café:

Why the hubbub over a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base in Minot, North Dakota and subsequently landing at a B-52 base in Barksdale, Louisiana? That’s like getting excited if you see a postal worker in uniform walking out of a post office. And how does someone watching a B-52 land identify the cruise missiles as nukes? It just does not make sense.

So I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let’s call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.

Then he told me something I had not heard before.

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