[Valin]

Sometimes they're NOT bumbling fools.

[Brett66]

Reagan set them up the bomb.

[Valin]

Duping the Soviets - The Farewell Dossier



"We communists have to string along with the capitalists for a while. We need their credits, their agriculture, and their technology. But we are going to continue massive military programs and by the middle 1980s we will be in a position to return to a much more aggressive foreign policy designed to gain the upper hand in our relationship with the West."
Leonid Brezhnev. Remarks in 1971 to the Politburo at the beginning of détente.

http://www.videofact.com/english/farewell_dossier.html

[NormsRevenge]

Bump

[SAMWolf]

"The pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire," writes Reed, "to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space."

Gotta love it. Good find Valin.

[Valin]

Completely shameless bump

[Constitution Day]

Amazing story!

Thanks for posting.

[LTCJ]

The Eighties were a great time to be involved in the dreaded Military/Industrial Complex.

Too bad most of these stories will never be declassified. Many were better than any Hollywood thriller ever made ...

[Pagey]

"In our complex disinformation scheme, deliberately flawed designs for stealth technology and space defense sent Russian scientists down paths that wasted time and money".

I'm really glad that Bill Safire outlived Gus Weiss, if only to be able to let the world know that it's one more positive thing/momentous event that happened during the Reagan Administration.

[Simon666]

People only believe this because they see the name Reagan and doing something against the evil, evil Soviet Union. If you actually start thinking about it: the plan allegedly dates from January 1982, the explosion from the summer of 1982. Is there anybody here who believes you successfully build a pipeline under 6 months? Or if they are not building it and it is already there, that they replace existing software with American software without knowing what it does or testing it for several months on a test platform to get accustomed to it and see how it works when applying it to Russian equipment?

[steve-b]

Anybody else reminded of Fred Pohl's The Cool War?

[Straight Vermonter]

Bump

[gitmo]

LOL!

Reminds me of something I did with a client I was sure wasn't going to pay me for a system I developed. Nothing physically exploded, but ...

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	Another (literal) Blast from the Past. This topic is a Thoroughly Modern Miscellany topic, posted four years ago. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are Blam, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
· Google · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology magazine · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[mad_as_he$$]

In the early 80's I worked for a company that made semiconductor test equipment. We received an order from a company in West Germany for a unit that we did not believe we would ever get permission to sell to them from DRPA and State.

We had already designed into the machine a password capability that locked out the process if the correct password was not typed in - three failures and it locked it out. Required a human service call to reset it.

In any case we received almost immediate permission to ship the unit. As the VP of Customer Support I scheduled a visit to install the machine and train the users. We could NEVER get a good date and at one point I sent an employee to "visit" he found an empty warehouse at the address for the company with one very old "janitor". He got out of the guy that the company had "moved" but not where too. As the years went by I wondered what happened to that machine. About two years after the wall went down I got a call from a Russian company in Moscow. They had the machine and could we come and fix it. It was password locked out and had been for a long time.

Thanks for this story I now believe I know what happened to the missing machine.

[Non-Sequitur]

bump

[Interesting Times]

Cold War win ping.

[Impala64ssa]

Bjmk