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Three ballistic missile crew members fell asleep while holding classified missile launch codes two weeks ago in North Dakota, the Air Force said Thursday.Uh ... I hear somebody got fired last month for lax nuclear security; better be careful.The error triggered a military investigation, which found the codes were not compromised.
But the July 12 incident comes on the heels of a series of missteps by the Air Force that already had put the service under intense scrutiny.
In this case, officials said the crew members reported themselves for the violation of procedure. The crew members apparently were leaving the control center at the end of their shift and took a set of old codes, which are typically replaced after every shift, to a rest area in the facility. Rather than proceeding back to Minot Air Force Base to dispose of the codes, they fell asleep.
--Robert Farley
