The Washington Post - USA (2020-07-28)

B6 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, JULY 28 , 2020

BY EMILY LANGER

Bruce Blair turned 25 the year
the Air Force gave him the assign-
ment that would set the course of
his life. For two years, as a Minute-
man missile launch officer at
Malmstrom Air Force Base in Mon-
tana, he would descend into an
underground bunker where he
stood ready to execute a nuclear
strike if the president ordered one.
At the time, in the early 1970s,
the United States and the Soviet
Union were nearly three decades
into the Cold War, which brought
with it the threat of nuclear holo-
caust. The U.S. president was often
imagined with a finger on the “but-
ton.” The “button” was not a button
but rather a complex set of pro-
cedures and verifications designed
to give the commander in chief
rapid control over nuclear forces.
From his vantage point in the
bunker, Dr. Blair concluded that
the risk of accidental nuclear war
was too great. Then as now, if the
United States detects an incoming
nuclear attack, the president has
only a few minutes to decide how
to respond. With weapons on what
is termed “launch ready alert,” mis-
siles can be fired within 12 minutes
of a president’s order. Once the
missiles take off, they cannot be
recalled.
Deeply marked by his experi-
ence, Dr. Blair devoted the rest of
his professional life to reducing the
nuclear threat — not through the
pacifist philosophies that animat-
ed many antinuclear activists but
through rigorous analysis of the
command-and-control system in
which he had played a role.
The recipient of a 1999 MacAr-
thur “genius” grant, Dr. Blair be-
came one of the most prominent
voices in the nuclear policy debate,
respected in Washington and Mos-
cow, in the military and intelli-
gence communities, as well as
among activists. He died July 19 at
a hospital in Philadelphia at age 72.
The cause was a stroke, said his
wife, Sally Blair.
Former U.S. senator Sam Nunn
(D-Ga.), a co-chair of the nonprofit

Nuclear Threat Initiative, de- scribed Dr. Blair in a statement as “an extraordinary public servant who committed his life to reducing nuclear risks around the world.” He spent 13 years as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution before establishing his own Wash- ington-based think tanks, including Global Zero, which he co- founded in 2008 with a mission to “stop the spread of nuclear weapons, secure all nuclear materials and eliminate all nuclear weapons: global zero.” He published books, conducted a highly classified review of the weaknesses of the U.S. nuclear command-and-control system in the 1980s, briefed members of Congress on nuclear policy and traveled to Moscow to consult with Soviet nuclear experts. But never far from his mind was his service as a launch officer, standing by for an order to fire nuclear-tipped inter-

continental ballistic missiles pow- erful enough to kill millions of people. “It illuminated for me the speed at which this process unfolds and how there’s really no latitude to question an order,” he told a publi- cation of Princeton University, where he had been a research scholar since 2013. “It sensitized me to the magnitude of devasta- tion at stake, which is humon- gous.” Dr. Blair was a vocal proponent of “de-alerting” nuclear arsenals by removing weapons from launch-ready alert — a status known colloquially as “hair-trig- ger alert” — and by physically sepa- rating warheads from missiles. The goal of such measures is to build more time into the presidential decision-making process and reduce the chance of error. U.S. and Soviet officials “have only a few minutes, at best, in

which to evaluate reports of an apparent incoming missile strike and decide the fate of the world,” he told the New York Times in 1999. “This is an intolerably short time.” In a sensational op-ed published in the Times in 1993, Dr. Blair revealed the existence in Russia of a “secret doomsday system,” built in the Soviet era and known as the “Dead Hand,” that allowed Mos- cow to launch a nuclear counterat- tack even if its leadership had been killed or incapacitated. “Bruce had an intense curiosity, driven by experience — he had served in the Minuteman silos, touched the codes and keys, and wanted to understand how nuclear alerts worked on both sides of the Cold War,” observed David E. Hoffman, a contributing editor at The Washington Post and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning vol- ume “The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race

and Its Dangerous Legacy.” “His curiosity,” Hoffman said in an email, “led him to ask the pen- etrating questions in Moscow that revealed the existence of the ‘dead hand’ system. He grasped the ab- surdity — and danger — and worked the rest of his career to make the world safer from it.” The end of the Cold War brought about reductions in U.S. and Rus- sian nuclear arsenals, but both countries continue to aim nuclear- armed missiles at each other. The post-Cold War period also height- ened fears about the possible nuclear capabilities of terrorists and rogue states such as North Korea, now led by Kim Jong Un. Dr. Blair continued pressing for the reduc- tion of nuclear arms worldwide and for greater caution with those that remained. “The end of the Cold War en- courages greater determination to become something more than cogs in the nuclear machinery,” he wrote in the 1993 Times op-ed. “It is time to be its master, not its minion.” Bruce Gentry Blair was born in Creston, Iowa, on Nov. 16, 1947. His father worked in hardware sales after serving with the Army Air Forces in Europe during World War II, and his mother was a home- maker. Dr. Blair received a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Illinois in 1970 before serving in the Air Force. He received a doctorate in operations research from Yale University in 1984. After leaving the Brookings In- stitution, Dr. Blair led the Center for Defense Information, later known as the World Security Insti- tute, whose initiatives included Washington ProFile, a news service that distributed content around the world. His books included “Strategic Command and Control” (1985), “The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War” (1993) and “Global Zero Alert for Nuclear Forces” (1995). In an effort to reach the public — and not only policymakers — about the nu-

clear threat, he was an executive producer of the 2010 documentary “Countdown to Zero.” Dr. Blair’s marriages to Cindy Olsen Hart and Monica Manchien Yin ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 28 years, the former Sally Onesti of New Hope, Pa.; two daughters from his first marriage, Carrie Blair Shives of Thurmont, Md., and Erica Blair Lockney of Middle- town, Md.; a daughter from his second marriage, Celia Paoro Yin- Blair, and a son from his third marriage, Thomas Onesti Blair, both of New York City; his mother, Betty Ann Blair of Shakopee, Minn.; three sisters; and seven grandchildren. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Dr. Blair organized a letter signed by 10 former nuclear launch control officers declaring that they did not believe then- nominee Donald Trump, if elected to the White House, should be granted the nuclear codes. “He has shown himself time and again to be easily baited and quick to lash out, dismissive of expert consultation and ill-informed of even basic military and international affairs — including, most especially, nuclear weapons,” the letter read. “Donald Trump should not be the nation’s commander in chief. He should not be entrusted with the nuclear launch codes. He should not have his finger on the button.” The month after his election, Trump tweeted that the United States “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” Dr. Blair told the Princeton Alumni Weekly in 2018: “I’ve been arguing for decades about the risks of accidental or mistaken launch, false warnings, nuclear terrorism, and proliferation. But in the past, not many of us concerned our- selves with the rationality of the leadership. The ascendance of leaders like Trump and Kim have really underscored that point.” [email protected]

BRUCE BLAIR, 72

Ex-launch o∞cer was a voice for nuclear arms control

MAX WHITTAKER/GLOBAL ZERO Bruce Blair at the 2011 Global Zero summit in London. Dr. Blair co-founded the group in 2008 to “stop the spread of nuclear weapons, secure all nuclear materials and eliminate all nuclear weapons.”

BY HARRISON SMITH

Before appearing in Wes Cra-
ven’s “Nightmare on Elm Street”
films and fighting alongside Bruce
Lee in “Enter the Dragon,” John
Saxon was just a high school stu-
dent playing hooky, skipping class
to see a movie at New York’s Para-
mount Theatre.
Known at the time as Carmine
Orrico, he was the only son of an
Italian immigrant painter and dock
worker, with dark hair, dramatic
eyebrows and chiseled features
that caught the eye of a male-mod-
eling agent, w ho handed h is busi-
ness card to the teenager as he
walked out of the Times Square
movie palace.
“I started doing jobs for maga-
zines, like Modern Romance, all the
Macfadden publications. I did
about a dozen of them in one year,”
he told the Los Angeles Times in

He recalled that for one photo
shoot, he was cast as a Puerto Rican
teenager, photographed while
slumped against a trash can with a
fake gunshot wound.
The picture ran on the cover of a
dime-store detective magazine and
attracted the attention of Holly-
wood agent Henry Willson, who
had launched the careers of heart-
throb actors such as Rock Hudson
and Tab Hunter, and who set about
making 17-year-old Carmine the
next 1950s teen idol.
“The next thing I knew,” Mr. Sax-
on later told Drama-Logue maga-
zine, “my mom and dad were sign-
ing agreement contracts because I
was still under age.” By the time he
made his movie debut in 1954, he
had given himself a stage name —
inspired, in his telling, by a Brook-
lyn roller hockey team called the
Saxons.
Mr. Saxon, who died July 25 at
age 83, went on to appear in nearly
200 television and film roles over
the next six decades, often playing
brooding lawmen or gunslinging
bandits. While his leading-man sta-
tus was brief, he became a fixture of
B-movies and guest-starred on TV
shows including “The Six Million
Dollar Man,” “Starsky & Hutch” and
“The A-Team.”
When Quentin Tarantino direct-
ed an episode of “CSI: Crime Scene
Investigation” in 2005, he cast Mr.
Saxon as the criminal villain, later
explaining that he needed someone
who could match wits “with an-
other mastermind” — just as Mr.
Saxon had in the 1966 western “The
Appaloosa,” in which he played a
Mexican outlaw who steals Marlon
Brando’s horse.
“John Saxon is the only actor to
ever steal a movie from Marlon

Brando,” Tarantino said. Mr. Saxon’s son, Antonio, con- firmed the death but did not have additional details. The actor’s wife, Gloria Martel, told the Hollywood Reporter that he died of pneumo- nia in Murfreesboro, Tenn. As an Italian American actor, Mr. Saxon was sometimes cast as Na- tive American, Latino or Jewish characters. He played Marco Polo in the ABC science-fiction series “The Time Tunnel,” starred as a Puerto Rican ex-con in the crime drama “Cry Tough” (1959) and appeared as an Israeli air force commander in “Raid on Entebbe” (1977), based on the real-life mission to free hostag- es in Uganda. Mr. Saxon also guest-starred on the long-running NBC series “Bo- nanza” and portrayed bandits or cowhands in movies such as “The Unforgiven” (1960), directed by John Huston; “Joe Kidd” (1972), starring Clint Eastwood and Robert

Duvall; and “The Electric Horse- man” (1979), with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. Like Tarantino, New York Times movie critic Bosley Crowther was especially admiring of Mr. Saxon’s work in “The Appaloosa,” directed by Sidney J. Furie. “Somehow you find yourself tensing as Mr. Brando, cautious and slow, moves into the alien territory of his wickedly smiling nemesis, who is played by dark-eyed John Saxon with remarkably fearsome oiliness,” wrote Crowther. “Quickly your muscles tighten as the two men, now face to face, contend in a show-down hand-wrestle on a table fringed with scorpions.” In addition to western fare, Mr. Saxon was featured in the slasher films “Black Christmas” (1974) and “Tenebrae” (1982); played an FBI agent in the vampire action movie “From Dusk Till Dawn” (1996); and appeared in “A Nightmare on Elm

Street” (1984) and two of its sequels, as the police lieutenant father of Heather Langenkamp’s character, who battles the razor-gloved Fred- dy Krueger. “I am intrigued by horror and fantasy-type things,” he once told the Associated Press, “because I think it is a way of magnifying some part of the human mind that is exhibited or projected in a highly distorted way.” Mr. Saxon was perhaps best known for co-starring in the martial arts classic “Enter the Dragon” (1973), the last movie Lee complet- ed before his death at age 32. The two men played competitors and allies at an international martial arts competition, and met at Lee’s Hong Kong home shortly before filming began. Lee, generally considered the most-influential martial artist of all time, asked Mr. Saxon to demon- strate his side-kick technique and

was apparently unimpressed by Mr. Saxon, who had a few years of karate under his belt. “Let me show you how to do it,” Lee said, before handing Mr. Saxon a shield to hold for protection. “He stood back, I would say a good eight or 10 feet, and lunged and belted that shield and knocked me clear across the room and into a chair, which broke,” Mr. Saxon recalled in a talk at the Memphis Film Festival in 2011. “He wasn’t concerned with my being hurt, but he said nobody had ever broken that chair before. Apparently he had done this many times. He was more concerned about the chair than me. He said, ‘That’s my favorite chair!’ ” Mr. Saxon was born in Brooklyn on Aug. 5, 1936. He was about 18 when he made his Hollywood de- but in 1954, appearing in two George Cukor movies, “It Should Happen to You” and “A Star Is Born,” before signing with Universal Pic-

tures. His breakthrough as an actor came two years later, when he starred in both “Rock, Pretty Baby!,” as a teenage guitarist performing alongside Sal Mineo, and “The Un- guarded Moment,” as a football player accused of stalking his teach- er, played by Esther Williams. He was later cast opposite Deb- bie Reynolds in “This Happy Feel- ing” (1958), a Blake Edwards comedy that earned Mr. Saxon the Gold- en Globe Award for most promising newcomer. His other early movies included the Vincente Minnelli comedy “The Reluctant Debutante” (1958), the Korean War film “War Hunt” (1962), which co-starred Robert Redford in his first major film role, and Otto Preminger’s religious drama “The Cardinal” (1963), in which he played a Catholic woman’s Jew- ish fiance. He also starred in Italian produc- tions such as “The Girl Who Knew Too Much” (1963), credited with kicking off the Italian mystery-horror genre known as giallo, and played surgeon Theodore Stuart on three seasons of the NBC medical drama “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors,” beginning in 1969. After getting married and having a son, Mr. Saxon said he began to focus on supporting his family, tak- ing parts as they came. “I was more concerned about my own life in Los Angeles, not necessarily in Holly- wood,” he told the Knoxville (Tenn.) News Sentinel. “I’d go from something that got reviews in national magazines to the next job that came along. If it paid tuition to a private school, that was fine.” Mr. Saxon was later featured on the soap operas “Dynasty” and “Fal- con Crest”; directed a zombie horror film, “Death House” (1988); and appeared in movies such as “Bever- ly Hills Cop III” (1994). His first two marriages, to Mary Ann Murphy and Elizabeth Phil- lips, ended in divorce, and in 2008 he married Martel. In addition to his wife and son, from his first marriage, survivors include a sister. Mr. Saxon continued acting in recent years, with appearances on shows including “Melrose Place” as well as in independent movies such as “God’s Ears” (2008), in which he played a former prizefighter who trains an autistic boxer. “That movie is closer to my feel- ings about what I want to do with my career,” he told the Memphis Commercial Appeal in 2011. “It’s a touching movie. Serious. Car crash- es — they don’t interest me any more.” [email protected]

JOHN SAXON, 83

Rugged screen veteran co-starred in ‘Enter the Dragon’

STANLEY BIELECKI MOVIE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES A ctors John Saxon, left, a nd Bruce Lee, with producer Raymond Chow, on the set of the 1973 martial arts classic “Enter the Dragon.”

The Washington Post - USA (2020-07-28)

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