James F. Bond Sr. Interview, 26 February 2005
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| JB: | Yeah, well, they would be at the site, we'd know they were coming. As soon as they left the base, we knew they were coming because Transportation would call. We would meet them. They wouldn't go in there by themselves because they might get shot. | |
| TT: | Yeah. | |
| JB: | Not a good thing to do. | |
| TT: | So, they kept you pretty busy then it sounds like you were constantly going through checklists, stuff like that? | |
| JB: | Yeah, we had one we'd run through about every two hours or so, "did I do this, have I done this?" You would have a call the Support Base, you would have to check in with your capsule crew make sure everything was still all right. | |
| TT: | In the documents they talk about O-7 was broken in to. How often did you have a site where there was a break-in? Where, for example, doors were left wide open and there's nobody around? | |
| JB: | I don't remember anything like that at November. | |
| TT: | No. I mean in the documents they make it sound like it happens all the time. What would happen if somebody had a key went inside that facility messing around and got caught? | |
| JB: | Where the missile is? We would arrest them; they would be turned over to the federal authorities. | |
| TT: | Yeah, the only reason I am asking is they're saying in here, "we had a couple incidents like that a year ago" where a couple of AP's were pranksters, had keys— | |
| JB: | No, we didn't. I think what they are talking about is, and we heard about it too, they said they had a team drove past one of the sites one time, because we didn't stop at the site, you know, if there was no alarm there. Just drive past them, patrol, and most of my guys would, that's what they did, was drive around patrol the site. You had 15 of them out there that you had to check, So, once in a while you might go out and you might see maybe the chain was not hanging right on the gate or something like that and you'd stop and investigate. We'd heard where one of the teams drove past and the gate was standing wide open—but I'm thinking that incident, it was some farms boys who were out there trying to have some fun, but they took some bolt cutters and just cut it and just left it open. They didn't go on the site because they didn't set anything off, is what we heard. It wasn't that common. | |
| TT: | They were probably sitting waiting to test your response or something, you know. | |
| JB: | Yeah, we'd had them do that before too. We had a farmer run into one of the gates one time with his tractor. | |
| TT: | But, do you recall any times where AP's had pulled pranks like that—not cutting the lock? | |
| JB: | No not that I knew of. | |
| TT: | They had keys, the padlock was undone the gates were wide open. | |
| JB: | Was that Oscar? | |
| TT: | Yeah, Oscar-7. They had opened the hatch to access the combos and had turned it off the settings. They investigated it the next morning, sent a Lieutenant out, and he could find no |
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