I think anyone who, like me, was in the military and had any exposure to nuclear weapons prior to the great nuke lockdown of 1977 would be completely unsurprised by this. The ship I served on carried nuclear weapons, and though there was no reason for me to ever get near one, I was able to do so on several occasions. In my case, it was just simple curiosity – I wanted to know what they looked like (not very impressive, actually).
Security in general was ludicrously lax on the ship. Anyone at all could enter the radio room, which routinely carried “Top Secret” traffic – I went in there many times to repair equipment without having the appropriate security clearance, and nobody ever questioned my presence. Similarly, the sonar room, electronic warfare area, and the SWC (Ship's Weapons Controller) station in CIC had classified material – some of it quite sensitive – lying about, and again I was frequently in those areas unsupervised and without appropriate clearance. I even spent an interesting afternoon with one of the sonarmen going through the acoustic signature analyzer and data!
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