USAF missile launch crew falls asleep; officials: codes not compromised

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Three ballistic missile crew members in fell asleep while holding classified launch code devices this month, triggering an investigation by military and National Security Agency experts, the US Air Force said Thursday. The probe found that the missile launch codes were not compromised, but the incident comes on the heels of a series of missteps by the Air Force that had already put the service under intense scrutiny. "This was just a procedural violation that we investigated," said Air Force Col. Dewey Ford, a spokesman at Patterson Air Force Base in Colorado. "We determined that there was no compromise."