COMM Cold War Theater Gold - Code Word “Hatefulness”: The Great EBS Scare of 1971

[Red Baron]

Code Word “Hatefulness”: The Great EBS Scare of 1971​

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

“…[My] longest five minutes in radio.”

--WOWO broadcaster Bob Sievers reflecting on what it was like to be on the air waiting to announce the end of the world.


EBS Broadcaster

On the morning of Saturday, February 20, 1971, Wayland S. Eberhardt, a civilian teletype operator, was going about his routine duties at the National Emergency Warning Center at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. One of the functions of “the Mountain” during this era was to send out the weekly Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) test directive to the nation’s radio and television stations. They were, of course, also responsible for sending out the real warning. When stations received these messages they compared it against a card to determine what action to take.


Brightened-Correct Tape Loading at Cheyenne Mtn

At 7:33 a.m. local time on that fateful Saturday, Mr. Eberhardt, a fifteen-year veteran of his job, fed the wrong tape into the transmitter and set off a panic that is remembered to this day. He was later quoted by the New York Times as saying “I can’t imagine how the hell I did it.” But he did.

The teletype message that went over the wires read:

MESSAGE AUTHENTICATOR: HATEFULNESS/HATEFULNESS

THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ACTION NOTIFICATION (EAN)
DIRECTED BY THE PRESIDENT. NORMAL
BROADCASTING WILL CEASE IMMEDIATELY. ALL
STATIONS WILL BROADCAST EAN MESSAGE ONE
PRECEDED BY THE ATTENTION SIGNAL, PER FCC RULES.
ONLY STATIONS HOLDING NDEA
MAY STAY ON AIR IN ACCORD WITH THEIR STATE EBS PLAN.

BROADCAST EAN MESSAGE ONE.

MESSAGE AUTHENTICATOR: HATEFULNESS/HATEFULNESS

20 FEB


EBS-Hatefulness

Station managers, broadcasters and listeners across the country were thrown into a tizzy. David Skinner, the news director of WEVA in Emporia, Virginia recalled the experience for a reporter: “I thought I was going to have a heart attack trying to open that damned envelope [containing the code words that authenticate the message from Cheyenne Mountain]. I haven’t felt that way since John Kennedy was killed.”


oops-Headline

Chuck Kelly of WWCM in Brazil, Indiana took his station off the air for twenty-two minutes and told a reporter, “I saw the authenticated message and thought, ‘My God! It’s December 7 [1941] all over again!’”

Corine Muldoon, 24, of Cambridge, Massachusetts told a Boston media outlet that she heard the alert when she was getting ready to go to work:

I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was a joke. I thought I was dreaming. Then I switched the dial and some stations were playing music, so I didn’t know what was happening. You can’t believe how panicky I was. All I could think of was Laos,* that Nixon had pushed the wrong button. I feel I lost about ten years [off my life].

Another distraught listener, Mrs. Peter Ori of Chicago, said:

I was absolutely terrified. It was so authentic. I just knew we were at war and the President would come on and say what had happened.


nixon

A spokesman for KIXL in Dallas told the New York Times that “This made us just angry as hell. You can’t play around with things like this. If we had gone on the air and broadcast this alert as being from the President of the United States, some old people would have checked in right then.”


Sievers

Decades after the incident, broadcaster Bob Sievers (WOWO-AM, Fort Wayne, Indiana) referred to his time on the air after the alert as his “longest five minutes in radio.” Thanks to the folks at the History of WOWO website, these tense five minutes—Partridge Family lead-in included!—are preserved for the ages. With their permission, CONELRAD presents the audio below in a slideshow. Sievers, a Fort Wayne institution, retired from the station in 1987 and passed away at the age of 90 in 2007.

RT 5:37

View: https://youtu.be/Yu4r79l8P8I

After forty minutes of frantic scrambling and sending out “kill” messages that did not contain an authenticator code word, the Cheyenne Mountain staff finally found the correct code to cancel the apocalyptic transmission. It read:

MESSAGE AUTHENTICATOR: IMPISH/IMPISH

CANCEL MESSAGE SENT AT 09:33EST REPEAT
CANCEL MESSAGE SENT AT 09:33EST

MESSAGE AUTHENTICATOR: IMPISH/IMPISH

20 FEB 10:13EST


Impish

President Nixon did not comment of the gaffe, but his Secretary of State, Melvin Laird, stated that there would be an investigation of what caused the false alert. The Pentagon released this statement that blamed civil defense:

The Office of Civil Defense is currently investigating the circumstances surrounding the transmittal of the erroneous message. The National Emergency Warning System is located within the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain complex but is not a NORAD function. It is operated by the the U.S. Army’s Strategic Communications Command. This is a civil defense action and not a military one.


No Action Against Men-Tape

Louis I. Smoyer, the chief of the warning center, said simply, “It damn sure won’t happen again. I’ve got to have time to sit up here and figure out how to make this thing fail safe.”

To his credit, Smoyer’s solution did not involve firing the hapless Wayland S. Eberhardt who was described as being “seriously shook up” over his mistake. Rather, the manager had a simple, low-tech remedy: He moved the tapes for the genuine alerts away from the transmitter. The Greeley (Colorado) Tribune explained the new procedure to its readers on February 23, 1971:

…In the past three tapes, one for the test and two for actual emergencies, were hanging on three labeled hooks above the transmitter… In the future only the test tape will be left near the transmitter. The two emergency tapes [will be] be sealed in clearly marked envelopes and placed inside a nearby cabinet.

This decidedly analog fix seemed to work. And it appears that Mr. Eberhardt lived out the rest of his life in quiet obscurity. He died in Colorado Springs, Colorado on November 20, 1996. But in Cold War trivia circles, he will never be forgotten.

Code Word “Hatefulness”: The Great EBS Scare of 1971

“…[My] longest five minutes in radio.” --WOWO broadcaster Bob Sievers reflecting on what it was like to be on the air waiting to ann...

conelrad.blogspot.com

 

[Lone_Hawk]

Interesting. I remember hearing about it, but didn't hear the actual alert..

 

[Red Baron]

Interesting. I remember hearing about it, but didn't hear the actual alert..

During the 1971 event 80% of the broadcasters did -not- air the alert.

Many of those stations ignored the warning because they knew it was around normal test time and many others simply did not know what the procedure actually was.

 

[bw]

Dang, missed it. Wasn't in country.

 

[Red Baron]

Fair Use Cited
------------------
6 times the Emergency Alert System sent out false warnings
Gianluca Russo Oct 3, 2018, 10:25 AM CDT

In the past, the Emergency Broadcast Systems has accidentally sent some alerts. Shutterstock
Originally launched in January of 1997, the national Emergency Alert System (EAS) was created to replace the Emergency Broadcast System, aimed at simplifying security and safety. And over the years, the EAS, regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has worked to keep the country safe.

But like with all things, there are kinks to work out, and over the years, the EAS has had its fair share of glitches. Whether from human error or a technological standpoint, there have been a handful of times when the EAS has failed, either by alerting citizens when no disaster was present or, on the flip side, failing to do so.

Now, President Donald Trump has made the decision to try out a Presidential alert system called the National Wireless Emergency Alert System that will go directly to cell phones in the case of disaster. The decision to do so comes after an investigation into the EAS and its functionality.

Here are six times that the EAS has sent out false warnings or glitched over the years.

There was a zombie warning shown in Michigan in 2013.

Fortunately, there were no zombies. Gene Page/AMC
In February of 2013, Michigan residents (and some residents in Montana and New Mexico) were in for quite a surprise when an alert appeared on some TV stations shortly after 8 p.m., claiming a zombie apocalypse was taking place.

According to The Huffington Post, the alert's audio said, "Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living. Follow the messages on screen that will be updated as information becomes available. Do not attempt to approach or apprehend these bodies as they are considered extremely dangerous."

Of course, this alert was false. The EAS has been hacked and this hoax message had been broadcast.

In 2016, there was a strange warning about hazardous materials in New York.
train

In 2016, a strange message was issued by network WKTV in Utica, New York, that left citizens rightfully confused. The EAS message read: "Civil authorities have issued a Hazardous Materials Warning for The United States. Effective until September 29, 02:16 AM EDT. Would you. Could you. On a Train? Wait for further instructions."

Many quickly released that "Would you. Could you. On a Train?" was from Dr. Seuss' book "Green Eggs and Ham." The station was quick to take to social media to say that the alert was false and later, they were found to have been hacked.

Recently, there was a false EAS warning of a ballistic missile in Hawaii.

One of the most well-known errors of the EAS took place in January of 2018. Citizens of Hawaii woke to a false alert delivered to their cell phones claiming that an incoming ballistic missile was going to strike the state. People of Hawaii were in a state of panic after receiving the alert, as was the country as a whole.

However, the alert was false and the FCC claimed it was just a human error. According to the New York Times, a worker "pushed the wrong button," sending the alert out.

This incident quickly sparked backlash towards the EAS and investigations into the effectiveness of the system were put into place.

Guam residents were shaken by a mistakenly sent EAS test.

In August of 2017, residents of Guam were shaken by an emergency alarm that was mistakenly sent to them. Just days before the incident, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had made threats to bomb Guam, so tensions were high in the region. Then, according to Politico, a false "civil danger warning" was issued.

However, in a statement, Guam Homeland Security said, "The unauthorized test was NOT connected to any emergency, threat or warning. There is no scheduled test of the EAS [Emergency Alert Broadcast System] or All Hazards Alert Warning System sirens today."

In 2013, a false evacuation alert was sent in Suffolk County.

On September 2, 2013, people in Suffolk County, New York, were hit with an emergency evacuation alert. The alert came as tropical storm Hermine approached and read, according to Newsday, "Civil Authorities have issued an Evacuation Immediate for the following New York counties: Suffolk. Effective until September 04-07:10 AM EDT. This is an emergency message from."

In a statement to Newsday, a representative from the Federal Emergency Management Agency said that the false alert was being investigated and should not have been sent.

In 2005, Connecticut residents were erroneously told to evacuate.

Back in 2005, what was intended to be a test of the EAS ended up being an alert telling all residents to evacuate the state. The alert included no details as to why the evacuation was necessary.

Soon after it was issued, it was deemed false. Kerry Flaherty of the Office of Emergency Management told NBC News, "There is absolutely no evacuation or state emergency. It was an erroneous message."

6 times the Emergency Alert System sent out false warnings

Whether it was a result of hackers or simple human error, the Emergency Alert System (EAS) has had its fair share of notable glitches. Here are six times the Emergency Alert System sent out false warnings.

www.insider.com

 

[Dobbin]

Orson Welle's "War of the Worlds" comes to mind.

The War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's hard to imagine Orson Welles this svelte. Almost human sized.

Dobbin