A "suitcase nuclear bomb" being detonated by a "potential enemy" in Washington, DC in a sneak attack?

Film director Stanley Kubrick suggested just such a scenario in 1994.  

What seemed wildly implausible before September 11th-like a subplot from the director's apocalyptic classic Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb-no longer seems so far-fetched.

Kubrick's politically-charged essay, which The New York Times refused to publish in 1994, warned of the potential of nuclear attack caused by "accident, miscalculation or madness." 

Penned by the director for the 30th anniversary of Dr. Strangelove, the remarks make no secret of Kubrick's fear that nuclear peril lay ahead.

"Certainly the present situation in Russian and the republics make it very unlikely that they have safe and reliable systems in place," warned the late director, who died in 1999.

Ironically, the famously-secretive director argued for less secrecy in nuclear matters. "We've been given some information about the 'hot-line,'" stated Kubrick, "but the nuclear powers should be much more open about the details. Like so many other things that are secret and never used, sloppiness, complacency and lack of imagination tend to take over."

Sounding an alarm about greater openness and better safety measures, Kubrick warned "in a nuclear crisis, tens of millions of lives would depend on communications."

To prevent a "Strangelove scenario" from occurring, he concluded,  "there could be nothing but advantage in opening this up for informed discussion."

Despite the provocative, and remarkably unguarded, tone of Kubrick's remarks, the editors at the New York Times declined to publish them, perhaps owing to his all-or-nothing creative demands. 

"I feel these points must be made coherently," he prefaced his written statement, "and I am sending this to you solely on your assurance that the TIMES will not change or cut anything-that they will run the piece as it is, as part of your story, or not use it."

To read Kubrick's entire statement click here.

  Photograph © 2001 Christiane Kubrick/Reprinted 
  by Permission/All Rights Reserved.