TRAPDOOR **INSCRIBED** by O'Keefe, Bernard - 1988

Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988. 1st edition with complete number line beginning with 1. Fine in fine dust jacket, not price clipped, in protective mylar cover. INSCRIBED COPY, "To John...All My Best, Bernie" at half-title page. O'Keefe is the chairman of the International Task Force on Nuclear Terrorism and a scientiest. and businessman who has both designed and detonated nuclear weapons. "The author of two nonfiction books about the threat of nuclear annihilation, Nuclear Hostages and Shooting Ourselves in the Foot , proves here that he can write a suspenseful techno-thriller...While elements of the plot may sound familiar -- terrorists steal an atomic weapon with which they blackmail the superpowers -- O'Keefe has thought up a new wrinkle: instead of threatening to blow up the world by firing the device and thus triggering a U.S.-U.S.S.R. armageddon, the terrorists threaten to induce disaster through a non-event. In a fit of security over-kill, the U.S. has equipped its 25,000 nuclear devices with so-called "permissive action links," designed to forestall their accidental firing unless the president transmits a special coded signal based on "trapdoor function" cryptography. The "trapdoors," however, have proven too complex for the real security of the US fail-safe system. June Malik, a Lebanese-American computer programmer sympathetic to the PLO, has inserted a "virus" into the U.S. warhead software, which on a certain date will make all our nuclear armaments inoperative. Israel's enemies threaten to tip off the Soviets that we've become a toothless tiger unless we agree to force the Israelis to abandon the West Bank. But the Soviets are already aware of the situation, and disaster looms. In an afterword, O'Keefe says he wrote this book to warn the U.S. against vulnerable computer-driven defense systems. Though his message outweighs his writing abilities, O'Keefe's sense of urgency comes through loud and clear.' -- Publishers Weekly. Inscribed By the Author. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. Book.