150 Top Pentagon officials, nuclear scientists and defense contractors will meet behind closed doors today in a top secret meeting to discuss rewriting the country’s nuclear strategy. Congressional observers have been barred from attending. Some observers fear the attendees will agree to end the U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing and to launch a new generation of nuclear weapons.

The meeting is taking place at the Offutt military base also known as U.S. Strategic Command outside of Omaha Nebraska.

The Guardian of London notes many ironies of the meeting’s location and timing:

The Offutt site inspired the setting for the 1964 film Dr Strangelove.

Attendees of the meeting arrived last night on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing and some are expected to stay until Saturday, the anniversary of the attack on Nagasaki.

The B-29 planes which dropped those nuclear bombs, were both built at the base.

The Guardian writes QUOTE ” The use of those weapons marked the beginning of the cold war and the first nuclear age. Today’s meeting, many observers believe, could mark the start of a second.”

Protests outside the base took place over the weekend and resumed yesterday. We are joined on the phone by one of them, Father Frank Cordero from the Des Moines Catholic Worker movement.