Vladimir Putin employs a full-time food taster to ensure his meals aren’t poisoned

If you were Vladimir Putin, you could be forgiven for feeling a little paranoid right now, as the Western world takes turns to blame, excoriate, vilify and condemn you over the Malaysian airline disaster.

You might well wonder whether a bullet, a Jiffy bag full of ricin or a lunchtime polonium sandwich were most likely to be the means of your imminent dispatch from this life. So it’s no surprise to learn that the Russian president employs a professional food taster on his full-time staff.

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Hopefully this is not a hint of what’s to come in the future, but the threat is real. Many people don’t know that even JFK warned about the Soviets and their nuclear bomb in Washington D.C..

Consider the following, which was told by JFK to Time Magazine:

In late July 1961, President Kennedy, just back from the grim Vienna summit with Khrushchev, asked me to dinner in Palm Beach. After daiquiris and Frank Sinatra records on the patio, his three guests and I gathered around the table for fish-in-a-bag, a White House recipe. Between lusty bites, Kennedy told the story of Khrushchev’s anger over West Berlin, the island of freedom in the Soviet empire’s East Germany. “We have a bustling communist enclave just four blocks from the White House,” I noted, meaning the Soviet embassy. Kennedy paused, fork between plate and mouth, and said, “You know, they have an atom bomb on the third floor of the embassy.” Aware of JFK’s love of spy stories, I said something like, “Sure, why not?”

No, Kennedy continued, it was his understanding that the Soviets had brought the components of an atomic device into the building in inspection-free diplomatic pouches and assembled it in the upstairs attic. “If things get too bad and war is inevitable,” he said, “they will set it off and that’s the end of the White House and the rest of the city.” I laughed. Still suspending his bite of fish, Kennedy said, “That’s what I’m told. Do you know something that I don’t?” No sign of mirth. The conversation moved on.

Five years ago I was lecturing in Staunton, Va., and retold the story. In the question session, a man in the audience rose and said, “You may not believe that story about the bomb in the attic, but I do. I worked for 25 years at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and that was our understanding.” And now I can hear Kennedy asking again, “Do you know something I don’t?”

Source: Were the Russians Hiding a Nuke in D.C.? (Time)

 

World leaders played an interactive nuclear war game designed to test their responses to a terrorist atomic “dirty bomb” attack that threatened the lives of hundreds of thousands of people

David Cameron joined Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Xi Jinping and other world leaders to play a “nukes on the loose” war game to see how they would cope with a terrorist nuclear attack.

The German chancellor grumbled at being asked to play games and take tests with the Prime Minister, US and Chinese presidents around a table with dozens of heads of state at a nuclear summit in The Hague.