This NUCLEAR WAR scare incident is not to be confused with the other Arizona Highways Article. The 18 Sept, 2016 60 minutes interview confirms this incident.
In 2013 a new book was released called "Command and Control" written by Eric Schlosser an investigative reporter. In the book he claims the following:
"AT ABOUT ELEVEN O’CLOCK in the morning on November 9, 1979, the computers at the NORAD headquarters inside Cheyenne Mountain said that the United States was under attack. The huge screen in the underground command center at SAC headquarters showed that Soviet missiles had been launched from submarines off the West Coast. The same message was received by computers in the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon and the Alternate National Military Command Center at Site R inside Raven Rock Mountain. And then more missiles appeared on the screen, launched not only from submarines but also from sites within the Soviet Union. It was a massive attack, and warheads would begin to hit American targets within five or six minutes.
Whenever NORAD’s early-warning sensors detected signs of a possible missile launch, a Missile Display Conference was held. It happened about four times a day; the infrared sensors on the Air Force satellites could be triggered by forest fires, volcanic eruptions, and other sources of heat. The officers on duty would discuss whether the threat seemed real or merely a false alarm. The commander in chief of NORAD would decide if a Threat Assessment Conference had to be arranged, bringing the head of SAC and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff into the discussion. That type of conference happened once or twice a week. And if missiles truly seemed to be heading toward the United States, a Missile Attack Conference would be set up. It would give the president a chance to speak with senior officers, listen to their advice, and decide whether to launch missiles in retaliation. A Missile Attack Conference had never been held.
As the computer screens at NORAD filled with Soviet missiles, a Threat Assessment Conference was called. Although the pattern of the attack seemed to fit with the Pentagon’s assumptions about Soviet war plans, its timing made little sense. Tensions between the superpowers weren’t particularly high, and nothing in the news seemed to warrant a “bolt from the blue” attack on the United States. Duty officers at NORAD contacted the radar and ground stations whose sensors were relaying information about the launches. None of them had detected signs of any missiles. The NORAD computers seemed to be providing an erroneous—but highly realistic—account of a Soviet surprise attack.
As a precaution, the Klaxons were sounded at SAC bases nationwide. Bomber crews ran to their planes, and missile crews were put on heightened alert. Fighter-interceptors took off to look for signs of a Soviet attack. The National Emergency Airborne Command Post left Andrews Air Force Base—without President Carter on board. And air traffic controllers throughout the country prepared to clear America’s airspace for military flights, warning every commercial airliner that it might soon have to land.
As the minutes passed without the arrival of Soviet warheads, it became clear that the United States wasn’t under attack. The cause of the false alarm was soon discovered. A technician had put the wrong tape into one of NORAD’s computers. The tape was part of a training exercise—a war game that simulated a Soviet attack on the United States. The computer had transmitted realistic details:of the war game to SAC headquarters, the Pentagon, and Site R.
The computers at NORAD had been causing problems for more than a decade. Although they were perhaps the most important data-processing machines in the United States—responsible for compiling and assessing information from all its early-warning radars and satellites—the Honeywell 6060 computers were already obsolete when NORAD installed them within Cheyenne Mountain. A 1978 investigation by the General Accounting Office (GAO) found that budget cuts and bureaucratic inflexibility during the Nixon administration had forced NORAD to buy the computers— despite protests from the head of NORAD that they lacked sufficient processing power for crucial early-warning tasks. NORAD’s computers were frequently out of commission, the GAO reported, “due to the lack of readily available spare parts.” Many of the parts hadn’t been manufactured by Honeywell for years.
The morale at NORAD, like its aging computers and software, left room for improvement. A couple of months after the false alarm, twenty-three security officers assigned to the Combat Operations Center inside Cheyenne Mountain were stripped of their security clearances. According to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the security force responsible for protecting the nerve center of America’s command-and-control system was using LSD, marijuana, cocaine, and amphetamines.
“FALSE ALARM ON ATTACK SENDS FIGHTERS INTO SKY” was one of the headlines, when news of the training tape incident leaked. Pentagon officials denied that the missile warning had been taken seriously. But the technical and human errors at NORAD felt in keeping with the general mood of the country. An accidental nuclear war didn’t sound inconceivable to most people—America seemed to be falling apart. A few months earlier a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania had suffered a partial meltdown, largely because a worker at the plant had turned off an emergency cooling system by mistake."
You can buy Eric Schlosser's book "Command and Control" on Amazon.com.