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PLATTEVILLE - Iowa is a long way from Washington, D.C., but during one of the Cold War's most dangerous phases, President John F. Kennedy entrusted homeland security to Dubuque lawyer Edward McDermott. In 1961, McDermott moved to Washington to head the Office of Emergency Planning, a forerunner of FEMA. McDermott's job was to prepare both the capital and the country to survive nuclear war, a frightening prospect that almost became reality during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

McDermott's responsibilities are detailed in "This Is Only a Test: How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear War," a new book by David Krugler, Krugler tells the story of nuclear age urban planning, civil defense and continuity of government programs in one of the nation's critical cold war targets: Washington D.C. Spanning the years 1940-1962, the book uses Washington's often conflicting identities - capital, city and symbol - to explore the connections between the attempted dispersal of vital government offices, the District's Office of Civil Defense, and the creation of the secretive Federal Relocation Arc. Measures to protect the federal government resulted in the widening gap between capital and city, while the failures of the city's local program symbolized federal ambivalence toward civil defense. Krugler, a native of the Milwaukee area, said he became interested in the subject as he was driving into Washington, D.C., for the first time and noticed that many of the government's functions were located far from the city's center. "What was the thinking that went into that? For example, the Atomic Energy Commission was located 20 miles away in Germantown, Md. That led me to the discovery that it was intentionally located outside the nuclear blast zone if Washington D.C. were to be targeted," he explained. Krugler said that although it is a scholarly work, "This Is Only a Test" is meant to appeal to a wide audience. According to Krugler, anyone interested in learning why the government seemed so ill-prepared for Hurricane Katrina, or college students who came of age since the 9/11 attacks, might be interested in learning some of the history of homeland security. "There is precedent for the fact that the federal government isn't well-equipped to deal with homeland security. During the Cold War,in every other area of national security the government was in charge, but when it came to civil defense, Americans were expected to take the lead. It's a challenge that transcends party politics," he said.

The book has been well reviewed, with experts highlighting its relevance for policy makers and citizens today. Howard Gillette is the author of "Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington D.C." "Krugler's dissection of the inadequacies of America's early plans to assure continuity of government in the nation's capital against the eventuality of nuclear attack is not just good history. It reveals, in the aftermath of the attacks of 2001, how ill-prepared America remains in case of a significant threat to the homeland. Lively and deeply informed, Krugler's book is both compelling reading and a wake up call to the American public and its elected representatives," Gillette wrote, according to the publisher's website. This is Krugler's second book. The first, "The Voice of America and the Domestic Propaganda Battles, 1945-1953," was published in 2000. He has been teaching modern American history at UW-Platteville since 1997. "This Is Only a Test" is published by Palgrave Macmillan, which can be accessed at http://www.palgrave-usa.com/catalog/product.aspx?isbn=1403965544. Anyone interested in learning more about Krugler's work may contact him at (608) 342-1809 okruglerd@uwplatt.edu

Contact: David Krugler, associate professor of History, UWP Department of Social Sciences, kruglerd@uwplatt.edu, (608) 342-1809 Formatted By: Evelyn Martens, UWP Public Relations, (608) 342-1194,martense@uwplatt.edu; book synopsis and reviewer's quote from Palgrave Macmillan.