Computer circuit fingered as cause of missile alert

A faulty computer circuit the size of a small coin was pinpointed by the Pentagon Tuesday as the cause of two recent US nuclear alerts over false-alarm Soviet missile attacks on North America. The Defense Department said it was drawing up a plan "to ensure a similar, future hardware failure does not again cause an undetected error." It repeated that at no time during the false alarms, on June 3 and 6, was US retaliation imminent.