Giles Prentice Quotes in Broken Arrow (1996)

Giles Prentice: A Broken what?

Secretary Baird: Broken Arrow. It's a Class 4 Strategic Theatre Emergency. It's what we call it when we lose a nuclear weapon.

Giles Prentice: I don't know what's scarier, losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it.

Giles Prentice: Just for the record, I'm not entirely a civilian. I was actually a lieutenant in the ROTC at Yale.

Riley Hale: Well, good for you, Lieutenant.

[on whether to disclose the loss of a stealth bomber]

Giles Prentice: Wait. We're making a mistake.

Secretary Baird: Giles? You, uh, have some input you wish to share with us?

Giles Prentice: Yes, sir. Aviation Week has been following the development of the B3 for years. They have "stringers" - guys camping out in lawn chairs all night out by the Whiteman perimeter fence - watching just in case one of these things take off. Now, they're gonna know that one took off last night, and they're gonna know that it didn't come back. Now, we put out a press-release saying a C141 went down in Utah, they're gonna put two and two together. Aviation Week is gonna run a story, everyone's gonna know what really happened, and we're all gonna look extremely stupid. We're better off just telling the truth.

Secretary Baird: The truth? How'd you get this job?

Secretary Baird: Guys in lawn chairs. I dunno, Giles. Sometimes you scare me.

Giles Prentice: Hell, sir. Sometimes I scare myself.

[after the nuke is detonated in the mine]

Giles Prentice: Colonel Wilkins, sir? Uh, shouldn't we be evacuating?

Colonel Max Wilkins: [covers his phone] We're fine, it was underground.

[into phone]

Colonel Max Wilkins: Colonel Wilkins to General Creeley...

Giles Prentice: Are you sure? I mean, how do you know that?

Colonel Max Wilkins: [covers the phone again] Because if it had been a surface detonation, we'd have felt a different kind of ground tremor. We'd also be burned, blind, and dying.