Circa Date

Circa 1976-1977

Description

Beginning in 1963, the U.S. and the Soviets had a Hotline in place to permit rapid communications and reduce risks during a crisis. Moscow and Washington updated the 1963 arrangements in a 1971 Hotline Agreement. That a September 1976 protocol updated the 1971 understanding has been buried in secrecy and obscurity, although some facts about the update can be found on the National Archives web site of declassified State Department telegrams. The agreement may have been negotiated under the auspices of the U.S.-Soviet Standing Consultative Commission (SCC), which was then chaired by Sidney Graybeal and General-Major G.I. Ustinov. Both of them signed the protocol.

The protocol established different emergency message formats for six different NUCFLASH situations, any of which carried the risk of nuclear war, such as an “accidental, unauthorized or any other unexplained incident involving a possible detonation of a nuclear weapon,” “detection by missile warning systems of unidentified objects,” or “detection of interference with missile warning systems or related communications facilities.” The forms of notification were not mandatory; the agreement allowed for flexibility for choosing notification contents and formats. The agreement was secret at the time and may not have been officially declassified until 2013, when the Carter Library released it.

Source

JCPL, Zbigniew Brzezinski Material - General Odom Files (NSA 12), box 17, Crisis Management, 1/69-5/80

Document published in following posting(s):

Colonel Odom’s “Chilling” Four A.M. Phone Call

Mar 24, 2022