LOOKING BACK By William Burr Presidents and the ‘Nuclear Football’ W hen U S Vice President Mike Pence and his aides were escaping the mob that broke into the U S Capitol Jan 6 2021 a Coast Guard officer carrying a heavy briefcase was following him on a staircase That briefcase was the so-called nuclear football Presidents and vice presidents are routinely accompanied by a military officer carrying the football which includes information and technology needed for the worst-case situation when the president or his successor decides to order military action in response to a nuclear or possibly conventional attack on the United States or its allies A military aide carrying the football has been in presidential entourages since the late 1950s and with vice presidents since the late 1970s Now aides with footballs shadow President Donald Trump and his vice president JD Vance The football includes information on emergency procedures nuclear war plans and communications arrangements with the Pentagon and key U S allies Initially referred to as the “satchel” or the “emergency actions pouch ” it also has been called the “black bag ” the “black box ” and by 1963 it became known as the football The football is a symbol of the president’s authority as commanderin-chief of the armed forces Since the Harry Truman era presidential control over nuclear weapons and any decisions to use them have flowed from that authority Before atomic bombs destroyed two Japanese cities in August 1945 Truman knew little about the nuclear targeting plans but concurred with the arrangements to use the weapons believing that the targets were straightforward military installations 1 U S Navy Captain Evan Aurand L holds an an early version of the president’s emergency satchel later known as the nuclear football as he accompanies President Dwight Eisenhower C with hand on hip on the White House lawn during Operation Alert a civil defense exercise on July 12 1957 Photo courtesy of the Dwight D Eisenhower Presidential Library Days later Truman shocked by the mass civilian casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki asserted presidential control by stopping further atomic bombings without his express authority 2 Determined to maintain control in 1948 he refused to turn nuclear weapons over to the Pentagon declaring that they were not “military” weapons but are “used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people ”3 The Cold War Era As the Cold War unfolded Truman’s successor Dwight Eisenhower and the presidents that followed sustained the practice of presidential control with John Kennedy tightening it after Eisenhower transferred custody of most of the weapons from the Atomic Energy Commission to the Department of Defense 4 Eisenhower and his successors faced the particularly daunting challenge of heightened strategic nuclear competition with the Soviet Union which developed long-distance bombers—and by 1957 showed a capability to develop and eventually deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles As the possibility of a severe crisis precipitating a Soviet nuclear attack became more than a theoretical issue U S leaders wanted to be prepared William Burr is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive at George Washington University where he directs its Nuclear Documentation Project 14 ARMS CONTROL TODAY March 2025 Among the preparatory actions that the Eisenhower administration took was in 1956 when Arthur Flemming director of the Office of Defense Mobilization asked a variety of U S agencies to begin developing continuity-of-government arrangements and to prepare Emergency Action Documents EADs including a proclamation of a national emergency orders to suspend habeas corpus provisions for a national censorship office and other martial-law arrangements The president would sign them in a crisis White House military aide Edward Beach devised the idea of using a satchel to carry emergency information despite mistaken claims that the Atomic Energy Commission created the football in the early 1960s Photographic evidence demonstrates that by 1957 naval aides were carrying a locked satchel but it was not until June 1958 that the agencies had nearly completed a set of the EADs to be carried in it 5 The EADs were in the satchel along with documents authorizing emergency use of nuclear weapons including instructions to make the weapons available to NATO allies that had nuclear sharing arrangements with the United States 6 Eisenhower approved instructions in 1956-1960 for “advance authorizations for the use of atomic weapons ” designed so that the United States “could not be caught by surprise ” Those were the highly secret pre-delegation instructions for military commanders-in-chief in the event that the president and vice president were killed in a nuclear attack 7 The Kennedy Administration Before John Kennedy’s inauguration Brigadier General Andrew Goodpaster a White House aide briefed the presidentelect on the satchel’s contents including the EADs Federal Emergency Plan D-Minus and a document for calling Congress into special session presumably at the secret location in The Greenbrier Hotel in West Virgina Goodpaster’s briefing also covered emergency plans to move the president and his family to emergency facilities at Mount Weather and other locations “from which he would operate ”8 During the meeting Eisenhower told Kennedy effectively that the satchel would be in the hands of “an unobtrusive man who would shadow the president for all his days in office ”9 Eisenhower told Kennedy that the satchel would be in the hands of “an unobtrusive man who would shadow the president for all his days in office ” Goodpaster also showed Kennedy a booklet that included information on the predelegation instructions Another booklet described U S Department of Defense “emergency actions” and how the Joint Chiefs of Staff would communicate with the president in a severe crisis Goodpaster further explained the “arrangement” that Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon had established if the president were incapacitated the “Vice President would accede to the powers of the Chief Executive ” Nixon also had a military aide assigned to him and presumably a satchel if something happened to the president Early in the Kennedy administration the president’s military aides sent a satchel to Vice President Lyndon Johnson who had it returned Years later Johnson suggested that he found the presence of a military aide with the satchel to be disconcerting 10 During the Kennedy administration the satchel would include information on U S nuclear war plans that was not available when Eisenhower was president Before that happened however in early 1962 Kennedy had requested the Joint Chiefs to develop procedures to enable the president to initiate a nuclear strike “without prior staffing at the Pentagon ” He wanted to know what “he would say to the Joint War Room to launch an immediate nuclear strike” and how the Pentagon could authenticate such instructions White House naval aide Captain Tazewell Shepard sought to ensure that the procedures in the JCS Emergency Actions File were flexible enough to allow the president to act in a crisis By November 1962 the White House had received from the Pentagon an emergency actions folder later renamed the Gold Book for inclusion in the satchel It may have offered the procedures along with emergency conferences that Kennedy had sought 11 When Kennedy became president the Eisenhower administration had recently completed the first Single Integrated Operational Plan SIOP a nuclear war plan that included targets for strategic bombers submarine-launched ballistic missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles Initially the SIOP was a one-shot plan involving the launching of thousands of nuclear weapons simultaneously against the Soviet Union and its allies with the potential of causing scores of millions of casualties Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara were dissatisfied with this plan’s inflexibility and in 1961-1962 approved arrangements to break up the SIOP into more discrete options such as preemptive or retaliatory strikes on military and urbanindustrial targets together or military targets only Those options also would involve huge casualties 12 A Comprehensible War Plan Distilling the war-plan options into a form that was comprehensible for any president took time but in 1963 the Joint Chiefs of Staff developed the SIOP Execution Handbook later known as the “black book ” and gave a copy to Kennedy in July The satchel included booklets with explanations of SIOP attack options and estimated casualties presented in “cartoons and color schemes to make the thing more understandable ” As the SIOP changed over the years military aides would update the handbook and related material 13 ARMS CONTROL TODAY March 2025 15 By 1963 the satchel was becoming known as the “football” for unknown reasons—but possibly because it was passed from military aide to military aide and the Kennedy family had a fondness for touch football At that time when the president was traveling outside Washington warrant officers on shifts carried the football because they were closer to the president than the military aides Yet only the military aides knew the combination for the lock and could make its contents available to the president During the 1960s the aides and warrant officers did not follow the president around Washington because the Pentagon knew how to get in touch with him but eventually the aides routinely would accompany the president during local travel The football was not light By 1963 it weighed about 30 pounds and by the 1990s about 45 pounds 14 When Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Nov 22 1963 Ira Gearhart an Army warrant officer was at the back of the motorcade He rushed to the hospital and learning of Kennedy’s death took the football to the room where Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sitting Although the Pentagon was worried about Gearhart’s location he followed Johnson to the airport and was on Air Force One when the new president took the oath of office During the flight back military aide Chester Clifton briefed Johnson on the football Once back in Washington Tazewell Shepard arranged for fuller briefings for the new president on the football and its contents 15 Although Johnson did not like the idea of the football and wanted to hand off the responsibility to the Pentagon he eventually acquiesced in the arrangement A newspaper article from 1965 included the first public reference to the football quoting White House aide Jack Valenti as saying “The ‘black bag’ or ‘football ’ as we call it goes wherever the President travels ”16 As far as is known Johnson did not arrange for a football to be assigned to his vice president Hubert Humphrey and no information is available indicating that vice presidents Spiro Agnew and Gerald Ford who served under President Richard Nixon or Nelson Rockefeller who served under President Ford had a football assigned to their military aides When Nixon resigned in August 1974 and 16 ARMS CONTROL TODAY March 2025 flew off to California the football was in the hands of Ford’s military assistants 17 A Football for the Vice President Believing that the vice president should be a partner in national security policymaking President Jimmy Carter assigned a football to Vice President Walter Mondale and this became the practice for future U S administrations 18 By Carter’s time if not before the president carried a laminated card known as the “biscuit ” with unique alphanumeric codes needed to authenticate his identity with the Pentagon before authorizing nuclear weapons use Carter accidentally left the biscuit in clothes sent for dry cleaning at one point In 1981 when President Ronald Reagan was shot the card was separated from him during surgery and found later in a shoe while the aide with the football was left behind at the Washington Hilton Hotel when Reagan was rushed to the hospital Years later President Bill Clinton lost his biscuit 19 The protocols that developed over the years for the football and the military aides who carry it remain highly classified No doubt the football includes the EADs and information on basic options in nuclear and non-nuclear strike plans Reportedly the football includes communications gear is hardened to protect against electromagnetic pulse and holds a tablet with satellite links to tactical warning systems All of that plus armor has added to the football’s weight 20 The fact that one person the U S president has had the singular authority to make life-or-death nuclear use decisions has led to debates and proposals to address the dangers inherent in this arrangement including by involving other responsible officials in nuclear use decisions in order to prevent a rushed process and by Congress asserting its war powers more robustly 21 Such reforms are worth serious discussion no matter who resides in the White House but the advent of a new president who The nuclear football which goes wherever the U S president goes contains the launch codes for nuclear weapons communications gear and options for a nuclear strike it weighs about 45 pounds Photo by Andrew Leyden NurPhoto via Getty Images rejects checks on executive authority and is determined to expand personal control over the government increases their relevance The current configuration of power with one party controlling all major institutions of government suggests that meaningful reforms are not in the cards for the foreseeable future The United States can only hope that serious crises do not emerge when the football must be unlocked ENDNOTES 7   William Burr “First Documented Evidence interview with General Godfrey McHugh 6 that U S Presidents Predelegated Nuclear May 1964 excerpts ” in William Burr ed “The Weapons Release Authority to the Military ” Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ From Eisenhower National Security Archive March 20 1998 and to George W Bush ” National Security Archive William Burr “Newly Declassified Documents EBB No 834 July 18 2023 on Advance Presidential Authorization of Nuclear Weapons Use ” National Security Archive August 30 1998 14   “William Manchester Interview with Major General Chester Clifton 21 April 1964 excerpts ” in William Burr ed “The Presidential 8   Andrew J Goodpaster “Memorandum Nuclear ‘Football’ From Eisenhower to George for the Record by Brigadier General Andrew W Bush ” National Security Archive No 834 J Goodpaster 25 January 1961 Top Secret ” July 18 2023 Ibid citing Robert S Allen and in William Burr ed “Presidential Control of Paul Scott  Bluefield Daily Telegraph July 27 Nuclear Weapons The ‘Football ’” National 1965 Manchester  The Death of a President Security Archive EBB No 632 July 9 2018 pp 62-63 261 321 Nancy Benac “Nuclear Krugler This Is Not a Test pp 169-171 Emily ‘halfbacks’ carry the ball for the president ” Matchar “The Town That Kept Its Nuclear Seattle Times May 17 2005 1   Alex Wellerstein “A ‘purely military’ target Bunker a Secret for Three Decades ” Smithsonian Truman’s changing language about Hiroshima” Magazine April 9 2024 Federation of American Restricted Data A Nuclear History Blog January Scientists “Mount Weather High Point Special 19 2018 Facility ” November 25 1999 2   Henry Wallace “Diary Entry Friday August 9   Dwight D Eisenhower  The White House Burr ed “The Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ 10 1945 ” and Leslie Groves “General L R Years Waging Peace 1956-1961  Garden City From Eisenhower to George W Bush ” National Groves to Chief of Staff George C Marshall Doubleday Company 1965 p 617 Security Archive EBB No 834 July 18 2023 August 10 1945 Top Secret with a hand- 10   William Manchester The Death of a 16   “Untitled two-part draft memorandum President November 20 – November 25 1963 n d 1965 ” in William Burr ed “Presidential New York Harper and Row 1967 p 261 Control of Nuclear Weapons The ‘Football ’” Garrett Graff  Raven Rock The Story of the U S National Security Archive EBB No 632 July 9 Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself—While the 2018 Allen and Scott report  July 27 1965 written note by General Marshall ” in William Burr ed “The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II ” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book EBB No 716 August 4 2020 See also Alex Wellerstein “The Kyoto Misconception What Truman Knew and Didn’t Know about Hiroshima ” in Michael D Rest of Us Die  New York Simon Schuster 2017 pp 177 250 Gordin and G John Ikenberry editors The Age 11   Tazewell Shepard “Tazewell Shepard to of Hiroshima Princeton University Press 2020 the President ‘JCS Emergency Actions File ’ 16 3   James V Forrestal “‘Meeting at the White and JCS Emergency Actions File ’ Top Secret ” House—Atomic Bomb Custody ’ 21 July 1948 ” in William Burr ed “U S Presidents and the Nuclear Taboo ” National Security Archive EBB No 611 November 30 2017 January 1962 with attached ‘Alert Procedures and “Memorandum from G C Bullard to General Taylor ‘President’s Emergency Actions “Gold Book ”’ 11 January 1964 Top Secret ” in William 15  Manchester  The Death of a President 62-63 321 Manchester interview with Clifton and “William Manchester Interview with Captain Tazewell Shepard 1 May 1964 ” in William 17   Graff 2017 pp xiv-xv 18   “Memorandum from Denis Clift to Vice President Mondale with Mondale memorandum attached “PEADS ” 1 March 1979 Secret ” in William Burr ed “The Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ From Eisenhower to George W Bush ” National Security Archive EBB No 834 July 18 2023 Burr ed “Presidential Control of Nuclear 19   Jamie Dettmer “Of biscuits and footballs 4   Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Weapons The ‘Football ’” National Security The perils of presidents and the nuclear codes ” Defense for Atomic Energy “History of the Archive EBB No 632 September 20 2018 The Hill January 23 2017 Christopher Woody Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons 12   William Burr “The Creation of SIOP-62 July 1945 through September 1977 ” in William Burr ed “United States Secretly Deployed Nuclear Bombs In 27 Countries and Territories During Cold War ” National Security Archive More Evidence on the Origins of Overkill ” National Security Archive July 13 2004 Joint Chiefs of Staff “Joint Chiefs of Staff ‘Berlin “Bill Clinton once lost the nuclear codes for months and a ‘comedy of errors’ kept anyone from finding out ” Business Insider January 3 2018 Contingency Planning ’ JCSM 431-61 26 20   Hans Kristensen “US Nuclear War Plan June 1961 Top Secret ” in William Burr ed Updated Amidst Nuclear Policy Review ” 5   David F Krugler This Is Only a Test How “Long-Classified U S Estimates of Nuclear Federation of American Scientists April 4 2013 Washington D C Prepared for Nuclear War New War Casualties During the Cold War Regularly various tweets by Marc Ambinder including York Palgrave Macmillan 2006 pp 156-162 Underestimated Deaths and Destruction ” on October 23 2020 at 17 37 UTC Stephen For the argument that the Atomic Energy National Security Archive EBB No 798 July Schwartz’s “Atomicanalyst” site at bsky social Commission devised the football see Annie 14 2022 William Burr “New Evidence on the is a valuable source for photos of military aides Jacobsen “What’s Inside the President’s Nuclear Origins of Overkill ” National Security Archive carrying the football Football ” Time April 11 2024 No 236 November 21 2007 6   Charles Finucane “Letter from Assistant 13   Tazewell Shepard “Memorandum of Presidential Authority ” Texas National Security Secretary of Defense for Manpower Personnel Conference with the President Prepared by Review July 2 2019 Bruce Blair “Strengthening and Reserve Charles Finucane to General Andrew Naval Aide Tazewell Shepard 24 July 1963 Checks on Presidential Nuclear Launch J Goodpaster 9 December 1959 ” in William Top Secret ” in William Burr ed “Presidential Authority ” Arms Control Today January Burr ed “The Presidential Nuclear ‘Football’ Control of Nuclear Weapons The ‘Football ’” February 2018 Adam Mount “There’s Nothing From Eisenhower to George W Bush ” National National Security Archive EBB No 632 Between an Unstable President and the Nuclear Security Archive EBB No 834 July 8 2023 September 25 2018 “William Manchester Button ” Foreign Policy March 18 2024 EBB No 20 October 20 1999 21   “Policy Roundtable Nuclear First-Use and ARMS CONTROL TODAY March 2025 17