The Presidential Nuclear "Football" From Eisenhower to George W. Bush

Assistant Secretary of Defense Finucane sent White House Staff Secretary General Andrew Goodpaster the latest version of the “War Emergency Check List and Master Readiness File,” which had been renamed the “Joint Chiefs of Staff Emergency Actions File.” The file would be included in the “President's emergency actions pouch” (later known as the Satchel or the Football). A new item for the file was an Emergency Message, EM-5, which would make “available atomic weapons to NATO and to such other allies as may be programmed to use U.S. atomic weapons.” As the purpose of the stockpile was for emergency use in a military crisis, a presidential order to make those nuclear weapons available to NATO allies was a necessary element in the Satchel.

One of the early elements of the Football or “black bag” were Civil Emergency Action Documents, later known as Presidential Emergency Action documents (PEADS). Eisenhower had bequeathed the Kennedy administration 24 of the documents, which Office of Emergency Planning Director Edward McDermott sent in a repackaged and reorganized format to President Kennedy’s Naval Aide Captain Tazewell Shepard, who had the emergency planning portfolio at the White House. President Kennedy had not formally approved the documents.

Whether the Cuban Missile Crisis encouraged the update or if it was already in the works is not known. According to McDermott, the 24 documents that he was sending to Shepard were ones that had been cleared by the agencies, not necessarily the most important items. According to McDermott, the contents of the EADs were essentially the same as the ones that Eisenhower had left the Kennedy administration, although he had plans to “improve” them and add new directives. He thought some were of “doubtful legality,” although he did not specify which ones. Their purpose was to “to clothe the President with formal emergency powers, to provide control over individuals for internal security purposes, to dispose of normal administrative requirements, to augment the armed forces, to assume functions of State and local governments in exceptional circumstances, to mobilize resources, and miscellaneous others.”

General Chester Clifton, one of the White House military aides who was with Kennedy on the day he was assassinated, explained that they always stayed close to the President because of the “emergency war orders” kept inside the Football. According to Clifton, “Kennedy was the first President to realize” that the exceedingly short period of warning before a missile attack necessitated the Football arrangement. “The Joint Chiefs of Staff got through to him and explained it.” The warrant officers who carried the black bag would be in closer proximity to the President than the military aides, but in a crisis the aide was responsible for getting the emergency orders “to the President and ‘instanter as possible.’” According to Clifton, Kennedy “had us brief Lyndon Johnson on the black bag,” and that “we told Lyndon Johnson on Air Force One,” just after Kennedy was assassinated, “that this black back was around.” Nevertheless, as the interviews with Maxwell Taylor and Tazewell Shepard suggest, neither were confident that Johnson was aware of the Football’s contents.

Also at Dallas with Kennedy on the day of his assassination, McHugh also provided Manchester with details on some of the Football’s contents. In addition to information on how to communicate with the British Prime Minister and the French President, the Football included booklets with explanations of attack options and estimated casualties. The military information was presented in “cartoons and color schemes to make the thing more understandable to the President.” The warrant officer who carried the satchel knew the combination for unlocking it but did not know what was inside. Only the military aide knew the contents.

Taylor explained his concern about the Football on the day of the Kennedy assassination. “I knew that the courier with the satchel was with the President and that the contents of the satchel had not been explained to Lyndon Johnson.” According to Manchester’s account in Death of a President, the previous Vice President, Richard Nixon had been assigned a “satchel,” and Naval Aide Shepard saw to it that one was given to Vice President Lyndon Johnson, but said it was “returned with the explanation that Johnson did not want it.”[8]

According to McHugh, Tazewell Shepard, who ran the White House emergency plans office, was “closest” to the Football set-up. Shepard recounted that his responsibilities included developing plans for relocating the President in a crisis and managing the contents of the Football “whenever and wherever the President goes.” The exception was when the President was in Washington, D.C., in which case the satchel stayed at the White House and did “not chase him around,” in part because the President remained in constant contact with the Defense Department. The protocol eventually extended to local events. For example, when Ronald Reagan was at the Washington Hilton in March 1981, a Football carrier was in his entourage. Like others, that officer ducked to the ground during the attempted assassination of the President.

Shepard did not travel to Texas after the assassination but met Air Force One when it returned to Andrews Air Force Base with President Johnson, who had just been sworn in. He recalled that General Taylor and Secretary of Defense McNamara were there and “were concerned that I brief the new President on emergency plans.” Following Taylor’s instructions, Shepard met with Johnson at the Executive Office Building that evening.

In keeping with Walter Mondale’s significant role in national security policy, a briefing was prepared for him on key elements of federal emergency planning, including continuity of government arrangements, civil emergency preparations, and Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADs).  According to the briefing, written by Dalimil Kybal, then acting director of the Federal Preparedness Agency (a forerunner of the Federal Emergency Management Agency), the PEADS were an element of the “Emergency Portfolio” assigned to the President and the Vice President. Noting their origin in the late 1950s, Kybal wrote that there were about 20 PEADs and that they were collectively known as “Emergency Plan D.” They covered a range of issues, including the declaration of war, the use of military forces to maintain law and order (martial law), the possible suspension of habeas corpus, and censorship of international communications. The PEADS had been recently updated and were at the Office of Management and Budget for review, which had delayed its approval.

Briefing Brzezinski on the problem of “badly out of date” PEADs, Odom suggested that some were “even illegal.” With OMB continuing to sit on the revised PEADs, the problem reached Hugh Carter, Jr., the President’s second cousin, who played an informal role in emergency management issues. Carter and the NSC told OMB Director James McIntyre about the problem, who quickly approved the PEADs (apparently he was unaware of them). Nevertheless, Odom believed it necessary to do more to improve the PEADs once “we work out how the civil side of the Federal government would transit from peacetime to wartime functions.”

The review of the new set of PEADs was apparently in its final stages with Clift observing that he considered the “proposed changes primarily in terms of whether or not they make it easier or more difficult to govern under circumstances following a nuclear exchange.” He said that two that he saw as the “most significant directives in terms of actually governing the country” had “been modified in ways which are to me not altogether clear in their impact.” What specifically concerned Clift were the “limits and/or constraints placed on the authority of the Office of Defense Resources (new PEAD 5) to carry out its many tasks” and “the Secretary of State’s (new PEADs 16 and 17) ability to constrain foreign diplomatic and other related activities within the United States.” Two previous PEADs concerning censorship and the temporary suspension of habeas corpus had been recommended for deletion.

Especially concerning to Clift was that some of the language in the PEADs concerning the role of Congress and the “peacetime rights and privileges” of citizens could have the effect of “unnecessarily constraining the effectiveness of those who would be charged with attempting to govern the country during a time of extreme hardship and deprivation.” The implication was that, in a nuclear crisis, presidential authority was necessary to supplant traditional constitutional rights.

Denis Clift, Mondale’s national security assistant, referred to a memorandum from Hugh Carter (not attached) concerning the update of the PEADs. While further review and refinement was necessary, the “interim” PEADs had been filed in the Footballs assigned to the President and the Vice President. In his memorandum, Mondale expressed agreement with that approach.

This memo from Clift reports that, in accordance with the White House Emergency Plan (WHEP), a Football has been placed at the Vice President’s residence. Clift recommends that Beaman and Hugh Carter “take the time to inspect the arrangements which have been made for its control” so they would all “feel confident about the security of that very sensitive item.”

Clift reported that Hugh Carter has become “concerned that the entire PEADs series is obsolete given the total devastation which could be expected from a thermonuclear attack on the US -- and the need for an updated approach to reconstituting order and organization at the local, state and federal levels of the Government.” President Carter had written on one of Hugh Carter’s memos that Brzezinski and Mondale needed to look into this further. Noting how “complex” the problem of updating the PEADs was, Clift observed that Hugh Carter was under pressure from the Pentagon on SIOP and on National Command Authority survivability issues, problems that were compounded by understaffed and ineffective civilian emergency planning leadership. The Federal Preparedness Agency has “not been up to the challenge.”

According to Clift, a “full time FEMA Director with savvy and political clout should be appointed to take the lead for the NSC in the PEAD update.” His closing recommendation was that Mondale “schedule a meeting with Zbig and Hugh Carter to receive a status report on the PEADs update and to invite their recommendations on steps to expedite the update.”

Odom believed that nothing could be decided at the meeting with Mondale and Hugh Carter, but he saw a few points about C³I and FEMA that were worth making. The PEADs updating has been completed. The larger question was whether “the system of NCA survivability and war mobilization, implicit in the PEADs [is] adequate for today.” Odom explained that, “Our mobilization and economic emergency management system (as spelled out briefly in the PEADs) is neither adequate for nuclear war conditions nor adaptable to lesser contingency plans.” He saw a “real danger that FEMA's Executive Order will not even include the proper authority to permit a solution to this problem.” The confirmation of John Macy as FEMA director was necessary “to make us more confident” in the ongoing review of emergency management and economic mobilization policy.

Odom informed Brzezinski that FEMA director John Macy had sent in the revised PEADS, the result of “the first thorough up-date in a decade.” Brzezinski sent the revised PEADs to Hugh Carter for “proper disposition.” In his letter enclosing the PEADs, Macy informed Brzezinski that they “should be transmitted directly to the White House Military Office and substituted for the documents which are now in the President’s ‘emergency portfolio.’” He noted that President Nixon had approved PEAD No. 5, “Providing for the Mobilization of the Nation's Resources,” in March 1970 and that it had been only slightly revised during the recent update. “Because of its reliance on the ‘implied’ powers of the President and in the absence of a definitive legal basis for the PEAD, it was deemed inappropriate to seek OMB and DOJ clearance at this time.”

One item for discussion in the conversation recorded here was the recent publication by Bill Gulley, former Director of the White House Military Office, of a “kiss and tell” memoir, Breaking Cover (Simon & Schuster). Moe found pages 178-194 “quite remarkable for the detailed revelations they offer on certain parts of the National Command Authority, White House Emergency Procedures, the NEACP aircraft, the Football, relocation sites and emergency procedures.” Odom had copies of the pages and was preparing a guidance memorandum. Moe recommended to the Vice President that Harold Brown and Zbigniew Brzezinski provide him “and the President with an assessment of any damage caused -- clearly this does cause damage – and recommendations for remedying the problem.”

Among the revelations in Gulley’s book was that the “White House Emergency Procedures” manual “sets out exactly what’s supposed to happen in the event of a sudden attack,” including the steps that the Pentagon will “take to notify the White House and how the White House will respond.” In a crisis, it was the task of the White House Military Office to ensure that the President gets the Football “because it’s only the President who can issue the orders.” Nevertheless, Gulley found that the “entire retaliatory strike capability is vulnerable” because the President is “scandalously underprotected against a full military attack.”[9]