The nuclear football, officially the Presidential Emergency Satchel, is a briefcase, the contents of which are to be used by the president of the United States to communicate and authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room or the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Functioning as a mobile hub in the strategic defense system of the United States, the football is carried by a military aide when the president is traveling.
Name The briefcase is officially named the "Presidential Emergency Satchel". During the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, the briefcase was most commonly nicknamed the "satchel" or the "black bag." By the time of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, if not earlier, the briefcase was also becoming known as the "football." General Chester Clifton said in 1986 that the term was used "jokingly", and he described how warrant officers, who were on a twenty-four hour schedule, would regularly hand-off the briefcase to the next person. That routine could have inspired the football metaphor, which dovetailed with the Kennedy clan's penchant for touch football. Various sources claim, often mentioning Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as a source, that the term "football" was derived from a nuclear attack plan codenamed "Dropkick." When and where McNamara made such a statement has not been cited nor is there an original source for the "Dropkick" reference. That claim may have a fictitious premise because "Dropkick" appears distinctively in the film Dr. Strangelove when the character General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) informs President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) that the wayward B-52s headed to the Soviet Union "were part of a special exercise we were holding called Operation Dropkick." During 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson discussed with Robert McNamara an arrangement to eliminate the "need for an aide to be in constant attendance upon him." Word of that proposal began to circulate in the media prompting White House aide Jack Valenti to deny that it had been under consideration. The newspaper article citing the denial, the syndicated "Allen-Scott Report," is perhaps the earliest public reference to the "football," quoting Valenti as saying that "The 'black bag' or 'football', as we call it, goes wherever the President travels."
Contents
In his 1980 book Breaking Cover, Bill Gulley, former director of the White House Military Office, wrote:
There are four things in the Football. The Black Book containing the retaliatory options, a book listing classified site locations, a manila folder with eight or ten pages stapled together giving a description of procedures for the Emergency Broadcast System, and a three-by-five-inch [7.5 × 13 cm] card with authentication codes. The Black Book was about 9 by 12 inches [23 × 30 cm] and had 75 loose-leaf pages printed in black and red. The book with classified site locations was about the same size as the Black Book, and was black. It contained information on sites around the country where the president could be taken in an emergency. The president is always accompanied by a military aide carrying the nuclear football with launch codes for nuclear weapons. It has been described both as a metal Zero Halliburton briefcase and as a leather briefcase weighing about 45 pounds (20 kg), with photographic evidence existing of the latter. A small antenna protrudes from the bag near the handle, suggesting that it also contains communications equipment of some kind. A popular misconception, sometimes deriving from pop culture, is that the football contains a large red button, which when pressed, launches a nuclear attack.
Operation
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