Living with Mega-Death

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As Ronald Reagan took to the road last week, moving briskly from Air Force One to limousines and helicopters, and from them to platforms and podiums, his retinue included a field-grade officer carrying a thick black leather briefcase, who usually walked a few respectful paces behind the President. The officer is one of four, representing each of the four armed services, who are responsible for staying near the President everywhere he goes, every moment of the day and night, switching off in shifts. Their other responsibility: not to drop the briefcase. Hence its irreverent nickname—"the football."

It is, for the most part, an anonymous, thankless and tedious duty. The four officers would be among the first to hope that it stays that way; the moment their job becomes exciting could be the beginning of World War III. Yet if they were not there, and the black bag in their charge were not within the President's easy reach, he would be unable to preserve and enforce a balance of power between East and West; he would no longer embody the sanction of American force necessary to restrain the nation's adversaries. In that case, the world would be an even more dangerous place than it is with one of these four officers constantly at the President's side.

They are keepers of the keys to the U.S. arsenal of last resort. Inside the briefcase are "sealed authenticators," envelopes containing a variety of alphabetical codes called release messages. A series of a dozen or so code words, like TANGO ECHO BRAVO ROMEO NOVEMBER, once transmitted by the President or his constitutionally designated successor through the White House Communications Agency to the Pentagon, would constitute an order to fire some combination of the nation's 9,480 strategic warheads, with a cumulative destructive force equivalent to 3,505 megatons (1 megaton = 1 million tons of TNT) at a preselected set of targets inside the U.S.S.R.

An alert code would be instantly relayed by telephone, ultrahigh-frequency radio or teletype to the crews manning the 1,052 Titan and Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles in underground silos scattered across the Great Plains. At each launch site, the crew commander and his deputy would decode the incoming message separately, then make sure that the two versions matched. The two officers would open two combination locks to a safe; neither has the combination to both locks. If the sealed authenticator inside the safe matches the incoming message, the officers would take out separate firing keys and go to consoles about twelve feet apart. When the two keys are turned simultaneously, one or more missiles are launched, their warheads independently aimed in advance according to whatever plan the President has activated.

A similar system of matching codes and dual-key procedures applies aboard the 15 or so U.S. nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines that are on 70-day patrol at any given time. They are always submerged, observing radio silence, and receive a stream of messages by means of a 2,400-ft. antenna that the boat trails above and behind it, just below the ocean surface. Usually this incoming traffic consists of routine instructions, equipment tests and 40-word "familygrams" for the crew. But the message could also be a much shorter, infinitely