The President's Book of Secrets Page #2

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he has a view of where he wants

to take the world.

Okay, sometimes that view is not

consistent with the intelligence

officer's view of the world as

it is.

(Clay Johnson) The greatest

example I can imagine is a

person who ascended to President

by death-- Harry Truman-- who,

upon becoming President, learned

that there was an atomic bomb.

Gingrich:
Harry Truman as

Vice President did not know that

we had built the atomic bomb.

When he became President and was

being briefed on the scale of

the weapon and the potential

power it had, and he literally

knew nothing about it.

Johns:
You think it changed

his thinking about how he waged

the war?

You bet.

Rather:
I often wonder what

he said to his wife when he went

back in the family quarters,

just after he learned of that.

Narrator:
Today the President

has a unique handle on the

nuclear arsenal.

Everywhere he goes he is

accompanied by a military aide

who carries a 45-pound briefcase

known as the "nuclear football."

(Peter Metzger) It's seen in

pictures all the time.

It's a black kind of doctor-

looking briefcase that I used to

say contained a tuna sandwich

and a Playboy magazine.

What's in it is highly

classified, but what it does is

allows the President, as the

commander in chief, to be

connected to the national

military command center and

those force commanders who must

respond to an order to initiate

a nuclear action.

Narrator:
Officially known as

the President's emergency

satchel, the nuclear football

was initiated in the 1950s by

President Dwight Eisenhower.

(Michael Bohn) The Cold War

drove a lot of things that the

President did over the years.

One of them was dealing with a

surprise attack by the Soviet

Union-- the bolt from the blue.

Missiles on the way.

Our retaliatory strategy was

massive retaliation during most

of that time-- mutually assured

destruction.

Metzger:
According to the

Constitution, the President of

the United States is the person

who would make that decision,

and so there was a notion that

something that the President had

to have the capability to make

that decision anywhere and

everywhere and at all times.

Lichtman:
Forget about

togetherness between the

President and his wife.

The real togetherness is between

the President and the carrier of

the nuclear football that

contains the nuclear codes.

Narrator:
During his

transition, the President-elect

is briefed on how to use the

codes.

Then, during the inauguration,

the military readies two cases--

one each for both the outgoing

and incoming presidents.

This serves to both immediately

transfer power and to deter any

surprise attacks.

Lichtman:
Let's say there's a

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