Abstract
“As of now, I am in control here.” Who doesn't remember Secretary of State Alexander Haig's mini-coup on March 30, 1981, when President Ronald Reagan was shot? That assassination attempt introduced most Americans to the intricacies of presidential succession and the military's weirdly contradictory designation of “National Command Authorities” (NCA).
This year, on January 11, under the direction of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Joint Chiefs of Staff quietly issued a new directive: “In future, please discontinue use of the term ‘National Command Authorities.’ Documents should instead refer specifically to the ‘President’ or the ‘Secretary of Defense,’ or both, as appropriate.” In most cases, the directive adds, the term “can be replaced by the ‘Secretary of Defense.’”
Is this another gaffe? Or is the nation finally safe from the Cold War contradiction that gave the defense secretary, and by extension, the uniformed military, the authority to employ nuclear weapons, regardless of the U.S. Constitution?
The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 ranked two elected officials, the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate, after the vice president and ahead of Cabinet members. After the Kennedy assassination, the 25th Amendment, which addresses succession in the case of disability or inability, was adopted.
But the Kennedy administration also saw the creation of the World-Wide Military Command and Control System, which in 1962 defined the NCA as “the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and their authorized successors and alternates.” In the event of nuclear war, this system could circumvent five constitutional successors in decision-making. I say “could,” because the presidential directives that govern who the “authorized successors and alternates” are have never been publicly revealed.
Over the years, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were removed as National Command Authorities. As of January, Pentagon directives defined the NCA as consisting “only of the President and the Secretary of Defense or their duly deputized alternates or successors.” The authority to use nuclear weapons was explicitly stated as running from the NCA to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
There has always been confusion and contradiction, even internally, with this arrangement. The Joint Chiefs of Staff Top Secret Emergency Action Procedures for 1984, partially declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, says that “the channel of communications for execution of the SIOP [the nuclear war plan] and other time-sensitive operations shall be from the President through the Chairman [of the] Joint Chiefs of Staff to the executing commanders.”
What happened to the secretary of defense? Or the Constitution? One insight comes in an account of the events of March 30, 1981 by then National Security Adviser Richard V. Allen, published in last April's Atlantic Monthly. An hour after the assassination attempt, White House Counsel Edwin Meese called from the hospital to reaffirm that “‘the national command authority’ rested with Cap Weinberger, in the absence of the Vice President.”
Haig, of course, got things terribly wrong, but it is unclear what would have happened had the Soviets attacked between 2:30 that afternoon and 6:30 that evening, when Vice President George Bush returned to the White House from Texas.
“What if the President and Vice President are out, the Capitol has been slowed down and you can't find the Speaker or the President pro tem-pore of the Senate, and the Cabinet officers are all down here eating lunch?” Vice Adm. Huntington Hardisty, Director for Operations of the Joint Staff, was asked in a 1985 hearing. The admiral didn't know, and he referred Congress to the ultra-secret “continuity of government” plan and the White House Military Office.
It is now again not inconceivable to imagine Washington under attack and the succession disrupted. There are thousands of nuclear weapons on alert. We all know that Dick Cheney is the ultimate war-maker sitting in his bunker in Maryland. It would be nice to know why the new directive dispenses with “duly deputized alternates and successors,” and gives the secretary of defense what amounts to presidential powers.