VIDEO: The nuclear football is a lot like a Denny's menu

The nuclear football is a lot like a Denny's menu

CNN

By Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

Updated 2001 GMT (0401 HKT) August 23, 2017

A White House military aide and member of the US Navy carries a briefcase known as the "football," containing emergency nuclear weapon codes, as then-President Barack Obama departs from the White House in 2012.

(CNN)Following President Donald Trump's speech in Arizona on Tuesday, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on CNN voiced concerns about Trump's mental stability, particularly in relation to his access to the US nuclear arsenal. "The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary," Clapper said. "So there's very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary."

Wondering whether Clapper was exaggerating (or not), I reached out to an expert: Garrett Graff. Graff, a CNN contributor, is the author of "Raven Rock: The Inside Story of the US Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself -- While the Rest of Us Die." Our conversation, conducted via email and lightly edited for flow, is below.

Cillizza: Clapper said that he worries that "in a fit of pique, [Trump] decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there's actually very little to stop him." How accurate is that?

Graff: It's entirely accurate -- at least once a launch order is given.

Obviously, the aides around the President could try to talk him out of it, if they disagreed with it, but our entire system is geared towards establishing whether a launch order is "valid" only insofar as whether it's actually coming from the President of the United States. There's a classified system of code words that communicate between the President and the person executing the launch order -- either at the Pentagon or the mountain bunker in Pennsylvania, Raven Rock, that serves as the alternate Pentagon -- that the person on the other end of the phone is the actual legitimate commander in chief. But, there's no check or balance in the system about whether it's "valid" to start a nuclear war. There's no second voice, like the defense secretary or chairman of Joint Chiefs, that has to OK a launch.

As bonkers as that may seem, it's a procedure that dates back to the Cold War, when we faced the Soviet Union with tens of thousands of nuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert. A president would have only about 15 minutes to respond to an attack -- perhaps even less -- so we devoted literally billions of dollars to building a system that could transmit a launch order as quickly as possible.

The nuclear football

From the time that a president orders a launch, the first ICBMs would leave their silos about four minutes later.

Cillizza: Let's talk nuclear Football. Who carries it? How is that person chosen? What does it look like? What does it contain?

Graff: The Football -- the nickname comes from the first nuclear war plan, code-named DROPKICK -- is a black briefcase carried by a rotating series of military aides who are never more than a few steps from the President. It's easy to forget it's there, except when you see a guest at Mar-a-Lago snap a selfie with the military aide -- but that aide is always present. When the President gets on an elevator, so does the Football. When you see the President driving his golf cart around his club, there's a golf cart right behind him with the military aide and the Football. During Jimmy Carter's presidency, when he went rafting out west, the Football was in a raft right behind him on the river.

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