83 DRAFT MEMORANDUM FOR The President The Secretary of Defense Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Information copy to McGeorge Bundy Subject The purpose of this memorandum is to fix the responsibility of the Military Aide to the President and his assistants in connection with Presidential signing of certain emergency powers executive orders Presidential authority in relation to the expenditure of nuclear weapons in case of attack including SIOP option choices and Maintenance of secure communications for these purposes and other classified matters while the President is traveling Assumptions A That if the President is in the White House the responsibility for the actions cited in and above rests with the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs assisted by the Military Aide's office as the Special As sistant requests SANITIZED E013292 Sec 3 5 0 NARA Dates 7-08 2 B That if the President is in the Washington area but not in the White House the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs will prescribe to the Military Aide his responsibilities in connection with the Presidential movement C That when the President travels outside the Washington area the Military aide or his properly cleared and trained assistants will carry out the responsibilities in connection with items and above Dis cus sion The history of the development of the requirement for the President to have certain documents accompanying him and be made available to him on short notice has develoPed over the past 15 years largely because of the possibility of the Presidency being destroyed by nuclear attack 3 - 5 53 The next place that the Attorney General became involved was when the law was passed that only the President could authorize the use of nuclear weapons and again the Attorney General ruled that this had to be considered at the time of the event and that the authority had to be gotten from the President The Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff determined that during the 1950's the President would have three or four hours at least to determine whether or not we were going to use nuclear weapons However with the advent of missiles carrying nuclear warheads the time frame for Presidential authorization and decision gradually moved up to 15 minutes as the warning time that they would have before enemy missiles could hit the United States in my opinion this is a little unrealistic now because surprise attack could come from submarine and other ways for which there would be no warning whatsoever The next refinement of this decision came in the early months of the Kennedy Administration when the Joint Chiefs of Staff developed the Single 5 4 Integrated Operational Plan SIOP in which options were available to the Commander-in Chief in the use of nuclear weapons on the assumption that any nuclear re5ponse would be a graduated re3ponse rather than an all-out one with several selections available And this later requirement of selection of Options plus executive authority being relayed to the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff by secure communications has led to the many develoPments and changes in the Presidential communication requirements Accompanying this evolution was the delegation of authority in regard to security of our forces retaliation of our unified commanders when attacked and finally delegation of authority in case of the President being incapacitated All of these considerations led to the assignment of responsibility to the White House Communications Agency 1958 59-60 for the and tran5portation of the emergency powers documents whenever the Presi- dent moved out of the White House 3 3 5 This document is from the holdings of The National Security Archive Suite 701 Gelman Library The George Washington University 2130 H Street NW Washington D C 20037 Phone 202 994-7000 Fax 202 994-7005 nsarchiv@gwu edu