On January 8, 2021, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took the extraordinary step of publicly revealing she had talked with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, about “available precautions for preventing an unstable President from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.” Milley reportedly issued a statement saying he “answered [Speaker Pelosi’s] questions regarding the process of nuclear command authority.” Four days later, The House of Representatives voted 223-205 to formally call on Vice President Mike Pence to use the 25th Amendment to strip President Trump of his powers after he incited a mob that attacked the Capitol. With the Vice President’s refusal, impeachment proceedings went forward in the House on January 13, 2021, with a vote of 232-197, to impeach President Trump for “incitement of insurrection” in only the fourth presidential impeachment in US history, and the first time a President has been impeached twice.

Without being removed from office, in the absence of a Senate trial, could a leader described as “increasingly isolated, sullen and vengeful” be a dangerous decision-maker with the world’s deadliest arsenal, and what is US policy and law with respect to the limits on such authority?

According to the Truman Library, no known written record exists in which Harry Truman explicitly ordered the use of atomic weapons against Japan [except a] handwritten order, addressed to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, in which Truman authorized the release of a public statement about the use of the bomb.” The Department of Energy’s History and Heritage archives note that how and when it should be used had been the subject of high-level debate for months and that President Truman actually delegated the employment of atomic weapons to the military. Historian Alex Wellerstein has written that “after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki…Truman changed tack. He suddenly seems to realize that this is something that he doesn’t want to delegate to the military”

Truman’s successor, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, spoke with great calm and forethought about the decision to use nuclear weapons. In 1955, he told a New York Times reporter: “Yes, of course, they would be used. In any combat where these things can be used on strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes, I see no reason why they shouldn’t be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.” Contemporaneously, Secretary of State Foster Dulles had “outlined a pattern of using new atomic devices for pinpoint military retaliation anywhere in the world.”

Eric Schlosser wrote in The New Yorker that “[w]ith great reluctance, Eisenhower agreed to let American officers use their nuclear weapons, in an emergency, if there were no time or no means to contact the President.” Conceivably, such a policy covered situations like the death of the President in an attack or a communications breakdown.

Wellerstein further noted when President John F. Kennedy took office in 1961 the–extant controls changed but “[t]here are a lot of details we still don’t know because they’re classified.” What is known, and what abides through the present, are three concepts: the permissive action link (PAL), the Single Integrated Operating Plan (SIOP) and successor plans, and the so-called nuclear “football.”

The US DoD defines PAL as: “[a] device included in or attached to a nuclear weapon system to preclude arming and/or launching until the insertion of a prescribed discrete code or combination. It may include equipment and cabling external to the weapon or weapon system to activate components within the weapon or weapon system.”

In 1960, the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff (JSTPS) created SIOP-62, in effect on April 15, 1961, giving the President of the United States a range of targeting options, and described launch procedures and target sets, consistent with then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s philosophy that “…one cannot fashion a credible deterrent out of an incredible action.” It is reported that Kennedy wanted the SIOP to make nuclear war “more flexible.” The highly classified SIOP continued to be updated through 2003, when it was renamed OPLAN (Operations Plan) 8022, then CONPLAN (contingency plan) 8022, and since July 2012, the US nuclear war plan has been OPLAN 8010-12, Strategic Deterrence and Force Employment.

Perhaps the most curious and iconic of the three Kennedy-era nuclear launch innovations is the nuclear “football,” or Presidential Emergency Satchel, which first came into use in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Kennedy recognized shortfalls in communications and verification of presidential instructions to implement war plans involving nuclear weapons. The resultant briefcase(s) contained, for the President’s use: the Black Book of retaliatory options, a book listing classified site locations, a manila folder giving a description of procedures for the Emergency Broadcast System, and a three-by-five inch card with authentication codes [which the president usually carries separately from the football].” According to Secretary McNamara, a nuclear war plan at the time was code-named “Dropkick”—a sequence that naturally would require a “football”—hence the briefcase’s nickname. To be used in conjunction with these items would be the Gold Codes, or the launch codes for nuclear weapons and secure communications equipment.

The Congressional Research Service notes that Presidents have sole authority to authorize U.S. nuclear weapons use, inherent in their constitutional role as Commander in Chief. A President can seek counsel from their military advisors; the protocol calls for a meeting with their military advisers, who might “adjust his orders to meet the laws of armed conflict,” but those advisors are then required to transmit and implement the orders authorizing nuclear use……… https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2021/01/kevin-govern-presidential-power-nuclear-weapons/