Nukes. How do they work, legally speaking?

[Bryan_Ekers]

@E-DUB

I always felt that Al Haig got a bum rap on that incident. It was pretty clear, to me at least, that he was talking about operational command at the White House itself, rather than an assumption of full presidential powers. (And I say that as a Democrat.)

Same here. I blame Larry Speakes (White House spokesman, acting Press Secretary in the absence of James Brady, who was seriously wounded alongside Reagan in the shooting) for the incident, in light of this exchange:

Reporter: Who is running the government right now?
Speakes: I cannot answer that question at this time.

I get that Speakes was a tad freaked out and overwhelmed, but the best response would have been:

Speakes: Who is running the government? The cabinet secretaries are running their departments in accordance with the policies of the Reagan Administration and will continue to do so until those policies are changed. Secretaries Haig and Weinberger are present here at the White House and are still in control of the State and Defense departments. Vice-President Bush has been notified. The operation of the U.S. government has not been disrupted.

I’m not at all surprised Haig stepped in. His comment wasn’t really the best possible one, either, but it was better than the uncertainty left by Speakes.

[LSLGuy]

@Bryan_Ekers

Same here. I blame Larry Speakes (White House spokesman, acting Press Secretary in the absence of James Brady, who was seriously wounded alongside Reagan in the shooting) for the incident, in light of this exchange:

Reporter: Who is running the government right now?
Speakes: I cannot answer that question at this time.

I get that Speakes was a tad freaked out and overwhelmed, but the best response would have been:

Speakes: Who is running the government? The cabinet secretaries are running their departments in accordance with the policies of the Reagan Administration and will continue to do so until those policies are changed. Secretaries Haig and Weinberger are present here at the White House and are still in control of the State and Defense departments. Vice-President Bush has been notified. The operation of the U.S. government has not been disrupted.

I’m not at all surprised Haig stepped in. His comment wasn’t really the best possible one, either, but it was better than the uncertainty left by Speakes.

This. Haig took a lot of flak for a badly formed sentence. The fact the guy looked like Napoléon didn’t help his stumble being interpreted charitably.

@Gray_Ghost

No. This is from conversations with former LCC personnel, but from them, while they don’t know at the outset of the Emergency Action Message whether the EAM is for a valid Launch Order, by the time they decode the EAM they know. …

This was my experience.

We were on less hair-trigger alerts than the ICBMs were/are. So there were additional factors which segregated practice from actual.
Thinking about the rest of the process … If they ever did send some kind of real-looking order followed by a countermand, what would be the outcome:

1. The troops would learn that launch orders are to be waited on a bit to see if a countermand comes out.
2. Somebody someplace would loose commo after the first order, never get the second, and really fire their weapons. Oops.
3. The enemy would learn there is such a thing as a countermand order and would then have a way to shut down our attacks if they could spy well enough to steal that code ahead of time.

Bottom line: it never makes any kind of sense to have a training scenario like that. When the only kind of order you can receive is “Go Live” or “Go Exercise”, there’s not much way for the enemy to intrude on that process to his benefit.