George Lee Butler II: The "Brick"
General George Lee Butler had been awarded his fourth star and installed as Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command in late January, 1991.
The only jobs in the military hierarchy to which General Butler might have been promoted now were Chief of Staff of the Air Force (who at the time was General “Tony” McPeak), and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (General Colin Powell). The civilians above these military officers were only the Secretary of Defense (Dick Cheney), and finally the person designated by our Constitution as the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces, the President, who in 1991 was George H. W. Bush.
Of all of these higher-ups, the only person who could order General Butler to execute our operational plan for nuclear war was President Bush.
If President Bush were still alive. If he weren’t alive, then orders might come from the next person in the official line of succession who was alive. A line of succession had been established by Congress in 1947 because of what might happen now that nuclear weapons were in the world.
General Butler could have taken orders from a successor. If it could be established that that person was the legal successor.
Using what communications were still working.
After a nuclear attack, a lot might be up in the air. General Butler could be pretty much on his own.
On the day he became CINCSAC, General Butler was given a telephone called the “brick” that he was to have with him at all times. The “brick” was the telephone on which he might one day get a call from the North American Air Defense Command. NORAD oversaw the systems designed to warn us that we might be under nuclear attack. It had been built in late 50’s and 60’s at an air base in southern Colorado. Next to it was an Alternate Command Center that had been built inside Cheyenne Mountain. It was a huge complex, a small town really, with its own water supply and barber shop and so on. Cheyenne Mountain was granite. The Alternate Command Center was built on giant metal springs.
If General Butler got a call from NORAD telling him that their systems were showing that we were under nuclear attack, he would use the “brick” to call the “football.” The “football” was a thick briefcase being carried by a military aide who had been ordered to stay close to the President, George H. W. Bush, at all times. The briefcase contained a telephone, operational plans for nuclear war, and the security codes that the president would need to order the execution of those plans.
At night, the military aide with the “football” was stationed outside the President’s bedroom door.
If the call came in to the “football” and was authenticated, the President would be interrupted, or awakened if necessary. When the President took the phone, on the other end would be General Butler. He would characterize the attack for the President and explain the options available for responding to it.
The President might be well versed in the options, but might not. Some more than others, I suppose. Just in case, the football contained some simplified visual aids on big cards.
General Butler and the President would consider the options. It was thought that no more than 15 minutes would be available to the President and General Butler to do this. Perhaps less. Perhaps a lot less.
The President might know that at the top he had three options. He could order a Launch on Warning, or, if the attack had begun, a Launch Under Attack. A third option would be Launch on Rideout. For that one, they would wait until the incoming weapons struck.
If the President chose Launch on Warning and the alarm had been a false alarm (we’d had a few of those already), the President could be the one who caused the nuclear war.
Choosing Launch on Rideout would allow the President to be sure the alarm wasn’t a false alarm and also to know how extensive the attack was. But if the attack had been a general one with hundreds of nuclear weapons, riding it out might also mean that our ability to retaliate with our own nuclear weapons would be reduced, maybe even eliminated—even though we had taken any number of measures to try to make sure we had a Second Strike Capability. Having a Second Strike Capability—or, more critically, being thought to have one—would be necessary, it had been recognized, for deterrence.
Since the 1970’s, the Soviets had been thought to have a Second Strike Capability too.
The Second Strike Capability was there for deterrence but only if deterrence failed would it would be used.
Our ballistic missile submarines were what seemed to offer the best shot at having a Second Strike Capability. A massive attack on the United States wouldn’t do anything to them.
You don’t suppose the President would ever choose Launch on Rideout, do you?
Might he choose not to retaliate at all? On the argument that millions of innocent people had already been killed in this country and killing millions of innocent people in the Soviet Union would simply compound the evil? Not likely, I grant. But logically possible. He might not. He wouldn’t have to retaliate.
If the President had launched our Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and the alarm turned out to have been a false alarm, we’d just have to live with the consequences. Missiles can’t be called back.
There were 120,000 airmen in the Strategic Air Command. Some of them were women by 1991, but in the Air Force, they were all called “airmen.” These airmen were stationed at some 36 bases around the United States and in some foreign countries. Earlier in the Cold War we’d had almost twice as many bases, here at home and around the Soviet Union. They hadn’t had any around us.
After the President gave General Butler the order, if it were an order to launch immediately, General Butler would be expected to pass the order along instantly to the launch officers in SAC on nuclear alert who would launch their weapons as quickly as possible. Bombers and missiles. All already loaded up with fuel and with our immensely powerful “strategic” nuclear weapons that were many tens of times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
The ICBMs we had on alert during General Butler’s time used solid fuel and could be launched within five minutes or so of getting the order. The bombers might be called back. The missiles, as we said, couldn’t be. Thirty minutes after being launched, they would arrive at their destinations. We had timed it so they wouldn’t arrive all at once and possibly interfere with each other. They had been, we hoped, “deconflicted.”
The ballistic missile submarines out on “deterrent patrol” wouldn’t have to launch on warning. Because their location wasn’t known, they could wait to be sure the alarm hadn’t been a false alarm. If the submarines weren’t yet in their launch positions, they might have to hold off a while until they got into position. Once they were in position, they could decide what to do. Using what information they were able to get.
In his remarkable memoir, Uncommon Cause: A Life at Odds with Convention (2 vols., 2016), General Butler gives an account of the no-notice “Night Blue” drills conducted every month. In them, the exchange between him and the President would be practiced. At the end, Butler found he would always be asked by the person on the other end, who in the drills was never the President, “General Butler, what is your recommendation?”
It struck General Butler that if that was how it went, he—an unelected military man—might be, de facto, the person who would decide whether and how to respond to a nuclear attack.
This had also been true, presumably, for the twelve CINCSACs who preceded him. Did you know this was how it would go? Or did you think it would be our well-informed President who would be calling the shots?
Next: George Lee Butler: Hard Things He Did as CINCSAC