The Real Story of the “Football” That Follows the President Everywhere

By Michael Dobbs

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2014

It is the closest modern-day equivalent of the medieval crown and scepter—a symbol of supreme authority.

Accompanying the commander in chief wherever he goes, the innocuous-looking briefcase is touted in movies and spy novels as the ultimate power accessory, a doomsday machine that could destroy the entire world.

Although its origins remain highly classified, the Football can be traced back to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Privately, John F. Kennedy believed that nuclear weapons were, as he put it, “only good for deterring.” He also felt it was “insane that two men, sitting on opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization.” Horrified by the doctrine known as MAD (mutually assured destruction), JFK ordered locks to be placed on nuclear weapons and demanded alternatives to the “all or nothing” nuclear war plan. A declassified Kennedy memo documents the concerns that led to the invention of the Football as a system for verifying the identity of the commander in chief. The president posed the following chilling, but commonsense, questions:

“What would I say to the Joint War Room to launch an immediate nuclear strike?” “How would the person who received my instructions verify them?”

According to former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, the Football acquired its name from an early nuclear war plan code-named “Dropkick.” (“Dropkick” needed a “football” in order to be put into effect.) The earliest known photograph of a military aide trailing the president with the telltale black briefcase (a modified version of a standard Zero-Halliburton model) was taken on May 10, 1963, at the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Since 1963, the Football has become a staple of presidential trips, and was even photographed in Red Square in May 1988, accompanying President Ronald Reagan on a state visit to the Soviet Union. (Reagan’s Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, was accompanied by a military aide who was clutching a very similar device, known in Russian as the chemodanchik, or “little briefcase.”)

A recurring complaint of presidents and military aides alike has been that the Football, which currently weighs around 45 pounds, contains too much documentation. President Jimmy Carter, who had qualified as a nuclear submarine commander, was aware that he would have only a few minutes to decide how to respond to a nuclear strike against the United States. Carter ordered that the war plans be drastically simplified. A former military aide to President Bill Clinton, Col. Buzz Patterson, would later describe the resulting pared-down set of choices as akin to a “Denny’s breakfast menu.” “It’s like picking one out of Column A and two out of Column B,” he told the History Channel.

The first unclassified reference to the existence of the Football is contained in a formerly top-secret memorandum from 1965 obtained by the National Security Archive of George Washington University. Tasked with reducing the weight of the Football, a senior defense official agreed this was a worthy goal, but added, “I am sure we can find strong couriers who are capable of carrying an additional pound or two of paper.” For the Football to function as designed, the military aide must be nearby the commander in chief at all times and the president must be in possession of his authentication codes. Both elements of the system have failed on occasion. According to the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Hugh Shelton, Clinton mislaid his laminated code card, nicknamed the “Biscuit,” for several months in 2000. “This is a big deal, a gargantuan deal,” the general complained in his 2010 autobiography, Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior. An even closer brush with disaster came during the attempted assassination of Reagan in March 1981. During the chaos that followed the shooting, the military aide was separated from the president, and did not accompany him to the George Washington University hospital. In the moments before Reagan was wheeled into the operating theater, he was stripped of his clothes and other possessions. The Biscuit was later found abandoned, unceremoniously dumped in a hospital plastic bag. It seems unlikely that a crown or scepter would have been treated so cavalierly.

Biden moving forward with placing Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire hasn’t let up on the fight to put abolitionist and political activist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. And with the Biden Administration announcing its intention to make the long-awaited change, Tubman is poised to become the first woman ever to be printed on a bill. And after years of advocating for it, Shaheen is finally poised to take a victory lap.

“Our paper currency is how we measure value in our society, and the fact that we haven't had any women on our paper currency is a suggestion that we don't value the contributions of women in the way that we should,” Shaheen told NBC News’ Know Your Value. “I'm so excited to see the new administration say that they're going to make this a priority.”

The redesigned $20 bill was announced during President Obama’s second term, after the Treasury Department launched a poll to get public input on who should replace former President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.

“The decision to put Harriet Tubman on the new $20 bill was driven by thousands of responses we received from Americans young and old,” Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said in 2016. “I have been particularly struck by the many comments and reactions from children for whom Harriet Tubman is not just a historical figure, but a role model for leadership and participation in our democracy.”

As a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Tubman led enslaved people from the South to freedom in the Northern states and Canada. She also served as a soldier and spy for the Union Army during the Civil War.

The new bill was expected to go into circulation in 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted some women the right to vote. (Crucially, many women of color, including Black women and Native women, were excluded from the women’s suffrage movement.)

But despite the fanfare and planning, the effort languished under the Trump Administration. Trump favored Jackson, a former Army general and slaveholder who is perhaps best known for his role in the forced relocation of Native Americans that robbed them of their land and resulted in thousands of deaths.

While Jackson’s image now graces one of the most-circulated bills in U.S. currency, as president he engaged in a bitter fight with the country’s national bank and actually warned against the use of paper money. As a candidate Trump called the Tubman plan “pure political correctness” and proposed printing the former slave-turned-abolitionist’s image on the $2 bill instead.

“Given the other actions of the Trump Administration, I was not surprised, I will be honest,” Shaheen said. “But that's why it's so exciting now to see that we have a president who recognizes that we need to reflect our society as a whole in everything we do… Having Harriet Tubman on the $20 shows that we value what she did, that we value women, that we value people of color. And I think for so many reasons, it's a very exciting signal to people throughout our country.”

Sunday's Motivation

Sharing a little Sunday Wisdom...from NO MERCY, Book Two of The Encounter Series.

Giving up on your goals because of temporary setbacks is almost as bad as slashing your own tires because you got a flat.

Establishing obtainable goals is one heck of a challenge. I know this personally as I have had one devastating challenge after another in the last month and a half.

Unfortunately...we have experienced some small delays in our book release coupled with unexpected adjustments but we're back on track.

We're currently working on setting our book price and pre-sale date and releasing our Book Collection Cards to our valued fans and Subscribers to our website. Talk about excited! I/m pretty sure you are as anxious as we are to see the finished product.

I can't wait to get it in my hands.