Ike Delegated Approval for Nuclear Strike, Files Show

President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave authority in 1957 to senior U.S. military commanders to retaliate with nuclear weapons if the president could not be reached or was otherwise unable to respond to a nuclear attack against the United States, according to declassified documents released this week.

The authority to launch nuclear weapons was only to be used “when the urgency of time and circumstances clearly does not permit a specific decision by the president, or other person empowered to act in his stead,” according to a 1959 memo outlining the policy for what is known as “pre-delegation authority.” The memo, sent to the head of the Strategic Air Command from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was among 18 formerly classified documents obtained by the National Security Archive, a public interest documentation center.

Defense specialists have long assumed the existence of pre-delegation authority to use nuclear weapons, but the released government memo and internal working papers mark the first time the issue has been publicly documented. Pre-delegation for a nuclear attack has been among the most highly classified and controversial policies in government since atomic bombs entered the U.S. arsenal in 1945.

A senior National Security Council official in the Clinton administration said Friday that the White House would not comment on the pre-delegation issue. Other sources said some elements of pre-delegation still exist today.

The documents, heavily censored before release this week, suggest that Eisenhower’s instructions were continued by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

It is unclear how widely among military commanders authority was granted to launch nuclear weapons in an emergency.

The most likely situation envisioned 40 years ago for pre-delegation authority was in the event of a nuclear “first strike” attack on the United States in which “immediate communications have become impossible between the president and responsible officials of the Department of Defense,” according to the 1959 instructions.

William Burr of the National Security Archive said the declassified materials were obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.