This post is from May 2006. Facts and links may have changed since. See more from that month

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Nuclear Football

A couple of weeks ago, a reader asked whether a military aide still acompanies the President carrying the “nuclear football”—otherwise known as the presiden’t emergency satchel.

I said that I assumed so, but that I hadn’t seen anything in a while and would keep an eye out.

The last article I saw was from early 2005.

Well, we have confirmation, according to a White House staff schedule for the President’s trip to Florida, which a sanitation worker found in the trash.

The schedule includes a list of “every passenger on board each aircraft, from the President to military attaché with nuclear football.”

Wikipedia has a nice entry on the nuclear football, if you are interested.

Jeffrey Lewis

Writing on ACW 2004–2026

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is the founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk.com. He is the Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. His also a non-resident affiliate at Stanford's Center for Security and International Cooperation and a Contributing Editor to Survival.

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