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Kinley with private lines to the War
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a military telegraph system which was .
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phone again became a vital tool in p (,j
House telephone made slow but steady p1
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For the first time in American history,” wrote one observer after the close of the war, “the president, in the fullest sense, was enabled from his executive office to exercise his prerogative as commander-in-chief.” These words, surprisingly, refer not to President Lyndon B. Johnson during the Vietnam conflict but rather to the wartime role of President William McKinley during the Spanish-American War. With startling suddenness, McKinley, in April 1898, discovered the telephone and, in combination with the telegraph, used remote voice communication for the first time to project presidential presence into the battle zone on a near realtime basis while he remained in Washington.
By 1898, the White House telephone was already 21 years old, having been first installed in late 1877 during the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes. In the first two decades it was used mainly by the White House staff and occasionally by reporters covering the President. The Chief Executives during this period, except possibly for Grover Cleveland in his second term (1893-97), seldom used it and none had an instrument on his desk or in his office. When the Spanish- American war erupted, however, McKinley found himself confronted with a two-front war—one in Cuba some 90 miles off the Florida Keys, and the other in the Philippine Islands, 10,000 miles to the west. As military and political events began to accelerate, the President felt the need to be in closer contact with his forces if he was to decisively affect the outcome.
To enable McKinley to better monitor and control his widely dispersed naval and ground forces, Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin F. Montgomery, U. S. Army Signal Corps, was brought into the White House to take charge of the rather rudimentary telephone and telegraph installations. Montgomery’s first move was to transform a second floor office into a military information center. Into this “war room,” as this hastily constructed presidential command post was called, the Signal Corps crammed 25 telegraph keys and 15 telephones plus large wall maps of the probable battle areas in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines, and adjacent ocean areas. The 15 telephones, which were in addition to the original installation, provided President Mc-
Navy Departments, other key Washington, plus a direct line from the House to Tampa, Florida, where troops" ; being deployed for an amphibious invasi0’ Cuba.
In addition to the voice circuit from ^ White House to Tampa, “flying telepb0^ .. squads were dispatched to Cuba to acC^ pany front line troops. Battlefield inform3^ coming into these mobile communic3^,, centers was telephoned to the nearest graph station and from there by submaI cable and land line to the White House'
room.
Kinley took an intense interest in his pers' ,, command/information center, sPe^„i over war maps. There, surrounded by ^ , ing telegraphs and whirring telephones, not only observed the movements of tr° ^ , direct commands to his generals and presidential leadership in war from a ^ House command center was in contras1 Lincoln’s experience during the Civil * j With no telegraph in the White House, the telephone, of course, not yet develop Lincoln had to leave the Executive Mans1^ and walk to the War Department where ] would wait to send or receive messages .,
111111 LU1 V A. U J Lj * * ** ***v^'* ’ t
its infancy. Although unstructured and 11 with its voice and telegraph communicate^ presaged the arrival of modern preside)1 crisis management.
In the interval between the Spanish-AiW j
dential leadership during crisis, the
ress towards the center of presidential decisr making. J cations and when he assumed office in 1901 began to expand the White House arrau?
phone and telegraph facilities in the ne'
iy telephones for the White House staff.
. 03, some 17 separate instruments were
. -c® *
Jfcich
n°t have a phone in his office. His suc- fjcir’ William Howard Taft, found the de- ® much more to his liking, and made effec- 'lsc °f it both in his official duties and ir
ted West Wing and to increase the num-
> nf _ 1 /» . __ __
were linked to the outside world Hvit^ a recently installed single-position l^jC, “oard- Only a few years earlier there W een a single instrument for the entire House staff, including the President, no central switchboard. pjlQ °0sevelt was said to have used the tele- Oi,!ne rather sparingly himself, and then lijj ln emergencies. Like his predecessors, he
to members of his family in Cincinnati and New York. On a number of occasions during critical debates over Administration bills, Taft used the telephone link between the White House and Capitol Hill to persuade a reluctant senator or congressman.
Towards the end of Taft’s term in 1912, the subject of the “war room” for the President was revived. This time, however, the “most important wire center in the country,” as one Washington newspaper described it, was equipped with only one telephone booth (especially designed for the 360-pound President), plus telegraph keys. Taft, as it developed, found the arrangement inconvenient and reportedly used it only once or twice. Of course, there was no compelling need at the time, as no national emergency existed that required quick decision and fast response from the White House to the field.
Although the single telephone booth in William Howard Taft’s war room was especially designed to accommodate the 360-pound President, he found it inconvenient and, since no war or national emergency occurred during his administration, he used it only once or twice.
Woodrow Wilson’s first term as President began in peace, but by its close the war clouds of the European conflict had begun moving closer to the United States. By 1916, the climate in Washington underwent a marked change and, as the threat to American security grew, the time seemed ripe to reassess the status of presidential communications. But such a review never came, even after the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. Throughout the war period, President Wilson made no special effort to tailor White House communications to his needs as the nation’s Commander-inChief. As President, he preferred personal contacts, handwritten letters, and special envoys to communicate on more sensitive matters. His particular attitude toward the telephone appeared to be one of indifference tinged with distrust. It was said he disliked speaking into the mouthpiece and, at one point, reportedly left instructions with the
tury.
White House operators not to disturb him.
Wilson’s attitude, however, did not carry over to America’s military establishment. In Europe, an extensive web of telephone lines spread across the war zone. In Washington, the War Department installed a 40-position switchboard, the largest in the world, to serve the wartime explosion of military activity and voice communications.
After the war, however, President Wilson did participate in a communications “first” that was to have major implications for future presidential voice communications. This experiment involved the radio-telephone which Wilson used to keep in touch with Washington while he was en route to the Paris Peace Conference by ship. The radiotelephone, developed by the U. S. Navy after the turn of the century to improve ship-to- shore and ship-to-ship communications, was installed in the USS George Washington, which carried Wilson to Europe. By his second trip in March 1919, sufficient progress had been made to hold two-way conversations between the ship and the U. S. capital while at sea.
The period between World War I and World War II was not unlike the interval separating the Spanish-Ainerican War and 1917, in that domestic issues again gained the ascendancy, while the President’s role as the
nation’s Commander-in- Chief receded |n the background. Also, the communica11 _ revolution, now spurred on by wartime PlC sures and state-of-the-art improvements tinued to intensify. These factors, coup with rapid expansion of the federal gove. ment, produced yet further improvement5 the White House voice communication 1 works. ,
By 1925, the number of White House te^ phones had grown to 37, more than dou the number present during Theodore R°0^. velt’s first administration. Moreover, 1925, the President had some 15 private U’C to the offices and homes of the Secretane5^ State, War, and Navy plus other key a ministrative figures, a practice which be? with McKinley before the turn of the celf Four years later, in 1929, the Win1
House telegraph and telephone services ■ ^ moved into new quarters, the first su change since 1902. The one-position sM* board, which had served the White H° since 1901, was replaced by a two-pos'a board capable of handling the many IlC'( “special circuits” required for Preside Herbert Hoover.
By the close of the decade, however, mc. remained one major shortcoming: the PreS' dent was still without a phone on his oeS
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Sldent had to leave his desk and go to some office if he wished to receive or place a (k This logistical problem effectively kept
outside the President’s office
mauguration, Hoover a handset installed on his desk.
v°ice
°nly
communications network which spanned the continent but also
,^d overseas to Europe. Although Hoover
'ii i n°^ use the overseas capability, he did
jg .e wide use of the phone domestically, ttIng
new records in the number of calls ade by a President.
The
by the President in foreign affairs th CS existed for a number of years, al- ^ °ugh the need was never clearly apparent p Png most of the interwar period. In 1928 Vln Goolidge opened regular long-distance
kCe the days of Rutherford Hayes, the
rQ Phone
Potylne’ one steP awaY from the center of
Th
ye advent of Herbert Hoover into the ^idency in March 1929 corrected what had ,ried an obvious omission to many. Within tee weeks of his
Sr -
'list aPParentlY an insignificant moment in pa0ry, this decision had a far-reaching im- tii^ °n t^le presidency for now, for the first e- the President was in arm’s reach of a
not expossibility that the telephone could
jWice to Spain by exchanging greetings with Alfonso over a 5,000-mile radio-tele- jj °ne hookup. Two years later, President § °0ver inaugurated a similar service to (j°uth America when he talked to the Presi- fer>ts of Chile and Uruguay from the Cabinet (^0rn in the White House. In both instances conversations were limited to polite rotocol exchanges.
th •Wards the end of the 1930s, however, as p e 'nternational climate began to deteriorate, rr,'s'dent Franklin Roosevelt took steps to Qf°rient G- S. policy to provide active support .. England and France. As he did so, pro- lrig for faster and more frequent communi- : tl0r>s with Europe became an urgent prior- In May 1940, when Winston Churchill ^as installed as the British Prime Minister, ^_°osevelt took the opportunity to order a j/cct telephone circuit between the White ?Pse and No. 10 Downing Street. In the 'heal weeks and months to follow, Roosevelt d Churchill talked, frequently negotiating
greater and lesser issues over the phone, rather than through the traditional, time-consuming diplomatic channels.
Although their initial communications capability was only a prelude to the sophisticated, global voice communications networks to follow in the postwar era, the Roosevelt- Churchill circuit clearly indicated the great potential which long-distance telephony held for presidential leadership in foreign affairs.
The attack on Pearl Harbor a few months later led to a series of rapid and fundamental changes in White House communications. The need for speed, security, mobility, and flexibility suddenly took a quantum jump as national survival and the President’s role as Commander-in-Chief again emerged as the nation’s number-one priority.
As in McKinley’s time, the Army Signal Corps was again brought into the White House and given charge of communications. Its job in 1941, as in 1898 and today, was to supply the President with rapid, effective, and secure communications wherever and however he travelled by land, sea, or air. As the Signal Corps moved to meet the President’s leadership needs, two trends became apparent. One was the beginning of a truly separate communications system to serve the President (in addition to the networks serving White House staff) and the other was the growth of communications mobility for the nation’s Commander-in-Chief. Faced with a two-front war thousands of miles apart and the deployment and command of large armies and navies, Roosevelt could never be far from the fast-breaking and tumultuous events taking place in Europe and the Pacific; communications had to accompany him wherever he travelled.
In the fall of 1942, a radio station was installed in President Roosevelt’s train to make possible direct teletype contact with the War Department in Washington and with the White House. On routes frequently travelled, special telephone installations were emplaced at the more important locations such as Hyde Park, N. Y., and Warm Springs, Georgia, which gave the President voice links with the White House and the War Department. Later, this communications mobility concept was extended to include the wartime conferences of the “Big Three.” At Casa-
blanca, Quebec, Cairo, Tehran, and Yalta, the Army’s Command and Administrative Network (ACAN) set up elaborate teleprinter and telephone communications in advance. These facilities gave the Big Three firm and rapid contact with their respective capitals and with their commanders in the field. At Cairo, in November 1943, for example, a four- position switchboard providing 300 telephone lines, was installed. In addition, a small, one- position telephone switchboard was provided for President Roosevelt’s personal use.
As in the Spanish-American War, however, it was the teletype rather than the telephone which was to carry the main burden in overseas transmissions to field commanders from the heads of state. The need for secrecy and record copies, and the uncertainty of overseas radiotelephonv made the cable a logical choice.
The arrival of the nuclear age, crisis diplomacy, and domestic unrest, accelerated the trends in presidential communication spawned by World War II. The need for more speed and greater reliability, flexibility, variety, and mobility in communication mounted rapidly as the President’s scope of responsibility and range of action broadened
dramatically at home and abroad. Tec^ cally, the need for better communica11 was answered by the development of tf communications whereby voice, telepr11 video, and data flowed simultaneously f the same broad-band channel, thus replaC, , the separate communication networks f dominated the industry prior to the "
efl1 tb«
_ _ ia
key instrument in presidential decision-!" f ing. All reluctance or reservations about u® the telephone in the nation’s business played by earlier presidents, such as Wood' ^ Wilson, completely disappeared. It becan'e central ingredient in the president’s d schedule. ^
The measure of the marriage between presidency and the telephone in the post" period was clearly evidenced as the presto began to exercise his new role as the natio1’
In this new communications environ!'1' it was the telephone which emerged ns
crisis manager.
Crisis management, as it is known
to'
d*»y>
for
did not emerge as a clear requirement the presidency until the late 1950s and e3' , 1960s, when a series of domestic and f°r, crises and weapon advances made Washing ton the center of decision-making as Wel* * decision-implementation. Lebanon in ’ the Congo in 1960, and Berlin in 1961 stir1^
the
the coals of East-West hostility, raising of nuclear conflict between
specter _________________ .
two superpowers. As a consequence, policy matters and military decisions wh,c formerly had been settled in the field "e referred to Washington in gro'vlIJ\
numbers. Decision times, which in pre-Wor War II days could be measured in weeks ^ months, shrank to hours and even minutes the 30-minute launch-to-impact time of "
IGBM quickened the pace to military aC^°,! and reaction. In addition, the President5 decision-making circle sharply increased 1,1 size as the President found it necessary tLj consult a range of U. S. military and politic3 leaders at home and abroad and, by the strange logic of nuclear diplomacy, it soO'1 became necessary also to talk directly with dlC foe in the midst of tension.
The Cuban missile crisis of October 19^" provided the first broad test of nuclear-a?c crisis management in which the Preside!11
]°uSht to %urces
pla serv*ces had been integrated and
S'
The President’s personal communica- s interface
tioti; __
telePho ‘tuly
nOU;
. records in the use of the White House ^Phones
"hi
Hile
cati
Jou
away from the White House, coinmuni- °n followed the President each step of the
use all the communications re- 0lJat his command to out-think and d' the foe, while avoiding nuclear
aU(JSler 1962, the long-haul command
tu p Control communications of the three U1‘uta
under the Defense Communications with this network was his >ne which, by 1962, had become a flexible, mobile, and universal instru- Cgj?^uside the White House, the President’s di .. director had replaced the single (non- |? ' handset which had served the Chief , ecutive through the 1950s. By pressing a b °n to bypass the White House operator, r^es'dent John F. Kennedy could quickly yj ch his key political and military advisors.
oreover, through this instrument, he also th access to the world-wide capabilities of commercial telephone systems.
Ur*ug the critical week of 15 October and prior to the Cuban blockade an- ncernent, the President and his staff set in a massive effort to co-ordinate tttany unpredictable facets of the crisis.
w>ey. On an electioneering jaunt to the tej West during that week, for example, a u ePhone hookup directly to the White °tise was emplaced behind each speaker’s p, nd at each stop along the way. It was a tele- Y °ne call, from Washington to Chicago on p^Ptrday, 20 October, which brought the Resident back to the Capital and into the 'lal deliberations leading up to the quaran- 11(5 decision the following day.
§ '^der the President’s blockade decision on J^day, 21 October, a “master scenario” ^ drawn up by U. Alexis Johnson which <){ lhe role and timing for each branch
t^le government. The key ingredients in te Scenario were orders to embassies, ships’ ^ °Vements, Army and Air Force deployments, riefings to key officials at home and abroad, d informing the American people and the u?dd at large. Some of the uses to which the fl'lc House telephone was put during these ase moments included calls to congressmen nd senators to bring them back to Washing- °a for an urgent meeting with the President,
and calls to former presidents Hoover, Truman, and Eisenhower in which President Kennedy informed them of the impending U. S. actions. When Prime Minister Harold MacMillan was told of the U. S. decision, he promptly telephoned President Kennedy to assure him of his support, an act reminiscent of the Roosevelt-Churchill calls some two decades earlier, when England was similarly confronted with an imminent threat to its security.
In addition to the telephone, President Kennedy also used two other forms of remote voice communications—television and radio —in crucial crisis management roles, this time to help shape a world-wide public consensus. One of the main reasons for Alexis Johnson’s “master scenario” had been not only to co-ordinate the U. S. military and political response, but also to prepare for President Kennedy’s television appearance on the night of 22 October. At 7:00 p.m. that evening, President Kennedy took to the air and before a TV audience of some 50 million, plus a worldwide radio audience of several million more, announced the U. S. quarantine of Cuba.
The pre-address secrecy and timing of the President’s TV-radio appearance and the
cti
deter11
ayaium. xxv. naa tctixgiii. iiiotut a. l vjaiiviun ------------------------------------ -
San Jose State College. While at Stanford Rcse j,e Institute in Menlo Park, California (1962-196^^,.
By 1962, however, the attitude towards ^
integrity of the foe’s communications ha^
been completely reversed. With the threat 1 ’ rldi
large audience he reached at home and abroad were key factors in the management of the crisis. The President’s purpose was not only to inform the American people, but also to bring the decision out in the open, into the spotlight of world opinion. In so doing, he sought to minimize ambiguity and reduce opportunities for misinterpretation and miscalculation, particularly on the part of the Soviets.
While 64 years and the nuclear age separate the two Cuban episodes—the one in 1898 and the other in 1962—there still exist interesting parallels. Many of the same crisis ingredients were present—the surge of tension, the need for detailed information and fast decisions, and the direct exercise of presidential leadership from the White House in military decisions at the field level. Also, both Presidents McKinley and Kennedy displayed an intense interest in following the details of the military buildup and maneuvers; President McKinley, from the messages and the maps which hung in the makeshift war room set up in the White House; and President Kennedy, from his own office and the Situation Room which, by 1962, had become a fixed asset in the President’s decision-making machinery.
In terms of the President’s role as Commander-in-Chief, the Cuban missile crisis removed all doubt concerning either the intent or capability of the President to exercise direct control over military decisions in the field when he felt it was in the national interests to do so. President Kennedy’s personal interest in the movement of individual U. S. warships in the blockade was a case in point. By the end of 1962, it was clear that the details of “who’s in charge” in the nuclear age were quietly being redrawn as the President, aided by communications, was locking himself in with field-level decisions.
The dissimilarities between the two crises also merit close attention, since they reflect radical changes in the application of communications to international relations. At the time of the Spanish-American War, Commodore George Dewey in the Far East and the American military commanders in Cuba considered it to be in the nation’s best interests to deny Spanish commanders the ability to communicate with their home government in
Polaris sea-based
served as a Senior Politico-Military Flistorian. - he specialized in case histories of recent world c ^ analyzing the crisis management process at the tional level.
i jg
Madrid. Thus Dewey cut the telegraph ca from Manila to Hong Kong, while the ican commanders in Cuba severed the ca j landings in Cuba. The consequence .. Dewey’s action was to delay details of victory at Manila by six days, since the n f sage had to go by ship from Manila to fj0' Kong, the nearest cable connection to Waf ington. For this same reason, ground figf1^ in the Philippines continued four days a the peace protocol had been signed in “ a | ington. ,{llC
ha4
nuclear holocaust hanging over the '■V°I ,j both the United States and Russia recogn'z.e the necessity for both sides to have and mall\ tain fast, reliable communications betwc forces in the field and higher headquartc Thus, during the suspense-laden days of *a October and early November 1962, _
United States did nothing to impair the cO>'^ munications between Moscow and the So'1 merchant ships sailing towards a confront tion with the U. S. Navy off the coast of Cuva Likewise, Moscow did nothing to intede^ with the flow of messages between Wash11’5 ton and the U. S. Navy blockade f°rC^ athwart the Soviet shipping lanes leading Cuba. ,
Another dimension to the communicati^_ equation was the need for the opposing hea ^ of government to talk during the course the crisis. Telegrams from the White House
>h 1!°rnehmes as long as 12 hours to reach Kremlin. Coming at a moment of great
ktis:
sion.
t, uidi eiiner a direct telephone or lj ePrinter link would suffice. Later, however,
■e difficulties (rather than promote solu-
'.ri(J!1*er ■Khrushchev took at least six hours
p —•> these delays seemed interminable, ...0ltlpting President Kennedy to urge that ,.Jstantaneous communications” be estab- n eh between the Kremlin and the White li °i.USe ®°r use in future nuclear crisis. Such a f0 Asserted President Kennedy, would make (,r safer situations.” Initially, the President °ught that either
doubted the desirability of a “hot tele- 'One”, since such a voice link might
n the wake of the Cuban confrontation, i residential crisis management gradually ecame more institutionalized. The decision- ^ aking group drew primarily on the National with uncertain futures, suddenly became valuable and necessary fixtures in the President’s emergency operations. The White House Situation Room, the State Department Operations Center, the National Military Command Center, and others received new roles and new capabilities.
Likewise, government communications received a new look. Mindful of the shortcomings in communications at the time of Cuba, President Kennedy called for the creation of the National Communications System in August 1963. The objective of this system, said the President, would be “to provide necessary communications for the Federal Government under all conditions ranging from a normal situation to national emergencies and international crises, including nuclear attack.” It was now clear that the risk of communication failure or inadequacy in time of international peril must be reduced to an acceptable minimum as quickly as possible.
Throughout this period of turbulent change, the telephone continued to move deeper into the presidency and closer to the man who occupied that august office. The assassination of President Kennedy and the transfer of the presidency to Lyndon Johnson on 22 November placed the heaviest demands yet on the telephones surrounding the nation’s highest office. In the early hours following the shooting, for example, the U. S. common carriers cleared trunklines between Dallas and Washington and rushed additional telephone equipment to Parkland Hospital and Love Field in Dallas in order that the new President, the White House aides, and the Secret Service could have unimpaired and uninterrupted service to Washington and elsewhere. From the presidential aircraft Air Force One at Love Field, President Johnson telephoned Robert Kennedy at his home in Virginia. Later, there were conversations between Air
Because the Cuban Confrontation demonstrated that the six-to-twelve hours it took for telegrams to travel from the White House to the Kremlin, was far too long, the so-called "hot-line,” which requires constant manning by communications personnel and Russian language interpreters, was established in August 1963.
Force One in Dallas, the White House, and the Air Force jet over the Pacific carrying Secretary of State Dean Rusk to Japan, all for the purpose of establishing the fact that a new President was actively in charge. The extensive coverage by radio and television of Mr. Johnson’s movement into the White House helped immeasurably to confirm to the American people, the Soviet Union, and the world at large that the continuity of the U. S. government and its military command had not been broken but, instead, was very much intact.
The new President had been in office only a few weeks when it became clear that his reliance on and use of the telephone, as well as television and radio, would leave him
idei’1
Johnson talked by telephone with PreS‘ ]2 Mohammed Ayub Khan in Karachi, uifU,
---------------------------------- —o '
that both Pakistan and India abide .
dated
cease-fire which had just been negotia the Kashmir. .
Perhaps the most co-ordinated coniB>u,ll(( tions effort by President Johnson, ho've' ^ was during the Tonkin Gulf incident August 1964. Although it was on a 11111 j lower tension level than the Cuban crisis3,1
oresefl*
remains politically controversial, it repiLJ” ( a significant refinement in the effective use^, every available mode of communication the President.
The episode began on 4 August 1964. 'v^e
second to none among American presidents. During the Panamanian disturbances of January 1964, President Johnson talked with both the President of Panama and the U. S. military commander in the Canal Zone. In the spring of 1965, during the U. S. intervention in the Dominican Republic, President Johnson personally telephoned the U. S. military commander on the scene, General Bruce Palmer, in order to check out a UPI report that 12,000 rebel troops were poised to attack U. S. troops arriving by helicopter (the report turned out to be false). A few months later, in September 1965, President
a report of the second torpedo-boat attack 0 a U. S. destroyer arrived at the White H°l at 11:00 a.m., one hour before a reg11^. meeting of the National Security Council- ■ the NSC began to discuss the event, a c°^ census quickly emerged that the N°r,
fished-
Vietnamese should not go unpun
Within the next few hours, President John
iso1'
>nse
a limited, single-strike resp°ff^ the patrol boat bases, avoid1115
decided on
against the patrol boat bases, avon densely populated areas. At this point White House telephones became key tools1 co-ordinating the many political and milit3^ facets of the problem.
At 6:45 p.m., the same evening, CongreS sional leaders were briefed at a White HollS‘
tbe
the
Presi
t!?i
meeting. At 8:45 p.m., George Reedy, White House Press Secretary, announced d'3
,ak«
the President would have a statement to m ^ to the nation that evening over television a*1 radio. Simultaneous with Reedy’s announce ment, the military’s Defense Communicati011 System went into action, sending the strike order down the chain-of-command until 1
arrived at the carriers Ticonderoga and Co'1 stellation on patrol near the mouth of the
of Tonkin.
The take-off time of the bombers was the
cue for the President to go on the air to
the
American people. The timing of his appeal ance was critical, since Washington did no1 want to give North Vietnam opportunity t0 clear the bases. But the White House aba wanted to make it clear that the strike would be limited to specific targets. In particular Peking was not to mistake the action for an assault on Red China. On the domesdc scene, the Administration wanted the Amer'
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Ij Without swift, reliable communications | ot^ at home and overseas, response to the ^ tack only 12 hours after news of the event
the White House would not have
,)CcUrring in Chile, Nigeria, or Czechoslova- la are at his doorstep within minutes. More-
lj|j.S^ent Richard M. Nixon
? pAoto
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in aC^ °n t^le Patr°l boat bases from Wash- p ^l°n before they heard of it from Hanoi or je j^S- The President went before the camera the White House television studio at 11:40 th'n ^•^•T.)> while the U. S. planes were in g e air but before the first bombs had struck. ^ then it was too late for the North Viet- I,lcse to disperse their forces, and the bombs
j^ched
Possible. With them in hand, President s- .ttson was able to orchestrate a highly sen- !Ve> fastmoving military response 12,000 1 es from the White House, with confidence precision.
^he breakthrough in presidential com- 'lunications by 1969, as far as the general . bfic is concerned, has arrived quietly, I ITlost unnoticed and unheralded. But its Impact on the daily life of the President has ,eeri revolutionary. With telecommunica- 0t>s surrounding him 24 hours a day, events
ki,
over, many of these events require his immediate attention, if not a decision. As a consequence, the presidency today is the center of operational activity, making it increasingly difficult for the President to find time to forward-plan for national goals and objectives.
The telephone has both served and stimulated this expansion of presidential power by giving the Nation’s Chief Executive reliable, high-quality voice communications around the world. Through the Defense Communications System, the President can now talk directly to the American commander in Vietnam or with field generals closer to the front. Over the Pentagon’s Interim Defense Communications Satellite Program quality reconnaissance photographs are transmitted from Saigon to Washington in a matter of minutes. This enables the President to study photographs along with his field commanders in pondering questions of future bombing targets. When the President is away from the White House, travelling by car or jet, the radiotelephone, first employed by President Wilson on his voyages to Paris, provides a voice link to the White House and the Defense Communication System. At each stop along the way special telephone circuits are prepared in advance for the President, his staff, and reporters.
The exercise, in the fullest sense, of the President’s prerogative as Commander-inChief first suggested by McKinley’s war room, has by late 1969 reached flood tide. As a new administration assumes office, the momentum of communications innovation and application continues unabated, releasing new forces to influence and shape the President’s role as crisis manager. In view of the central role which voice communications will continue to have in this unfolding technological- institutional drama, perhaps the time has arrived to adopt a suggestion for a third symbol to be incorporated in the presidential seal: Between the arrows and the olive branch, a telephone for the President.