Minor officers ’had N-attack authority’

Press, 12 November 1977, Page 9

Minor officers ’had N-attack authority’

NZPA San Francisco The former United States Defence Department analyst, Dr Daniel Ellsberg, has said that some military field commanders down to the rank of major have had Presidential authority to order a nuclear attack.

Dr Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, said that most Americans had erroneously believed that only the President could give a nuclear “go order.”

He said Dwight Eisenhower was the first President to delegate such authority to field commanders and both John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson renewed the authorisation. “I don’t know what the situation is today under President Carter,” he told a

news conference, “but I have heard that President Richard Nixon renewed this authorisation with certain modifications.”

Dr Ellsberg said he learned of the matter when he questioned commanders during field trips for the White House and the Defence Department. He said that a major in Kunsan, South Korea, had 12 planes at his disposal in 1960, each carrying a 1.1 megaton bomb. “He felt he could order these planes into action, and his targets were in Russia and China,” he said. He said he saw written authorisation in Eisenhower’s own handwriting giving the commander in chief of United States forces in the Pacific authority to use nuclear weapons.