C3 (command, control, and communications): the circulatory system for the transmission and execution of nuclear war orders.
CINC: Commander in Chief.
Defense Mobilization Systems Planning Activity (DMSPA): the cover office for the National Programs Office, which ran the mobile presidential successor command post program during the Reagan administration. Its creation was spelled out in the still-classified National Security Decision Directive 55, signed by President Reagan in 1982.
EAMs (Emergency Action Messages): EAMs often contain nuclear-weapons-related instructions generated by the National Military Command Center, its alternate sites, the Strategic Air Command, and Commanders in Chief of nuclear commands, including NATO. Lee Trolan’s EAMs were received through a system called Emergency Management Authentication System (EMAS).
Intelligence Agencies
In the United States: the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), responsible for foreign intelligence collection and covert action; the National Security Agency (NSA), responsible for signals intelligence collection and electronic warfare; the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), responsible for providing intelligence to military commanders; the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which builds and runs spy satellites.
In Britain: the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), popularly known as MI6.
In the Soviet Union: the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB), responsible for foreign intelligence and SIGINT; the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye (GRU), responsible for military intelligence SIGINT. In East Germany: the Stasi, the intelligence service, and its HVA, the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance.
Missiles
Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM): a supersonic missile with an effective range of more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) but less than 5,500 kilometers (3,540 miles). Missiles capable of traveling these distances could threaten Europe when launched from the Soviet Union and vice versa.
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM): a missile designed to travel more than 3,400 miles and capable of striking a target on a different continent with one or more warheads.
NATO
GLCM: a mobile, ground-launched cruise missile with a maximum range of 1,600 miles.
Pershing II: developed in the late 1970s and fielded in the 1980s by NATO; a direct-to-target missile with a maximum range of up to 1,100 miles and bearing a warhead with a yield up to 50 kilotons.
Soviet Union
SS-20: an intermediate range mobile missile capable of striking NATO.
SS-25 (the Sickle): the missile that kept the CIA up at night; destined to become the mainstay of the Soviet ICBM fleet.
United States
National Command Authority (NCA): The president, functioning in his role as Commander in Chief of all US forces, with an emphasis on his prerogative to initiate a nuclear weapons release.
National Military Command Center (NMCC): the Pentagon’s war room, the beating heart of the American worldwide military machine.
National Security Decision Directive 12 (October 1, 1981): President Reagan’s strategic forces modernization program.
National Security Decision Directive 13 (October 19, 1981): President Reagan’s nuclear war doctrine.
National Security Decision Directive 55: Enduring National Leadership (September 14, 1982): The secret plan to bolster the US defensive deterrent by giving the presidency—not the current president—a chance to survive a first nuclear strike. NSDD-55 borrowed heavily from President Carter’s Presidential Directive 58 in endorsing the use of randomly situated mobile command posts and the rapid (and random) identification of a presidential successor in the wake of a nuclear attack.
National Security Decision Directive 75 (January 3, 1983): The blueprint for Reagan’s fight to end the Cold War.
NIESO: National Intelligence Emergency Support Office. Created by Presidential Directive 58, it existed outside the CIA as a separate organization designed to “shadow” the intelligence community and provide the president and potential successors with critical information in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. Also called the National Intelligence Emergency Support Staff.
NORAD: North American Aerospace Defense Command, the nexus of US early-warning satellites and sensors.
Presidential Directive 58 (June 30, 1980): President Jimmy Carter’s plan for continuity of government after a nuclear strike. It authorized the creation of five Presidential Successor Support Staff units (called TREETOP teams by the Pentagon) and the predesignation of individuals to serve and train for those roles. It also directed the White House Military Office to identify new, secret locations to shelter the president during nuclear emergencies, it upgraded the president’s emergency shelter under the West Wing, and it called upon Congress and the Supreme Court to coordinate their contingency plans with the executive branch. It distributed new, electronically tagged cards to presidential successors and appropriated funds to modernize the Emergency Broadcast System and prioritize the president’s ability to communicate with nuclear force commanders.
Presidential Directive 59 (August 26, 1980): President Carter’s nuclear war policy guidance, released shortly before he left office.
RYAN (or VRyan, or Rian): the English initialization of the Cyrillic acronym for “Surprise Nuclear Attack,” Project RYAN was the top collection priority of the Soviet GRU and KGB during President Reagan’s first term.
SAC: The Strategic Air Command, headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, with thousands of weapons in its arsenal.
SACEUR: The Supreme Allied Commander Europe: the commander of all NATO forces; when authorized by NATO’s political committee, he could direct the nuclear custodial brigades to transfer custody of warheads to field artillery, fighter, and missile units in Europe for use. The SACEUR was also “dual-hatted” as the CINCEUR—the Commander in Chief for US forces in Europe—who could authorize the employment of nuclear weapons when directed by the president of the United States.
SIOP: Single Integrated Operational Plan, otherwise known as the United States’s base nuclear war plan. At least seven hundred pages long, with annexes, it was revised twice during the period covered by the book.1
SOSUS: Sound Surveillance System. A network of ocean-based sensors that served as the main US underwater early-warning network to detect Soviet nuclear submarines.
WHEP: White House Emergency Plan/White House Emergency Procedures. Classified procedures governing the evacuation of the president from the White House and the identification of potential successors. Jointly administered by the US Secret Service and White House Military Office’s Office of Presidential Contingency Programs.