In the spring of 1988, President Ronald Reagan made a historic trip to Moscow to meet with General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev to finalize the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which had just been ratified by the Senate.

The iconic photo of the occasion was not the Reagan-Gorbachev signing ceremony at the Grand Kremlin Palace at the end of the summit. It was the one of Reagan reaching out to shake the hand of a young Russian boy as the two heads of state walked through Red Square. The photo betrayed a note of irony: Just as the leaders of the two countries were embarking on a historic nuclear agreement, a military aide who was just feet behind the president was prepared to end it and had the equipment with him to do so.

The aide-de-camp had at his feet what is commonly referred to as the “nuclear football,” a leather briefcase with a sturdy aluminum frame — the ultimate power accessory, which could initiate global destruction. Officially known as the “president’s emergency satchel,” the contents are to be used by the president to authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room or the Pentagon.

It may have seemed audacious to have at the ready the device that could launch a nuclear strike on a country from its very soil, but Gorbachev was also accompanied by a military aide who was clutching a very similar device, known in Russia as the chemodanchik, or “little briefcase.” It became the most literal example of deterrence by mutually assured destruction in history.

The nuclear football came into active service after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when President John F. Kennedy worried how the Pentagon and nuclear launch officers would be sure that it was really the president ordering a strike. Declassified documents reveal his concerns: “What would I say to the Joint War Room to launch an immediate nuclear strike?” Kennedy asked. “How would the person who received my instructions verify them?” The football got its name, according to former secretary of defense Robert McNamara, because it was part of an early nuclear war plan code-named Operation Drop Kick.

The football, which has always been manufactured for the White House by Zero Halliburton, the Utah firm that also supplied aluminium briefcases to Hollywood, does not actually contain a big red button for launching a nuclear war, contrary to popular belief. Its primary purpose is to confirm the president’s identity, and it allows him to communicate with the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon, which monitors worldwide nuclear threats and can order an instant response.

The nuclear football allows the President to authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room. (Smithsonian Institute/Jamie Chung)

The football also provides the commander-in-chief with a simplified menu of nuclear strike options. There are four things in the football: The Black Book containing the retaliatory options, a book listing classified site locations, a manila folder with eight or ten pages stapled together giving a description of procedures for the Emergency Alert System, and a three-by-five inch card with authentication codes. The Black Book was about nine by 12 inches and had 75 loose-leaf pages printed in black and red. The book with classified site locations was about the same size as the Black Book, and was also black. It contained information on sites around the country where the president could be taken in an emergency.

The first declassified reference to the existence of the football is contained in a formerly top-secret memorandum from 1965 obtained by the National Security Archive of George Washington University. Tasked with reducing the weight of the football, a senior defense official agreed this was a worthy goal, but added, “I am sure we can find strong couriers who are capable of carrying an additional pound or two of paper.”

That may have been true, but a recurring complaint of presidents and military aides alike has been that the football, which currently weighs around 45 pounds, contains too much documentation. President Jimmy Carter, who had qualified as a nuclear submarine commander, was aware that he would have only a few minutes to decide how to respond to a nuclear strike against the United States. Carter ordered that the war plans be drastically simplified.