Pre-delegation authority is the practice by United States presidents to empower military commanders to initiate nuclear attacks in various circumstances.
[5] In 1981, Brent Scowcroft pointed out that aside from the Secretaries of Defense and State, the potential successors were "almost completely unacquainted" with nuclear command and control.
[6] Academic Peter Feaver testified to Congress in 2017 that pre-delegation authority "may thwart an enemy's first-strike planning, for example, but, it would raise the risk that a weapon might be used in an unauthorized fashion or by someone confused in the fog of battle.
[12][13] The instructions were drafted by the Defense and State Departments, but based on declassified memos, the National Security Archive described Eisenhower as playing a "central role in the review process" to avoid "reckless or accidental use of nuclear weapons".
[15] Starting in 1965, authority was delegated to the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) "only under severe restrictions and specific conditions of attack".
[19] Nuclear security expert Bruce G. Blair said that around 1993, President Clinton and his defense secretary, William J. Perry, "rolled back" pre-delegation authority.
Following Freedom of Information Act requests from the National Security Archive, the government partially declassified some memos from the Eisenhower and Johnson administrations in 1998, officially confirming pre-delegation authority publicly for the first time.
In March 1976, the then-House International Relations Committee conducted a hearing titled "First Use of Nuclear Weapons: Preserving Responsible Control" in which Miller testified about pre-delegation to NORAD.