Question for the experts at DU

[Octafish]

30. CBS reported Weinberger ordered SAC on Alert...

The Day Reagan Was Shot

Fears Of A Soviet Plot

CBS, April 23, 2001

EXCERPT...

Haig was wrong to say “constitutionally.” The constitution mentions the secretary of state only in an actual transfer of power and then it places him fourth in line.

“I wasn’t talking about transition,” Haig says now. “I was talking about the executive branch, who is running the government. That was the question asked. It was not, ‘who is in line should the President die?’”

Haig says he knew the order of succession better than anyone. In 1974 he was chief-of-staff when Nixon resigned. Haig insists the briefing room appearance was meant to reassure the world and ease the pressure on the nuclear trigger.

“There are absolutely no alert measures that are necessary at this time or contemplated,” Haig told reporters.

But in the Situation Room, they were making a liar out of Haig. Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger was ordering an alert. American pilots were, at that moment, climbing into their nuclear bombers. Weinberger wanted to save time if this was all part of a Soviet plot.

“It's based on the idea that until we know a little bit more about it, it’s better to be in the plane than …which saves three and a half to four minutes than it is to stay in their quarters,” Weinberger said in the Situation Room.

“I said up there, Cap, I am not a liar. I said there had been no increased alert,” Haig responded.

“Well, I didn’t know you were going up Al,” Weinberger said.

Weinberger then told the room he was calling the shots for the military.

“You’d better read the constitution,” Haig said to him. “We can get the vice president any time we want.”

But the men in the situation room couldn’t make the decision to launch the nuclear weapons without secret codes that are kept in a case called the football - usually at the president’s side.

“I had the football brought to me and I held it in my hand, it was under my sheaf of papers and stayed right there all afternoon,” Allen says now. “It didn’t pass into the hands of anyone ese.”

It didn’t make him feel safe, he says now: “There’s no security in holding a document like that in your hand. But in the interest of prudence, you wanted to have everything there that you might need in the worst case.”

In time. it became clear the gunman was a deranged loner. Mr. Reagan and the others would all survive. Four hours after the first shots, the vice president arrived and shut down the situation room.

Allen’s tapes have been in a drawer all these years and surfaced now to the surprise and annoyance of some who were there.

CONTINUED...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-day-reagan-was-shot/

PS: Thanks for the heads-up, Ichingcarpenter. That article has tons of stuff to digest -- missed by Corporate McPravda and McAkademia.