Wasn't the nuclear football taken away from Nixon?

[Renew Deal]

I think I remember hearing this somewhere. Can anyone confirm this?

[charlie]

1. I don't think that's ever been confirmed

SecDef Schlesinger did, however, instruct the Joint Chiefs not to act on "unusual" orders from Nixon without first consulting himself or Kissinger. Scary times.

[Rick Myers]

2. I found this little tidbit:

Famous Fumbles - During the April 1999 NATO summit in Washington, President Clinton left his aide and the football behind when he unexpectedly left a session 45 minutes early. The aide hurried the 4 1/2 blocks back to the White House without incident...After Reagan was shot by John Hinckley in 1981, the codes wound up in a plastic personal-effects bag at the hospital...Jimmy Carter dodged a calamity when he once left his authenticator ID in the pocket of a suit. It went to the dry cleaner...After a hot tennis match in Los Angeles one day, President Bush (41) took off with his racket but not the football. It took the Navy pigskin carrier 15 minutes of hightailing it to hook up with him on Sunset Boulevard...When Gerald Ford took over, he flew off to Paris for a summit and left his ballcarrier aboard Air Force One...During the final days of Watergate, when Nixon was drinking hard and wandering the White House at night talking to the pictures on the walls, there were stories that the chief of staff and the secretary of defense had taken away his football. Untrue, but still interesting.

http://members.aol.com/thebodie/football.html

[Journeyman]

3. What did we do before the "football"?. . .

Did someone with a pencil and a pad of paper follow Coolidge around, in case we were attacked and he had to order the military to retaliate?

When I read these assinine articles about how the "man with the football" follows close in the footsteps of the president -- he's right outside the bathroom, he's in the pew behind him in church, he's underneath the bed even when the prez is schtupping -- I realize it's all for show, it's all to create the image of a resolute leader ever-ready to take control. Gunga Din could just as well be in the room next door, or even down the hall, and the response time wouldn't suffer.

There's more chance the president will need to react to a natural disaster -- an earthquake or a tornado -- or that he'll need to respond to something mundane like planes crashing into the World Trade Center, but no one ever talks about how some schlub with a cell phone -- "the man with the tennis racket" -- is always by the president's side, ready to put him in contact with the necessary agencies. And of course, even if there were a "man with the tennis racket," as Michael Moore will show the world end of this month, there's no guaranty the "racket" (or, by inference, the "football") will even be used.

[charlie]

4. The window of opportunity

for responding to a hostile nuclear launch before missiles reach our shores is measured in minutes. It's really not so far-fetched to imagine that the president is perpetually accompanied by a carrier of the codes to our arsenal.