The Quick Brown Fox

The Overlook

By Tom Clavin

“The Overlook” appears every Wednesday at tomclavin.substack.com. An overlook is usually a place from which one can see in many if not all directions, including where one has been and where one is going. If you enjoy the column, please "like" it and let me know what you think by commenting (check out previous ones while you're at it). All support is appreciated. Don't forget to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button – it’s free!

It was used for the first time by U.S. President John F. Kennedy on August 30, 1963 – which means this week marks the 60^th anniversary of the Moscow – Washington D.C. “hotline.”

Several people came up with the idea for a hotline, including a Harvard University professor, Thomas Schelling, who had previously worked on nuclear war policy for the U.S. Defense Department. He credited the novel Red Alert (the basis for the movie Dr. Strangelove) with making governments more aware of the benefit of direct communication between the superpowers. In addition, the Parade magazine editor Jess Gorkin personally badgered 1960 presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon and buttonholed the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev during a U.S. visit to adopt the idea. Plus, Gerard Smith, head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, proposed direct communication links between Moscow and Washington. Objections from officials in both countries put the idea on hold.

The came the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. During the standoff, official diplomatic messages typically took six hours to deliver. Unofficial channels, such as via television network correspondents, had to be used too as they were quicker. The United States took nearly 12 hours to receive and decode Khrushchev’s 3000-word initial settlement message, which was a dangerous delay. By the time Washington had drafted a reply, a tougher message from Moscow had been received, demanding that U.S. missiles be removed from Turkey. 

White House advisers thought faster communications could have averted the crisis or at least resolved it quickly. The two countries signed the Hot Line Agreement on June 20, 1963 – the first time they formally took action to cut the risk of starting a nuclear war unintentionally.

In July, the U.S. sent four sets of teleprinters with the Latin alphabet to Moscow for the terminal there. A month later the Soviet equipment, four sets of East German teleprinters with the Cyrillic alphabet, arrived in Washington. On August 30, the first message transmitted over the hotline was from Washington to Moscow: “THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG’S BACK 1234567890.” The message was sent in all capital letters because the equipment did not support lowercase.

The Moscow–Washington hotline was intended for text only because speech might be misinterpreted. Leaders wrote in their native language and messages were translated at the receiving end. The first generation of the hotline used two full-time duplex telegraph circuits. The primary circuit was routed from Washington via London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Helsinki to Moscow. The primary link was accidentally cut several times -- for example, near Copenhagen by a Danish bulldozer operator and by a Finnish farmer who ploughed it up.

A secondary radio line for back-up and service messages linked Washington and Moscow via Tangier. Regular testing of both the primary and backup links took place daily: At even hours, the U.S. sent messages to the Soviet Union, and at odd hours, the Soviet Union sent test messages to the U.S.

In September 1971, Moscow and Washington decided to upgrade the system. The countries also agreed for the first time when the line should be used. Specifically, they agreed to notify each other immediately in the event of an accidental, unauthorized, or unexplained incident involving a nuclear weapon that could increase the risk of nuclear war. Two new satellite communication lines supplemented the terrestrial circuits. This arrangement lasted from 1971 to 1978 and it made the radio link via Tangier redundant, so it was scrapped.

In May 1983, President Ronald Reagan proposed to upgrade the hotline by the addition of high-speed fax capability. A year later, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed formally to do this. According to the agreement, upgrades were to take place through the use of satellites and modems, facsimile machines, and computers. The fax terminals were operational by 1986. The teletype circuits were severed in 1988 after several years of testing and use proved the fax links to be reliable.

That same year, the U.S. side of the hotline system was located at the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. Each MOLINK (Moscow Link) team worked an eight-hour shift – a non-commissioned officer looked after the equipment, and a commissioned officer who was fluent in Russian and well-briefed on world affairs was the translator. The hotline was tested hourly. U.S. test messages included excerpts of William Shakespeare and Mark Twain and short articles from encyclopedias. Soviet tests included passages from the works of Anton Chekhov. MOLINK staffers took special care not to include innuendo or literary imagery that could be misinterpreted, such as passages from Winnie the Pooh, given that a bear is considered the national symbol of Russia.

Upon receipt of the message at the NMCC, it was translated into English, and both the original Russian and the translated English texts were transmitted to the White House Situation Room. However, if the message were to indicate an imminent disaster, such as an accidental nuclear strike, the MOLINK team would telephone the gist of the message to the Situation Room duty officer who would brief the president before a formal translation was complete.

In 2007, the Moscow–Washington hotline was upgraded and now a dedicated computer network links Moscow and Washington. It continues to use the two satellite links but a fiber optic cable replaced the old back-up cable. Commercial software is used for both chat and email -- chat to coordinate operations and email for actual messages. Transmission is nearly instantaneous.

So far, the hotline has been officially used sparingly (which is a good thing). The first time was in November 1963, immediately after the assassination of President Kennedy. The two most recent uses were in 2003, in the aftermath of the Iraq War, and on October 31, 2016, when President Barack Obama reinforced his warning of the month before that the U.S. would consider any interference on Election Day a grave matter.

By the way: Since 2007 there has been a hotline between Beijing and Washington and another one between Beijing and Moscow.

As many readers know, the hotline has been depicted dramatically on the big screen. Two of the best examples were two movies both released in 1964: Fail Safe, with Henry Fonda as the president and Larry Hagman as the translator, and Dr. Strangelove, with Peter Sellers as the president who spoke directly to “Dimitri,” the top guy in the Soviet Union. A more realistic depiction of the hotline was in the film version of the Tom Clancy novel The Sum of All Fears, released in 2002, with James Cromwell as the president, in which a text-based computer communications system was depicted, resembling the actual hotline equipment from the 1980s and 1990s.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books, including Follow Me to Hell, published in April by St. Martin’s Press. The trade paperback edition of The Last Hill (with Bob Drury) will be published on September 12. Please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com to purchase a copy.