High-Stakes Hotline

Some readers might be old enough to have experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis. It began 63 years ago this week, when President John F. Kennedy announced a blockade of Cuba in response to the Soviet Union building ballistic missile sites on the island.

One would think such a close brush with nuclear war would have been the inspiration for the hotline between Washington, D.C., and Moscow. Yes, sort of. Such a system was used for the first time only 10 months after the crisis, on August 30, 1963, a call between Kennedy and the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

With Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin conversing about war and maybe peace this week, it’s a good time to tell the tale of the telephone line.

Even before the Missile Crises, several people had promoted the idea of a hotline between the two nations. One was the 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 satirical movie “Dr. Strangelove”) with making the superpowers more aware of the benefit of direct communication.

In addition, the 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. Still, objections from officials in both countries put it on hold.

Then 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, as they were quicker.

The United States took nearly 12 hours to receive and decode Khrushchev’s 3,000-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.

The following month, 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 President Kennedy transmitted was: “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 then by a Finnish farmer who plowed it up.

A secondary radio line for backup and service messages linked Washington and Moscow via Tangier, Morocco. 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 and 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.

In May 1983, President Ronald Reagan proposed to upgrade the hotline by the addition of high-speed fax capability, and the Soviet Union agreed. Upgrades included the use of satellites and modems and computers.

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 noncommissioned 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.

Upon receipt, a Soviet message 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 to this day a dedicated computer network links Moscow and Washington. It continues to use the two satellite links, but a fiber optic cable replaced the old backup 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 second time was in November 1963, immediately after the assassination of President Kennedy. A more recent use was 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 (and as a British officer, and as Dr. Strangelove himself) who spoke directly to “Dimitri,” the top guy in the Soviet Union.