The real story is this: on his vacation trip Gorbachev was accompanied by nine servicemen from the General Staff. Three were communications officers and six were members of the General Staff unit responsible for ensuring that the Soviet president can control strategic nuclear forces in an emergency, during a sudden massive strike from the enemy. The chief of the group was Col. V. Vasilyev. Three men were on duty at a time-two operators and one communications officer. Each shift began at 9 a.m. and lasted 24 hours. The officers who were off duty lived in a military sanitarium in Alupka. They had neither radio, television nor telephone. If they needed to, they used the matron’s telephone.
The nuclear watch at “Daybreak” (the code name for Gorbachev’s dacha at Foros) was located in the so-called guest house about 100 meters from the presidential quarters. The operators were in one room and the communications officer in the other. Access to the premises was limited and the doors were always closed. The strategic nuclear forces control system provided that the codes of the president, the defense minister and the chief of the General Staff were coordinated by the control center. If the Soviet president’s codes were switched off from the control center, the whole system of nuclear forces control collapsed: it could not be operated without the codes of the Soviet president.
At 7:40 p.m. on Aug. 19 the nuclear detail flew to Moscow aboard the president’s plane. They took the briefcase with them; it was made inoperable by erasing its magnetic memory. At Vnukovo-2 Airport the officers surrendered their weapons and equipment to representatives of the General Staff and then were driven to their homes, with the exception of Vasilyev, who as head of the group went to report to his superiors.
The thoroughly undramatic, humdrum simplicity with which Gorbachev, the supreme commander of the armed forces, was deprived of control over the strategic superweapons is potent proof that he never in fact controlled the nuclear button. Control of the nuclear forces was entirely in the hands of the top army generals and the KGB. It was possible all along for the Soviet Union to launch a nuclear strike–and not only a retaliatory one–without the consent of the president. That was why the General Staff was not unduly worried about the break-off of communications with the presidential nuclear detail during the coup. They knew the true value of Gorbachev’s briefcase.
