A military aide, carrying the "football" containing launch codes for nuclear weapons, accompanies President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, February 3, 2017. Reuters
Business Insider: Bill Clinton once lost the nuclear codes for months, and a 'comedy of errors' kept anyone from finding out
* The codes needed to launch a US nuclear strike are supposed to be kept close to the president at all times.
* A department within the Defense Department is tasked with overseeing all aspects of the nuclear-launch process, including the codes.
* During Bill Clinton's presidency, officials from that department discovered the codes had gone missing.
The process the president has to go through to launch the US's nuclear weapons isn't as simple as pressing a button, but the key component of that process — the codes needed to authorize the launch — are never far from the president.
At least they're never supposed to be.
According to Gen. Hugh Shelton, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1997 to September 2001, the number of redundancies in the nuclear-launch process "is staggering." All of steps are "dependent on one vital element without which there can be no launch," he wrote in his 2010 autobiography, "Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior."
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WNU Editor: Some in the U.S. Congress are still pushing to restrict President Trump's authority to order a nuclear strike .... Democratic congressman calls for Congress to restrict Trump's ability to launch nuclear strike without authorization (Washington Examiner).
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