Harold Hering

In 2017, Hering was profiled in the Radiolab episode "Nukes". In the episode he refuted the characterization by General Russell E. Dougherty of his statements. According to Dougherty, Hering's assertions that he would readily turn keys (to launch the nuclear missiles) if so ordered had always been qualified by subjective conditions expressing his own judgment of the validity of the order. Hering insisted, on the contrary, that he had always expressed a commitment to follow orders, but that if he was not informed about the checks and balances of presidential decision making that he assumed had to exist, he would do so with a conflicted conscience. He said, "I think it's an affront to play the game of you don't have the 'need to know' for someone who's doing one of the most serious, grave jobs that there is in the armed forces."

In 1978, journalist Ron Rosenbaum wrote a 15,000-word article in Harper's Magazine about the nuclear command and control system in which he publicized the case of Hering. Rosenbaum later wrote that Hering's question exposed a flaw in the very foundation of this doctrine, and asked "What if [the president's] mind is deranged, disordered, even damagingly intoxicated? ... Can he launch despite displaying symptoms of imbalance? Is there anything to stop him?" Rosenbaum says that the answer is that launch would indeed be possible: to this day, the nuclear fail-safe protocols for executing commands are entirely concerned with the president's identity, not his sanity. The president alone authorizes a nuclear launch and the two-man rule does not apply to him.

Hering served in the Vietnam War as part of the Air Rescue Service. Twenty-one years into his Air Force career, while serving as a Minuteman missile crewman and expecting a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, he posed the following question during training at Vandenberg Air Force Base in late 1973, at a time when Richard Nixon was president:

Harold L. Hering (born 1936) is a former officer of the United States Air Force, who was discharged in 1975 for requesting basic information about checks and balances to prevent an unauthorized order to launch nuclear missiles. Hering was subsequently presented the 2017 Courage of Conscience Award at the Peace Abbey, Boston, Massachusetts.