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Bill Hennigan: I'm Bill Hennigan.
I'm a national security writer for Times Opinion section.
And I am the lead writer
in our new nuclear series, At the Brink.
In the United States, it is up to one person whether or not
the country goes to nuclear war.
Should any one person have that much power?
I recently went to US Strategic Command,
which is near Omaha, Nebraska.
And it's there where the US military oversees all nuclear forces across the world
as well as nuclear weapons here in the United States.
Bill Hennigan: So, really, what I'm here for is twofold,
to understand how the command works —
particularly if there was an order to launch a nuclear strike.
Bill Hennigan: The US Strategic Command is a sprawling base.
And it's highly guarded, of course.
I was able to talk to military officials
in one of the conference rooms upstairs.
Of course, it's a difficult subject to talk about because so much of it is secret.