The Biscuit and the Football

Bill Clinton

Shortly after I became president, the Iraqis attempted to kill my predecessor, President Bush in a parade in Kuwait. We agreed at length that the best thing to do would be to fire some precision missiles at the ministry of the interior, which had authorized the hit on President Bush, and to hit them hard, but hit them at night when the civilian workers weren't there. We fired the missiles, we hit the building and everything was hunky-dory, except three or four of those missiles over flew their target and they landed in a prosperous Baghdad neighborhood just beyond the building and eight Iraqi civilians were killed. And for all I know, every single one of them hated Saddam Hussein and longed to be free.

It's very important when you hear all these people talking tough to realize there's, there are real lives behind all this tough talk. And you know when you start firing guns, there’s going to be collateral damage. And if you drop a nuclear weapon, God forbid ever, most of the casualties will be completely innocent collateral damage. And so I thought about that all the time.

I wish I could have met those eight people because they sort of stood in my mind for the millions that could be killed by nuclear war or nuclear winter after and all the other terrible things that could go wrong if people who hold the power of life and death make bad judgments.

Lisa Perry

My name is Lisa Perry and this is AT THE BRINK, a podcast about the dangers we face from nuclear weapons and the stories of those who are fighting to protect us.

Today we are talking about a truly terrible power we have laid in the hands of a single person. That person is the president of the United States. You were listening to President Bill Clinton, speaking about how he dealt with the most solemn part of a president's job, making decisions that involve life and death. And as he alludes to, the most awesome decision he could ever make would be to use nuclear weapons, to push the proverbial button, and be responsible for the deaths of millions. Ben Rhodes was deputy national security advisor to President Obama; he recalls when he first fully grasped the reality of the power that the president has in his hands.

Ben Rhodes

I remember the first time I went on one of these trips and I'm sitting in the back seat and the president's military assistant is sitting next to me in the back seat. And right between us on the backseat is a suitcase. And I remember the realization that, that this was the nuclear football, that this was essentially the set of codes that a military assistant carries around the president all times. It brought home that this is a real thing. The very fact that you are in proximity to something that could enable one single human being on their own decision to kill tens if not hundreds of millions of people you know, I think drives home that nuclear weapons are an actuality. They're not just something that sit in silos.

Lisa Perry

The suitcase that Ben Rhodes sat next to is officially referred to as the presidential nuclear emergency satchel. Within this benign-looking luggage is the capability to order the launch of every nuclear weapon in the American arsenal. Enough power to desolate the entire planet. In true American form, this briefcase is also known as The Football. If you look closely at photos of the president, you may catch a glimpse of the briefcase, which is always nearby under the control of a military aide.

Ted Lieu

I was on Air Force One and I remember meeting this Air Force Colonel and I asked him what he did. He said he was a military liaison. I said, oh okay, and then a few minutes later I asked him, I said, well, what does that mean? And he says, on a very, very bad day they need me.

Lisa Perry

That was Congressman Ted Lieu speaking about his own encounter with the nuclear football. We'll hear more from him later. Despite what pop culture may have you think, there is no big red button for the president to push. So how exactly does the president order a nuclear attack?

Here's how it works. If our early warning systems were to report that the U.S. is under attack, the president would have roughly six minutes to decide whether to launch a counter-strike. We explored the potential dangers of this “use ‘em or lose ‘em” dilemma in our first episode. In this hypothetical scenario, if the president decides to launch, a strictly choreographed process then unfolds. The nuclear emergency satchel is opened, which contains launch plans and allows for direct communication with the Pentagon's war room. To verify his identity, the president must use a code found on a plastic card he is required to carry at all times. This card is known as the biscuit.

Once the order is verified as authentic, in less than two minutes, the war room transmits the order to the launch officers. This order is no longer than the length of a tweet and contains all the information necessary to launch the missiles.

In teams of two, launch officers verify the order and initiate launch. Roughly five minutes after the president gives the order, 400 Minuteman missiles could be on their way from the Midwest towards any point around the world.

This is the scenario most people envision when they picture a presidential nuclear order. However, this is not the only scenario where a president could initiate a nuclear attack. Under U.S. policy, the power to order a nuclear strike belongs to the president and the president alone. There are no official limitations on when that power can be exercised.

In this episode, we are exploring the frightening question of how far could the president really go in deciding to launch nuclear weapons. There are only a few people in history who have ever experienced the weight of this power on their shoulders. So we figured we'd ask one of them what it was like.

Bill Clinton

Hello, I'm President Bill Clinton.

Lisa Perry

President Clinton sat down with me to talk about when he first came to the realization that he had the potential power to end the world as we know it.

Bill Clinton

Well, I remember it very well. I, uh, I remember the morning I was inaugurated President and when it hit me and I was rather vulnerable because I was trying so hard to say exactly what I wanted to say in my inaugural address. We kept rewriting it almost up to the very end. And then early in the morning, I was introduced to my new military aide of the day and they carry the so-called nuclear football. You get every so often a little card that had the nuclear codes in them which could activate the football and allow you to launch nuclear weapons.

And then on my inaugural morning when I was introduced to the Mil Aide and I saw the little box he was going to carry, the so-called football, I realized that this was something I needed to take very seriously because people throughout history have gotten in a lot of trouble by assuming things would never happen that in fact did. But I thought a great deal about this and every time I saw the football it registered on me. Does this look like a clunky deal my Mil Aide’s carrying around? And that clunky deal could be the end of the world for a lot of, millions and millions of people.

Lisa Perry

The United States is unique among all other nuclear-armed nations in that we entrust the power to launch nuclear weapons entirely to our commander in chief. This power is called presidential sole authority. No one can authorize a nuclear attack and no one can countermand a nuclear order except for the POTUS. My grandfather, William Perry, who was Secretary of Defense during Clinton’s first term, has long been concerned about presidential sole authority. This year he collaborated with Tom Collina, director of policy at the Ploughshares Fund, to write a book about this issue called The Button. Tom explains the potential problem of this system.

Tom Collina

So the chain of command is actually quite simple. It's up to the president of the United States and the president only to make a determination of whether nuclear weapons will be used. No one else has to be part of that decision. The president does not have to consult Congress or the Pentagon or the United Nations or the Joint Chiefs of Staff or anybody. This is up to the president. The president can choose to consult those people and as many people as they want. But the interesting and kind of terrifying thing is that they don't have to.

Lisa Perry

This individual authority is unprecedented in our history; although the president is commander in chief, the decision of what weapons to use is left to the trained experts in the Department of Defense, except when it comes to nukes. So why did we decide to leave this ultimate power up to one person? The history of Presidential sole authority goes back to President Truman, who shocked the world on August 6th,1945, when he announced the first-ever use of a nuclear weapon in war.

President Truman

A short time ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It is an atomic bomb, it is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.

Lisa Perry

A lot has been made of Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan, but what many people don’t know is that Truman only learned about the existence of the top-secret atomic bomb program just 4 months before this address, when he was sworn into office after the death of Franklin Roosevelt. Three months after his inauguration the first successful test of an atomic bomb was completed; and two weeks after that, Truman approved the Japanese targets selected by his war cabinet.

President Truman

The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.

Lisa Perry

Historical evidence suggests that Truman was led to believe that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were largely military targets, and he was initially pleased at the successful mission. But as the extent of civilian deaths became clear in the days following, he became increasingly distressed, and stepped in to halt military plans to drop additional atomic bombs. Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian, and the developer of the website NukeMap, studied the drama that unfolded as the President and the military struggled over who would ultimately control these new weapons.

Alex Wellerstein

You go back to August 10th,1945, this is when Truman says, no more bombs are going to be used and he does this at the response of a memo sent to him by General Groves. It says, we're going to have another bomb ready in a week, just letting you know, and he has General Marshall write back to him, do not use any more nuclear weapons without express authority of the president. Just full stop. Part of it is also him taking control of a situation where he is not really in control and starting increasingly to realize that there were stakes associated with that

Lisa Perry

Despite the military’s misgivings, Truman insisted upon maintaining Presidential authority over nuclear weapons, out of his fear that, if they were given the power, the generals might use these weapons indiscriminately.

Alex Wellerstein

The military doesn't like this at all. They go to Truman multiple times and say, “Hey, we can't do anything if like war breaks out without these weapons, you should give us some just in case,” and Truman says, no. He says, these are not regular weapons. They are used for killing women and children. I do not trust the military to do this on their own. I think that if I give them the weapons, they'll find a way to use them.

Lisa Perry

In 1948, sole authority became official U.S. policy.

Alex Wellerstein

In 1948 the National Security Council, in consultation with the military and other advisers, realizes they ought to have a policy. First thing that says in the event of wartime, the weapons will only be used if the president makes the decision to use them, which in the context is eliminating everybody else. So this is the first time that becomes a real policy. By the 60s, even by the late fifties, people are starting to realize this is not great. Certainly by the 60s the Kennedy people are like, this is terrible. This is going to lead to accidental nuclear war, which is in some way even then like on purpose nuclear war. Right? So like this makes them very uncomfortable, very disturbed. By the 60s you basically see a full-throttle defense of the idea that the president is in charge of nuclear weapons and it's always held up with the idea that the reason you do that is because you don't want the military in charge. And then later by the 60s, you don't want NATO in charge. Like those are the alternatives. It's never held up as the president is inherently sane person and should never be worried. And you should never doubt.

Lisa Perry

Any such doubts have so far failed to change this policy, which remains in place today. A 2013 Pentagon report reiterated this stance stating, “Consistent with decades-long practice, the president, as commander in chief, has the sole authority to order the employment of US nuclear forces.”  But what began as Truman's efforts to keep the use of the atomic bomb in check, has become a policy that many have begun to question. Tom Collina highlights the unintended consequences that Truman's attempt to limit military power brought along with it.

Tom Collina

Truman's purpose there was to make sure that the authority stayed civilian, right? That the military shall not have control over nuclear weapons. That is still true today and that is different for nuclear weapons than any other weapon in the arsenal, right? The nuclear weapons are the only weapon where the president has that kind of authority and the military does not. The question is why just one civilian, right? Why is it limited just to the president and why does no one else need to be involved in that?

Lisa Perry

One of the things that is so unsettling about the policy of presidential sole authority is that there is no guarantee that a given president is appropriately knowledgeable about nuclear weapons. While all presidents are briefed on their duties upon taking office, there is no way to know if they understand the issues of false alarms, potential for an interference or even basic deterrence theory, nor is it guaranteed that they grasp the scale of devastation that nuclear weapons could cause, including full-scale nuclear war, global climate impact, and long term health consequences. There is no road test. There are no training wheels. The president is given the power to destroy the world on day one.

Bill Clinton

The real problem comes is that you have to make a quick decision, because there are many times that someone will be called upon to lead a country and they won't have had the background necessary or even done the study necessary to understand exactly what's at stake.

Lisa Perry

These issues have existed since the policy was put into place, but recent concerns over President Trump's repeated threats to potentially use nuclear weapons, have focused new attention onto presidential sole authority, as Tom Collina describes.

Tom Collina

There has not been much discussion about presidential sole authority and the main thing that has brought it up today is President Trump and the impulsive nature of President Trump. And is he the kind of president that we should trust with nuclear authority. But I have to be clear, this is not just a conversation about President Trump. I mean there've been many presidents in the past that have raised concerns about this, from President Kennedy who had reports of taking many pain medications that could have clouded his judgment. President Nixon who was known to be a heavy drinker while in the White House, even during major crises, President Reagan who was known to have dementia and that may have come on earlier than, than we were told at the time, and now of course with President Trump, but you know, the point here is that no president in our view should have this authority. There is no person that is capable.

Lisa Perry

My grandfather shared some chilling details about Nixon and his erratic behavior at the end of his presidency, that begs the question, how close have we already come to disaster because of this policy?

Bill Perry

President Nixon was heavily intoxicated much of the time the last month or so he was in office. The House of Representatives was considering an impeachment of President Nixon and it was very likely to go through, so President Nixon was under great pressure and he was known to be drinking heavily. Both the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense at the time, Kissinger and Schlesinger, were very much concerned that President Nixon might do something wild and irrational while he was intoxicated during that very stressful period for him. And it was that, during that time that Secretary Schlesinger is reported to have called the general in command of the Strategic Air Command and told him not to execute a launch unless he checked with himself. But this was not only highly irregular, it probably would not have been effective. There was nothing in the system that allows that intervention to take place.

Lisa Perry 

While my grandfather never encountered a situation like this while he was President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, he remained disturbed by the fact that he would have been powerless to stop any such order coming from the president.

Bill Perry

If the president, for whatever reason, decides to launch nuclear weapons, he can do it in an instant and he can do it without consulting with anyone. He may consult, but he's not required to. And once he gives that order, there's nothing I could have done as Secretary of Defense to stop that. No one can stop him.

Lisa Perry

While no member of the President’s cabinet has the power to stop a Presidential nuclear launch order, there is some debate about whether the military might be a check on a rogue President. After President Trump was elected, some officials brought up this point. We asked Bruce Blair, a nuclear security expert, and former nuclear missileer, to explain how the chain of command works for nuclear weapons.

Bruce Blair

So the chain of command essentially ran from the president through the war room in the Pentagon, which was a Joint Chiefs of Staff entity, directly down to the launch crews. And we received the order and could carry it out in one minute. We had a checklist, uh, that was designed to sort of, kind of filter out the emotion of the moment and force us to kind of, uh, go through a lock-step checklist, to cope with, culminating in the turning of keys to fire up to, in our case, we could fire up to 50 missiles out of their silos. Two of us, alone. The chain of command ran from me, as far as we were concerned, to the president of the United States. And we were not to take nuclear orders from anyone other than the president. From the time the president could give an order to use our nuclear weapons to the time missiles would be leaving their silos would be on the order of five minutes.

Lisa Perry

Defenders of sole authority have argued that we can rely on the integrity of our military officers and those in the chain of command to resist any illegal or questionable orders that come from the president. In late 2017, retired General Robert Kehler, former commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, or STRATCOM, testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that they would refuse a nuclear launch order from the president if it was not seen as following the legal principles of military necessity and proportionality.

General Kehler

If there is an illegal order presented to the military, the military is obligated to refuse to follow it.

Lisa Perry

This position was reiterated by General Kehler's successor, General John Hyten, who declared that he would then guide the president on how to make the order legal. However, these reassurances do not address how regimented the actual process is. Bruce Blair, who once served as the last link in the nuclear chain of command, is not comforted by the general's reassurances.

Bruce Blair

Let me first of all say that although there are certainly a lot of people in the loop, there are not that many. There's not a lot of discretion down the chain of command. Some of these generals who say that they would not carry out the order are not even directly in the chain of command in a position to stop it. For example, an order from the president goes through the war room in the Pentagon and then it goes directly down to the crews that carry out the order and General Hyten and Strategic Command in Omaha and other senior generals receive the order at the same time.

How are they going to stop it? I can carry out the order in one minute as a Minuteman launch officer, who's going to stop me in one minute if the generals are getting their order the same time I am? So as a practical matter, it's very, very difficult because we have this hair-trigger posture that takes so little time to execute an order. I don't think the military is an adequate check and balance.

Lisa Perry

Tom Collina explains that there’s a very good reason why we shouldn’t expect the military to be an adequate check and balance.

Tom Collina

So when I think about this, what strikes me is that the military is trained to follow orders. That's what they do. And they do it very well. They are not trained to overthink things. In fact, military officers who overthink things tend to get fired or tend not to get to levels of seniority.

Lisa Perry

Congressman Ted Lieu, who is currently a Colonel in the Air Force Reserves, is also skeptical about this reliance on the military to defy a presidential order.

Ted Lieu

Some of my colleagues that I got to know, one was a missile launch officer who sat in one of those silos for several years and just talking to him, it was very clear that when the order came down, he was launching, there's no way he could tell it was an illegal order or somehow there's something wrong with it. They're trained to simply launch when it happens, and it just reinforced in my mind that literally it’s one person that could decide essentially the fate of the world for a lot of people, and I always thought that we need to fix that structural problem.

Lisa Perry

In addition to the risks it presents, critics of presidential sole authority have also questioned its constitutionality since the power to declare war is supposed to be reserved for Congress.

Ted Lieu

If you look at our constitution, my view is there's no way the framers of the constitution would have allowed that to happen. They put tremendous checks and balances on the president. They created an entire judicial branch to check the president. They created an entire legislative branch to check the president and then they gave the greatest power they knew at that time, the power to declare war, to Congress. There's no way they would've given one person the ability to kill that many people and not have called it war.

Lisa Perry

President Clinton offered his thoughts about how we might reconcile this constitutional concern.

Bill Clinton

For one thing, because of the impact of any use of nuclear weapons, it comes very close to saying a president can go to war all by himself or herself. That is, if you can choose the weapon, then the ability of Congress to declare war or not has become largely moot, in this case.

I think if we could construct a constitutional deliberative process—that is, before the president can do this, you must hear from one, or two, or three people or agencies that guarantee perspective, experience, and just raw knowledge, and reminding the president of the consequences, and why nobody's dropped a nuclear weapon in a very long time, of the consequences of it, I think that would be a good thing

Lisa Perry

Congressman Ted Lieu has come up with his own solution to this constitutional dilemma. He joined with Senator Edward Markey to author a bill that would require the president to get approval from Congress before ordering a nuclear strike.

Ted Lieu

Once that people sort of understand how easy it is to launch nuclear weapons. First of all, they're horrified, and then they want to know how can we make it safer. The legislation that I introduced along with Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, establishes that because Congress is the only institution in our United States Constitution that can declare war, then before the president can launch a nuclear first strike, Congress first has to authorize it. It would not apply to self-defense. It would not apply to responses to an incoming nuclear strike. So it's only for a premeditated first strike would this bill would apply. We actually introduced it when Obama was president and when everyone believed Hillary Clinton was gonna be the next president. So this was never targeted at Donald Trump.

Lisa Perry

Interestingly, no president has ever suggested that they relinquish their power over nuclear weapons. When we asked President Clinton, he said he would be reluctant to give up the ultimate presidential authority to order a nuclear strike, but he was open to at least considering expanding the decision-making process beyond himself.

Bill Clinton

I believe that I'd want to leave the authority with the president. But I think it ... I always think it's better to have the broadest base of consultation and work for a president, especially it's hard to imagine a decision more grave. I would not have made a decision to use nuclear weapons without consulting with people in my own government, in different departments, who knew more about the operational realities of the weapons and the probabilities of what would happen. So, I wouldn't object to requiring some process by which that could be done.

Lisa Perry

There is another approach that we could take to roll back the risks of Presidential sole authority — an approach that a number of people have pushed for. Instead of removing the authority from the President, we could as a nation declare that we would never launch nuclear weapons first — that is, we would only launch nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack. Other nuclear-armed states, including China and India, have declared such “no-first-use” nuclear policies, but the U.S. has never officially ruled out the possibility that we might use nuclear weapons preemptively, as Bruce Blair explains.

Bruce Blair

I think that we have options for preemptive strikes. There is in the context of a growing threat and perception of possible imminent conflict with one of these countries, the distinct possibility that a president could at least seriously consider the first use of nuclear weapons and quite possibly turn the corner on that mentally and order their use and there's nothing really in our system currently that would prevent that bad call from being carried out. No one can have confidence that the use of nuclear weapons would not escalate to a large-scale nuclear exchange. We have a conventional juggernaut, the most powerful non-nuclear forces, military in the world that can prosecute any conceivable military mission that might be necessary. So we don't need nuclear weapons anymore. We should adopt a policy of no first use.

Lisa Perry

Opponents of a no first use policy argue that ambiguity about our intentions gives us an advantage. They say that if an opponent isn’t sure about whether we might use nukes first, that opponent will be deterred. Bruce Blair argues that such ambiguity actually increases our risk.

Bruce Blair

I think that predictability and certainty in the minds of a potential adversary is safer for us than for them to be unsure of what we're going to do. If they had confidence that we were not going to use nuclear weapons first, an opponent would be reluctant to initiate the use of nuclear weapons--if they thought we were going to use them first, they would be more inclined to jump the gun. And so I think ambiguity is destabilizing in a crisis. I think it creates doubts and fears that would be counterproductive in a crisis. I think we have the ability to prosecute any military mission that we need to either with conventional forces or nuclear forces. And we give up nothing by saying that we're not going to start a nuclear war. We can protect Americans, protect our security, our sovereignty, without ever resorting to the first use of nuclear weapons.

Lisa Perry

Tom Collina believes that proponents of nuclear first use misunderstand deterrence

Tom Collina

First use is not necessary for deterrence. And this is something people confuse all the time, they somehow think that first use is necessary for deterrence. It’s not, what's necessary for deterrence is second use. That's the whole point. We will deter you from attacking us. If you attack us we will respond. So that is deterrence in a nutshell. First use is not required for deterrence. There is no prospect in my mind that a president would actually authorize the first use of nuclear weapons. So we're not getting any value from it. Threats of nuclear first use are not credible; all it's doing is putting countries like Russia on a hair-trigger and increasing the chance that they will blunder into war against us. So to me, it's all pain, no gain. And we should get out of first use as soon as we can.

Lisa Perry

Previous presidents have considered declaring a no first use policy, but none have adopted it. When we spoke with him, President Clinton was also reluctant to endorse such a policy, but he did acknowledge my grandfather’s point that our security environment has changed significantly since they were both in office.

Bill Perry

The best argument for no first use policy is that it protects you from accidentally starting a nuclear war and while the probability of accidentally blundering into a nuclear is very low, that probability has been increased by the presence of cyber warfare, by the possibility of a cyber-attack.

Bill Clinton

Yeah, and that might make me change my position back. The point you just made, it might tip the balance in favor of going ahead and doing it now.

Lisa Perry

The Obama administration considered adopting a no-first-use policy, but the attempt was bogged down by resistance from the Pentagon, and it was never finished. In congress, a no first use bill was introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Adam Smith, but there has not been enough political capital to push it through.

The issue of Presidential Sole Authority is not about who the president is right now, it is about whether any single individual should ever have the power to end the world as we know it. Defenders say that they would push back against any unlawful order, but what does that really look like in practice? Especially in a military environment where obedience to authority is a paramount virtue. The President can choose to bring advisors into the decision-making process leading up to the point where he makes the decision, but once the President has decided to launch a nuclear attack, the system is, by design, meant to move quickly and automatically.

If the Trump era has shown us anything, it is that we cannot rely on implicit norms to constrain behavior. There is no reason why we shouldn’t codify the rules and expectations of when a single individual can make a decision that could affect all life on earth, particularly an individual who more than likely was not elected for their knowledge of nuclear weapons.

There is no reason why a decision this consequential should be in the hands of a single person. The fact that it is, truly begs the question: does such a system fit within a democracy? Limiting presidential nuclear authority won’t remove the risk of a nuclear war, but it would certainly lessen it, and for once we wouldn’t be kicking the football down the road.

Bill Clinton

I just want people to know this, not to be terrified, but to be clear-headed and say, look, anything we can do to reduce the biggest threats, we should. I always tell people, in politics, the problem is there are no permanent victories or defeats. You have to suit up every day. You have to struggle every day, and you can create an environment in which things are much better than they were before, in which the risks are lower. You know, you can't take risks down to zero, but if you can take it from 50% down to five, that's a pretty good deal.

Lisa Perry   

If you liked our show and want to help raise awareness about these issues, please subscribe and share our show with your friends. The more people who

know about the problem, the closer we can come to pushing for a solution. To find out more information about presidential sole authority, including how you can support Congressman Ted Lieu’s legislation, or listen to our full 45-minute interview with Bill Clinton, go to our website at www.atthebrink.org. You can also check out the new book from my grandfather and Tom Collina: The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump. A huge thank you to President Clinton for taking the time to sit down with us for this podcast, and to all of our amazing guests.

At the Brink is made possible by the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation and the Nuclear Threat Initiative. These organizations work tirelessly to combat the global threat of nuclear weapons.

This podcast is a creation of the William J. Perry Project, led by director Robin Perry, and education director David Perry. This episode was produced by Jeff Large and Maggie Fischer from Come Alive Creative, and Ryan Hobler is our composer and audio engineer.

Thank you to our listeners — You're helping us to try and save the world one podcast at a time. I'm Lisa Perry. Thanks for listening