On This Day

Moscow–Washington Hotline

The Moscow-Washington hotline is a system that allows direct communication between the leaders of the United States and the Russian Federation. The hotline was established in on this day in 1963 and links the Pentagon with the Kremlin.

The 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis made the hotline a priority. During the standoff, official diplomatic messages took six hours to deliver. White House advisers thought faster communications could have averted the crisis. The two countries signed the Hot Line Agreement - the first time they formally took action to cut the risk of starting a nuclear war unintentionally.

Although in popular culture known as the "red telephone", the hotline was never a telephone line, and no red phones were used. The first implementation used Teletype equipment, and shifted to fax machines in 1986. Since 2008, the Moscow–Washington hotline has been a secure computer link over which messages are exchanged by a secure form of email.