Here's What Trump's 'Nuclear Documents' Could Be

Yesterday evening, the Washington Post broke the blockbuster news that FBI agents who searched former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence on Monday were looking for "nuclear documents," a phrase that immediately set off alarms inside national security circles. The nation's nuclear systems and plans are considered among the most sensitive and most narrowly known secrets. Trump denied the report, calling the "nuclear weapons issue" a "hoax." But assuming the Post's reporting is correct, what could such a vague phrase as "nuclear documents" mean, and what could we learn about such a category? Broadly speaking, the US intelligence and defense communities would possess four different categories of files that might be considered "nuclear documents": nuclear weapon science and design; other countries' nuclear plans, including the nuclear systems and command of allied nations (UK, France) and adversaries (Russia, China, North Korea, Iran), as well as countries whose nuclear programs exist in a more gray zone (Israel, India, Pakistan); details on the United States' own nuclear weapons and deployments; and details on US nuclear command & control procedures, known in Pentagon parlance as NC2.