Table Of ContentNaTe JONeS History $27.95 U.s.
is the director of the Free-
dom of Information Act Project for the National praiSe fOr able archer 83
Security Archive. He is also editor of the National
Security Archive’s blog, Unredacted. He lives in The Secret History of the From the National Security
“Twenty-one years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, a NATO exercise, Able a
Washington, D.C.
Archer 83, came terrifyingly close to precipitating an accidental nuclear war. NATO Exercise That Almost Archive, the little-known
b
Nate Jones’s brilliantly researched and gripping history of government mis- history of how the United
TOm blaNTON
is the executive director of Triggered Nuclear War
calculations and misjudgments on both sides of the iron curtain during this
l States and the Soviet Union
the National Security Archive at George Wash-
war game poses the twenty-first-century’s most serious existential question:
ington University in Washington, D.C. e came close to nuclear war
How many nuclear bullets can humanity dodge? Read it and reckon! I don’t
able
during the Reagan years, told
think you will like the answer.”
—marTiN J. SherwiN, University Professor of History at George Mason through newly declassified
a
University and author of A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies documents
r
“Able Archer 83 is an invaluable resource on one of the most dangerous
c iN NOvember 1983,
moments of the Cold War. The book contains an unmatched collection of
previously secret documents about the War Scare of 1983 and the Able h
archer NATO conducted Able Archer 83, a vast nuclear
Archer exercise at the center of it. If you want to learn from history, this is
war game that realistically modeled a nuclear
the place to start.” e
attack on the Soviet Union. What the West didn’t
—david e. hOffmaN , author of The Dead Hand: The Untold
r know at the time was that the Soviets thought
Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy
Operation Able Archer 83 could be a real attack
and were actively preparing for a surprise strike
8
“Read this book and you will make the world a safer place. Read these for-
from NATO. After receiving reports of alarming
mer secrets—many of them classified above Top Secret—and you will see 3 83 activity on U.S. bases, the Soviets began planning
The front cover image is composed of White House how truly scary the War Scare of 1983 was. Read this book and you will for a countdown to a nuclear first strike by NATO
understand how the Cold War dangers that flared in 1983—and could have
negatives of Oleg Gordievsky’s first meeting with on Eastern Europe, putting their nuclear forces on
Ronald Reagan in July of 1987. Gordievsky was a KGB produced a nuclear war through miscalculation and misperception—are still high alert.
colonel working in London who spied for the United with us today.” ediTed The danger of this scrape with Armageddon
by
Kingdom and later passed along his knowledge of the —TOm blaNTON, director, National Security Archive (from the foreword) was largely unknown until October 2015, when
Soviet Union to the United States. His intelligence N
the U.S. government released a ninety-four-page
helped to avert the potential nuclear confrontation
“Able Archer 83 brings us back to a moment when we all came close to a presidential analysis of Able Archer that the
with the USSR that was nearly caused in 1983 during
T
becoming cinders or radioactive corpses. It’s an important contribution to National Security Archive had spent over a de-
NATO’s Able Archer 83 nuclear release exercise.
e
our understanding of how the Cold War played out, and how erroneous cade fighting to declassify.
assumptions routinely become institutionalized policy, which then becomes Able Archer 83 tells the story of the fateful
J
almost irresistible.” O NATO exercise, the agents who spied on it, and
—GleNN l. carle, a former CIA officer N the Soviet Union and American leaders it affected
and author of The Interrogator e NaTe JONeS through a selection of declassified documents that
Archive historian Nate Jones has pried loose from
S ediTed by
U.S. and British agencies and archives, as well
TOm blaNTON
THE NEW PRESS wiTh a fOrewOrd by as from formerly secret Soviet Politburo, KGB,
and other Eastern Bloc files, vividly recreating the
www.thenewpress.com a NaTiONal SecuriTy archive bOOk
atmosphere that nearly unleashed nuclear war.
Jacket photographs courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Library
Jacket design by Hot Griddle Design THE NEW PRESS
Able Archer 83_jacket2b.indd 1 08/25/2016 11:20 AM
ABLE ARCHER 83
ABLE ARCHER 83
The Secret History of the NATO Exercise
That Almost Triggered Nuclear War
Edited by Nate Jones
With a foreword by Tom Blanton
THE NEW PRESS
NEW YORK
LONDON
©2016 by Nate Jones
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, without written permission from the
publisher.
Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to:
Permissions Department, The New Press, 120 Wall Street, 31st floor, New York, NY 10005.
Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2016
Distributed by Perseus Distribution
libraryofcongresscataloging-in-publicationdata
Names: Jones, Nate, author.
Title: Able Archer 83 : the secret history of the NATO exercise that almost
triggered nuclear war / Nate Jones ; with a foreword by Thomas S. Blanton.
Other titles: Secret history of the NATO exercise that almost triggered
nuclearwar
Description: New York : The New Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016023458 (print) | LCCN 2016032122 (ebook) | ISBN
9781620972618 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781620972625 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Europe—History, Military—20th century. | Military
maneuvers—Europe—History—20th century. | Nuclear crisis
control—History—20th century. | United States—History, Military—20th
century—Sources. | Nuclear weapons—Government policy—United
States—History—20th century. | North Atlantic Treaty
Organization—History—20th century. | Europe,
Western—Defenses—History—20th century. | Soviet Union—Foreign
relations—United States—Sources. | United States—Foreign
relations—Soviet Union—Sources. | Cold War—Sources.
Classification: LCC UA646 .J656 2016 (print) | LCC UA646 (ebook) | DDC
355.5/209409048—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016023458
The New Press publishes books that promote and enrich public discussion and
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CONTENTS
ix Foreword by Tom Blanton
1 Introduction: “Two Spiders in a Bottle”
5 Part I: “Standing Tall,” the “Mirror- Image,” and Operation RYaN
25 Part II: “Thoroughly White Hot,” Able Archer 83, and the Crux of the War Scare
39 Part III: Aftermath, “One Misstep Could Trigger a Great War”
54 Conclusion: “Why Is the World So Dangerous?”
61 Acknowledgments and Notes on Sources
67 Document 1 President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
Report, “The Soviet ‘War Scare,’ ” February 15,
1990, Top Secret, UMBRA GAMMA WNINTEL
NOFORN NOCONTRACT ORCON
179 Document 2 CIA Studies in Intelligence Article by Benjamin
Fischer, “The 1983 War Scare in U.S.-Soviet
Relations,” Undated (Circa 1996), Secret
195 Document 3 KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov to General
Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, “Report on the Work
of the KGB in 1981,” May 10, 1982
199 Document 4 Central Intelligence Agency Biographical Profile of
Yuriy Vladimirovich Andropov, January 11, 1983,
Classification Redacted
203 Document 5 Memorandum of Conversation Between General
Secretary Yuri Andropov and Averell Harriman,
CPSU Central Committee Headquarters, Moscow,
3:00 p.m. June 2, 1983
219 Document 6 U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command
Daily INTSUM, November 10, 1983, Secret
221 Document 7 Air Force Seventh Air Division, Ramstein Air Base,
“Exercise Able Archer 83, SAC ADVON, After
Action Report,” December 1, 1983, Secret NOFORN
241 Document 8 Memorandum for National Security Advisor
Robert McFarlane from Soviet Expert Jack Matlock,
“Subject: American Academic on Soviet Policy,”
December 13, 1983, Confidential with Attached
EXDIS Cable from the American Embassy in Moscow
251 Document 9 UK Ministry of Defence, “Soviet Union Concern
About a Surprise Nuclear Attack,” May 9, 1983
259 Document 10 Central Intelligence Agency, Special National
Intelligence Estimate, “Implications of Recent
Soviet Military- Political Activities,” May 18, 1984,
Top Secret
273 Document 11 Central Intelligence Agency Memorandum for
the President, Vice President, Secretary of State,
Secretary of Defense, Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs, and Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, from CIA Director William
Casey, “U.S./Soviet Tension,” June 19, 1984, Secret
283 Document 12 Small Group Meeting of November 19, 1983,
7:30 a.m., The Secretary’s Dining Room,
Department of State, Secret / Sensitive
289 Document 13 Reagan’s Handwritten Addition of Ivan and Anya
to His January 16, 1984, Speech on United States–
Soviet Relations
303 Notes
327 Index
FOREWORD
READ THIS BOOK AND YOU will make the world a safer place. Read these
former secrets—many of them classified above Top Secret—and you will see how
truly scary the War Scare of 1983 was. Read this book and you will understand how
the Cold War dangers that flared in 1983—and could have produced a nuclear war
through miscalculation and misperception—are still with us today.
You don’t have to take the author’s word for it. Nate Jones has personally led
the cutting edge of scholarship, breaking loose the primary sources, the classified
contemporaneous notes, the highest- level intelligence assessments, from all sides,
through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and through archival research in col-
lections ranging from the East German Stasi to the Soviet Politburo to the CIA’s
database of declassified records. Here in this book, Nate shows you the actual docu-
ments, along with his own narrative and analysis, so you can judge for yourself.
This book effectively resolves a heated controversy that divided the CIA in the
1980s and has led to sharp exchanges between scholars ever since. The debate over
the 1983 War Scare secretly raged for years inside the classified conference rooms
of U.S. and British spy agencies, and inside the closed briefing sessions with presi-
dents and prime ministers. Word of the War Scare of 1983 only reached the public
domain in the 1990s, and scholars took up cudgels on both sides of the debate, some
expressing serious alarm and others pooh- poohing the fright factor, but all lacking
the firsthand evidence that you will read about in this book.
Here’s how President Ronald Reagan summed up the key question about the
1983 War Scare (in a query to his ambassador to Moscow, Arthur Hartman, in
