Able Archer 83

1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink

by Taylor Downing  · 23 Apr 2018  · 400pp  · 121,708 words

Star Wars 6 Lack of Intelligence 7 Double Agents 8 PSYOPS 9 Shootdown 10 Outcry 11 False Alerts 12 Truck Bomb 13 Kremlin Paranoia 14 Able Archer 83 15 Combat Alert 16 Night 17 ‘Really Scary’ 18 Spy Wars 19 Pay-off 20 Endgames Epilogue Acknowledgements Also by Taylor Downing Bibliography Key

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United States. And now the last and most agonising phase was fast approaching that would bring the world to the brink of nuclear catastrophe. 14 Able Archer 83 In early November 1983, at the peak of the heightened level of tension between the Soviet Union and the West, NATO began an exercise

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by the name of Able Archer 83. Able Archer was an annual war game known as a Command Post Exercise. It did not involve sending troops out into the field. It

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up against NATO in Europe, but Able Archer was intended to test out the procedures for responding to a military assault from the East. Able Archer 83 was itself part of a bigger group of NATO exercises that were taking place in the autumn of 1983, under the umbrella name Autumn Forge

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in the airlift. Atlantic Lion 83 involved thousands of American, Dutch, German, British and Canadian troops as well as tanks and armoured vehicles.2 Able Archer 83 came after these exercises and was intended to focus on one principal issue: a request by NATO commanders to deploy nuclear weapons as the final

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resort in a full-scale war with the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies that they felt they were losing. Able Archer 83, in essence, was a rehearsal for the release of NATO’s nuclear weapons. The Able Archer war game was played out deep inside the

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alarm in Moscow that they nearly engulfed the world in a nuclear Armageddon. As a top secret US report for the President later concluded, Able Archer 83 ‘may have inadvertently placed our relations with the Soviet Union on a hair trigger’.3 The war gamers invented a lively but credible scenario for

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Soviet tanks and armour soon overpower NATO forces and rapidly begin to spread across the north German plain.4 At this point in the scenario, Able Archer 83 began in real time. Those taking part in the war game in the bunker in Mons were faced with a massive assault against NATO forces

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players under considerable pressure by constantly feeding in new and unexpected developments in the unfolding scenario. Colonel Spike Callender was in the directing staff for Able Archer 83 and he recalled, ‘There’s always an ever-changing situation and you would have to be continually adapting just like you’d expect to in

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will be consistent and a commander could be faced with two different reports that could be entirely different.’6 All of those taking part in Able Archer 83 knew that it was an exercise but played along as though it were real. Eugene Gay was the Nuclear Operations Officer in the NATO

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would deceive NATO into thinking that there was no real threat. They now began to believe that the radio messages they were picking up from Able Archer 83 were a mirror image of their own plans. Maybe this had started out as a war game, but was it in reality intended to

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behind in embassy bunkers.8 To those, like the ever-paranoid Vladimir Kryuchkov, at the KGB Centre in Moscow, receiving alarming reports from NATO during Able Archer 83, all these instructions seemed logical and necessary. If the Western powers were about to launch a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union some of these

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should be aware of what would happen and the role they needed to play in the event of a real crisis. However, just before Able Archer 83, Reagan’s National Security Advisor Bud McFarlane calculated that the international situation was too tense and there were too many demands on the President’s

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could interpret a situation wrongly and the consequence would be nuclear war by miscalculation. When on 8 November NATO changed its top secret codes during Able Archer 83, the Soviet leaders felt confident that this could no longer be a war game. Andropov and his close clique of regular military and intelligence visitors

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foil a first strike whose intention might be to decapitate the leadership and leave no one with clear authority to order a retaliation. As Able Archer 83 moved towards its climax on the evening of Tuesday 8 November there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing to the Kuntsevo Clinic

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bases from 1800 to 1900 hours Moscow time every night. This, along with the use of that new and unknown code at the peak of Able Archer 83, convinced the senior figures in the KGB, the GRU and the Kremlin that this war game was different to all previous war games. Just

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Ramstein Air Force Base in south-west Germany, the US Air Force had its European headquarters. It was one of the bases taking part in Able Archer 83. In those crucial days of heightened alert in Moscow, Lieutenant-General Leonard Perroots was Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence. He was a career

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Perroots was not alarmed. He had received no intelligence briefings warning him that the Soviet leadership was anxious about Western preparations for war or that Able Archer 83 had prompted a serious panic. There was no heightened state of alert on the NATO side. So he decided to do ‘nothing in the

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officials carried on with their routine exercise with no notion of the scare it had provoked in Moscow. On the morning of 11 November, the Able Archer 83 war game came to an end. They had practised the release of nuclear weapons. That was it. The exercise did not follow on with

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a Special National Intelligence Estimate entitled ‘Implications of Recent Soviet Military-Political Activities’. The assessment was specifically set up to examine the Soviet reaction to Able Archer 83 and it noted the various military responses, including the placing of Soviet and East German aircraft on to a heightened state of readiness. It admitted

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of the genuineness of Soviet fears’. At the Commonwealth heads of government conference in New Delhi later that month, less than two weeks after the Able Archer 83 exercise had finished, there was a discussion with the Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere and others. Neither Thatcher nor Howe made any reference to their secret

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genuinely impressed with the British intelligence was Reagan’s new National Security Advisor, Bud McFarlane. He had been in office for just a month when Able Archer 83 began. He later remembered, ‘The Gordievsky debriefs were quite shocking to me in the sense that this extremely reliable source, an insider, was reporting

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on to power; Grigory Romanov, in his sixties, the Secretary of the Party Central Committee, who had spoken about the situation being ‘white hot’ during Able Archer 83; and Mikhail Gorbachev, the youngest member of the Politburo, then in his fifties. When reports came in from Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau that he

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truck bomb, increased communication between London and Washington after the Grenada invasion–all these events brought the Soviet leadership to the brink. And then came Able Archer 83. Fischer concluded that ‘RYaN was real’, and that while Soviet fears of a US first strike were exaggerated, ‘they were scarcely insane’.15 Nearly

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and the Baltic to reassure these governments of Western support. The US moved 600 paratroopers to the Baltic as a demonstration of its resolve. If Able Archer 83 had once been provocative, Russian military exercises like Zapad 17 have taken its place in recent years. But all this is still a far

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played out, at least in the West. It usually holds the accolade as the most perilous episode of the Cold War. By contrast, the Able Archer 83 incident was not reported at the time and is not well known outside specialist circles. But it too could lay claim to being the most

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last couple of years he has pried loose from secret files around the world more than a thousand pages of documents relating to Operation RYaN, Able Archer 83 and the background to the events of that year. These include Freedom of Information Act releases by the CIA, the National Security Agency, the

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Breath. London: Abacus, 2008; originally published by Bantam Press, 1998. Johnson, R. W., Shootdown: The Verdict on KAL 007. London: Chatto & Windus, 1986. Jones, Nate, Able Archer 83. New York: The New Press, 2016. Kahn, Herman, On Thermonuclear War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960. Maydew, Randall C. and Julie Bush, America’s Lost

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at Eureka College, Illinois, 9 May 1982. 24 Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence, p.502. 25 Reagan, The Reagan Diaries, p.75. 26 Nate Jones, Able Archer 83, p.9. 27 REAGAN: Address to Members of the British Parliament, 8 June 1982. 28 REAGAN: Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Association

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War Scare’, Top Secret, p.53. 16 Gates, From the Shadows, p.259. 17 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story, p.488. 18 Jones, Able Archer 83, p.14. 19 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story, pp.488–9. 20 NSA: KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov to General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, Report

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Years, p.450. 7 Gates, From the Shadows, pp.290–1. 8 Volkogonov, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, pp.376–8. 14 Able Archer 83 1 Richard Dannatt, Boots on the Ground, p.191. 2 NSA: The 1983 War Scare, Vol II, Briefing Book No. 427, Documents 3 & 4

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Autumn Forge 83; and Jones, Able Archer 83, pp.25–6. 3 NSA: PFIAB, The Soviet ‘War Scare’, 15 February 1990, Top Secret, p.xii. 4 NSA: The 1983 War Scare, Vol

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II, Briefing Book No. 427; Documents 6a & 6b NATO Exercise Able Archer 83 Scenario, NATO Historical Files; and see also Jones, Able Archer 83, pp.1–2. 5 NSA: Air Force Seventh Air Division, Ramstein, Exercise Able Archer 83, SAC ADVON, After Action Report, 1 December 1983, p.5. 6 FLASHBACK: Interview with Spike

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p.391. 4 CIA: Fischer, A Cold War Conundrum, p.17. 5 Romanov’s speech was reported in Pravda on 6 November 1983; see Jones, Able Archer 83, p.37. 6 NSA: PFIAB, The Soviet ‘War Scare’, Top Secret, p.64ff. 7 NSA: Interview with Vitalii Tsygichko in December 1990 by John

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Gordievsky, Next Stop Execution, p.272. 3 FLASHBACK: Interview with Oleg Gordievsky. 4 FLASHBACK: The quotes are from the interview with Rainer Rupp. 5 Jones, Able Archer 83, p.37. 6 NSA: PFIAB, The Soviet ‘War Scare’, Top Secret, pp.28–9. 7 FLASHBACK: Interview with Spike Callender. 8 FLASHBACK: Interview with

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Studies in Intelligence, a CIA in-house journal, in 1996 entitled The 1983 War Scare in US-Soviet Relations: A Cold War Conundrum. 2 Jones, Able Archer 83, pp.39–40. 3 NSA: CIA, Special National Intelligence Estimate, Implications of Recent Soviet Military-Political Activities, Top Secret, 18 May 1984; and PFIAB,

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not know of Gordievsky by name at this point, he just knew him by a codename–his real name came out much later). 7 Jones, Able Archer 83, pp.45–6. 8 Reagan, The Reagan Diaries, p.186. 9 Ibid., p.199. 10 FLASHBACK: Interview with Robert McFarlane. 11 Reagan, The Reagan

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p.199. 12 NSA: Small Group Meeting of 19 November 1983, 7.30am, The Secretary of State’s Dining Room, Secret, p.4. 13 Jones, Able Archer 83, p.3. 14 NSA: CIA Memorandum from CIA Director William Casey, US/Soviet Tension, 19 June 1984, Secret; and PFIAB, The Soviet ‘War Scare’,

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; and Howe, Conflict of Loyalty, pp.353–4. 17 Hoffman, The Dead Hand, p.155. 18 Reagan, An American Life, p.588. 19 Jones, Able Archer 83, p.49. 20 REAGAN: Address to the Nation and Other Countries on US-Soviet Relations, 16 January 1984. 21 Gaddis, The Cold War, p.228

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. Gaddis says he heard the story from two well-placed White House sources. The handwritten addition appears in Jones, Able Archer 83, pp.301–2. 22 NSA: Johnson, American Cryptology during the Cold War, National Security Agency, Top Secret, p.319. 23 Reagan, The Reagan Diaries,

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Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 18:3, August 1998, pp.325–32. 4 Some of the latest evidence uncovered is published in Jones, Able Archer 83. 5 NSA: PFIAB, The Soviet ‘War Scare’, Top Secret, pp.1–30. 6 The PFIAB report was classified as Top Secret UMBRA GAMMA WNINTEL

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of no contractors or consultants (NOCONTRACT), and Originator Controlled (ORCON), meaning of very limited and controlled distribution. Index Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations Able Archer 83 exercise 222–56, 344 intelligence failures 256, 257–61, 263 NATO code changes 231, 240, 251 political leaders, participation of 231–2 scenario 224–5

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, 158 Anderson, Martin 91, 92, 93, 98 Andrew, Christopher 338 Andropov, Yuri 36, 37–40, 41–2, 45–8, 49–50, 241 and the Able Archer 83 exercise 242, 250, 255 background of 39, 40, 41 CIA profile of 106 domestic reforms 87–8 and the downing of KAL 007 179–80

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Carter 297 nuclear policy 70–1 relations with Reagan 59 signs Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) 13 war games, participation in 68 Britain and Able Archer 83 exercise 231, 232 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 95, 123–4 Falklands War 118, 210 Gorbachev’s visit to 271–4 London KGB residency 81,

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109 opposes Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty 320 Ceauşescu, Elena 332 Ceauşescu, Nicolae 332 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 6, 38, 106–12, 277 and the Able Archer 83 exercise 256, 257, 258 aggressive and proactive policy 107–8, 144 assessment of Gorbachev 294–5 bureaucracy 109 covert aid to anti-communist and resistance

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(KAL) Flight 007 incident 149–56, 157–88 ‘proxy’ engagements through client states 205 stalemate 92 Cole, John 274 Command Post Exercise 222 see also Able Archer 83 exercise Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) 29, 30, 32, 49, 51 Commonwealth of Independent States 333 Congress of People’s Deputies 329 Contras 110

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, 260, 270, 275, 276–7 and the downing of KAL 007 185 head of Supreme Soviet 275, 297 meets with Shultz 296 GRU and the Able Archer 83 exercise 245, 251 foreign residencies 119 Operation RYaN 80, 81–5, 251 Grushko, Viktor 280, 281 Guk, Arkady 119–20, 124, 125 H-bomb

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5, 333, 334 KC-135 tanker aircraft 191 Kennedy, John F. 10, 11, 320 Kennedy, Robert 114 KGB 43, 45–7, 49, 338 and the Able Archer 83 exercise 250–1 Andropov as head of 35, 45, 46–7, 48, 69, 74, 80, 83, 106, 341 directorates 73 First Chief Directorate (FCD)

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launching nuclear weapons 10, 15–16, 55–6, 62–3, 240–1 simulated nuclear attack 61–2 Withhold Options 60 nuclear war scare (1983) 344 Able Archer 83 exercise and 222–56, 344 CIA report on 339–40 Soviet arsenal on maximum alert 16, 240, 242, 243–9, 255, 257, 307 Soviet

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occupation of Afghanistan 30, 76–7 and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 204–5 Kremlin nuclear paranoia 85, 86, 112, 125, 233, 238, 240 see also Able Archer 83 exercise; Operation RYaN Middle East policies 220 military strength and personnel 222–3 nuclear arsenal 223 nuclear programme 4–6, 8, 9, 12 office of

The Cold War

by Robert Cowley  · 5 May 1992  · 546pp  · 176,169 words

, a friend of Moscow's ally Cuba. Washington appeared to be in an aggressive mood. In this charged atmosphere occurred a NATO military exercise called Able Archer 83, scheduled to last from November 2 through November 11. A socalled command post exercise in which only headquarters and higher echelons participated, Able Archer tested

The Defence of the Realm

by Christopher Andrew  · 2 Aug 2010  · 1,744pp  · 458,385 words

sober-minded person must stop.’ The KGB took its cue from Andropov. The Centre’s alarmism reached its peak during the NATO command-post exercise ABLE ARCHER 83, held from 2 to 11 November to practise nuclear-release procedures, which it feared might be used as cover for beginning the countdown to an

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of Andropov on 9 February and reassuring signals from London and Washington (prompted, particularly in the British case, by knowledge of the fears generated by ABLE ARCHER 83), the mood in Moscow gradually lightened. Andropov’s successor and former rival, Konstantin Chernenko, was already in failing health and had only a year to

The Secret World: A History of Intelligence

by Christopher Andrew  · 27 Jun 2018

preventing it from crossing the point at which any sober-minded person must stop.’ Alarm within the Centre reached a climax during the NATO exercise ‘Able Archer 83’, held in November 1983 to practise nuclear-release procedures for a simulated DEFCON 1 coordinated nuclear attack. For a time both the Kremlin and the

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Publications, 1992) Ketchum, Robert, Victory at Georgetown: The Campaign That Won the Revolution (Georgetown, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990) Khuri, Nick, ‘New Light on Able Archer ’83: The Dynamics of Misperception, Escalation, and De-Escalation’, MPhil thesis (University of Cambridge, 2016) Kieckhefer, Richard, ‘The Office of Inquisition and Medieval Heresy: The Transition

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’s residency. 97. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 591–605. The best analysis of recently declassified documents on the crisis is Khuri, ‘New Light on Able Archer ’83’. 98. Some of the KGBR YAN directives are published in Andrew and Gordievsky (eds.), Instructions from the Centre, ch. 4. 99. Gordievsky, Next Stop Execution

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’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, ‘The Soviet “War Scare”’, 15 Feb. 1990 (declassified Oct. 2015), pp. vi, viii, 7 (cited in Khuri, ‘New Light on Able Archer ’83’, p. 37). The PFIAB report is available online at: http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb533-The-Able-Archer-War-Scare-Declassified-PFIAB-Report-Released/2012

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Nazi capability), 741* first Soviet bomb (1949), 691 Iranian nuclear programme, 733 and Islamist terrorism, 759 MANHATTAN Project, 664–8, 669, 673, 691 NATO exercise ‘Able Archer 83’ (1983), 696, 713–14 PFIAB report (1990), 697 role of intelligence on in Cold War, 682, 683, 684 SDI (‘Star Wars’) programme (1983), 696 Soviet

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by Robert Service  · 7 Oct 2015

possible objectives: he thought him mad enough to order a nuclear Blitzkrieg against the USSR. In November 1983 there was a NATO command post exercise – Able Archer 83 – to deal with a potential ‘escalation’ of trouble between America and its allies and the Warsaw Pact. It involved an attempt to experiment with new

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Decision Directive (No. 210) ref1 National Union of Mineworkers ref1, ref2 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 command post exercise (Able Archer 83) (1983) ref1, ref2 and de Gaulle ref1, ref2 and deployment of Pershing-2 and Tomahawk missiles ref1 expansion eastwards ref1, ref2 Germany’s membership question

Who Rules the World?

by Noam Chomsky

Light for Israeli Offensive Violating 1973 Cease-Fire,” press release, 7 October 2003, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB98/press.htm.   3. Nate Jones, “The Able Archer 83 Sourcebook,” National Security Archive, 7 November 2013, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ablearcher/.   4. Jillian Kestler-D’Amours, “Opportunity Missed for Nuclear-Free Middle East

The Cold War: A World History

by Odd Arne Westad  · 4 Sep 2017  · 846pp  · 250,145 words

had held military exercises, usually in the fall, in order to test alliance readiness to withstand a sudden Warsaw Pact attack. The 1983 version, codenamed Able Archer ’83, simulated conflict escalation up to the point when nuclear strikes were launched. The Soviets had been notified about the exercise beforehand, and knew quite a

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September 1983, PPP Reagan 1983, 1227. 5. Quoted in Nate Jones, “First Page of Paramount Able Archer 83 Report Declassified by British Archive,” 27 October 2014, https://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/first-page-of-paramount-able-archer-83-report-declassified-by-british-archive-remainder-of-the-detection-of-soviet-preparations-for-war-against-nato

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-withheld/. See also Nate Jones, ed., Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War (New York: New Press, 2016). 6. Homily of His Holiness John Paul II,

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[the headquarters of the 82nd Airborne Division] to have them relay his request.” The week after the invasion, NATO staged a command-and-control exercise, Able Archer 83. It included a practice drill for NATO’s defense ministers, simulating the procedures to authorize the use of nuclear weapons. The KGB thought that

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Able Archer 83 might be a cover for a surprise attack on the Soviet Union. The timing of such an attack—a few weeks before the arrival of

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a cover for a surprise attack on Western Europe. While NATO played its war game, Soviet aircraft in Poland and East Germany prepared to counterattack. Able Archer 83 ended uneventfully on November 11—and NATO’s defense ministers were totally unaware that their command-and-control drill had been mistaken for the start

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, Center for Naval Analyses, July 1994, pp. 23-31. “a frustrated Army officer used his AT&T credit card”: “JTF Operations Since 1983,” p. 28. Able Archer 83: See Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 270-73; Hoffman, Dead Hand, pp. 94-95; Fischer, “Cold War Conundrum.” “the KGB concluded that American forces”: The

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locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable. Able Archer 83, 448–49 A-bomb. See Atomic bomb “Acceptable Military Risks from Accidental Detonation of Atomic Weapons,” 171–72 Accident prevention Burned Board briefing, 369–70

The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy

by David Hoffman  · 1 Jan 2009  · 719pp  · 209,224 words

a nuclear war? Soviet paranoia reached a zenith at the time of a planned NATO exercise in Europe scheduled for November 2-11. The exercise, Able Archer '83, was designed to practice the procedures for a full-scale simulated release of nuclear weapons in a European conflict. The Soviets had long feared that

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exercises could be used as a disguise for a real attack; their own war plans envisioned the same deception. According to Gordievsky, two features of Able Archer '83 caused particular alarm in Moscow. First, the procedures and message formats for the shift from conventional to nuclear war were quite different from those on

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notice. The United States and its NATO allies had for years carried out fall military exercises, but the ones that took place in November—designated “Able Archer 83”—involved a higher level of leadership participation than was usual. The Soviet intelligence agencies kept a close watch on these maneuvers, and their reports caused

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