November 1983: the most dangerous moment of the cold war?

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Nigel Bowles, Kris Stoddart and Nick Wheeler for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. All of them, together with the Reviews Editor of the journal, R. Gerald Hughes, are to blame if I’ve got anything wrong.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Gates, From The Shadows, 270. Gates was Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from 1991 until 1993 and United States Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011.

2. National Security Archive (NSA): The National Security Archive Able Archer 83 Sourcebook: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/project/able-archer-83-sourcebook [last accessed 27 August 2019].

3. President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Report [hereafter PFIABR] ‘The Soviet “War Scare,’” February 15, 1990, Top Secret, UMBRA GAMMA WNINTEL NOFORN NOCONTRACT ORCON,’ in Jones, Able Archer 83, 67–177.

4. One British official interviewed was Harry Burke of GCHQ and the Cabinet Office.

5. Director of Central Intelligence, ‘Implications of Recent Soviet Military–Political Activities’, SNIE 11-10-84/JX, 18 May 1984, p. iii, in Jones, Able Archer 83, 264. These conclusions were echoed in a second SNIE in August.

6. PFIABR, p. ix in Jones, Able Archer 83, 77.

7. PFIABR, p. 31 in Jones, Able Archer 83, 112.

8. PFIABR, p. 1 in Jones, Able Archer 83, 82.

9. PFIABR, p. xii in Jones, Able Archer 83, 80.

10. Jones, Able Archer 83, 37, 44.

11. PFIABR, p. 36 in Jones, Able Archer 83, 118.

12. The second volume of Michael Goodman’s official history of the Joint Intelligence Committee, currently in preparation, is anticipated to provide illumination of British assessments.

13. Fischer, ‘Scolding Intelligence’, 105.

14. Barrass, “Able Archer 83?” 23. Barrass’ conclusions accord with his earlier study, idem, The Great Cold War, 298–301, 304–5.

15. Ermarth, “Observations on the ‘War Scare’.”

16. Flashback 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse.

17. Downing, 1983 The World at the Brink, 16 .

18. ibid, 17.

19. For authoritative accounts of Reagan’s national security polices see Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era and Garthoff, The Great Transition.

20. See Blair, The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War and Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine. For important documentation on the SIOP, see the NSA’s collection at: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/search/node/SIOP [Last accessed 27 August 2019].

21. Kaplan, “JFK’s First Strike Plan.”

22. For a thorough history of the Soviet-American nuclear relationship during the Carter and early Reagan years, see Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation.

23. PFIABR, p. 51 in Jones, Able Archer 83, 133.

24. Downing, 1983 World at the Brink, 10.

25. Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine and Schlosser, Command and Control. For a worrying account of Soviet command and control issues – and a frightening account of Soviet biological weapons development, see Hoffman, The Dead Hand. Bruce Blair’s Logic of Inadvertent Nuclear War remains a seminal text on nuclear command and control by a pre-eminent authority on the subject.

26. Reagan, An American Life, 586.

27. The mistaken belief that it was an avowed policy of the United States never to strike first with nuclear weapons was reinforced in an influential 1964 documentary (so described by Daniel Ellsberg), which portrayed American nuclear command and control arrangements, and the delegation of nuclear release authority to military commanders. Ellsberg, Doomsday Machine, 18–19, 59, 64–5, 75, 297, 301, 303–5, 308. This portrayed a scenario in which a SAC base commander, acting on the belief that the United States is under sustained biological weapons attack, orders selective B-52 strikes against targets in the USSR. Scripted by a former officer in RAF Bomber Command, Peter George, the scenario in which nuclear weapons are used is far more convincing than that devised by the planners of Able Archer 83.

28. Fischer, “The 1983 Soviet War Scare,” 65–6 in Jones, Able Archer 83, 185–6.

29. RYAN was the Russian acronym for, Raketno-Yadernoye Napadenie, meaning nuclear missile attack. Other acronyms, including RYaN and RIaN also appear in the literature, as does that for surprise nuclear missile attack, VRYaN.

30. Hoffman, The Dead Hand, 6–11. See also Barrass, The Great Cold War, 1–2, 296.

31. Fischer, “The 1980s Soviet War Scare.” For archival material, including Stasi documentation, see the NSA’s collection at https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/aa83/2018-11-05/soviet-side-1983-war-scare [last accessed 27 August 2019].

32. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story, 488–507, 508, 524–6; and Gordievsky, Next Stop Execution, 244, 261–2, 271–4, 377. Knowledge of Operation RYAN entered the public domain with an article in the Sunday Telegraph by Gordon Brook-Shepherd in 1988, followed by his book, The Storm Birds, based on interviews with Gordievsky, Brooke-Shepherd, The Storm Birds, 268–70. For more recently declassified material on Operation RYAN, including from the Stasi, see the NSA collection at: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/search/node/operation%20ryan [last accessed 27 August 2019].

33. Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor. The SIS officers were presumably given official authorisation for their interviews with the author.

34. Howe, Conflict of Loyalty, 350. According to Ben Macintyre, Prime Minster Thatcher, Foreign Secretary Howe and the Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, were the only ministers made aware that SIS had an agent inside the Soviet embassy (though they did not know his name). Macintyre, Spy and the Traitor, 154.

35. Fischer, “Scolding Intelligence,” 108, 109. The NSA continues to provide new documentary material on its website, including on Operation RYAN: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/aa83/2018-11-05/soviet-side-1983-war-scare [last accessed 27 August 2019].

36. Andrew and Gordievsky, Instructions from the Centre, 67–90.

37. PFIABR, p. 6 in Jones, Able Archer 83, 87. Some details of GRU activities have not been redacted, which might suggest its provenance was General Dimitri Polyakov, whose work as an American agent within the GRU was brought to an end by Aldrich Ames in July 1985, after which he was executed. The information from Ames appears to have corroborated that received earlier from Robert Hanssen. Bearden and Risen, The Main Enemy, 129, 157, 193–5.

38. Miles, “The War Scare That Wasn’t” [last accessed 27 August 2019].

39. NSA: ‘Previously Classified Interviews with Former Soviet Officials Reveal U.S. Strategic Intelligence Failure Over Decades, Gen.-Col. (Ret.) Adrian A. Danilevich’, 5 March 1990, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb285/vol% 20iI%20Danilevich.pdf, 26 [last accessed 27 August 2019].

40. ‘Permanent Operational Assignment to discover NATO Preparations for a Nuclear Attack on the USSR’, Andrew and Gordievsky, Instructions from the Centre, 72.

41. Flashback TV, 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse.

42. For discussion of the development of Operation RYAN see Miles, “War Scare that Wasn’t.”

43. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story, 489.

44. Andrew and Gordievsky, Instructions from the Centre, 69.

45. Hennessy, The Secret State, 7–14.

46. Jones, Able Archer 83, 14.

47. See note 43 above.

48. PFIABR, p. 39 in Jones, Able Archer 83, 120. A KGB telegram published by Andrew and Gordievsky gives a ‘reaction time’ of 20 minutes for an ICBM strike on Moscow. Andrew and Gordievsky, Instructions from the Centre, 76.

49. PFIABR, p. 39 in Jones, Able Archer 83, 120n.

50. Jones, Able Archer 83, 10.

51. Ibid., 53.

52. Downing, 1983 World at the Brink, 216.

53. Ibid., 14.

54. Barrass, “Able Archer 83,” 15.

55. Pry, War Scare, 34.

56. Hoffman, The Dead Hand. For observations on the development of Soviet nuclear strategy see Danilevich, “Previously Classified Interview.”

57. For details of the INF negotiations, see Talbott, Deadly Gambits. For discussion of the interim offer from US INF negotiators in Geneva, see ibid., 116–51. This proposed elimination of the Pershing-2 and would have allowed 75 triple-warhead Pioneer/SS-20s and 300 GLCMs. The 1987 INF Treaty in fact went further than a ‘zero option’, and included short-range intermediate nuclear missiles, in what was called, ‘the double-zero option’. For a valuable history of INF see Nuti, Bozo, Rey and Rother, The Euromissile Crisis. See also the NSA document collection at: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb301/.

58. Downing, 1983 World at the Brink, 242.

59. Ibid., 255.

60. Jones, Able Archer 83, 29. Most writers had previously accepted Gordievsky’s start date of 2 November. There remains acceptance that it was completed by 11 November.

61. PFIABR, p. 70 in Jones, Able Archer 83, 153. For discussion see, Jones, Able Archer 83, 26, 32–3.

62. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story, 502. This alluded to moving from DEFCON-5 to DEFCON-1 when nuclear war would be imminent.

63. Ibid. The document is reproduced in idem, Instructions from the Centre, 86–7. Interestingly, Gordon Barrass describes this telegram as ‘bland’. Barrass, “Able Archer 83,” 18.

64. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story, 503.

65. Ibid.

66. Jones, Able Archer 83, 316 n45.

67. Downing, 1983 World at the Brink, 251.

68. Kramer, “The Able Archer 83 Non-Crisis,” 27.

69. Barrass, “Able Archer 83,” 18. Whether his knowledge comes directly from Gordievsky, with whom he had extensive access during his time in the Cabinet Office between 1988 and 1993, and afterward, or from reading the document is unclear.

70. Mastny, “How Able Was ‘Able Archer’?.”

71. Barrass, The Great Cold War, 301.

72. Downing, 1983 World at the Brink, 240.

73. Barrass, The Great Cold War, 297.

74. Ibid., 301.

75. Danilevich, “Previously Classified Interview,” 26.

76. Barrass, The Great Cold War, 301. While Yesin’s revelations about the deployment of the Pioneer/SS-20s were used in 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse, his less alarmist remarks were not. Barrass, The Great Cold War, 439n. For Flashback TV’s interview with Yesin, see NSA: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=5028380-Document-22-Unpublished-Interview-with-Colonel. Document 22.

77. Garthoff, Soviet Leaders and Intelligence. 67–9; Garthoff, “Soviet Leaders, Soviet Intelligence, and the Changing Views of the United States,” 44–6; and Kramer, “Able Archer 83 Non-Crisis,” 20–2.

78. NSA: Unpublished Interview with former Soviet Head of General Staff Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, January 10, 1990, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB427/docs/14.Interview%20with%20Sergei%20Akhromeyev,%201990.pdf Document 14, 7.

79. Garthoff, Soviet Leaders, 68 .

80. Gordievsky, Next Stop Execution, 377.

81. PFIABR, pp. 69–76, in Jones, Able Archer 83, 152–9; Barrass, “Able Archer 83,” 19–20.

82. PFIABR, p. 28 in Jones, Able Archer 83, 109.

83. CIA, ‘The Implications of Recent Soviet Military-Political Activities’, p. 4.in Jones Able Archer 83, 269.

84. Nuclear Information Service (NIS): [Ministry of Defence/Foreign Office?], ‘Soviet Union: Concern About a Surprise NATO Attack’, 8 [?] May 1984. Released under the Freedom of Information Act. Available via NSA at: https://unredacted.com/2013/11/04/british-documents-confirm-uk-alerted-us-to-danger-of-able-archer-83/Document 9. Reproduced in Jones, Able Archer 83, 252. This document is (presumably) the final draft of the joint MOD-FO paper discussed below.

85. Fischer, “Anglo-American Intelligence,” 83.

86. Downing, 1983 World at the Brink, 243–4.

87. Ibid., 246–7.

88. Ibid., 242.

89. Downing states that US alerting never went beyond DEFCON-3. Downing, 1983 World at the Brink, 230, ignoring the fact that SAC went to DEFCON-2. Oddly, in an earlier book, he and his co-author did refer to ‘the US military’ being placed on DEFCON-2 during crisis, Isaacs and Downing, Cold War, 198.

90. Downing, 1983: World at the Brink, 255.

91. Jones, Able Archer 83, 34.

92. Barrass, The Great Cold War, 300; Garthoff, “Soviet Leaders,” 45; and Miles, “The War Scare That Wasn’t,” 35–6 [last accessed 27 August 2019].

93. NSA: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/aa83/2018-11-05/soviet-side-1983-war-scare. [Last accessed 27 August 2019]. This assessment was presumably written by Nate Jones.

94. Downing, 1983: World at the Brink, 253.

95. Michael Herman, ‘The JIC 1972–75 Some Personal Reflections,’ Centre for Intelligence and International Security Conference; ‘One Hundred Years of British Intelligence: From Empire to Cold War to Globalisation’, 1 May 2009.

96. Ibid. See also Herman’s remarks in Jones, Able Archer 83, 42.

97. NIS: DIS(CS)and DI(AG)I, ‘JIC paper: Soviet Concern About a Surprise NATO Attack’, 20 March 1984. Released under the Freedom of Information Act. Available via NSA at: https://unredacted.com/2013/11/04/british-documents-confirm-uk-alerted-us-to-danger-of-able-archer-83/Document 1. [last accessed 30 August 2019].

98. NIS: Prime Minister’s Private Secretary: ‘Soviet Concern About a Surprise NATO Attack’, 10 April 1984. Released under the Freedom of Information Act. Available via NSA at: https://unredacted.com/2013/11/04/british-documents-confirm-uk-alerted-us-to-danger-of-able-archer-83/Document 7 [last accessed 30 August 2019].

99. Ibid.

100. [Ministry of Defence/Foreign Office?] ‘Soviet Union: Concern About a Surprise NATO Attack’, If this is appeared in the draft shown to the Americans, they were thus told that the JIC was divided on the issue.

101. PFIABR, p. 11 in Jones, Able Archer 83, 252. Michael Quinlan, Britain’s most influential defence official in nuclear issues, later dismissed the idea, Quinlan, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons, 62n. For a riposte to Quinlan and a measured assessment of Soviet concerns, see Braithwaite, Armageddon and Paranoia, 352–5.

102. NIS: DUS(P) to PS/Secretary of State for Defence. ‘Soviet Concern About A Surprise NATO Attack’ [April 1984]. Released under the Freedom of Information Act. Available via NSA at: https://unredacted.com/2013/11/04/british-documents-confirm-uk-alerted-us-to-danger-of-able-archer-83/Document 8 [last accessed 30 August 2019].

103. Prime Minister’s Private Secretary: ‘Soviet Concern About a Surprise NATO Attack’.

104. NIS: DUS(P) to PS/Secretary of State for Defence: ‘Soviet Concern About A Surprise NATO Attack’, 8 May 1984. Released under the Freedom of Information Act. Available via NSA at: https://unredacted.com/2013/11/04/british-documents-confirm-uk-alerted-us-to-danger-of-able-archer-83/Document 10 [last accessed 30 August 2019].

105. For discussion, see Fischer, ‘Anglo-American Intelligence’.

106. NSA: ‘Department of State memo from Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research Hugh Montgomery to Secretary of State George Shultz, “Subject: SNIE 11-10-1984,” 28 May 1984, Secret’ at The 1983 War Scare: “The Last Paroxysm” of the Cold War Part III, Document 7: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB428/docs/7.Subject%20SNIE%2011-10-1984.pdf [last accessed 29 August 2019].

107. NIS: DUS(P) to PS/Secretary of State for Defence. ‘Soviet Concern About A Surprise NATO Attack’.

108. PFIABR, p. 11 in Jones, Able Archer 83, 92.

109. Bearden and Risen, Main Enemy, 47.

110. Jones, Able Archer 83, 103.

111. Gordievsky, Next Stop Execution, 372–3.

112. Fischer, The Reagan Reversal.

113. Jones, Able Archer 83, 46 .

114. Ibid., 58.

115. See note 41 above.

116. For scrutiny of the ‘window of opportunity’, see Podvig, “The Window of Vulnerability That Wasn’t.” For a thorough assessment of the Soviet-American nuclear relationship during the Carter and early Reagan years, see Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation.

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Len Scott

Len Scott is Emeritus Professor of International History and Intelligence Studies at Aberystwyth University. He has written extensively on nuclear history, the Cold War and intelligence studies. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.