October 12, 2022 • 41 mins
A former Hollywood actor and a former Chairman of the KGB walk into a bar and... blow the whole thing up? In 1983, the decision to launch nukes lay in the hands of two men: Ronald Wilson Reagan and Yuri Andropov. Let's talk about how their teeny tiny… inferiority complexes set us on a path – right to the edge of a nuclear cliff. Produced by FilmNation and Pacific Electric Picture Co. in association with Gilded Audio.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
You know what's unsettling thinking about how easy it would
be to push the nuclear button, you know, the one,
the big red button. Nukes go flying and millions of
people instantaneously evaporate. You know you shouldn't, but you still
kind of want to push it. It's right there, that button. Button.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Pushing it gets so much easier to talk of how
many tens of millions of deaths are acceptable when one
is removed from it.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
This guy gets it, the idea that a simple flinch
of a presidential finger could cause so much destruction. It
feels too easy, too clean. Okay, there's not really a
big red button. That's a myth. The truth is the
nuclear war plans live in a briefcase that follows the
US president wherever they go. The codes are always on hand,
(00:54):
written on a small card in the president's pocket, like
your gym membership card. You've always got it on you
and you never use it. But it's still relatively easy,
because the process of launching a nuclear weapon is still
a million miles removed from the real cost millions of
human lives. In the nineteen eighties, people were pondering this problem,
(01:15):
how to make the weight of pushing that button just
a little bit heavier. People like Roger Fisher.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Roger Fisher, who is a law professor at Harvard I
can't remember which, had a fantasy about how one could
overcome this button pushing distance.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Fisher was a professor at Harvard, not Yale, but anyway,
he proposed an idea. What if he said, the nuclear
codes weren't in a briefcase. What if the codes were
actually in a little capsule, and that capsule was buried
in the chest of a volunteer, let's call him Fred.
Instead of carrying around the briefcase with the codes inside,
(01:51):
imagine Fred carrying around a big, heavy butcher knife.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
And if the President needed the codes, he would have
to retrieve them from the volunteer and would hand the
President tonight Fred.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I'm sorry, buddy, but I gotta heck your chest open.
Fred's freaking out. The Commander in Chief is forced to
then physically butcher good old Fred with his own hands
in order to then kill millions.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
When he told this to his friends in the Pentagon,
they were aghast. Blood on the White House carpet. They
said he might never push the.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Button precisely, much to his dismay. Roger Fisher's fantasy was
just that earth destroying power still rests in a briefcase
that follows the president wherever they go. To me. It
makes the prospect of launching a nuclear weapon a terrifying
psychological dilemma. What will it really take to push a
man so far that he'd press that button, that he'd
(02:47):
prompt the end of the world. I've had helms and
This is Snafu, a podcast about history's greatest screw ups.
In season one, we're telling the story of Avil Archer eighth,
the nineteen eighty three NATO military exercise that became a
snafu so gigantic, so absurd, so terrifying that it almost
(03:09):
led to a real nuclear war. In order to trace
(03:34):
what happened during Able Archer eighty three, we need to
get to know the players at the heart of this story.
This episode will follow the two powerful men behind the
proverbial big red buttons, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet
General Secretary Uri and drop Off. There are two men
with political savvy, plenty of bravado, and an aptitude for
(03:55):
mind games. The question is would they push each other
to far?
Speaker 3 (04:04):
How do you do?
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Everybody?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Hey, there I'd like to introduce myself, please do. My
name is Ronald Reagan. This was it where it all began.
It's the late thirties and a young Ronald Reagan introduces
himself to moviegoers in the trailer for his first film,
Love Is on the Air. Even from the beginning, he
had that incredible knack for making you feel like he
(04:25):
was talking right to you through the camera.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
A few months ago, I was a sports announcer on
a radio station in Des.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Moines, Iowa. Back before he was charming political audiences with
his good looks and brilliant smile. Ronald Reagan was a
radio sports announcer in Iowa. Legend has it sometimes Reagan
would lose the feed of the game while he was
live on air, so he would just make up amazing
plays until the feed came back. But his descriptions were
so vivid audiences didn't really care whether they were hearing
(04:53):
about a real game or not. But Reagan knew his
face was too pretty for radio. He wanted Hollywood. In
nineteen thirty seven, he got the break he was looking for.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
One day, I ran into one of these movie talent scots.
I think I caught him off guard. Because the next
thing I knew, I was taking a screen test for
Warner Brothers in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
His career didn't exactly take off like a rocket, but
he was working, got some good roles in smaller films.
He even got to play a guy whose legs were
amputated by an angry small town doctor. Good stuff. After
a few years, it seemed like Reagan was finally headed
for the A List, until a World war inconveniently disrupted
his path.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Some bust some nineteen forty one, a date which will
live in infamy.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
The World War two draft called up young, able bodied
American men, including the famous ones. Even Jimmy Stewart went
off to fly bombers in the war. But Ronald Well,
he left Hollywood to go nowhere. Yeah, no, he didn't
actually leave Hollywood at all. Instead of fighting the war
on the front line, he filmed propaganda and training videos
for the army at a movie studio in Culver City, California.
(06:10):
To be fair, the four or five and the ten
intersection is the closest I've ever seen to a war zone.
But I digress.
Speaker 6 (06:16):
So he serves out his time. The war ends, and
he is very disappointed that the fighting has non fixed
the world.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
This is journalist Seth Rosenfeld. He says that at this
point in time, Reagan's life wasn't going so well. His
relationship was falling apart, his career was faltering, and he
was looking for a new sense of purpose.
Speaker 6 (06:40):
One night, there's a knock on his door, his home
nineteen forty six, and two FBI agents are standing there
and they say they have some information that he might
be interested in.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
They came one of some findings from me on people
that I had dealt with and so forth.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
By this time, Reagan was a vice president of the
Screen Actors Guild, and the FBI came knocking, Hey, Ronald,
we could use your help.
Speaker 6 (07:06):
This is about spies of savagers. We're sure. As a
former military man, you know all about that.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Calling Reagan a military man was a bit much. It's
like calling doctor Pepper a member of the medical establishment.
But you know, I mean, come on, they were buttering
him up. The FBI thought Hollywood communists were brainwashing the
American public by sneaking pro communist propaganda into movies. At first,
Reagan said no thanks, He wasn't interested in what he
(07:32):
called red baiting. But then the FBI said.
Speaker 6 (07:35):
We think you're going to want to hear what some
of these people are saying about you.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Basically, the Communis are talking about you behind your back.
Speaker 6 (07:44):
Well, that got his attention.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
And there right on his doorstep, Reagan got his shot
at patriotic glory. The FBI offered him a chance to
enlist in the world's next great conflict, the war against
the Communists.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
After that meeting, he agreed to become an FBI and former.
He did provide information about colleagues and people who he
suspected were Unamerican in some way.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
As it happens, the FBI's communist plot story was a
bit exaggerated.
Speaker 6 (08:16):
There's really no evidence that anything like that ever happened.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Sure, there were people in Hollywood who called themselves communists,
and it's not at all surprising that some of their
politics zeeped into their work. But these weren't national traders
in contact with Soviet agents. There was no coordinated plot.
But that wasn't Reagan's takeaway.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
I never got over realizing that I could recognize the signs.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Reagan wasn't just convinced that communists were his enemies. He
started to believe that every one of his enemies were Communists.
If someone was against him, it was a sign they
were a pinko for sure. And here's where things get
a little weirder.
Speaker 6 (08:56):
Not only was Reagan reporting on somebody who he suspected
somehow might be a communist or a Communist sympathizer, but
he was also reporting on people he didn't like.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Get in an argument with Ron at a meeting, snub
and at a party, maybe write a bad review for
his chimpanzee movie. You just got yourself blacklisted. It wasn't
just Reagan. Everyone was ratting each other out. There were hearings,
public shamings. People were prevented from ever working in Hollywood again.
Some even ended up serving time in prison.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
It did give me a real understanding of the communist menace.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
If you asked Reagan, he was fighting the good fight.
He was an American hero. Fast forward to the mid fifties,
Reagan's acting career was sputtering a little, which meant maybe
it was time for a career change, perhaps a leap
from the silver screen to the political podium. Reagan versus
the Communists coming soon to a political stage near you.
Speaker 7 (09:55):
I'll thank you very much.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
A group of prominent party members came to me before
the nineteen sixty six governorace in California and claimed that
I was the only one who could bring the party
together and win the election.
Speaker 8 (10:16):
California millionaires, we're looking for a new candidate, and they
didn't have an obvious one. But they saw him, and
they saw how he appealed to audiences.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
This is Frankie Fitzgerald. She literally wrote the book on
Reagan and nukes.
Speaker 8 (10:31):
They knew they didn't have to worry too much about
what he actually thought about because he was a good actor.
He would just he would do what people wanted him
to do.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
But they kept after Still. Pretty soon Nancy and I
couldn't sleep. We thought, well, what if they're right, then
we live with ourselves if we keep saying no.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Pretty soon, the Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan was the governor
of California, with his sight set on the White House.
Speaker 7 (10:56):
The distinguished guest here and you ladies in gentlemen who
I know are looking for a cause around which to
rally and which I believe we can give them.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Running for president in nineteen eighty, Reagan gave Americans causes
to rally around, all right, and In so doing, he
permanently altered the character of the Republican Party.
Speaker 8 (11:18):
He didn't have much a support at that point nationally,
but he went for the South, and the South had
just turned Republican.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
His opponent was Jimmy Carter, the incumbent Democrat, who was
really more of a centriest. So in order to capture votes,
Reagan needed to move to the right, far to the right.
His main thing was Reaganomics, tax cuts, bounced budget, trickle
down economics, all that, and in order to sell the policy,
he needed a villain, and you could be pretty sure
(11:53):
it wouldn't be Wall Street.
Speaker 9 (11:54):
In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record.
She used eighty names, thirty addresses, fifteen telephone numbers to
collect food Stamps, social Security, veterans, benefits for four non
existent deceased veterans' husbands, as well as welfare.
Speaker 7 (12:11):
Her tax free cash.
Speaker 9 (12:12):
Income alone has been running one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a year.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Now, this little anecdote, while tethered to an actual person,
is deeply embellished, and worse, Reagan is using it to
sell a larger myth that is complete horseshit that welfare
queens were running rampant in US society. It was racist,
and this myth has never really gone away. It's a
nasty old political trick, scaring the voters straight into the
(12:39):
voting booth. And when it came to the Cold War,
Ronald Reagan saw an opportunity for a new villain, one
he knew very well, the Communists.
Speaker 8 (12:49):
So that was when Reagan began to move to the
right on national security issues.
Speaker 10 (12:57):
Reagan did take a very strong life line on building
up US defenses.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
That's nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 10 (13:05):
Reagan was hawkish in a way that alarmed not just
Democrats but many mainline Republicans.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Reagan was hawkish, but he didn't actually want to fight
a nuclear war. In the same breath that he spoke
about building more weapons, he always talked about how awful
a nuclear war would be. He said he dreamed of
a day with no nuclear weapons. A bit confusing, I know,
but the idea was this, in order to maintain mad
mutually assured destruction, the US needed to match the Soviet's
(13:34):
nuclear strength. That would be the only way to keep
us all safe. And that's what's known as peace through strength.
Speaker 10 (13:41):
Reagan really painted himself as a person who was going
to be strong and who was going to stand up
to the Soviet Union in a way that Jimmy Carter
did not.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
In reality, Jimmy Carter was not at all soft on
the Soviets. I mean, this is the president who pulled
the US out of the Moscow Olympics. He wouldn't even
share the beauty of rhythmic gymnastics with the Soviets. But
the truth didn't really matter. Reagan had a political story
to sell. The evil communists, You're threatening the American way
of life, and we're too weak to stop them. Hey,
(14:14):
vote for me.
Speaker 8 (14:15):
Somewhere along the ways, a fantasy got mixed up with reality.
That is to say, if you're an actor, it does
to some degree.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Oouch, Frankie, that hurts, But I guess it's fair. I
still think The Hangover is a documentary, and do not
try to convince me otherwise.
Speaker 11 (14:32):
Well, the time has come.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
Ronald Wilson Reagan of California, a sports announcer.
Speaker 6 (14:40):
Of film actor.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
We have projected Ronald Reagan the winner. You hear the
subtle incredulity in his voice. How about a little less
subtle incredulity.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Who's President of the United States in nineteen eighty five,
Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 12 (14:55):
Ronald Reagan, the actor.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Suffice to say, Doc wasn't the only person who was
surprised over Moscow. The Soviets were trying to get a
read on this new Hollywood president, but they also had
their hands full with a leadership shakeup of their own.
Speaker 13 (15:20):
Good evening. Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Communist Party leader and president,
died yesterday morning of a heart attack, but the news was.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Not in The Soviet Union. Nineteen eighty two ended with
the bang of a coffin. Lid Reshnev was dead and
his successor emerged from the shadows.
Speaker 13 (15:38):
Yuri Andropov, former chief of the KGB or secret police,
was named chairman of the funeral committee, possibly a sign
that he could succeed as party leader.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
When Leonid Brezhnev died at the end of nineteen eighty two,
Yuri and Dropoff, former head of the KGB, stepped up
to become the leader of the Soviet Union. Yeah, the
head of the KGB took over that KGB mm hmm
Russian secret beliefs Political assassinations midnight arrests, domestic surveillance, ring
a bell. So believe me when I say the news
(16:08):
of and Dropoff's appointment sent a chill up every spine
in Washington. Suddenly everyone was scrambling to learn something, anything,
about their new adversary. But the stories that were emerging
about and drop Off, they were all over the fucking place.
Some said he spent his youth as a boatman or
a film projectionist. Others say Stalin almost killed him in
(16:28):
the Soviet Purge, or that he was the mastermind behind
the Berlin Wall, or that he plotted the death of
the Pope. It was difficult to get a sense of him,
to figure out what was true biography and what was lore.
What people were left with were mostly just photographs. His
icy white hair was always combed back just so, the
thick black rim of his glasses kind of merging with
(16:51):
his wily eyebrows. His face always entirely expressionless, not giving
a damn thing away about what he's thinking. So, when
it comes down to it, as you might expect from
mkagb Man, Urian Dropov was a total mystery.
Speaker 14 (17:10):
Urian Dropov is I think one of the most interesting
Soviet leaders.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
This is Simon Miles, a Cold War historian.
Speaker 14 (17:18):
So and Dropov was definitely a man of the system.
As we say, he started his career in the party
and he finished his career in the party.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
It was actually more complicated than it sounds, because throughout
the middle of the twentieth century the party was constantly
shape shifting, as were its rules, norms, and expectations. So
to remain in the party's good graces for so many
years was a feat all its own.
Speaker 11 (17:45):
He's a remarkable man. I read his speeches very carefully.
He managed always to be a centrist, whatever it meant
to be a centrist at that particular moment. A great
master of political maneuver.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
And Dropoff rose through the ranks of Soviet politics, slowly
gaining more and more power and eventually demonstrating a particular
talent for brutal policing.
Speaker 12 (18:10):
You became head of the KGB in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
This is historian Douglas Salvag who specializes in the history
of Soviet secret police and propaganda.
Speaker 12 (18:20):
Once Andropov took over the KGB, he began to issue
new regulations, push for new laws, new ways to prosecute
people for anti Soviet agitation or propaganda.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
As head of the KGB, it was like in drop
Off became a twisted Soviet Santa. Through his staggering surveillance network.
He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good. So, holy shit,
you better be good. This was a naughty list you
did not want to be on.
Speaker 12 (18:51):
He actually created a new division within the KGB responsible
practically just for suppressing internal dissent. I was especially dealing
with intellectuals or people who had contacts to Western journalists
of the West.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
One story goes that when he was hiring someone new
for his KGB office, he didn't bother to interview anyone.
One candidate said, let me tell you about myself, to
which and drop Off replied, my dear boy, what makes
you think I don't already know everything about you? Yeah,
the British accent's mine. I was taking creative license. I
just thought it sounded more kind of like a movie villain,
(19:28):
because that's kind of what he is, right, I mean,
this dude was freaking scary. All you had to do
was sing the wrong protest song and you'd get scooped
up by and drop Offs trash collectors.
Speaker 14 (19:39):
He is having Soviet dissidents sent to statemental facilities.
Speaker 12 (19:46):
Of course, if you're diagnosed with there's this special diagnosis
sluggish schizophrenia, it's very is even harder to get out
of a mental hospital than to get out of prison.
Speaker 14 (19:56):
He was a perpetrator of some really horrible.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Things, and yet in nineteen eighty two, as he stepped
into the role of Soviet leader, rumors began floating around
about and drop Off that he loved Western art, literature,
folk music, a real renaissance man.
Speaker 14 (20:16):
So at the same time as he's sending these people
to statemental facilities, he's happily sitting around a fireside in
the Caucasus Mountains with the head of the local Communist party,
singing their songs and playing them on a guitar and
roasting sausages on sticks and things like that.
Speaker 13 (20:36):
There seems to be some controversy about Andropoff. There's a
suggestion that some of his political aids leaked through the
Western press what some are calling disinformation about his being
a closet liberal. A man who likes Western art is
a very urbane intellectual. What is your review of him.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Part of it is the complexity of the man himself.
I think complexity that's the best they could do on
Goods back in nineteen eighty two, throw their hands up
in the air and just kind of shrug goes the show.
When it comes to and drop Off, everything you learn
about him should have an asterisk and a little footnote
that says maybe.
Speaker 10 (21:12):
And drop Off is ultimately a mystery in this because
he turns out to be an old sick man dying.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Oh yeah, one more thing you should know about Uri
and drop Off. When he became the leader of the
Soviet Union, he was practically on his deathbed from kidney failure.
Speaker 10 (21:24):
Keep in mind, if you complained about the Soviet Union
too much, he'd probably have you and your family murdered.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
But yes, he'd kill you then sing songs at your
funeral permission. Did not feel bad for him. So here's
where we are. In one corner, we've got Ronald Reagan,
newly elected American cowboy who does not keep his distaste
for the Communists on the down low, campaigned on the
promise of building more weapons. And in the other corner,
Yuri and drop Off, who nobody really knows anything about
(21:49):
except for the fact that he likes to squash dissidence
and he's dying of kidney failure. I'd buy a ticket
to this fight. That's right ed. The atmosphere is elect
We've been waiting nearly forty years to see these two
sluggers enter the ring. Who's gonna land the first punch? Well,
that's anyone's guess. One thing we should probably get out
of the way. This nuclear missile standoff is basically just
(22:11):
a big dick measuring contest. I'm not being crass. This
is an idea straight out of academia. A young professor
named Carol Kohane wrote about it in the early eighties.
She said that US defense intellectuals, the guys who literally
shape our nuclear policy, talked about nuclear war in a
way that was overtly erotic. Nations without nukes were called virgins.
(22:36):
They talked about the creamy foam of mushroom clouds. Nuclear
blasts were called orgasmic womps. I'm not joking, And according
to Carol, apparently the men kept touching the bombs, like
stroking them, even asking her, Hey, Carol, do you want
to touch it? It sounds like harassment, but Carol says
they were totally unaware of the innuendo. Honestly, to me,
(22:57):
it sounds like a bad stand up routine. It is
at the peak of the arms race, nuclear weapons became
a very unsubtle metaphor for one's manhood, which made nuclear
policy awfully susceptible to the good old fashioned inferiority complex.
Speaker 10 (23:11):
When Reagan comes into office, and this is where the
Worscare comes in.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
He has this very part.
Speaker 10 (23:17):
Is an idea that the US is week and the
Soviets are strong, and we have to fix that.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Oh yeah, Reagan's campaign message that a whole thing about
Soviet strength and American weakness. It's totally and utterly incorrect.
Let me take a big highlighter to that. Because this
is the first domino. It's this misunderstanding that sets us
up for the real clusterfuck. In November nineteen eighty three,
the United States was never behind the Soviet Union in
(23:44):
military capability. In fact, the Soviet economy wasn't doing great.
The military was broke and their equipment was in total disrepair.
But Reagan was running for president and candidates always ramp
up the rhetoric. Of course, now that he is president.
Surely he'll get the real end. Tell he'll realize the
Soviets are not an actual threat and cool down all
this talk about building more bombs.
Speaker 10 (24:06):
Right, Ronald Reagan, having campaigned on being tough, is not
going to stand up and say, oh, that was just
for the cameras. I'm actually an old softy I love borsh.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
He's not gonna do that.
Speaker 10 (24:18):
He truly believes that the Soviets are strong and we
are weak, and he has to restore his strength.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
And then drop Off, trained to be paranoid, assumes that
Reagan must be up to something.
Speaker 10 (24:29):
And I think when he hears Reagan talking about how
the Soviet Union is strong in America's week and America
has to get stronger, and drop Off knows it's the
other way around, and he thinks that Reagan is lying, right,
that Reagan is deliberately distorting the truth in order to
exploit the Soviet Union's weakness.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
In order to gain public support for building more bombs, which,
of course at the Soviets wondering why does Reagan want
all these bombs so badly?
Speaker 10 (24:58):
And they don't see Reagan as as bringing the US
up to their level. They see Reagan as pushing past them.
And it's really in that context right where you have
those two totally different views of what the hell is happening,
that you get the war scare.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Ladies and gentlemen. That is a pissing contest, except in
this case the piss is radioactive and the pissers are
shooting completely in the dark, and we're all in the
crosshairs getting a very deadly golden shower. If it's possible
to take a metaphor too far, we might have done it.
(25:38):
And what's about to happen next, it's only gonna make
things worse. I think it's time for that day after
Scream again. When and drop off in Reagan came into power,
(26:06):
they weren't just on different pages, they were reading from
entirely different books. Arms negotiations were closed, but a Chili
cold war relationship does not necessarily a nuclear crisis make.
In order for things to spiral out of control during
nineteen eighty three's Able Archer Exercise, things needed to get
a lot hotter, and they did.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I was born in Hungary. My father was in the
Soviet military, so we moved a lot.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
This is Svetlana Sovereignskaya I.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Work at the National Security Archive as director of Russia
Program and senior analyst.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Svetlana works in DC now, but she grew up in
the Soviet Union, where she was constantly told that the
United States was a threat that they could attack at
any time.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
My father was very devoted Communist, like he actually believed seriously.
I remember when I began asking questions about nuclear weapons
and possibility of war much later in maybe in high school.
He was always saying that, well, of course, we have
(27:14):
to defend ourselves. So I get into Moscow State University
and I am very, very excited.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Svedlana's first year of university was you guessed it, nineteen
eighty three.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
In the universities in Moscow, you had mandatory military preparation.
So one day a week we would have a complete
military immersion day. You would wear a military uniform, go
to a separate place, and you take military courses.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
It wasn't all marching to Tchaikowsky. Periodically, Svetlana and her
comrades would do nuclear drills, practice what to do if
the Americans launched nuclear weapons. At the Soviet Union, sirens
would blare and the students would file into lines. And
head straight for the bunkers.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
We had a civil defense system underground.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Bunkers were meticulously scattered throughout the country so that in
case of a nuclear attack, Soviet citizens could survive.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
So we practiced it regularly, like once a month, we
had to go to the nuclear shelter.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
So Vetlana says the walk from her university to the
bunker was about ten to fifteen minutes. So if the
United States launched a missile and the Soviets sounded the alarms.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
It takes suty minutes for a ballistic missile to get
to Moscow, and under suity minutes you can walk leisurely
to your shelter.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I don't know how leisurely I'd be walking in that situation,
but I take her point. A secret CIA report from
the late seventies said that there were only enough bunkers
to save about twenty percent of the Moscow population if
American intelligence was right, But they did expect most of
these shelters to actually work. Anyone inside would survive a
nuclear blast. But then, as Atlanta tells it, the bunker
(29:01):
chatter started to get a little more tense.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Over the summer. The relationship between the United States and
the Soviet Union really got from bad to worse. There
was a discussion of how the danger is rising, the
United States is becoming more and more aggressive. We could
see that there was also very genuine concern among these
(29:26):
military guys, especially after the deployments started.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
The deployments so of Atlanta is talking about are the
five hundred and seventy two shiny new missiles being installed
in western Europe by NATO, the Pershing twos and the
ground launched cruise missiles. The Persiing twos were little and lightweight,
at just over thirty feet long. They were highly maneuverable
and fast. And then there were the ground launched cruise
(29:55):
missiles aka Glickams. They were designed to fly low to
the ground, underneath radar, capable of delivering seriously big booms. Now,
these new missiles would be nicknamed the euro missiles because
they would be installed in Europe very close to Soviet territory. Now,
if NATO wanted to attack the Soviet Union, the missile
(30:17):
flight times would be a lot faster, disastrously faster.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
So our military officers explained to us one day, your
civil defense arrangement is useless because now with the Persians
in Europe. It takes under ten minutes. They said, it
takes seven minutes for them to hit Moscow.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Seven minutes, which means if it took Svetlana ten minutes
to get to her bunker.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
There's no use anymore of going running. They had this joke. Now,
if you hear the alarm, your training should be you
cover yourself with white sheet and lay your head away
from the nuclear blasts.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Woo very dark joke. Starting to understand why Russia is
known for ballet and not comedy.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Really, for the first time in my life, I felt
like there could be nuclear war.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
To be clear, the threat to deploy these new euro
missiles was a negotiation tactic during the Carter years before
Reagan ever set foot in the Oval Office, because the
Soviets had missiles too, enough to bomb all of Europe
if they felt so inclined. So European leaders felt exposed.
They said they would also like a light sprinkling of
missiles on their side of the border, thank you very much.
(31:40):
Thus the Cruise and Pershing twos. But in reality, the
prospect of these missiles being deployed was only intended to
be a threat back off or we'll bring in some nukes.
But when Ronald Reagan entered office, he and the NATO
chiefs made good on that threat. The deployment was scheduled
for November nineteen eighty three, the exact same time as
(32:00):
NATO's annual Able Archer exercise.
Speaker 6 (32:22):
The Nuclear Freeze movement was a grassroots movement that wanted
to de escalate the nuclear arms race.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Seth Rosenfeld again. Seth says, after the announcement of the
euro missiles, people all over the world took to the
streets in protest. They thought Reagan was being irresponsible by
pointing even more weapons at the Soviets, and they put
pressure on Congress to cut Reagan's defense spending, and of
course Reagan didn't like that.
Speaker 6 (32:48):
Reagan actually made an allegation that the Nuclear Freeze movement
was just another Communist plot to weaken America.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yep. Reagan believed that the Soviets were brainwashing people all
to orchestrate a massive nuclear cock block. And by now
Ronnie knew exactly what to do when a communist plot
was afoot. He got on stage.
Speaker 6 (33:14):
So I'm delighted to be here today.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
It's now March third, nineteen eighty three. We're t minus
eight months to able Archer and Reagan's in sunny Orlando,
Florida to deliver a speech.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
Number of years ago, I heard a young father saying,
I love my little girls more than anything, and I
would rather see my little girls die now still believing
in God, than have them grow up under communism and
one day die no longer believing in God.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Oh okay, that's pretty weird for a crowd to cheer
on a father wishing for the death of his children.
But the audience was the National Association of Evangelicals, and
I think it's safe to say they believing in God.
Pretty seriously, say what you want about Reagan. The guy
knew his crowd. With the nuclear freeze movement on Reagan's back.
(34:11):
He needed to remind the public why his military build
up was necessary. He needed to remind them who the
enemy was, like he'd done a million times before, but
this time he would go a little too far.
Speaker 5 (34:24):
So let us pray for the salvation of all of
those who live in that totalitarian darkness. They preached the
supremacy of the state, declare it's omnipotence over individual man,
and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
The next words out of Reagan's mouth are a critical
turning point in our able Archer story. If all this
nuclear tension was already soaked and gasoline, you might say
Reagan was about to light a fucking match.
Speaker 5 (34:52):
They are the focus of evil in the modern world.
I urge you to beware the temptation to ignore the
facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire.
Evil empire, evil empire.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Identity, an evil empire. Now them's fighting.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Words, and then was a shock. It was in all
Russian newspapers.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
To the Soviets, calling them an evil empire was a
step too far, They wondered, was Ronald minuc is bigger
than yours? Reagan calling them out because he was building
up to an attack. Well, they wouldn't have to wonder
for long.
Speaker 13 (35:33):
Good evening. President Reagan today issued a formal directive to
the National Security Council to begin initial research on the
space Age missile defense system he proposed to the nation.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Last night, three weeks after calling the Soviet Union an
evil empire, Ronald Reagan announced that he was building a
new technology. He gave the public an irresistible pitch. What
if the thing you're absolutely the most afraid of could
suddenly vanish into thin air?
Speaker 5 (36:00):
We could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they
reached our own soil or that of our allies.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
He proposed a kind of magic shield, a technical innovation
that would shoot down Soviet missiles from outer space. He
called it the Strategic Defense Initiative acronym SDI, and he
would need a massive increase in his defense budget to
do it. Now, a nuclear shield sounds like a comforting thought,
but you might be wondering, how the hell would you
(36:28):
do that? Well, Reagan conveniently wrapped up his speech before
offering much detail.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
There will be risks, and results take time, but I
believe we can do it.
Speaker 8 (36:40):
In this speech, he said we're going to make nuclear
weapons obsolete by building these defenses. And he didn't say
what the defenses would be, really, but people then began
asking all of his aids what the defenses could be,
and they came out with their own view of it.
Whereas everyone in both Houses of Congress and in this
NOS Defense Department understood that he was talking about something
(37:03):
that simply didn't exist, and couldn't exist.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
In other words, it was bullshit fantasy. America didn't have
the technology to block out thousands of incoming Soviet nukes. Hell,
we still don't have that kind of technology. Reagan's opponents
in Congress started calling it the star Wars program because
of how obviously it was rooted in science fiction. I
got a bad feeling about this. Some scientists estimated that
(37:28):
developing Star Wars would take thirty years and cost a
million million dollars, but that didn't stop Reagan supporters from
trying to sell the illusion with creepy ads like this.
Speaker 15 (37:39):
I asked my daddy what the star Wars stuff is
all about. He said that right now, we can't protect
ourselves from nuclear weapons, and that's why the President wants
to build a p shield. It would stop missiles in
outer space so they couldn't hit our house.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
Vain.
Speaker 15 (37:57):
Nobody could win a war. Nobody could win a war.
There's no reason to stab.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Anyway. All of that might have been fine, funny even
if the Soviets didn't have their own interpretation of this announcement.
They thought it was part of a cunning plan that
sure Reagan would put satellites in space only these satellites
wouldn't be used for nuclear defense. They would be used
to launch nuclear weapons at the Soviet Union.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
There was a certain hysteria among the Soviet leaders because
what it meant to them is blitzkrieg from space, and
that would create a situation where the United States would
have for strike capability.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Star wars, the new missiles in Europe, and the Evil
Empire speech to the Soviets. These three things added up
to one conclusion. The United States was prepared a surprise
nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. It was the only
explanation they were certain of it. What was in drop
of to do well? For one thing, he needed to
(39:10):
see the attack before it happened. He needed eyes on
the other side of the Iron Curtain, and it turns
out he had him. Next on Snaffoo, we leave the
Oval Office and Kremlin to meet the spies in the
field who would be forced to intervene during the able
Archer crisis.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Omaka, he's preparing an.
Speaker 10 (39:35):
It was moments like that that he really began to think,
I need to do something about this.
Speaker 12 (39:40):
I need to target the Soviet system, undermine it.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Somehow, and try and damage it somehow.
Speaker 6 (39:45):
Beto was my enemy and I mean to destroy it.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
I mean, this is just so hutterly crazy.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Stanley Kubrick could not invent this. SNAFU is a production
of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company
in association with Gilded Audio. Our lead producers are Sarah
Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our producer is Carl Nellis. Associate
producer Torry Smith. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms,
(40:14):
Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo, Andy Chug, and Whitney Donaldson. This
episode was written by Carl Nellis and Sarah Joyner, with
additional writing from me Elliott Kalin and Whitney Donaldson. Our
senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 10 (40:27):
I'm actually an old softy.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Olivia Canny is our production assistant. Our creative executive is
Brett Harris. Additional research and fact checking by Charles Richter,
Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Original music and
sound design by Dan Rosatto. Additional editing from Ben Chugg.
Some archival audio from this episode originally appeared in Taylor
Downing's fantastic film nineteen eighty three, The Brink of Apocalypse.
(40:52):
Thank You mister Downing for permission to use it. Special
thanks to Alison Cohen and Matt Aisenstadt.
You know what's unsettling thinking about how easy it would
be to push the nuclear button, you know, the one,
the big red button. Nukes go flying and millions of
people instantaneously evaporate. You know you shouldn't, but you still
kind of want to push it. It's right there, that button. Button.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Pushing it gets so much easier to talk of how
many tens of millions of deaths are acceptable when one
is removed from it.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
This guy gets it, the idea that a simple flinch
of a presidential finger could cause so much destruction. It
feels too easy, too clean. Okay, there's not really a
big red button. That's a myth. The truth is the
nuclear war plans live in a briefcase that follows the
US president wherever they go. The codes are always on hand,
(00:54):
written on a small card in the president's pocket, like
your gym membership card. You've always got it on you
and you never use it. But it's still relatively easy,
because the process of launching a nuclear weapon is still
a million miles removed from the real cost millions of
human lives. In the nineteen eighties, people were pondering this problem,
(01:15):
how to make the weight of pushing that button just
a little bit heavier. People like Roger Fisher.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Roger Fisher, who is a law professor at Harvard I
can't remember which, had a fantasy about how one could
overcome this button pushing distance.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Fisher was a professor at Harvard, not Yale, but anyway,
he proposed an idea. What if he said, the nuclear
codes weren't in a briefcase. What if the codes were
actually in a little capsule, and that capsule was buried
in the chest of a volunteer, let's call him Fred.
Instead of carrying around the briefcase with the codes inside,
(01:51):
imagine Fred carrying around a big, heavy butcher knife.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
And if the President needed the codes, he would have
to retrieve them from the volunteer and would hand the
President tonight Fred.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I'm sorry, buddy, but I gotta heck your chest open.
Fred's freaking out. The Commander in Chief is forced to
then physically butcher good old Fred with his own hands
in order to then kill millions.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
When he told this to his friends in the Pentagon,
they were aghast. Blood on the White House carpet. They
said he might never push the.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Button precisely, much to his dismay. Roger Fisher's fantasy was
just that earth destroying power still rests in a briefcase
that follows the president wherever they go. To me. It
makes the prospect of launching a nuclear weapon a terrifying
psychological dilemma. What will it really take to push a
man so far that he'd press that button, that he'd
(02:47):
prompt the end of the world. I've had helms and
This is Snafu, a podcast about history's greatest screw ups.
In season one, we're telling the story of Avil Archer eighth,
the nineteen eighty three NATO military exercise that became a
snafu so gigantic, so absurd, so terrifying that it almost
(03:09):
led to a real nuclear war. In order to trace
(03:34):
what happened during Able Archer eighty three, we need to
get to know the players at the heart of this story.
This episode will follow the two powerful men behind the
proverbial big red buttons, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet
General Secretary Uri and drop Off. There are two men
with political savvy, plenty of bravado, and an aptitude for
(03:55):
mind games. The question is would they push each other
to far?
Speaker 3 (04:04):
How do you do?
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Everybody?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Hey, there I'd like to introduce myself, please do. My
name is Ronald Reagan. This was it where it all began.
It's the late thirties and a young Ronald Reagan introduces
himself to moviegoers in the trailer for his first film,
Love Is on the Air. Even from the beginning, he
had that incredible knack for making you feel like he
(04:25):
was talking right to you through the camera.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
A few months ago, I was a sports announcer on
a radio station in Des.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Moines, Iowa. Back before he was charming political audiences with
his good looks and brilliant smile. Ronald Reagan was a
radio sports announcer in Iowa. Legend has it sometimes Reagan
would lose the feed of the game while he was
live on air, so he would just make up amazing
plays until the feed came back. But his descriptions were
so vivid audiences didn't really care whether they were hearing
(04:53):
about a real game or not. But Reagan knew his
face was too pretty for radio. He wanted Hollywood. In
nineteen thirty seven, he got the break he was looking for.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
One day, I ran into one of these movie talent scots.
I think I caught him off guard. Because the next
thing I knew, I was taking a screen test for
Warner Brothers in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
His career didn't exactly take off like a rocket, but
he was working, got some good roles in smaller films.
He even got to play a guy whose legs were
amputated by an angry small town doctor. Good stuff. After
a few years, it seemed like Reagan was finally headed
for the A List, until a World war inconveniently disrupted
his path.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
Some bust some nineteen forty one, a date which will
live in infamy.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
The World War two draft called up young, able bodied
American men, including the famous ones. Even Jimmy Stewart went
off to fly bombers in the war. But Ronald Well,
he left Hollywood to go nowhere. Yeah, no, he didn't
actually leave Hollywood at all. Instead of fighting the war
on the front line, he filmed propaganda and training videos
for the army at a movie studio in Culver City, California.
(06:10):
To be fair, the four or five and the ten
intersection is the closest I've ever seen to a war zone.
But I digress.
Speaker 6 (06:16):
So he serves out his time. The war ends, and
he is very disappointed that the fighting has non fixed
the world.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
This is journalist Seth Rosenfeld. He says that at this
point in time, Reagan's life wasn't going so well. His
relationship was falling apart, his career was faltering, and he
was looking for a new sense of purpose.
Speaker 6 (06:40):
One night, there's a knock on his door, his home
nineteen forty six, and two FBI agents are standing there
and they say they have some information that he might
be interested in.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
They came one of some findings from me on people
that I had dealt with and so forth.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
By this time, Reagan was a vice president of the
Screen Actors Guild, and the FBI came knocking, Hey, Ronald,
we could use your help.
Speaker 6 (07:06):
This is about spies of savagers. We're sure. As a
former military man, you know all about that.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Calling Reagan a military man was a bit much. It's
like calling doctor Pepper a member of the medical establishment.
But you know, I mean, come on, they were buttering
him up. The FBI thought Hollywood communists were brainwashing the
American public by sneaking pro communist propaganda into movies. At first,
Reagan said no thanks, He wasn't interested in what he
(07:32):
called red baiting. But then the FBI said.
Speaker 6 (07:35):
We think you're going to want to hear what some
of these people are saying about you.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Basically, the Communis are talking about you behind your back.
Speaker 6 (07:44):
Well, that got his attention.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
And there right on his doorstep, Reagan got his shot
at patriotic glory. The FBI offered him a chance to
enlist in the world's next great conflict, the war against
the Communists.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
After that meeting, he agreed to become an FBI and former.
He did provide information about colleagues and people who he
suspected were Unamerican in some way.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
As it happens, the FBI's communist plot story was a
bit exaggerated.
Speaker 6 (08:16):
There's really no evidence that anything like that ever happened.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Sure, there were people in Hollywood who called themselves communists,
and it's not at all surprising that some of their
politics zeeped into their work. But these weren't national traders
in contact with Soviet agents. There was no coordinated plot.
But that wasn't Reagan's takeaway.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
I never got over realizing that I could recognize the signs.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Reagan wasn't just convinced that communists were his enemies. He
started to believe that every one of his enemies were Communists.
If someone was against him, it was a sign they
were a pinko for sure. And here's where things get
a little weirder.
Speaker 6 (08:56):
Not only was Reagan reporting on somebody who he suspected
somehow might be a communist or a Communist sympathizer, but
he was also reporting on people he didn't like.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Get in an argument with Ron at a meeting, snub
and at a party, maybe write a bad review for
his chimpanzee movie. You just got yourself blacklisted. It wasn't
just Reagan. Everyone was ratting each other out. There were hearings,
public shamings. People were prevented from ever working in Hollywood again.
Some even ended up serving time in prison.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
It did give me a real understanding of the communist menace.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
If you asked Reagan, he was fighting the good fight.
He was an American hero. Fast forward to the mid fifties,
Reagan's acting career was sputtering a little, which meant maybe
it was time for a career change, perhaps a leap
from the silver screen to the political podium. Reagan versus
the Communists coming soon to a political stage near you.
Speaker 7 (09:55):
I'll thank you very much.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
A group of prominent party members came to me before
the nineteen sixty six governorace in California and claimed that
I was the only one who could bring the party
together and win the election.
Speaker 8 (10:16):
California millionaires, we're looking for a new candidate, and they
didn't have an obvious one. But they saw him, and
they saw how he appealed to audiences.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
This is Frankie Fitzgerald. She literally wrote the book on
Reagan and nukes.
Speaker 8 (10:31):
They knew they didn't have to worry too much about
what he actually thought about because he was a good actor.
He would just he would do what people wanted him
to do.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
But they kept after Still. Pretty soon Nancy and I
couldn't sleep. We thought, well, what if they're right, then
we live with ourselves if we keep saying no.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Pretty soon, the Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan was the governor
of California, with his sight set on the White House.
Speaker 7 (10:56):
The distinguished guest here and you ladies in gentlemen who
I know are looking for a cause around which to
rally and which I believe we can give them.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Running for president in nineteen eighty, Reagan gave Americans causes
to rally around, all right, and In so doing, he
permanently altered the character of the Republican Party.
Speaker 8 (11:18):
He didn't have much a support at that point nationally,
but he went for the South, and the South had
just turned Republican.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
His opponent was Jimmy Carter, the incumbent Democrat, who was
really more of a centriest. So in order to capture votes,
Reagan needed to move to the right, far to the right.
His main thing was Reaganomics, tax cuts, bounced budget, trickle
down economics, all that, and in order to sell the policy,
he needed a villain, and you could be pretty sure
(11:53):
it wouldn't be Wall Street.
Speaker 9 (11:54):
In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record.
She used eighty names, thirty addresses, fifteen telephone numbers to
collect food Stamps, social Security, veterans, benefits for four non
existent deceased veterans' husbands, as well as welfare.
Speaker 7 (12:11):
Her tax free cash.
Speaker 9 (12:12):
Income alone has been running one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a year.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Now, this little anecdote, while tethered to an actual person,
is deeply embellished, and worse, Reagan is using it to
sell a larger myth that is complete horseshit that welfare
queens were running rampant in US society. It was racist,
and this myth has never really gone away. It's a
nasty old political trick, scaring the voters straight into the
(12:39):
voting booth. And when it came to the Cold War,
Ronald Reagan saw an opportunity for a new villain, one
he knew very well, the Communists.
Speaker 8 (12:49):
So that was when Reagan began to move to the
right on national security issues.
Speaker 10 (12:57):
Reagan did take a very strong life line on building
up US defenses.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
That's nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 10 (13:05):
Reagan was hawkish in a way that alarmed not just
Democrats but many mainline Republicans.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Reagan was hawkish, but he didn't actually want to fight
a nuclear war. In the same breath that he spoke
about building more weapons, he always talked about how awful
a nuclear war would be. He said he dreamed of
a day with no nuclear weapons. A bit confusing, I know,
but the idea was this, in order to maintain mad
mutually assured destruction, the US needed to match the Soviet's
(13:34):
nuclear strength. That would be the only way to keep
us all safe. And that's what's known as peace through strength.
Speaker 10 (13:41):
Reagan really painted himself as a person who was going
to be strong and who was going to stand up
to the Soviet Union in a way that Jimmy Carter
did not.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
In reality, Jimmy Carter was not at all soft on
the Soviets. I mean, this is the president who pulled
the US out of the Moscow Olympics. He wouldn't even
share the beauty of rhythmic gymnastics with the Soviets. But
the truth didn't really matter. Reagan had a political story
to sell. The evil communists, You're threatening the American way
of life, and we're too weak to stop them. Hey,
(14:14):
vote for me.
Speaker 8 (14:15):
Somewhere along the ways, a fantasy got mixed up with reality.
That is to say, if you're an actor, it does
to some degree.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Oouch, Frankie, that hurts, But I guess it's fair. I
still think The Hangover is a documentary, and do not
try to convince me otherwise.
Speaker 11 (14:32):
Well, the time has come.
Speaker 5 (14:35):
Ronald Wilson Reagan of California, a sports announcer.
Speaker 6 (14:40):
Of film actor.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
We have projected Ronald Reagan the winner. You hear the
subtle incredulity in his voice. How about a little less
subtle incredulity.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Who's President of the United States in nineteen eighty five,
Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 12 (14:55):
Ronald Reagan, the actor.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Suffice to say, Doc wasn't the only person who was
surprised over Moscow. The Soviets were trying to get a
read on this new Hollywood president, but they also had
their hands full with a leadership shakeup of their own.
Speaker 13 (15:20):
Good evening. Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Communist Party leader and president,
died yesterday morning of a heart attack, but the news was.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Not in The Soviet Union. Nineteen eighty two ended with
the bang of a coffin. Lid Reshnev was dead and
his successor emerged from the shadows.
Speaker 13 (15:38):
Yuri Andropov, former chief of the KGB or secret police,
was named chairman of the funeral committee, possibly a sign
that he could succeed as party leader.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
When Leonid Brezhnev died at the end of nineteen eighty two,
Yuri and Dropoff, former head of the KGB, stepped up
to become the leader of the Soviet Union. Yeah, the
head of the KGB took over that KGB mm hmm
Russian secret beliefs Political assassinations midnight arrests, domestic surveillance, ring
a bell. So believe me when I say the news
(16:08):
of and Dropoff's appointment sent a chill up every spine
in Washington. Suddenly everyone was scrambling to learn something, anything,
about their new adversary. But the stories that were emerging
about and drop Off, they were all over the fucking place.
Some said he spent his youth as a boatman or
a film projectionist. Others say Stalin almost killed him in
(16:28):
the Soviet Purge, or that he was the mastermind behind
the Berlin Wall, or that he plotted the death of
the Pope. It was difficult to get a sense of him,
to figure out what was true biography and what was lore.
What people were left with were mostly just photographs. His
icy white hair was always combed back just so, the
thick black rim of his glasses kind of merging with
(16:51):
his wily eyebrows. His face always entirely expressionless, not giving
a damn thing away about what he's thinking. So, when
it comes down to it, as you might expect from
mkagb Man, Urian Dropov was a total mystery.
Speaker 14 (17:10):
Urian Dropov is I think one of the most interesting
Soviet leaders.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
This is Simon Miles, a Cold War historian.
Speaker 14 (17:18):
So and Dropov was definitely a man of the system.
As we say, he started his career in the party
and he finished his career in the party.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
It was actually more complicated than it sounds, because throughout
the middle of the twentieth century the party was constantly
shape shifting, as were its rules, norms, and expectations. So
to remain in the party's good graces for so many
years was a feat all its own.
Speaker 11 (17:45):
He's a remarkable man. I read his speeches very carefully.
He managed always to be a centrist, whatever it meant
to be a centrist at that particular moment. A great
master of political maneuver.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
And Dropoff rose through the ranks of Soviet politics, slowly
gaining more and more power and eventually demonstrating a particular
talent for brutal policing.
Speaker 12 (18:10):
You became head of the KGB in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
This is historian Douglas Salvag who specializes in the history
of Soviet secret police and propaganda.
Speaker 12 (18:20):
Once Andropov took over the KGB, he began to issue
new regulations, push for new laws, new ways to prosecute
people for anti Soviet agitation or propaganda.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
As head of the KGB, it was like in drop
Off became a twisted Soviet Santa. Through his staggering surveillance network.
He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good. So, holy shit,
you better be good. This was a naughty list you
did not want to be on.
Speaker 12 (18:51):
He actually created a new division within the KGB responsible
practically just for suppressing internal dissent. I was especially dealing
with intellectuals or people who had contacts to Western journalists
of the West.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
One story goes that when he was hiring someone new
for his KGB office, he didn't bother to interview anyone.
One candidate said, let me tell you about myself, to
which and drop Off replied, my dear boy, what makes
you think I don't already know everything about you? Yeah,
the British accent's mine. I was taking creative license. I
just thought it sounded more kind of like a movie villain,
(19:28):
because that's kind of what he is, right, I mean,
this dude was freaking scary. All you had to do
was sing the wrong protest song and you'd get scooped
up by and drop Offs trash collectors.
Speaker 14 (19:39):
He is having Soviet dissidents sent to statemental facilities.
Speaker 12 (19:46):
Of course, if you're diagnosed with there's this special diagnosis
sluggish schizophrenia, it's very is even harder to get out
of a mental hospital than to get out of prison.
Speaker 14 (19:56):
He was a perpetrator of some really horrible.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Things, and yet in nineteen eighty two, as he stepped
into the role of Soviet leader, rumors began floating around
about and drop Off that he loved Western art, literature,
folk music, a real renaissance man.
Speaker 14 (20:16):
So at the same time as he's sending these people
to statemental facilities, he's happily sitting around a fireside in
the Caucasus Mountains with the head of the local Communist party,
singing their songs and playing them on a guitar and
roasting sausages on sticks and things like that.
Speaker 13 (20:36):
There seems to be some controversy about Andropoff. There's a
suggestion that some of his political aids leaked through the
Western press what some are calling disinformation about his being
a closet liberal. A man who likes Western art is
a very urbane intellectual. What is your review of him.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Part of it is the complexity of the man himself.
I think complexity that's the best they could do on
Goods back in nineteen eighty two, throw their hands up
in the air and just kind of shrug goes the show.
When it comes to and drop Off, everything you learn
about him should have an asterisk and a little footnote
that says maybe.
Speaker 10 (21:12):
And drop Off is ultimately a mystery in this because
he turns out to be an old sick man dying.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Oh yeah, one more thing you should know about Uri
and drop Off. When he became the leader of the
Soviet Union, he was practically on his deathbed from kidney failure.
Speaker 10 (21:24):
Keep in mind, if you complained about the Soviet Union
too much, he'd probably have you and your family murdered.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
But yes, he'd kill you then sing songs at your
funeral permission. Did not feel bad for him. So here's
where we are. In one corner, we've got Ronald Reagan,
newly elected American cowboy who does not keep his distaste
for the Communists on the down low, campaigned on the
promise of building more weapons. And in the other corner,
Yuri and drop Off, who nobody really knows anything about
(21:49):
except for the fact that he likes to squash dissidence
and he's dying of kidney failure. I'd buy a ticket
to this fight. That's right ed. The atmosphere is elect
We've been waiting nearly forty years to see these two
sluggers enter the ring. Who's gonna land the first punch? Well,
that's anyone's guess. One thing we should probably get out
of the way. This nuclear missile standoff is basically just
(22:11):
a big dick measuring contest. I'm not being crass. This
is an idea straight out of academia. A young professor
named Carol Kohane wrote about it in the early eighties.
She said that US defense intellectuals, the guys who literally
shape our nuclear policy, talked about nuclear war in a
way that was overtly erotic. Nations without nukes were called virgins.
(22:36):
They talked about the creamy foam of mushroom clouds. Nuclear
blasts were called orgasmic womps. I'm not joking, And according
to Carol, apparently the men kept touching the bombs, like
stroking them, even asking her, Hey, Carol, do you want
to touch it? It sounds like harassment, but Carol says
they were totally unaware of the innuendo. Honestly, to me,
(22:57):
it sounds like a bad stand up routine. It is
at the peak of the arms race, nuclear weapons became
a very unsubtle metaphor for one's manhood, which made nuclear
policy awfully susceptible to the good old fashioned inferiority complex.
Speaker 10 (23:11):
When Reagan comes into office, and this is where the
Worscare comes in.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
He has this very part.
Speaker 10 (23:17):
Is an idea that the US is week and the
Soviets are strong, and we have to fix that.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Oh yeah, Reagan's campaign message that a whole thing about
Soviet strength and American weakness. It's totally and utterly incorrect.
Let me take a big highlighter to that. Because this
is the first domino. It's this misunderstanding that sets us
up for the real clusterfuck. In November nineteen eighty three,
the United States was never behind the Soviet Union in
(23:44):
military capability. In fact, the Soviet economy wasn't doing great.
The military was broke and their equipment was in total disrepair.
But Reagan was running for president and candidates always ramp
up the rhetoric. Of course, now that he is president.
Surely he'll get the real end. Tell he'll realize the
Soviets are not an actual threat and cool down all
this talk about building more bombs.
Speaker 10 (24:06):
Right, Ronald Reagan, having campaigned on being tough, is not
going to stand up and say, oh, that was just
for the cameras. I'm actually an old softy I love borsh.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
He's not gonna do that.
Speaker 10 (24:18):
He truly believes that the Soviets are strong and we
are weak, and he has to restore his strength.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
And then drop Off, trained to be paranoid, assumes that
Reagan must be up to something.
Speaker 10 (24:29):
And I think when he hears Reagan talking about how
the Soviet Union is strong in America's week and America
has to get stronger, and drop Off knows it's the
other way around, and he thinks that Reagan is lying, right,
that Reagan is deliberately distorting the truth in order to
exploit the Soviet Union's weakness.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
In order to gain public support for building more bombs, which,
of course at the Soviets wondering why does Reagan want
all these bombs so badly?
Speaker 10 (24:58):
And they don't see Reagan as as bringing the US
up to their level. They see Reagan as pushing past them.
And it's really in that context right where you have
those two totally different views of what the hell is happening,
that you get the war scare.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Ladies and gentlemen. That is a pissing contest, except in
this case the piss is radioactive and the pissers are
shooting completely in the dark, and we're all in the
crosshairs getting a very deadly golden shower. If it's possible
to take a metaphor too far, we might have done it.
(25:38):
And what's about to happen next, it's only gonna make
things worse. I think it's time for that day after
Scream again. When and drop off in Reagan came into power,
(26:06):
they weren't just on different pages, they were reading from
entirely different books. Arms negotiations were closed, but a Chili
cold war relationship does not necessarily a nuclear crisis make.
In order for things to spiral out of control during
nineteen eighty three's Able Archer Exercise, things needed to get
a lot hotter, and they did.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I was born in Hungary. My father was in the
Soviet military, so we moved a lot.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
This is Svetlana Sovereignskaya I.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Work at the National Security Archive as director of Russia
Program and senior analyst.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Svetlana works in DC now, but she grew up in
the Soviet Union, where she was constantly told that the
United States was a threat that they could attack at
any time.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
My father was very devoted Communist, like he actually believed seriously.
I remember when I began asking questions about nuclear weapons
and possibility of war much later in maybe in high school.
He was always saying that, well, of course, we have
(27:14):
to defend ourselves. So I get into Moscow State University
and I am very, very excited.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Svedlana's first year of university was you guessed it, nineteen
eighty three.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
In the universities in Moscow, you had mandatory military preparation.
So one day a week we would have a complete
military immersion day. You would wear a military uniform, go
to a separate place, and you take military courses.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
It wasn't all marching to Tchaikowsky. Periodically, Svetlana and her
comrades would do nuclear drills, practice what to do if
the Americans launched nuclear weapons. At the Soviet Union, sirens
would blare and the students would file into lines. And
head straight for the bunkers.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
We had a civil defense system underground.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Bunkers were meticulously scattered throughout the country so that in
case of a nuclear attack, Soviet citizens could survive.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
So we practiced it regularly, like once a month, we
had to go to the nuclear shelter.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
So Vetlana says the walk from her university to the
bunker was about ten to fifteen minutes. So if the
United States launched a missile and the Soviets sounded the alarms.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
It takes suty minutes for a ballistic missile to get
to Moscow, and under suity minutes you can walk leisurely
to your shelter.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I don't know how leisurely I'd be walking in that situation,
but I take her point. A secret CIA report from
the late seventies said that there were only enough bunkers
to save about twenty percent of the Moscow population if
American intelligence was right, But they did expect most of
these shelters to actually work. Anyone inside would survive a
nuclear blast. But then, as Atlanta tells it, the bunker
(29:01):
chatter started to get a little more tense.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Over the summer. The relationship between the United States and
the Soviet Union really got from bad to worse. There
was a discussion of how the danger is rising, the
United States is becoming more and more aggressive. We could
see that there was also very genuine concern among these
(29:26):
military guys, especially after the deployments started.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
The deployments so of Atlanta is talking about are the
five hundred and seventy two shiny new missiles being installed
in western Europe by NATO, the Pershing twos and the
ground launched cruise missiles. The Persiing twos were little and lightweight,
at just over thirty feet long. They were highly maneuverable
and fast. And then there were the ground launched cruise
(29:55):
missiles aka Glickams. They were designed to fly low to
the ground, underneath radar, capable of delivering seriously big booms. Now,
these new missiles would be nicknamed the euro missiles because
they would be installed in Europe very close to Soviet territory. Now,
if NATO wanted to attack the Soviet Union, the missile
(30:17):
flight times would be a lot faster, disastrously faster.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
So our military officers explained to us one day, your
civil defense arrangement is useless because now with the Persians
in Europe. It takes under ten minutes. They said, it
takes seven minutes for them to hit Moscow.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Seven minutes, which means if it took Svetlana ten minutes
to get to her bunker.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
There's no use anymore of going running. They had this joke. Now,
if you hear the alarm, your training should be you
cover yourself with white sheet and lay your head away
from the nuclear blasts.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Woo very dark joke. Starting to understand why Russia is
known for ballet and not comedy.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Really, for the first time in my life, I felt
like there could be nuclear war.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
To be clear, the threat to deploy these new euro
missiles was a negotiation tactic during the Carter years before
Reagan ever set foot in the Oval Office, because the
Soviets had missiles too, enough to bomb all of Europe
if they felt so inclined. So European leaders felt exposed.
They said they would also like a light sprinkling of
missiles on their side of the border, thank you very much.
(31:40):
Thus the Cruise and Pershing twos. But in reality, the
prospect of these missiles being deployed was only intended to
be a threat back off or we'll bring in some nukes.
But when Ronald Reagan entered office, he and the NATO
chiefs made good on that threat. The deployment was scheduled
for November nineteen eighty three, the exact same time as
(32:00):
NATO's annual Able Archer exercise.
Speaker 6 (32:22):
The Nuclear Freeze movement was a grassroots movement that wanted
to de escalate the nuclear arms race.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Seth Rosenfeld again. Seth says, after the announcement of the
euro missiles, people all over the world took to the
streets in protest. They thought Reagan was being irresponsible by
pointing even more weapons at the Soviets, and they put
pressure on Congress to cut Reagan's defense spending, and of
course Reagan didn't like that.
Speaker 6 (32:48):
Reagan actually made an allegation that the Nuclear Freeze movement
was just another Communist plot to weaken America.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yep. Reagan believed that the Soviets were brainwashing people all
to orchestrate a massive nuclear cock block. And by now
Ronnie knew exactly what to do when a communist plot
was afoot. He got on stage.
Speaker 6 (33:14):
So I'm delighted to be here today.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
It's now March third, nineteen eighty three. We're t minus
eight months to able Archer and Reagan's in sunny Orlando,
Florida to deliver a speech.
Speaker 5 (33:25):
Number of years ago, I heard a young father saying,
I love my little girls more than anything, and I
would rather see my little girls die now still believing
in God, than have them grow up under communism and
one day die no longer believing in God.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Oh okay, that's pretty weird for a crowd to cheer
on a father wishing for the death of his children.
But the audience was the National Association of Evangelicals, and
I think it's safe to say they believing in God.
Pretty seriously, say what you want about Reagan. The guy
knew his crowd. With the nuclear freeze movement on Reagan's back.
(34:11):
He needed to remind the public why his military build
up was necessary. He needed to remind them who the
enemy was, like he'd done a million times before, but
this time he would go a little too far.
Speaker 5 (34:24):
So let us pray for the salvation of all of
those who live in that totalitarian darkness. They preached the
supremacy of the state, declare it's omnipotence over individual man,
and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
The next words out of Reagan's mouth are a critical
turning point in our able Archer story. If all this
nuclear tension was already soaked and gasoline, you might say
Reagan was about to light a fucking match.
Speaker 5 (34:52):
They are the focus of evil in the modern world.
I urge you to beware the temptation to ignore the
facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire.
Evil empire, evil empire.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Identity, an evil empire. Now them's fighting.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Words, and then was a shock. It was in all
Russian newspapers.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
To the Soviets, calling them an evil empire was a
step too far, They wondered, was Ronald minuc is bigger
than yours? Reagan calling them out because he was building
up to an attack. Well, they wouldn't have to wonder
for long.
Speaker 13 (35:33):
Good evening. President Reagan today issued a formal directive to
the National Security Council to begin initial research on the
space Age missile defense system he proposed to the nation.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Last night, three weeks after calling the Soviet Union an
evil empire, Ronald Reagan announced that he was building a
new technology. He gave the public an irresistible pitch. What
if the thing you're absolutely the most afraid of could
suddenly vanish into thin air?
Speaker 5 (36:00):
We could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they
reached our own soil or that of our allies.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
He proposed a kind of magic shield, a technical innovation
that would shoot down Soviet missiles from outer space. He
called it the Strategic Defense Initiative acronym SDI, and he
would need a massive increase in his defense budget to
do it. Now, a nuclear shield sounds like a comforting thought,
but you might be wondering, how the hell would you
(36:28):
do that? Well, Reagan conveniently wrapped up his speech before
offering much detail.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
There will be risks, and results take time, but I
believe we can do it.
Speaker 8 (36:40):
In this speech, he said we're going to make nuclear
weapons obsolete by building these defenses. And he didn't say
what the defenses would be, really, but people then began
asking all of his aids what the defenses could be,
and they came out with their own view of it.
Whereas everyone in both Houses of Congress and in this
NOS Defense Department understood that he was talking about something
(37:03):
that simply didn't exist, and couldn't exist.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
In other words, it was bullshit fantasy. America didn't have
the technology to block out thousands of incoming Soviet nukes. Hell,
we still don't have that kind of technology. Reagan's opponents
in Congress started calling it the star Wars program because
of how obviously it was rooted in science fiction. I
got a bad feeling about this. Some scientists estimated that
(37:28):
developing Star Wars would take thirty years and cost a
million million dollars, but that didn't stop Reagan supporters from
trying to sell the illusion with creepy ads like this.
Speaker 15 (37:39):
I asked my daddy what the star Wars stuff is
all about. He said that right now, we can't protect
ourselves from nuclear weapons, and that's why the President wants
to build a p shield. It would stop missiles in
outer space so they couldn't hit our house.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
Vain.
Speaker 15 (37:57):
Nobody could win a war. Nobody could win a war.
There's no reason to stab.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Anyway. All of that might have been fine, funny even
if the Soviets didn't have their own interpretation of this announcement.
They thought it was part of a cunning plan that
sure Reagan would put satellites in space only these satellites
wouldn't be used for nuclear defense. They would be used
to launch nuclear weapons at the Soviet Union.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
There was a certain hysteria among the Soviet leaders because
what it meant to them is blitzkrieg from space, and
that would create a situation where the United States would
have for strike capability.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Star wars, the new missiles in Europe, and the Evil
Empire speech to the Soviets. These three things added up
to one conclusion. The United States was prepared a surprise
nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. It was the only
explanation they were certain of it. What was in drop
of to do well? For one thing, he needed to
(39:10):
see the attack before it happened. He needed eyes on
the other side of the Iron Curtain, and it turns
out he had him. Next on Snaffoo, we leave the
Oval Office and Kremlin to meet the spies in the
field who would be forced to intervene during the able
Archer crisis.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Omaka, he's preparing an.
Speaker 10 (39:35):
It was moments like that that he really began to think,
I need to do something about this.
Speaker 12 (39:40):
I need to target the Soviet system, undermine it.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Somehow, and try and damage it somehow.
Speaker 6 (39:45):
Beto was my enemy and I mean to destroy it.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
I mean, this is just so hutterly crazy.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Stanley Kubrick could not invent this. SNAFU is a production
of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company
in association with Gilded Audio. Our lead producers are Sarah
Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our producer is Carl Nellis. Associate
producer Torry Smith. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms,
(40:14):
Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo, Andy Chug, and Whitney Donaldson. This
episode was written by Carl Nellis and Sarah Joyner, with
additional writing from me Elliott Kalin and Whitney Donaldson. Our
senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 10 (40:27):
I'm actually an old softy.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Olivia Canny is our production assistant. Our creative executive is
Brett Harris. Additional research and fact checking by Charles Richter,
Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Original music and
sound design by Dan Rosatto. Additional editing from Ben Chugg.
Some archival audio from this episode originally appeared in Taylor
Downing's fantastic film nineteen eighty three, The Brink of Apocalypse.
(40:52):
Thank You mister Downing for permission to use it. Special
thanks to Alison Cohen and Matt Aisenstadt.
Host
Ed Helms
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com