November 23, 2022 • 42 mins
The Finale of Snafu: Season One! The holy grail of classified Able Archer documents is finally revealed. Will it hold the answers we seek? Produced by FilmNation and Pacific Electric Picture Co. in association with Gilded Audio.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
In the movie biz, there's something called the false defeat.
It's a moment towards the end of a movie when
things are going really well, too well. The heroes just
had a victory and the finish line is in sight,
and then a grave challenge presents itself, one that seems
so insurmountable that for a brief moment, the audience can't
(00:25):
even fathom a happy ending. It's like in Sleepless in
Seattle when Annie is rushing to the top of the
Empire State Building, but it's too late because Sam and
Jonah are already in the elevator on their way down.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm sorry, man, empty.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's like in Home Alone when after Kevin absolutely roasts
Harry and Marv with all his booby traps, they finally catch.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Up with him high a pal be out smart this time.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It's like when Our Fearless History slewth Nate Jones discovered
that there was a top secret piffy app report one
hundred pages long, all about Able Larcher, and then found
out that it would take decades to unseal, and he
probably wouldn't see it in his lifetime.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
We were in big trouble.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Nate had waited eight years for his piffy app foya.
When he finally.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
Faced the music, it just wasn't working.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It was never gonna happen.
Speaker 5 (01:29):
Just kidding.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Another thing about a false defeat. The hero always finds
a way.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Is never the end of the road.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I learned that avoid Nate filing a FOYA isn't the
only way to get a secret document declassified. There's one
other path, but it's a real hail Mary.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Called Mandatory Declassification.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Review aka MDR aka ice CAP. Don't ask me why.
Ice CAP is effectively a side door into the government vaults.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
It's a small born of one representative of all of
the intelligence agencies sitting at the National Archives.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Meaning instead of each agency taking years to approve declassification
one by one, all the agencies sit down in a
room and review it together at the same time.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
For a historian, it's kind of like the hottest ticket
in town.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, we're talking a hotter ticket than macho Man Randy
Savage versus hul Kogan WrestleMania five, nineteen eighty nine. But
there's a catch. If you want to try to get
those ice Cap tickets, you have to withdraw your foyas first.
You can't do both, which meant Nate would need to
withdraw a FOYA that was already eight years in progress.
(02:51):
Then if ice Cap declined to review the pifyab, he'd
have to start all over again, eight years down the drain.
But in the wise words of a risky Tom.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
Cruise, sometimes you gotta say what the fuck make you move?
Speaker 4 (03:10):
So we decided we are going to take a shot
and do MDR and Gopher broke. If ice Cap can't
do it, we're pretty screwed.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
All right, my listeners, We have arrived at the final chapter,
and we've had quite a ride here, haven't we. First
we heard about how Reagan's tough guy speeches plus a
new deployment of super fast earth destoring weapons, fueled the
Soviets paranoia to the point that they convinced themselves the
US was going to nuke them at precisely the same
time NATO was rehearsing a nuclear war. But at the
(03:47):
last minute, we were all saved by a couple of
spies and Lieutenant General Leonard Perutz, who, in a tense moment,
kept a cool head. But then we learned that there
isn't a record of the so called war scare in
Eastern archives that two of the main eye witnesses might
be kind of unreliable, and that maybe the story of
(04:09):
Able Archer eighty three is nothing more than a Cold
War myth. But one stone remains unturned the piffy. This
episode we take one more shot at the most elusive
facet of history, the truth. I'm at Helms and this
is the season finale of Snaffoo Able Archer eighty three.
(04:40):
One day in twenty fifteen, Nate Jones woke up for work.
It was his thirty second birthday. He took his time
moseying into the office.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Probably about ten o'clock. I guess nicely might be in
a historian, you can't go to work a little later.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
It was an ordinary day, save for a few happy birthdays,
maybe a cupcake or two, and of course that thirty
dollars check from Graham, which is so nice but never
seemed to keep up with the pace of inflation. Come on, grandma.
Nate settled in at his desk, unaware that the best
birthday president of all time was about to arrive certified delivery,
(05:16):
and it went through the mail slit.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
So there's kind of a thud onto the floor.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Nate Jones wondered, what could.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
It be that was about one hundred pages thick with
government and dress government stamps. So I knew it might
be good. So went and looked at it and then
saw that it was from ice Cap. My heart started
beating a little bit and ripped it open and saw
the title.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
The Soviet War Scare President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, also
known as Piffy AM.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
I still remember. It had a bright red stamp, had
seven code words.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Top secret, wintel, no FRON, no contract, orcn Umbra, gamma.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
And all seven of them had a line through them
tick tick tick tick tick tick tick, meaning that they
were no longer classified.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
This is it. The report to end all reports? Was
able Archer a Cold War myth like some historians believed,
a propaganda plot like the CIA concluded in the eighties,
or a terrifying nuclear near myss like Leonard Perutz had
insisted for so many decades. Nate nervously began to flip
(06:34):
through the Piffy app hoping praying that what he was
holding was not one hundred percent redacted.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
And I flipped through and I saw way more text
than redactions, and I said, oh my God, this is it.
And then I actually read it for the content and
I said, oh my god, this is revealing the secrets
that I was so curious about.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Finally clarity. All right, let's break it all down, shall we.
The report confirmed a lot of things that Nate had
already figured out from other sources, like those planes in
East Germany loaded up with nukes. But there was some
new stuff too.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
There's details about flights and helicopter flights, probably for surveillance
of able Archer.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
The Soviets conducted over thirty six reconnaissance flights monitoring able Archer.
The report said that even though the Soviets monitored able
archer every year, this was more reconnaissance than any year before.
And apart from these flights, all other Soviet flights were grounded.
Why is that important? The report author speculates that this
(07:40):
was in order to have as many aircraft as possible
at the ready for combat.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Said that Soviet military reaction hadn't been like this since
World War Two.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
For example, the Soviets stopped production at their tractor factory
and started using it to build tanks. The last time
they did that was during World War Two. The report
also pointed to the Soviet's own nuclear wargames as evidence
that they genuinely believed NATO might launch a surprise nuclear attack.
(08:13):
The wargame they're talking about is called Druzeba, which, according
to Google, translates to Friendship. That's right, a wargame called friendship.
Who says that Soviets don't have a sense of humor anyway.
In the years after Able Archer eighty three, in nineteen
eighty five, eighty six, and eighty seven, the Druzebil wargame
scripts all began the same way, with NATO launching a
(08:36):
surprise nuclear attack during Autumn Forge, which is the NATO
exercise that ends with Able Archer. Ultimately, the Able Archer mystery,
the mystery of how close we really were to all
dying that night in nineteen eighty three, It really comes
(08:57):
down to one question. How genuine was the Soviets fear
that the US was going to attack them? Were they
terrified finger hovering over the button or were they pretending
to be terrified. Well, the pifyab's take was this.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
They concluded that during Naval Archer that US actions and
Soviet actions put the world on hair trigger away from
nuclear war.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
They said knowing what we know now, it's very possible
the Soviets were genuinely afraid that an attack was imminent,
and they may have prepared their own nuclear weapons to
fire first.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
And I agree with this conclusion that the war scare
was real and the war scare was dangerous.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Nate immediately wrote up a summary and the next day
he published the declassified Pifyab for all the world to see.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
I won't say I cried, but my eyes did get
a little misty. I've had a lot of good birthdays,
but that one might.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Take the cake. Happy birthday, buddy. The End You music
roll credits SNAFU was a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment,
and Pacific Electric Picture Company. I'm kidding, it's not the
(10:27):
end people. There's always a twist. Nate's Piffy ab win
was supposed to be our hero's victory against all odds.
The Foyer Warrior fought for the Piffy ab Report and
finally he solved the able Archer mystery once and for all.
But it turns out this might be a false victory
(10:48):
after the false defeat, or something like that, because even
though Nate was convinced.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Very good analysis very good use of facts.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Not everyone would agree. You see in the PIFYAB reports
one hundred pages, it didn't actually claim to solve the
mystery of Able Archer. It didn't say what definitely happened
that night. It used a lot of equivocating phrases like
may have and very possible. And the truth is, the
(11:18):
conclusions that are drawn from the Piffyab will differ depending
on who's reading it.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
The first time I read the PIFFIAB report was when
the National Security Archive managed to get a copy of it.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
This is Ben Fisher. He's the CIA historian who brought
the Able Archer story into the public eye in the
late nineties, the one who convinced the intelligence community at
large that Able Archer may have been much more than
a propaganda plot. So you may be surprised to hear
that by the time the PIFYAB report came out, Ben
(11:54):
had this to say about it.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
I think that the Piffyab study was an exaggeration.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I know, it's surprising that the guy who changed everyone's
mind about Able Archer would say such a blasphemous thing
in light of you know, everything we've talked about on
this show, The war mongering speeches, the euro Missiles Operation Ryan,
the stories of Oli Gordievsky and ryder Up, the airplanes
on alert with nukes potentially loaded, Missile commanders called in
(12:25):
for emergency shifts. Not to mention the new details from
the PIFYAB report, reconnaissance flights, tank production, and Soviet nuclear
war games.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
But nonetheless I began to move away from the countdown
to armageddon. The Abel Archer alert was a night we
almost went to war.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Ben says. Despite the way it looks, there could be
another reasonable explanation for everything. Let's start with the Soviet's
military mobilization during Able Archer.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
Shall we Especially during the Able Archer Alert, the Soviets
did take certain actions. The strip alert for the aircraft
is one thing. They may have put some of their
forces on alert. Senior officials may have repaired to their
underground bunkers. How do I interpret this? I think it's
(13:16):
what we call signaling. It's sending messages to the other
side by doing things, rather than saying things.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Like, hey, we see you doing your big exercise over there.
We're watching and we're ready, so don't try any funny business.
It's like the wargame equivalent of that like I'm watching
you thing where you point at your eyes and then
point at the other guy's eyes and then point at
your eyes again. Ben says that if the Soviets were
truly on the brink, we should be seeing a lot
(13:45):
more military activity than we did, Entire armies at the ready,
navy ships, submarines and tanks, anything smaller just signaling. Okay, So,
what's beIN's take on our two spies, you know, the
two men who just so happened to have their own
stories about the Soviets getting really freaked out during Able Archer.
Speaker 7 (14:05):
Well, it was a flush telegram, It wasn't super urgent telegram.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Do you remember sending a message in there?
Speaker 5 (14:14):
I remember sending You know, we always have this problem
with people who do who defect, you know, how much
of what they say is true, how much of it it's
not true, how much of it is slanted in a
certain direction.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
We reached out to both Gordiovski and Ruugh to try
to get to the bottom of all this. Oleg Gordievsky
was unavailable due to his health, plus the fact that
he's in a safe house hiding from Putin's assassins, and
we just never heard back from Rhina Rup, so ultimately
we can't ask them these questions. But for what it's worth,
Ben doesn't think Oleg Gordievsky is a liar.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
Oliah Gordiowsky was absolutely the best Soviet agent of the
Cold War. I've met him a couple of times. A
good man who risked his life. Obviously, I think he
reported what he believed and what he saw and what
he heard. There's a bigger question of what about the
people above him. I mean, to what extent were they serious?
Speaker 1 (15:17):
By they? Ben means the KGB leaders who under Operation
Ryan commanded their spies in the West to report back
any indication of NATO war preparation. You remember that proverbial
tic tac toe board of death the batshit crazy nuclear
crystal ball. But Ben thinks Operation Ryan may have actually
been more down to earth, that the Soviets were just
(15:41):
doing due diligence in a period of heightened nuclear tension.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
Simple they were concerned that they balance the power was
tipping against them. They wanted to be prepared for if
and when that happened.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, they did send messages to their spies saying the
adversary could attack us at any moment, But maybe they
were just saying that to encourage thorough espionage.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Sevie Union's following apart. They've got all kinds of problems.
You need to keep the morale of your troops up.
How do you do this, Well, you give them a task,
and the task is to go out and collect information
related to the possibility of a surprise nuclear missile attack
on the Soviet Union. Okay, this gives people something to do.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So back to the central question. Just how close of
a call was a larger How scared were the Soviets.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
I'm from Oklahoma, I'm a country boy. As a phrase,
I use that they were worried, but they weren't shaking
in their boots.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Ben believes that there was at least some element of
truth to the Soviet fear in nineteen eighty three. If
they weren't afraid at all, they wouldn't have shot down
that Korean Airlines flight. If they weren't afraid at all,
they wouldn't have spent billions of dollars building underground bunkers.
If they weren't afraid at all, they wouldn't have practiced
a nuclear wargame. That begins with NATO attacking undercover of
(17:11):
Autumn Forge. So yeah, they were scared, but they weren't
quote shaken in their boots. In other words, Ben doesn't
think Yuri and drop Off was anywhere close to pushing
that button.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
It was a serious matter, but it wasn't almost the
end of the world.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
That said, Ben admits he doesn't know for sure.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
I realized how complex it is. There's no hard and
fast answer. It's a very marky world and rarely does
it offer concrete evidence of this or that. And that's
why you have intellvisionce failures. It's not scientific, it's an arts,
not science.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Hold on, Ben, that's kind of terrifying. These intelligence agencies
hold the fate of the world in their hands, and
you're telling me there's rarely concrete evidence of this or that.
It's an art.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
Intelligent and honest people on both sides of the same issue.
People are not bad because they have one point of
view or not good because they have another point of view.
They're human beings struggling to make sense of what's going
on around them.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
The Able Archer mystery is riddled with maddening contradictions. As
a result, rational people can look at the same information
and draw startlingly different conclusions.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
No matter what's found, I think that the debate will continue.
That's history arguing both sides. What the best evidence you
have in.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
The end Able Archer is a rorshack test. In other words,
how you see it might just be a reflection of
your personality, how optimistic or cynical or fearful you might be.
I don't know if you ask me, No matter how
it makes you feel, the fact that intelligent people can
still argue about how close we came to armageddon means
(19:10):
we came too damn close. It was June of nineteen
eighty four, about seven months after Able Archer, when Ronald
Reagan took the Able Archer Rorschach test himself.
Speaker 6 (19:26):
While we go on believing that the Soviets are blotting
against us and mean us harm, maybe they are scared
of us and think we are a threat.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
This is an entry from his diary. It was written
right around the same time that Reagan first read a
detailed report listing the specifics of the Soviet reaction to
Abel Archer, and even though his own CIA analysts claimed
that there was absolutely nothing to worry about, that these
Soviet reactions were all part of a propaganda campaign that
wasn't Reagan's takeaway. To him, it seemed possible that the
(20:02):
Soviets were preparing for war on his watch without his knowing.
In the end, Reagan ignored the advice of his own analysts.
He believed that the able Archer war scare was quote
very scary. He decides to set up a face to
face meeting with the new Soviet leader, the first time
(20:23):
he would do this in over three years of being president.
He writes, and I quote, I.
Speaker 8 (20:28):
Haven't got feeling we should do this, no shit. So
this is why I tell people the war scare is
actually a good news story.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
Okay, there's always a room for miscalculation, there's always a
room for hubris, there's always a room for mistakes. But
what came out of the war scare, well, President Reagan
learned for the first time in his life that this
helped mes a're scared of us, And from that you
can or a straight line to his second term, where
(21:03):
he says he wanted to be known not as the
man who waits to coal warp, but the man who
would end it. And he realized that to do this
he was going to have to deal with the Soviet leaders.
He was going to have to talk to them.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
This is tomorrow morning's Washington Post.
Speaker 5 (21:24):
Reagan Gorbachev signed.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Nuclear missile treaty. As you can see, it is very
big news here in the United States.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
On December eighth, nineteen eighty seven, over four years after
able Archer, President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev signed
the historic Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty AKAINF.
Speaker 9 (21:45):
This ceremony and the treaty we're signing today are both
excellent examples of the rewards of patients. On the Soviet side,
over fifteen hundred deployed warheads will be removed. On our side,
our entire complement of pershing to and ground launched cruise missiles,
with some four hundred deployed warheads, will all be destroyed.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
It's almost a miracle in some ways, because eventually in
Italy to the end of the Cold War.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
At the signing of the i in F, the entire
globe heaved a giant sigh of relief. At last, the
Cold War was coming to an end. Now, I wish
I could say that at this point we collectively threw
aside all of the geopolitical theater that led us to
able our t eighty three, that we got smarter, that
(22:35):
we approached the nuclear dilemma with a little more humility
and a little less trash talking. But unfortunately that's not
what happened.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
As President Winston Churchill once said that trying to maintain
a good relationship with a communist was not unlike trying
to woo a crocodile. When it opened its mouth, you
never could be quite certain whether it was trying to
smile or eat you up.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
This is from an interview with Reagan after news about
the inf treaty broke. You may or may not be
surprised to hear that he got a lot of criticism
from his own party about being too weak.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Americans respect you, love you, and pulling for you, with
their concerned that perhaps you are going to or already
have allowed Gorbachev to eat you and us up.
Speaker 9 (23:27):
Well, I haven't changed from the time when I made
a speech about an evil empire, evil empire, evil empire.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Ere Certain phrases come to mind at a time like this.
Old habits die hard. You can't teach an old dog
new tricks. Nancy's astrologer made me do it. You see,
even after Ronald Reagan had his able Archer epiphany, even
after he reached across the Iron Curtain and negotiated a
(23:54):
groundbreaking treaty publicly, he wasn't prepared to let go of
his tough guy persona. In other words, according to Reagan,
the Cold War didn't simply end through a mutual detente.
He the American cowboy had finally conquered the evil Communist villain,
and the US had won the Cold War with pure
brute strength.
Speaker 10 (24:16):
The men in those positions are so confident.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Here's Jeffrey Lewis talking about the people in power during
the Cold War.
Speaker 10 (24:26):
They believe that they are like the masters of the universe,
and that they are in complete and total control, and
nothing will happen without them allowing it to happen. And
that you're this incredibly clever brinksman who will always pull
back at the last moment because you know what you're doing,
(24:48):
because you don't know what the fuck you're doing.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Thank you, Jeffrey. And that brings me to my next
point where it all went wrong.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
I was almost a scolding to.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
That's Nate Jones again. He's talking about the piffyab the
report chronicled the events leading up to Able Archer in
a lot of detail, and it tried to identify all
the mistakes that allowed things to get to that point.
The idea was maybe if we can find what went wrong,
we could avoid I don't know, accidentally stumbling into a
nuclear war moving forward. And in the end the authors
(25:23):
focus on one root cause of the whole snaffu, what
they call over confidence.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Essentially saying that the intelligence did not accurately present the
picture of the danger at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
The report says, look, even with the benefit of hindsight
and access to more intel than ever before, we still
don't know exactly what happened that night. And back then
the CIA had so much less information, and yet their
conclusion was very specific and very confident that it was
all propaganda. But how could they have known that, Well,
(26:02):
they simply couldn't have, not with one hundred percent certainty.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
There is too much confidence that a nuclear war can
never happen, or that the Soviets would never think that.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
The report says, the CIA analysts in the eighties should
have entertained all possible explanations. You know, maybe it's propaganda,
or maybe the Earth is hurtling towards imminent demise, or
at the very least they could have reevaluated as new
intel came in. Instead, they just kept doubling down again
and again, and EPIFIAB says that was insanely risky.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
With something with such catastrophic results, even if the risk
is low as an unacceptable risk.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Exactly because it's not just the immediate damage of a
nuclear explosion, the tens of millions of people instantaneously incinerated
after the initial blast, there's a domino effect. A recent
study said that if only three percent of today's nuclear
stockpile was used in a nuclear exchange, there'd be firestorms,
(27:05):
soot rising into the atmosphere to block the sun, we'd
plummet into an ice age, lose a majority of our
food production, and in the end, an estimated one third
of the world's population would die from starvation. So yeah,
I'd say the stakes are high. But alas the report
(27:28):
couldn't really pinpoint a specific blunder that caused this whole mess.
There's no single incident where somebody got definitive proof of
an impending nuclear war and then shredded the document or
aid it or something. In the end, the errors were psychological.
The real mistake hubris refusing to accept the possibility of
(27:51):
being wrong.
Speaker 11 (27:56):
We've got to always be very careful to make sure
that we're not just seeing what we want to see,
or you know what we're frightened of seeing, or you
know what we don't want to see. We're pushing back
against it, and that we've also it's got to kind
of question the context.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
This is Fiona Hill, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
She's a former member of the National Security Council with
an expertise in Russian affairs. Fianna says, there's a common
pitfall in human psychology. It shows up everywhere, from marital
spats to geopolitical standoffs, and it's called mirror imaging.
Speaker 11 (28:28):
Mirror imaging, you know, projecting your own rationale, failing to
really understand the perspective of the other and where they're
coming from, and to really kind of get into a
deeper understanding of the mindsets of the individuals.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Mirror imaging happens when two parties have trouble understanding each other,
so their minds fill in the blanks and they project
their own logic onto the other.
Speaker 11 (28:51):
Because you try to think about, well, what would I
do what's rational for me? But you're not living in
that context, and you don't fully understand what the information
on the other side house at their fingertips, And ultimately,
we never fully understand the other's perspective, and we always
engage in quite a lot of mirror imaging.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Ronald Reagan and his intelligence analysts knew that the United
States would never start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union,
and they assumed that Yuri and drop Off and the
rest of the Soviets knew this. The US officials couldn't
conceive of a reality where the Soviets would think anything different. Meanwhile,
the Soviet Union had a history of sneak attacking other
(29:30):
countries under cover of military exercise, and so to them,
this was a completely plausible strategy. For the Americans, Reagan
and a drop Off never spoke in person or on
the phone, not once, but they made plenty of assumptions
about one another, and those assumptions cascaded into a slew
of miscalculations.
Speaker 10 (29:51):
The fact of the nuclear age is that you share
interests with your enemy and you have to talk to them,
and that stuff is just like so unpopular the idea
of talking to your mortal enemy is unthinkable, and to
be fair, it's unpopular today when people talk about like well,
(30:14):
maybe we should negotiate with the Chinese, or maybe we
should like strike a deal with the Iranians. There is
a huge outcry that we're somehow contaminating ourselves or staining
our legacy by talking to these evil people. It is
so much easier to just tell them to blow off
and build some more bombs. And it is absolutely crazy
(30:36):
to me that people who do not want to talk
to the enemy are perfectly happy to live in that
kind of arrangement. Like talking to them is like so
much less scary, Like they have little cookies and tea,
and you know, it's you go see, like a cultural
thing after the it's nice. It's a way less scary
(30:59):
than do clear.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
To me personally, I'm all about the cookies and tea.
Speaker 10 (31:04):
The answer is like, stop imagining that you can use
force in this way.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Well, at least we learned from it, right Jeffrey, Hey, Yeah,
there's no learning.
Speaker 10 (31:16):
I mean, not only is there no learning, there was
a refusal to accept it happened at the time, and
those of us who were like you, know you, people
really almost fucked up, Like people don't want to hear that.
So the lesson that I draw from it is that
people don't learn that we make the same mistake over
and over again, just a tragedy.
Speaker 11 (31:36):
Basically where we are now we haven't learned enough from
those previous crises.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Here's Fiona Hill again. She was in Moscow training as
a translator in nineteen eighty eight, just after Reagan and
Gorbachev signed the IF Treaty. She recalls watching as the
two heads of state strolled through Red Square in a
public display of diplomacy.
Speaker 11 (31:56):
It was just mind blowing and just an amazing fitting.
The world had turned, the access of the world had turned,
and maybe, maybe, just maybe, after these war scares and
all of this misunderstanding of each other, we were going
to go off to a different path what we did
for a while. But they're not so much.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
The IF Treaty that both leaders signed that year reduced
the world's nuclear stockpile by thousands, but today there are
still more than twelve thousand nuclear weapons, some big, some small,
some just right. No, I'm kidding, none of them are
just right. They're all terrifying, and still plenty enough to
destroy the world then and twenty nineteen the United States
(32:37):
withdrew from the IONF treaty all together.
Speaker 11 (32:42):
We kept hoping that we would find some golden key
to arms control that might even lead to nuclear zero,
but we always haven't achieved that because we've had proliferation
of nuclear weapons. It's not just China, the United States, Russia,
Frompson the UK, but we've Akistan, in India, We've got
all some others we think have nuclear weapons but we
(33:02):
don't say it openly that we kind of know they do.
And we've got loads of others who aspire to have
nuclear weapons, you know, ran North Korea, where we can
easily see that. What they've taken away from all of
these lessons from the past is that you can blackmail
other countries with nuclear weapons, that you can force people
to do things that they don't want to do, or
you can force them to reckon with you, even as
(33:23):
they otherwise might ignore you in world affairs. So, you know,
we're back to gund of the euromissile crisis feeling where
we're all sort of sitting thinking, how do we get here,
how do we get to this point? We kind of
obviously totally misjudge and misunderstood and have been really poor
at communicating. And we've got all this more information than
we had before, and yet we've done it again, and.
Speaker 10 (33:46):
So there's no learning, you know. And it makes me
crazy because people are like, well, we got through that crisis,
nobody was killed, Like other than the airline are full
of dead people like you. People are gambling with normal
people's lives. And the reason I find able art are
so interesting is precisely because there are other moments where
you watch crises kind of start to spiral out of
(34:07):
control and you see all the same dynamics at play.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
We now believe that only force will make him leave.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
We can't let the world's worse leaders blackmail threaten.
Speaker 9 (34:20):
Would be prepared to without delay with pis wonder ward.
Speaker 6 (34:25):
Just by walking away from it.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
That's a victory for the other side, with the blood
of our citizens and the strength of our worry. Tonight
about China's new missile capability.
Speaker 7 (34:33):
President Trump writing, will someone from his depleted and food
starve regime please inform him that I too have a
nuclear button, but it is a much bigger and more
powerful one than his, and might hamm why don't we use.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Them with Trump projected those weapons of mass destruction got
to be something parading his nuclear arsenal.
Speaker 10 (34:51):
This posenominous nuclear language.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
It's president threatening nuclear war.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
This is not a bluff, and those who tried to
blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the prevailing
wins can turn in their direction.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
It's just way too complicated a problem for us to
be cleanly and easily dealing with.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
This is John Batham.
Speaker 5 (35:31):
I'm John Batham. I'm the director of War Games.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
That's right, my friends. We're going to bring it all
home right where we began with the movie that started
it all, at least for me.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
Sure we got a problem.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Whipper's not letting me log back on. They can't get
any stand out of them. In the movie War Games,
the plot comes to a climax when Whopper, that's the
US Department of Defense's supercomputer, goes rogue and is about
to start launching nuclear weapons at the Soviet Union.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Well, can't they get in and stop?
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Time is running out at Norad, buried deep inside Cheyenne Mountain,
the entire US Nuclear Command is running around like chickens
with their heads cut off, trying to figure out how
to stop the computer from starting a nuclear war. But
none of the adults in the room can fix it.
The world's only hope the kid, David Lightman, laid by
(36:23):
National Treasurer Matthew Broderick.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
But what are we gonna do?
Speaker 5 (36:27):
I don't know, do you.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
I told you not to start playing games with that thing.
Speaker 6 (36:32):
It's games.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
Games. Try it wants to play a game, then play it.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
See Whopper uses games to teach itself Chess, poker, you
name it. And David Lightman knows that the only hope
in saving humanity is to somehow teach the computer to
understand what mutually assured destruction really means.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
And eventually he does come up with a solution that,
you know, kind of stemies the computer, which is playing
Tic Tac Toe. Tic Tac Toe, one of the simplest
games in the universe.
Speaker 5 (37:09):
Put X in the center square.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
As Whopper narrows in on the launch codes, it begins
playing Tic Tac Toe. And we've all played it, so
you know what happens next game after game ends in
a tie. There's no way you can win that game.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
I know that it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
It doesn't learned what David Lightman knows that the supercomputer
does not, is that Tic tac Toe is a futile game.
There's no point in playing it at all because there's
no winning. That's when the computer realizes, just like Tic
Tac Toe, when it comes to nuclear war, every scenario
(37:50):
ends the same way. In a tie, everyone is equally dead.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
The only winning move is not to play.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Is not today? How am i okay nay of jess?
Speaker 1 (38:13):
The only winning move is not to play. It's such
an obvious answer, but one that all the big adult
brains running around Norad couldn't possibly consider, because being buried
in nuclear strategy and tactics for so many years had
blinded them to a simple truth found in a rudimentary
children's game. So how close were we to all dying
(38:37):
in November of nineteen eighty three? Well, my dear listeners,
there are only a few people who can definitively answer
that question once and for all. The Soviet leaders themselves
and their answers are forever buried along with them in
the Kremlin Wall necropolis. So unless the CIA lets me
borrow their time machine and their mind reading device, were
(39:00):
just never going to know exactly how close and drop
off was to pushing the button that night.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
But ultimately, yeah, we don't know. Unfortunately, for the people
that want to know how close was the finger to
the button, we won't.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Know the truth. That elusive holy Grail may be buried
in Moscow for good. But there's no denying the able
Archer story is still absolutely absurd. It is absurd that
it's even remotely possible we all almost perished in an
(39:35):
unintentional nuclear war in nineteen eighty three, and that the
actions of just a few people could have been our
saving grace. People like Stanislov Petrov and Oleg Gordievsky and
Ryan or Rupp, who, in their own small ways intervened,
and Leonard Perutz, who, after hearing that the Soviets were
going on alert, decided to do nothing, decided not to
(39:57):
play the game. If it wasn't for the people, we
might all be tiny radioactive particles floating through a barren,
scorched atmosphere. Their actions are inspiring, sure, but it's not
exactly hopeful, is it, Because it reinforces an unacceptable nuclear reality,
one where the fate of humanity can sometimes depend on
(40:18):
a few people trying to thwart disaster. While the leaders
of the world double down on public trash talking, attempted
mind reading, and shows of strength in lieu of diplomacy.
So where the hell does this leave us? Well, maybe
not all is lost. Maybe we can begin to approach
the nuclear dilemma with a little humility. Maybe we don't
(40:41):
have to accept the status quo. Leonard Brutz didn't accept
it when after Able Archer he wouldn't stay quiet about
the intelligence failures he believed led us to the brink.
Nate Jones didn't accept it when he dedicated his life
to bringing Able Archer out of obscurity and into the light.
And by the way, Nate Jones is still at it.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
I'm still voiding footnotes to go even deeper. I think
there's still more stuff to find.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Soldier on Nate Jones, You and those like you represent
the real hope in this mess. Maybe, just maybe, through
your tireless efforts, the situation normal won't always be fucked up.
I don't know, listener, when it's all said and done,
I think the real hero here is me. I don't
(41:30):
know how, and I don't know why. Somehow that just
feels right. So you're welcome, everyone. Snapoo is a production
of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company
in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me
Ed Helms, Nolan Papelka, Mike Falbo, Andy Chuck, and Whitney Donaldson.
(41:53):
Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our
producer is Carl Nellis. Associate producer Tory Smith. This episode
was written by Sarah Joyner, with additional writing from me
Elliott Kalen, and Whitney Donaldson. Our senior editor is Jeffrey
Lewis like they.
Speaker 10 (42:07):
Have little cookies and tea and you know it's nice.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Olivia Kenny 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. Some archival audio from this
episode originally appeared in Taylor Downing's fantastic film nineteen eighty three,
The Brink of Apocalypse. Thank you, mister Downing for permission
(42:32):
to use it. Special thanks to Alison Cohen and Matt Asenstadt.
In the movie biz, there's something called the false defeat.
It's a moment towards the end of a movie when
things are going really well, too well. The heroes just
had a victory and the finish line is in sight,
and then a grave challenge presents itself, one that seems
so insurmountable that for a brief moment, the audience can't
(00:25):
even fathom a happy ending. It's like in Sleepless in
Seattle when Annie is rushing to the top of the
Empire State Building, but it's too late because Sam and
Jonah are already in the elevator on their way down.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm sorry, man, empty.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It's like in Home Alone when after Kevin absolutely roasts
Harry and Marv with all his booby traps, they finally catch.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Up with him high a pal be out smart this time.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It's like when Our Fearless History slewth Nate Jones discovered
that there was a top secret piffy app report one
hundred pages long, all about Able Larcher, and then found
out that it would take decades to unseal, and he
probably wouldn't see it in his lifetime.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
We were in big trouble.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Nate had waited eight years for his piffy app foya.
When he finally.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
Faced the music, it just wasn't working.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It was never gonna happen.
Speaker 5 (01:29):
Just kidding.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Another thing about a false defeat. The hero always finds
a way.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Is never the end of the road.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I learned that avoid Nate filing a FOYA isn't the
only way to get a secret document declassified. There's one
other path, but it's a real hail Mary.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Called Mandatory Declassification.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Review aka MDR aka ice CAP. Don't ask me why.
Ice CAP is effectively a side door into the government vaults.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
It's a small born of one representative of all of
the intelligence agencies sitting at the National Archives.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Meaning instead of each agency taking years to approve declassification
one by one, all the agencies sit down in a
room and review it together at the same time.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
For a historian, it's kind of like the hottest ticket
in town.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Yeah, we're talking a hotter ticket than macho Man Randy
Savage versus hul Kogan WrestleMania five, nineteen eighty nine. But
there's a catch. If you want to try to get
those ice Cap tickets, you have to withdraw your foyas first.
You can't do both, which meant Nate would need to
withdraw a FOYA that was already eight years in progress.
(02:51):
Then if ice Cap declined to review the pifyab, he'd
have to start all over again, eight years down the drain.
But in the wise words of a risky Tom.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
Cruise, sometimes you gotta say what the fuck make you move?
Speaker 4 (03:10):
So we decided we are going to take a shot
and do MDR and Gopher broke. If ice Cap can't
do it, we're pretty screwed.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
All right, my listeners, We have arrived at the final chapter,
and we've had quite a ride here, haven't we. First
we heard about how Reagan's tough guy speeches plus a
new deployment of super fast earth destoring weapons, fueled the
Soviets paranoia to the point that they convinced themselves the
US was going to nuke them at precisely the same
time NATO was rehearsing a nuclear war. But at the
(03:47):
last minute, we were all saved by a couple of
spies and Lieutenant General Leonard Perutz, who, in a tense moment,
kept a cool head. But then we learned that there
isn't a record of the so called war scare in
Eastern archives that two of the main eye witnesses might
be kind of unreliable, and that maybe the story of
(04:09):
Able Archer eighty three is nothing more than a Cold
War myth. But one stone remains unturned the piffy. This
episode we take one more shot at the most elusive
facet of history, the truth. I'm at Helms and this
is the season finale of Snaffoo Able Archer eighty three.
(04:40):
One day in twenty fifteen, Nate Jones woke up for work.
It was his thirty second birthday. He took his time
moseying into the office.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Probably about ten o'clock. I guess nicely might be in
a historian, you can't go to work a little later.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
It was an ordinary day, save for a few happy birthdays,
maybe a cupcake or two, and of course that thirty
dollars check from Graham, which is so nice but never
seemed to keep up with the pace of inflation. Come on, grandma.
Nate settled in at his desk, unaware that the best
birthday president of all time was about to arrive certified delivery,
(05:16):
and it went through the mail slit.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
So there's kind of a thud onto the floor.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Nate Jones wondered, what could.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
It be that was about one hundred pages thick with
government and dress government stamps. So I knew it might
be good. So went and looked at it and then
saw that it was from ice Cap. My heart started
beating a little bit and ripped it open and saw
the title.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
The Soviet War Scare President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, also
known as Piffy AM.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
I still remember. It had a bright red stamp, had
seven code words.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Top secret, wintel, no FRON, no contract, orcn Umbra, gamma.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
And all seven of them had a line through them
tick tick tick tick tick tick tick, meaning that they
were no longer classified.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
This is it. The report to end all reports? Was
able Archer a Cold War myth like some historians believed,
a propaganda plot like the CIA concluded in the eighties,
or a terrifying nuclear near myss like Leonard Perutz had
insisted for so many decades. Nate nervously began to flip
(06:34):
through the Piffy app hoping praying that what he was
holding was not one hundred percent redacted.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
And I flipped through and I saw way more text
than redactions, and I said, oh my God, this is it.
And then I actually read it for the content and
I said, oh my god, this is revealing the secrets
that I was so curious about.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Finally clarity. All right, let's break it all down, shall we.
The report confirmed a lot of things that Nate had
already figured out from other sources, like those planes in
East Germany loaded up with nukes. But there was some
new stuff too.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
There's details about flights and helicopter flights, probably for surveillance
of able Archer.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
The Soviets conducted over thirty six reconnaissance flights monitoring able Archer.
The report said that even though the Soviets monitored able
archer every year, this was more reconnaissance than any year before.
And apart from these flights, all other Soviet flights were grounded.
Why is that important? The report author speculates that this
(07:40):
was in order to have as many aircraft as possible
at the ready for combat.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Said that Soviet military reaction hadn't been like this since
World War Two.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
For example, the Soviets stopped production at their tractor factory
and started using it to build tanks. The last time
they did that was during World War Two. The report
also pointed to the Soviet's own nuclear wargames as evidence
that they genuinely believed NATO might launch a surprise nuclear attack.
(08:13):
The wargame they're talking about is called Druzeba, which, according
to Google, translates to Friendship. That's right, a wargame called friendship.
Who says that Soviets don't have a sense of humor anyway.
In the years after Able Archer eighty three, in nineteen
eighty five, eighty six, and eighty seven, the Druzebil wargame
scripts all began the same way, with NATO launching a
(08:36):
surprise nuclear attack during Autumn Forge, which is the NATO
exercise that ends with Able Archer. Ultimately, the Able Archer mystery,
the mystery of how close we really were to all
dying that night in nineteen eighty three, It really comes
(08:57):
down to one question. How genuine was the Soviets fear
that the US was going to attack them? Were they
terrified finger hovering over the button or were they pretending
to be terrified. Well, the pifyab's take was this.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
They concluded that during Naval Archer that US actions and
Soviet actions put the world on hair trigger away from
nuclear war.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
They said knowing what we know now, it's very possible
the Soviets were genuinely afraid that an attack was imminent,
and they may have prepared their own nuclear weapons to
fire first.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
And I agree with this conclusion that the war scare
was real and the war scare was dangerous.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Nate immediately wrote up a summary and the next day
he published the declassified Pifyab for all the world to see.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
I won't say I cried, but my eyes did get
a little misty. I've had a lot of good birthdays,
but that one might.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Take the cake. Happy birthday, buddy. The End You music
roll credits SNAFU was a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment,
and Pacific Electric Picture Company. I'm kidding, it's not the
(10:27):
end people. There's always a twist. Nate's Piffy ab win
was supposed to be our hero's victory against all odds.
The Foyer Warrior fought for the Piffy ab Report and
finally he solved the able Archer mystery once and for all.
But it turns out this might be a false victory
(10:48):
after the false defeat, or something like that, because even
though Nate was convinced.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Very good analysis very good use of facts.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Not everyone would agree. You see in the PIFYAB reports
one hundred pages, it didn't actually claim to solve the
mystery of Able Archer. It didn't say what definitely happened
that night. It used a lot of equivocating phrases like
may have and very possible. And the truth is, the
(11:18):
conclusions that are drawn from the Piffyab will differ depending
on who's reading it.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
The first time I read the PIFFIAB report was when
the National Security Archive managed to get a copy of it.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
This is Ben Fisher. He's the CIA historian who brought
the Able Archer story into the public eye in the
late nineties, the one who convinced the intelligence community at
large that Able Archer may have been much more than
a propaganda plot. So you may be surprised to hear
that by the time the PIFYAB report came out, Ben
(11:54):
had this to say about it.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
I think that the Piffyab study was an exaggeration.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I know, it's surprising that the guy who changed everyone's
mind about Able Archer would say such a blasphemous thing
in light of you know, everything we've talked about on
this show, The war mongering speeches, the euro Missiles Operation Ryan,
the stories of Oli Gordievsky and ryder Up, the airplanes
on alert with nukes potentially loaded, Missile commanders called in
(12:25):
for emergency shifts. Not to mention the new details from
the PIFYAB report, reconnaissance flights, tank production, and Soviet nuclear
war games.
Speaker 5 (12:32):
But nonetheless I began to move away from the countdown
to armageddon. The Abel Archer alert was a night we
almost went to war.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Ben says. Despite the way it looks, there could be
another reasonable explanation for everything. Let's start with the Soviet's
military mobilization during Able Archer.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
Shall we Especially during the Able Archer Alert, the Soviets
did take certain actions. The strip alert for the aircraft
is one thing. They may have put some of their
forces on alert. Senior officials may have repaired to their
underground bunkers. How do I interpret this? I think it's
(13:16):
what we call signaling. It's sending messages to the other
side by doing things, rather than saying things.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Like, hey, we see you doing your big exercise over there.
We're watching and we're ready, so don't try any funny business.
It's like the wargame equivalent of that like I'm watching
you thing where you point at your eyes and then
point at the other guy's eyes and then point at
your eyes again. Ben says that if the Soviets were
truly on the brink, we should be seeing a lot
(13:45):
more military activity than we did, Entire armies at the ready,
navy ships, submarines and tanks, anything smaller just signaling. Okay, So,
what's beIN's take on our two spies, you know, the
two men who just so happened to have their own
stories about the Soviets getting really freaked out during Able Archer.
Speaker 7 (14:05):
Well, it was a flush telegram, It wasn't super urgent telegram.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Do you remember sending a message in there?
Speaker 5 (14:14):
I remember sending You know, we always have this problem
with people who do who defect, you know, how much
of what they say is true, how much of it it's
not true, how much of it is slanted in a
certain direction.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
We reached out to both Gordiovski and Ruugh to try
to get to the bottom of all this. Oleg Gordievsky
was unavailable due to his health, plus the fact that
he's in a safe house hiding from Putin's assassins, and
we just never heard back from Rhina Rup, so ultimately
we can't ask them these questions. But for what it's worth,
Ben doesn't think Oleg Gordievsky is a liar.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
Oliah Gordiowsky was absolutely the best Soviet agent of the
Cold War. I've met him a couple of times. A
good man who risked his life. Obviously, I think he
reported what he believed and what he saw and what
he heard. There's a bigger question of what about the
people above him. I mean, to what extent were they serious?
Speaker 1 (15:17):
By they? Ben means the KGB leaders who under Operation
Ryan commanded their spies in the West to report back
any indication of NATO war preparation. You remember that proverbial
tic tac toe board of death the batshit crazy nuclear
crystal ball. But Ben thinks Operation Ryan may have actually
been more down to earth, that the Soviets were just
(15:41):
doing due diligence in a period of heightened nuclear tension.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
Simple they were concerned that they balance the power was
tipping against them. They wanted to be prepared for if
and when that happened.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, they did send messages to their spies saying the
adversary could attack us at any moment, But maybe they
were just saying that to encourage thorough espionage.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Sevie Union's following apart. They've got all kinds of problems.
You need to keep the morale of your troops up.
How do you do this, Well, you give them a task,
and the task is to go out and collect information
related to the possibility of a surprise nuclear missile attack
on the Soviet Union. Okay, this gives people something to do.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So back to the central question. Just how close of
a call was a larger How scared were the Soviets.
Speaker 5 (16:42):
I'm from Oklahoma, I'm a country boy. As a phrase,
I use that they were worried, but they weren't shaking
in their boots.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Ben believes that there was at least some element of
truth to the Soviet fear in nineteen eighty three. If
they weren't afraid at all, they wouldn't have shot down
that Korean Airlines flight. If they weren't afraid at all,
they wouldn't have spent billions of dollars building underground bunkers.
If they weren't afraid at all, they wouldn't have practiced
a nuclear wargame. That begins with NATO attacking undercover of
(17:11):
Autumn Forge. So yeah, they were scared, but they weren't
quote shaken in their boots. In other words, Ben doesn't
think Yuri and drop Off was anywhere close to pushing
that button.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
It was a serious matter, but it wasn't almost the
end of the world.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
That said, Ben admits he doesn't know for sure.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
I realized how complex it is. There's no hard and
fast answer. It's a very marky world and rarely does
it offer concrete evidence of this or that. And that's
why you have intellvisionce failures. It's not scientific, it's an arts,
not science.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Hold on, Ben, that's kind of terrifying. These intelligence agencies
hold the fate of the world in their hands, and
you're telling me there's rarely concrete evidence of this or that.
It's an art.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
Intelligent and honest people on both sides of the same issue.
People are not bad because they have one point of
view or not good because they have another point of view.
They're human beings struggling to make sense of what's going
on around them.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
The Able Archer mystery is riddled with maddening contradictions. As
a result, rational people can look at the same information
and draw startlingly different conclusions.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
No matter what's found, I think that the debate will continue.
That's history arguing both sides. What the best evidence you
have in.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
The end Able Archer is a rorshack test. In other words,
how you see it might just be a reflection of
your personality, how optimistic or cynical or fearful you might be.
I don't know if you ask me, No matter how
it makes you feel, the fact that intelligent people can
still argue about how close we came to armageddon means
(19:10):
we came too damn close. It was June of nineteen
eighty four, about seven months after Able Archer, when Ronald
Reagan took the Able Archer Rorschach test himself.
Speaker 6 (19:26):
While we go on believing that the Soviets are blotting
against us and mean us harm, maybe they are scared
of us and think we are a threat.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
This is an entry from his diary. It was written
right around the same time that Reagan first read a
detailed report listing the specifics of the Soviet reaction to
Abel Archer, and even though his own CIA analysts claimed
that there was absolutely nothing to worry about, that these
Soviet reactions were all part of a propaganda campaign that
wasn't Reagan's takeaway. To him, it seemed possible that the
(20:02):
Soviets were preparing for war on his watch without his knowing.
In the end, Reagan ignored the advice of his own analysts.
He believed that the able Archer war scare was quote
very scary. He decides to set up a face to
face meeting with the new Soviet leader, the first time
(20:23):
he would do this in over three years of being president.
He writes, and I quote, I.
Speaker 8 (20:28):
Haven't got feeling we should do this, no shit. So
this is why I tell people the war scare is
actually a good news story.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
Okay, there's always a room for miscalculation, there's always a
room for hubris, there's always a room for mistakes. But
what came out of the war scare, well, President Reagan
learned for the first time in his life that this
helped mes a're scared of us, And from that you
can or a straight line to his second term, where
(21:03):
he says he wanted to be known not as the
man who waits to coal warp, but the man who
would end it. And he realized that to do this
he was going to have to deal with the Soviet leaders.
He was going to have to talk to them.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
This is tomorrow morning's Washington Post.
Speaker 5 (21:24):
Reagan Gorbachev signed.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Nuclear missile treaty. As you can see, it is very
big news here in the United States.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
On December eighth, nineteen eighty seven, over four years after
able Archer, President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev signed
the historic Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty AKAINF.
Speaker 9 (21:45):
This ceremony and the treaty we're signing today are both
excellent examples of the rewards of patients. On the Soviet side,
over fifteen hundred deployed warheads will be removed. On our side,
our entire complement of pershing to and ground launched cruise missiles,
with some four hundred deployed warheads, will all be destroyed.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
It's almost a miracle in some ways, because eventually in
Italy to the end of the Cold War.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
At the signing of the i in F, the entire
globe heaved a giant sigh of relief. At last, the
Cold War was coming to an end. Now, I wish
I could say that at this point we collectively threw
aside all of the geopolitical theater that led us to
able our t eighty three, that we got smarter, that
(22:35):
we approached the nuclear dilemma with a little more humility
and a little less trash talking. But unfortunately that's not
what happened.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
As President Winston Churchill once said that trying to maintain
a good relationship with a communist was not unlike trying
to woo a crocodile. When it opened its mouth, you
never could be quite certain whether it was trying to
smile or eat you up.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
This is from an interview with Reagan after news about
the inf treaty broke. You may or may not be
surprised to hear that he got a lot of criticism
from his own party about being too weak.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Americans respect you, love you, and pulling for you, with
their concerned that perhaps you are going to or already
have allowed Gorbachev to eat you and us up.
Speaker 9 (23:27):
Well, I haven't changed from the time when I made
a speech about an evil empire, evil empire, evil empire.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Ere Certain phrases come to mind at a time like this.
Old habits die hard. You can't teach an old dog
new tricks. Nancy's astrologer made me do it. You see,
even after Ronald Reagan had his able Archer epiphany, even
after he reached across the Iron Curtain and negotiated a
(23:54):
groundbreaking treaty publicly, he wasn't prepared to let go of
his tough guy persona. In other words, according to Reagan,
the Cold War didn't simply end through a mutual detente.
He the American cowboy had finally conquered the evil Communist villain,
and the US had won the Cold War with pure
brute strength.
Speaker 10 (24:16):
The men in those positions are so confident.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Here's Jeffrey Lewis talking about the people in power during
the Cold War.
Speaker 10 (24:26):
They believe that they are like the masters of the universe,
and that they are in complete and total control, and
nothing will happen without them allowing it to happen. And
that you're this incredibly clever brinksman who will always pull
back at the last moment because you know what you're doing,
(24:48):
because you don't know what the fuck you're doing.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Thank you, Jeffrey. And that brings me to my next
point where it all went wrong.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
I was almost a scolding to.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
That's Nate Jones again. He's talking about the piffyab the
report chronicled the events leading up to Able Archer in
a lot of detail, and it tried to identify all
the mistakes that allowed things to get to that point.
The idea was maybe if we can find what went wrong,
we could avoid I don't know, accidentally stumbling into a
nuclear war moving forward. And in the end the authors
(25:23):
focus on one root cause of the whole snaffu, what
they call over confidence.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Essentially saying that the intelligence did not accurately present the
picture of the danger at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
The report says, look, even with the benefit of hindsight
and access to more intel than ever before, we still
don't know exactly what happened that night. And back then
the CIA had so much less information, and yet their
conclusion was very specific and very confident that it was
all propaganda. But how could they have known that, Well,
(26:02):
they simply couldn't have, not with one hundred percent certainty.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
There is too much confidence that a nuclear war can
never happen, or that the Soviets would never think that.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
The report says, the CIA analysts in the eighties should
have entertained all possible explanations. You know, maybe it's propaganda,
or maybe the Earth is hurtling towards imminent demise, or
at the very least they could have reevaluated as new
intel came in. Instead, they just kept doubling down again
and again, and EPIFIAB says that was insanely risky.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
With something with such catastrophic results, even if the risk
is low as an unacceptable risk.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Exactly because it's not just the immediate damage of a
nuclear explosion, the tens of millions of people instantaneously incinerated
after the initial blast, there's a domino effect. A recent
study said that if only three percent of today's nuclear
stockpile was used in a nuclear exchange, there'd be firestorms,
(27:05):
soot rising into the atmosphere to block the sun, we'd
plummet into an ice age, lose a majority of our
food production, and in the end, an estimated one third
of the world's population would die from starvation. So yeah,
I'd say the stakes are high. But alas the report
(27:28):
couldn't really pinpoint a specific blunder that caused this whole mess.
There's no single incident where somebody got definitive proof of
an impending nuclear war and then shredded the document or
aid it or something. In the end, the errors were psychological.
The real mistake hubris refusing to accept the possibility of
(27:51):
being wrong.
Speaker 11 (27:56):
We've got to always be very careful to make sure
that we're not just seeing what we want to see,
or you know what we're frightened of seeing, or you
know what we don't want to see. We're pushing back
against it, and that we've also it's got to kind
of question the context.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
This is Fiona Hill, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
She's a former member of the National Security Council with
an expertise in Russian affairs. Fianna says, there's a common
pitfall in human psychology. It shows up everywhere, from marital
spats to geopolitical standoffs, and it's called mirror imaging.
Speaker 11 (28:28):
Mirror imaging, you know, projecting your own rationale, failing to
really understand the perspective of the other and where they're
coming from, and to really kind of get into a
deeper understanding of the mindsets of the individuals.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Mirror imaging happens when two parties have trouble understanding each other,
so their minds fill in the blanks and they project
their own logic onto the other.
Speaker 11 (28:51):
Because you try to think about, well, what would I
do what's rational for me? But you're not living in
that context, and you don't fully understand what the information
on the other side house at their fingertips, And ultimately,
we never fully understand the other's perspective, and we always
engage in quite a lot of mirror imaging.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Ronald Reagan and his intelligence analysts knew that the United
States would never start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union,
and they assumed that Yuri and drop Off and the
rest of the Soviets knew this. The US officials couldn't
conceive of a reality where the Soviets would think anything different. Meanwhile,
the Soviet Union had a history of sneak attacking other
(29:30):
countries under cover of military exercise, and so to them,
this was a completely plausible strategy. For the Americans, Reagan
and a drop Off never spoke in person or on
the phone, not once, but they made plenty of assumptions
about one another, and those assumptions cascaded into a slew
of miscalculations.
Speaker 10 (29:51):
The fact of the nuclear age is that you share
interests with your enemy and you have to talk to them,
and that stuff is just like so unpopular the idea
of talking to your mortal enemy is unthinkable, and to
be fair, it's unpopular today when people talk about like well,
(30:14):
maybe we should negotiate with the Chinese, or maybe we
should like strike a deal with the Iranians. There is
a huge outcry that we're somehow contaminating ourselves or staining
our legacy by talking to these evil people. It is
so much easier to just tell them to blow off
and build some more bombs. And it is absolutely crazy
(30:36):
to me that people who do not want to talk
to the enemy are perfectly happy to live in that
kind of arrangement. Like talking to them is like so
much less scary, Like they have little cookies and tea,
and you know, it's you go see, like a cultural
thing after the it's nice. It's a way less scary
(30:59):
than do clear.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
To me personally, I'm all about the cookies and tea.
Speaker 10 (31:04):
The answer is like, stop imagining that you can use
force in this way.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Well, at least we learned from it, right Jeffrey, Hey, Yeah,
there's no learning.
Speaker 10 (31:16):
I mean, not only is there no learning, there was
a refusal to accept it happened at the time, and
those of us who were like you, know you, people
really almost fucked up, Like people don't want to hear that.
So the lesson that I draw from it is that
people don't learn that we make the same mistake over
and over again, just a tragedy.
Speaker 11 (31:36):
Basically where we are now we haven't learned enough from
those previous crises.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Here's Fiona Hill again. She was in Moscow training as
a translator in nineteen eighty eight, just after Reagan and
Gorbachev signed the IF Treaty. She recalls watching as the
two heads of state strolled through Red Square in a
public display of diplomacy.
Speaker 11 (31:56):
It was just mind blowing and just an amazing fitting.
The world had turned, the access of the world had turned,
and maybe, maybe, just maybe, after these war scares and
all of this misunderstanding of each other, we were going
to go off to a different path what we did
for a while. But they're not so much.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
The IF Treaty that both leaders signed that year reduced
the world's nuclear stockpile by thousands, but today there are
still more than twelve thousand nuclear weapons, some big, some small,
some just right. No, I'm kidding, none of them are
just right. They're all terrifying, and still plenty enough to
destroy the world then and twenty nineteen the United States
(32:37):
withdrew from the IONF treaty all together.
Speaker 11 (32:42):
We kept hoping that we would find some golden key
to arms control that might even lead to nuclear zero,
but we always haven't achieved that because we've had proliferation
of nuclear weapons. It's not just China, the United States, Russia,
Frompson the UK, but we've Akistan, in India, We've got
all some others we think have nuclear weapons but we
(33:02):
don't say it openly that we kind of know they do.
And we've got loads of others who aspire to have
nuclear weapons, you know, ran North Korea, where we can
easily see that. What they've taken away from all of
these lessons from the past is that you can blackmail
other countries with nuclear weapons, that you can force people
to do things that they don't want to do, or
you can force them to reckon with you, even as
(33:23):
they otherwise might ignore you in world affairs. So, you know,
we're back to gund of the euromissile crisis feeling where
we're all sort of sitting thinking, how do we get here,
how do we get to this point? We kind of
obviously totally misjudge and misunderstood and have been really poor
at communicating. And we've got all this more information than
we had before, and yet we've done it again, and.
Speaker 10 (33:46):
So there's no learning, you know. And it makes me
crazy because people are like, well, we got through that crisis,
nobody was killed, Like other than the airline are full
of dead people like you. People are gambling with normal
people's lives. And the reason I find able art are
so interesting is precisely because there are other moments where
you watch crises kind of start to spiral out of
(34:07):
control and you see all the same dynamics at play.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
We now believe that only force will make him leave.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
We can't let the world's worse leaders blackmail threaten.
Speaker 9 (34:20):
Would be prepared to without delay with pis wonder ward.
Speaker 6 (34:25):
Just by walking away from it.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
That's a victory for the other side, with the blood
of our citizens and the strength of our worry. Tonight
about China's new missile capability.
Speaker 7 (34:33):
President Trump writing, will someone from his depleted and food
starve regime please inform him that I too have a
nuclear button, but it is a much bigger and more
powerful one than his, and might hamm why don't we use.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Them with Trump projected those weapons of mass destruction got
to be something parading his nuclear arsenal.
Speaker 10 (34:51):
This posenominous nuclear language.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
It's president threatening nuclear war.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
This is not a bluff, and those who tried to
blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the prevailing
wins can turn in their direction.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
It's just way too complicated a problem for us to
be cleanly and easily dealing with.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
This is John Batham.
Speaker 5 (35:31):
I'm John Batham. I'm the director of War Games.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
That's right, my friends. We're going to bring it all
home right where we began with the movie that started
it all, at least for me.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
Sure we got a problem.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Whipper's not letting me log back on. They can't get
any stand out of them. In the movie War Games,
the plot comes to a climax when Whopper, that's the
US Department of Defense's supercomputer, goes rogue and is about
to start launching nuclear weapons at the Soviet Union.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Well, can't they get in and stop?
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Time is running out at Norad, buried deep inside Cheyenne Mountain,
the entire US Nuclear Command is running around like chickens
with their heads cut off, trying to figure out how
to stop the computer from starting a nuclear war. But
none of the adults in the room can fix it.
The world's only hope the kid, David Lightman, laid by
(36:23):
National Treasurer Matthew Broderick.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
But what are we gonna do?
Speaker 5 (36:27):
I don't know, do you.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
I told you not to start playing games with that thing.
Speaker 6 (36:32):
It's games.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
Games. Try it wants to play a game, then play it.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
See Whopper uses games to teach itself Chess, poker, you
name it. And David Lightman knows that the only hope
in saving humanity is to somehow teach the computer to
understand what mutually assured destruction really means.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
And eventually he does come up with a solution that,
you know, kind of stemies the computer, which is playing
Tic Tac Toe. Tic Tac Toe, one of the simplest
games in the universe.
Speaker 5 (37:09):
Put X in the center square.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
As Whopper narrows in on the launch codes, it begins
playing Tic Tac Toe. And we've all played it, so
you know what happens next game after game ends in
a tie. There's no way you can win that game.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
I know that it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
It doesn't learned what David Lightman knows that the supercomputer
does not, is that Tic tac Toe is a futile game.
There's no point in playing it at all because there's
no winning. That's when the computer realizes, just like Tic
Tac Toe, when it comes to nuclear war, every scenario
(37:50):
ends the same way. In a tie, everyone is equally dead.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
The only winning move is not to play.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Is not today? How am i okay nay of jess?
Speaker 1 (38:13):
The only winning move is not to play. It's such
an obvious answer, but one that all the big adult
brains running around Norad couldn't possibly consider, because being buried
in nuclear strategy and tactics for so many years had
blinded them to a simple truth found in a rudimentary
children's game. So how close were we to all dying
(38:37):
in November of nineteen eighty three? Well, my dear listeners,
there are only a few people who can definitively answer
that question once and for all. The Soviet leaders themselves
and their answers are forever buried along with them in
the Kremlin Wall necropolis. So unless the CIA lets me
borrow their time machine and their mind reading device, were
(39:00):
just never going to know exactly how close and drop
off was to pushing the button that night.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
But ultimately, yeah, we don't know. Unfortunately, for the people
that want to know how close was the finger to
the button, we won't.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Know the truth. That elusive holy Grail may be buried
in Moscow for good. But there's no denying the able
Archer story is still absolutely absurd. It is absurd that
it's even remotely possible we all almost perished in an
(39:35):
unintentional nuclear war in nineteen eighty three, and that the
actions of just a few people could have been our
saving grace. People like Stanislov Petrov and Oleg Gordievsky and
Ryan or Rupp, who, in their own small ways intervened,
and Leonard Perutz, who, after hearing that the Soviets were
going on alert, decided to do nothing, decided not to
(39:57):
play the game. If it wasn't for the people, we
might all be tiny radioactive particles floating through a barren,
scorched atmosphere. Their actions are inspiring, sure, but it's not
exactly hopeful, is it, Because it reinforces an unacceptable nuclear reality,
one where the fate of humanity can sometimes depend on
(40:18):
a few people trying to thwart disaster. While the leaders
of the world double down on public trash talking, attempted
mind reading, and shows of strength in lieu of diplomacy.
So where the hell does this leave us? Well, maybe
not all is lost. Maybe we can begin to approach
the nuclear dilemma with a little humility. Maybe we don't
(40:41):
have to accept the status quo. Leonard Brutz didn't accept
it when after Able Archer he wouldn't stay quiet about
the intelligence failures he believed led us to the brink.
Nate Jones didn't accept it when he dedicated his life
to bringing Able Archer out of obscurity and into the light.
And by the way, Nate Jones is still at it.
Speaker 4 (41:03):
I'm still voiding footnotes to go even deeper. I think
there's still more stuff to find.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Soldier on Nate Jones, You and those like you represent
the real hope in this mess. Maybe, just maybe, through
your tireless efforts, the situation normal won't always be fucked up.
I don't know, listener, when it's all said and done,
I think the real hero here is me. I don't
(41:30):
know how, and I don't know why. Somehow that just
feels right. So you're welcome, everyone. Snapoo is a production
of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company
in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me
Ed Helms, Nolan Papelka, Mike Falbo, Andy Chuck, and Whitney Donaldson.
(41:53):
Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our
producer is Carl Nellis. Associate producer Tory Smith. This episode
was written by Sarah Joyner, with additional writing from me
Elliott Kalen, and Whitney Donaldson. Our senior editor is Jeffrey
Lewis like they.
Speaker 10 (42:07):
Have little cookies and tea and you know it's nice.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Olivia Kenny 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. Some archival audio from this
episode originally appeared in Taylor Downing's fantastic film nineteen eighty three,
The Brink of Apocalypse. Thank you, mister Downing for permission
(42:32):
to use it. Special thanks to Alison Cohen and Matt Asenstadt.
Host
Ed Helms
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