Speaker 1: It's the middle of Exercise Able Archer when Leonard Perutz
Speaker 1: receives an NSA report that Soviet Air Force planes in
Speaker 1: East Germany are on high alert, at least one squadron
Speaker 1: is likely loaded with real nuclear warheads, and his boss
Speaker 1: is asking him to make a decision on whether the
Speaker 1: US Air Force should escalate in kind. Should we put
Speaker 1: our aircraft on alert, should we prepare our nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: to escalate or not to escalate? That is the question.
Speaker 1: I'm at helms and this is snafu Able Archer eighty three.
Speaker 2: General Perutz makes a really critical decision at this time,
Speaker 2: but he's not making this decision based on any knowledge
Speaker 2: about what's happening.
Speaker 1: This is Greg Elder, the chief historian of the DIA,
Speaker 1: the Defense Intelligence Agency. Greg says, at the time that
Speaker 1: Leonard Perudes was facing this critical decision, he didn't know
Speaker 1: what was happening, not fully, he didn't know the depths
Speaker 1: of Soviet paranoia that for years, under Operation Ryan, the
Speaker 1: Soviets had been accumulating evidence of an imminent nuclear attack
Speaker 1: on their proverbial tic tac toe board of Doom.
Speaker 3: Seems the craziest of satires that you could ever imagine.
Speaker 1: He didn't know the Soviets had intercepted a NATO message
Speaker 1: approving a fictional nuclear strike upon the Soviet Union, who.
Speaker 2: Was requesting use of twenty five nuclear weapons over.
Speaker 1: He didn't know that Ole Gordoyevski had received a telegram
Speaker 1: from Moscow saying that the countdown to a nuclear attack
Speaker 1: might have already begun under the guise of able archer
Speaker 1: and you it was.
Speaker 4: A dramatic moment, and you Moscow was.
Speaker 1: He didn't know that another secret agent, Rhyner Rupp, was
Speaker 1: running to a phone booths to transmit an urgent message
Speaker 1: via his super high tech spy calculator that NATO was
Speaker 1: not planning to attack and that the KGB didn't believe him.
Speaker 5: Might well have just been another form of deception.
Speaker 1: And he didn't know that Soviet missile commanders were on alert,
Speaker 1: awaiting instructions to launch.
Speaker 5: Are these guys about to attack us?
Speaker 6: Are they about to launch nuclear weapons?
Speaker 1: Leonard Perutz knew none of this? How could he? We
Speaker 1: hadn't made the podcast yet. All he knew was that
Speaker 1: in East Germany, Soviet planes were on high alert and
Speaker 1: at least one squadron likely had real nuclear weapons loaded
Speaker 1: onto their aircrafts, and his boss was asking him a question.
Speaker 6: You know, Lenny, should we heighten our alert level?
Speaker 1: To escalate or not to escalate. If Leonard Berutz does
Speaker 1: nothing and the Soviets carry out a nuclear attack, he
Speaker 1: will have wasted precious minutes, minutes where NATO forces could
Speaker 1: have prepared some sort of defense, minutes that could save lives.
Speaker 1: But if he recommends to his boss to escalate and
Speaker 1: it turns out the Soviets weren't actually planning a nuclear strike, well,
Speaker 1: the very active escalation could spook them. It could be
Speaker 1: seen as an act of aggression. It could cause the
Speaker 1: Soviets to do the very thing he was trying to prevent,
Speaker 1: launch a nuclear weapon. Once again, to escalate or not
Speaker 1: to escalate.
Speaker 2: And so he recommends to his four star commander that
Speaker 2: we not escalate.
Speaker 1: In kind, he says, let's watch and wait.
Speaker 2: He makes the determination that it's very possible the Soviets
Speaker 2: may just be increasing their own alert and readiness level
Speaker 2: because of their own concerns about our exercise and so
Speaker 2: general perudes. Although making an uninformed decision in this case,
Speaker 2: makes a thoroughly rational and what turned out to be
Speaker 2: the correct decision.
Speaker 1: In a tense moment, Leonard Perudes didn't flex one single
Speaker 1: military muscle. He didn't kick the tires and light the fires.
Speaker 1: He left the fires unlit and the tires unkicked. Instead,
Speaker 1: he aired on the side of caution.
Speaker 2: Here is one of those examples where a US military
Speaker 2: figure actually took the less hawkish approach, so to speak,
Speaker 2: and that ultimately helps to alleviate the situation.
Speaker 1: So on the night of November ninth, as Soviet leaders
Speaker 1: sat in their bunkers watching to see what the United
Speaker 1: States military would do next, they saw nothing.
Speaker 2: So that major indicator that they may have been looking
Speaker 2: for ultimately wasn't there.
Speaker 1: The next morning, the sun came up and there were
Speaker 1: no mushroom clouds on the horizon, just regular clouds, big
Speaker 1: floaty blops.
Speaker 2: And so when able archers over, the Soviets wait a
Speaker 2: few days and then essentially stand.
Speaker 1: Down, anti climactic much. I know you came for explosions,
Speaker 1: but hey, if there were explosions at this point in
Speaker 1: the story, you'd be listening to this podcast from an
Speaker 1: underground mole town living in a community that hadn't seen
Speaker 1: the sun in forty years. Be grateful. Leonard Brutes fortuitously
Speaker 1: made the decision that brought the Able Archer War scare
Speaker 1: to a close, And the most absolutely insane part of
Speaker 1: it is that he wasn't even aware of what he
Speaker 1: was doing. The roots may have single handedly saved all
Speaker 1: of humankind, and the dude has no clue exactly how
Speaker 1: important that decision was. He was cool as a cukee.
Speaker 1: His shift ends, he punches out, grabs a pint and
Speaker 1: schnitzel at the pub, just another day at the office.
Speaker 7: That decision made is attributed to out of misinformations, even
Speaker 7: described as that of ignorance. It was the right call,
Speaker 7: thank god, but it was made out of ignorance of
Speaker 7: all the other things that were going on.
Speaker 2: We not knowing that there was any major significant issue
Speaker 2: to begin with, go about our daily business, and it
Speaker 2: isn't for some time that there's a full appreciation of
Speaker 2: how bad things really were.
Speaker 1: It's November fourteenth, nineteen eighty three, three days after the
Speaker 1: end of Able Archer. Reagan is just returning to DC
Speaker 1: from his trip to Japan and Korea. He's exiting a
Speaker 1: helicopter and walking towards a podium set up on the
Speaker 1: White House lawn. Nancy is trailing behind him, holding the
Speaker 1: hands of two small Korean children.
Speaker 8: Nancy was outsight seeing or probably even shopping for souvenirs,
Speaker 8: and knowing Nancy as well as I do, I wasn't
Speaker 8: surprised when I came home and found that she had
Speaker 8: two little Korean friends.
Speaker 1: To be clear, these two children were being brought back
Speaker 1: to the United States for medical care, not because Nancy
Speaker 1: kidnapped them or something. Anyway, Reagan's in good spirits. He's
Speaker 1: flashing his classic Hollywood smile, cracking jokes in this ten
Speaker 1: minute speech. He doesn't mention the Soviet Union, and if
Speaker 1: he has any inkling of what happened during Able Archer
Speaker 1: a few days prior, he doesn't let.
Speaker 8: On, God bless you and God bless this wonderful country.
Speaker 6: Thank you, you wipe out here.
Speaker 8: I translate pretty well, got eight hours sleep on the
Speaker 8: boat rally.
Speaker 1: But the truth is, in this very moment, Reagan wouldn't
Speaker 1: have known much about Able Archer, even if he was
Speaker 1: totally up to speed. US intelligence didn't know shit at
Speaker 1: this point, just that over in East Germany a squadron
Speaker 1: of planes were on high alert and they may have
Speaker 1: loaded nuclear warheads. That information made it to Leonard Perut's desk. Sure,
Speaker 1: but who knows if it got all the way to Reagan.
Speaker 1: If only we could know what was in his head,
Speaker 1: if only there was some document that was a written
Speaker 1: record of his actual thoughts. November eighteenth, nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: I feel the Soviets are so defense minded, so paranoid
Speaker 1: about being attacked, that, without being in any way soft
Speaker 1: on them, we ought to tell them no one here
Speaker 1: has any intention of doing anything like that. What the
Speaker 1: hi double hockey sticks have they got that anyone would want? Okay,
Speaker 1: putting aside my terrible Reagan impression, he really did write that,
Speaker 1: so something must have prompted him to ruminate on the
Speaker 1: Soviet's nuclear paranoia. Nonetheless, that didn't stop what came next.
Speaker 1: George is going on ABC right after its big nuclear
Speaker 1: bomb film Sunday Night. We know it's anti nuke propaganda,
Speaker 1: but we're going to take it over and say it
Speaker 1: shows why we must keep on doing what we're doing. Yep.
Speaker 1: This is when Reagan sent George Schultz on national television
Speaker 1: to tell an absolutely terrified American public that our nuclear
Speaker 1: policy was working perfectly.
Speaker 5: The successful policy of the United States.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what this calls for thanks Day after Lady.
Speaker 1: The thing is, even though Able Archer is over, it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that we're safe. It doesn't mean the Soviets
Speaker 1: have stopped to being afraid of a surprise nuclear attack.
Speaker 1: Think about it. If there's a guy who keeps saying
Speaker 1: he might literally kick your ass, and then he starts
Speaker 1: pulling his foot back for a literal kick, and you
Speaker 1: think this is it, He's gonna literally kick my ass,
Speaker 1: but then it turns out he's just practicing for his
Speaker 1: Rockhets audition. Well that doesn't mean that he won't still
Speaker 1: someday take a leave of absence from the Rockets to
Speaker 1: come back and kick you in the ass. Guys, I
Speaker 1: think we have our submission for this year's Perfect Analogy Awards. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the point is the Soviets were still on edge. The
Speaker 1: day after George Schultz reassured a terrified American public that
Speaker 1: the US nuclear policy was definitely, absolutely totally a safe bet,
Speaker 1: the Soviets reached out with an offer. They said, we'll
Speaker 1: destroy half of our intermediate range nuclear missiles, the ones
Speaker 1: that could target Europe, if NATO will cancel the euro missiles.
Speaker 1: The Reagan administration declined the offer, saying that the conditions
Speaker 1: of the agreement were unacceptable, as if rubbing salt in
Speaker 1: the wound. Those euro missiles were officially installed in Europe
Speaker 1: mere days later in response, and drop off scheduled the
Speaker 1: deployment of new seaborn nuclear missiles pointed at the US
Speaker 1: and additional nukes aimed at Western Europe.
Speaker 2: If the President doesn't even know that there's something going
Speaker 2: on to be concerned about, that, that's a problem, that's
Speaker 2: a failure that has to be addressed.
Speaker 1: And yet, despite Reagan's televised message saying that the administration's
Speaker 1: policy was perfect, absolutely flawless, in the background, they would
Speaker 1: begin working on an extremely subtle shift in their Soviet strategy.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be a policy change per se. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: cancel the euro missiles, they wouldn't stop building SDI, and
Speaker 1: they wouldn't stop being tough, but they'd be less adversarial.
Speaker 1: They'd attempt to let the Soviets know that nobody has
Speaker 1: any intention of nuking them.
Speaker 8: Hugh.
Speaker 1: That charmingly folksy Ivan and Anya speech.
Speaker 8: And as they went their separate ways, maybe Anya would
Speaker 8: be saying to Ivan, wasn't she nice?
Speaker 1: She also teaches music.
Speaker 8: They might even have decided they were all going to
Speaker 8: get together.
Speaker 1: For dinner some evening soon, but apparently Reagan didn't feel
Speaker 1: any urgency to display this new softer side. The speech
Speaker 1: was originally scheduled for just before Christmas, but Reagan delayed
Speaker 1: it for nearly a month because someone very important advised
Speaker 1: him to Who was it. Why don't you take a
Speaker 1: guess whose advice would President of the United States Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan heed in regards to delaying the Soviet Friendship speech
Speaker 1: in the weeks after almost getting nuked. The Joint chiefs
Speaker 1: of Staff, Nope, The Secretary General of the UN Nope,
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa. If only it was Nancy. Reagan's astrologer, a
Speaker 1: San Francisco woman named Joan Quigley. Anyway, while Reagan was
Speaker 1: waiting for Joan Quigley's permission to extend an olive branch
Speaker 1: to the Soviet Union, the US intelligence community got some
Speaker 1: unwelcome news.
Speaker 7: I think it was two or three weeks before actual
Speaker 7: other reporting came in that started to peak his concerns.
Speaker 1: Here's John Perutz again talking about his dad, Leonard Perutz.
Speaker 1: According to John, on December second, nineteen eighty three. A
Speaker 1: few weeks after Leonard made the decision to do nothing
Speaker 1: during Able Archer, a new NSA report landed on his desk.
Speaker 7: That indicated that their alert level had been much larger
Speaker 7: than we had assumed.
Speaker 1: Hey, funny story. Remember that Able Archer exercise that ended
Speaker 1: with US fake nuking Thozovits Well, you're totally gonna laugh
Speaker 1: at this. I mean, it's so ridiculous. But anyway, it
Speaker 1: turns out the Soviets alert during Abel Archer was just
Speaker 1: a tad bigger than we thought. It wasn't just a
Speaker 1: few planes in East Germany. It was all the units
Speaker 1: of the Soviet fourth Air Army. The alert was ordered
Speaker 1: by the Chief of the Soviet Air Forces, and the
Speaker 1: alert quote included preparations for immediate use of nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: end quote. All right, I want to explain what this means.
Speaker 1: This is hundreds of airplanes potentially loaded with nukes, not
Speaker 1: just a squadron. We're talking potentially the end of the
Speaker 1: world number of airplanes. It's a pretty big fucking difference.
Speaker 7: Extraordinarily unusual in alarming events. From an intelligien standpoint.
Speaker 1: Leonardprutz was, well, let's just say a little shaken by
Speaker 1: this news.
Speaker 6: Hmmm, wow, that would have been interesting to know at
Speaker 6: the time.
Speaker 1: Got to hope he wasn't drinking coffee when he read
Speaker 1: that report, because he would have had the mother of
Speaker 1: all spit takes. He was wondering, why the hell is
Speaker 1: he just finding out about this now? This was information
Speaker 1: that he needed weeks ago. He realized he had made
Speaker 1: a decision that could have had catastrophic consequences with only
Speaker 1: a tiny fraction of the picture, and even though it
Speaker 1: turned out to be the right decision, he was pissed.
Speaker 1: Leonard Perutz got on a soapbox about abel Archer. He
Speaker 1: complained to any of his colleagues who would listen.
Speaker 7: He wasn't certain that that the community, the intelligence community,
Speaker 7: had looked closely enough to figure out how we could
Speaker 7: get better from this scenario.
Speaker 1: But nobody listened to him. They just didn't think it
Speaker 1: was that big of a deal because even with this
Speaker 1: new information, US intelligence still didn't know the full picture,
Speaker 1: and they never would have if it wasn't for one
Speaker 1: Oleg Gordievski.
Speaker 9: Do you remember meeting the British at any point during
Speaker 9: abel Archer exercise?
Speaker 4: I think I met them in the end of the
Speaker 4: able Archer. Yes, I spoke to the to Joe Scarlets
Speaker 4: about EVERYTHINGE Pichet experienced.
Speaker 1: That's Gordievsky. After Able Archer. Sometime in November nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: he met with his I six handler, a man with
Speaker 1: a name right out of a spy novel, John Scarlet.
Speaker 4: Britain's an operational officer.
Speaker 1: Wow, Gordy, fast and loose with the compliments. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, he handed Scarlet the urgent flash telegram he
Speaker 1: had just received from Moscow.
Speaker 4: It said the American exercise may be preparation to a
Speaker 4: sudden new play attack. When I told Joe Scarlet for
Speaker 4: him it was important.
Speaker 1: Soon word that a nuclear war scare may have just
Speaker 1: unfolded under exercise. Able Archer landed on the desk of
Speaker 1: the Iron Lady herself, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. To her credit,
Speaker 1: when she did hear what Gordievski had told John Scarlett,
Speaker 1: she was definitely spooked. Hopefully she wasn't sipping tea at
Speaker 1: the time, or she might have experienced the Queen mother
Speaker 1: of all spit takes. See how I made a call back,
Speaker 1: but I made a British.
Speaker 4: As it illized that's was a serious so the Russians
Speaker 4: are afraid of something. They're afraid of the Strategic Defense Initiative,
Speaker 4: and they're afraid of the ideological speeches by Reagan than shoots.
Speaker 1: In March of nineteen eighty four, Thatcher sent her ambassador
Speaker 1: to Washington to communicate a warning to the US government.
Speaker 1: Her message was this, Reagan needs to cool it with
Speaker 1: the nukes. The Soviets nearly started a war because of
Speaker 1: this shit. The meeting apparently did not go well. The
Speaker 1: ambassador wouldn't tell the Americans exactly who their secret source was,
Speaker 1: so the Reagan rep said, we're gonna keep doing peace
Speaker 1: through stre thank you very much. But fine, we'll have
Speaker 1: the CIA look into your concerns about this silly little
Speaker 1: Able Archer stuff, since you've got you old Nikas in
Speaker 1: a twist about it. Now, given everything we know about
Speaker 1: Able Archer, it's pretty damn surprising that when the CIA
Speaker 1: did look into it, they didn't find anything at all.
Speaker 9: So here we have all right, So this is implications
Speaker 9: of recent Soviet military political activities, and this is the
Speaker 9: first CIA report on what happened during the war Scan
Speaker 9: and what happened during Able Archer.
Speaker 1: You remember Nate Jones are Able Archer sleuth. The document
Speaker 1: he's holding is called the SNIE, another acronym shocker. It
Speaker 1: stands for Special National Intelligence Estimate. It's the CIA's response
Speaker 1: to the British request to look into Able Archer. This
Speaker 1: top secret report was written in May of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: It's about six pages long. In the document, the CIA
Speaker 1: analysts list everything unusual they've observed the Soviet Union doing
Speaker 1: over the past six months. They talk about the construction
Speaker 1: of new missile sites, big military exercises, and of course
Speaker 1: the fact that during Exercise Able Archer, the Soviets escalated
Speaker 1: their nuclear readiness. But despite listing all of these concerning things.
Speaker 9: Overall, our conclusion is that it wasn't very dangerous and
Speaker 9: it was not a very big deal.
Speaker 1: Hmm. You may be wondering, like me and anybody else
Speaker 1: with the brain cell, how exactly is this not a
Speaker 1: big deal? Did you watch the day after? I bet
Speaker 1: when you're reduced to a cloud of dust drifting over
Speaker 1: a radioactive wasteland, then you'd call it a big deal.
Speaker 1: There's only one paragraph that details the Soviet military reaction,
Speaker 1: specifically to Able Archer, about those planes in East Germany
Speaker 1: and Poland going on high alert. So how did the
Speaker 1: CIA explain it.
Speaker 9: The theory is that the Soviets are doing a massive
Speaker 9: propaganda campaign to trick the West into thinking that they're
Speaker 9: very scared of a preemptive nuclear strike, but that they
Speaker 9: weren't really scared.
Speaker 8: Ah.
Speaker 1: Yes, of course, more mind games and the age of
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons love that for us.
Speaker 9: The thinking goes that this campaign was to make the
Speaker 9: West stop deploying the new missiles to Europe. Is the
Speaker 9: reason for the campaign. That's what some people believed.
Speaker 1: You can tell what Nate makes of this theory, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't altogether implausible. The idea was if the Soviet
Speaker 1: leaders were very public about their fear of nuclear war
Speaker 1: with the United States, then American and European citizens would
Speaker 1: freak out. They would call on NATO to take the
Speaker 1: Persian two and Cruise missiles out of Europe, and that
Speaker 1: would be a win for the Soviets, some successful mind fuckery.
Speaker 1: The SNIE report is confident in this propaganda theory. They
Speaker 1: don't waiver. They even say, and I quote, we cannot
Speaker 1: at this point conduct a detailed examination of how the
Speaker 1: Soviets perceived recent NATO military activities. But even so, we
Speaker 1: are confident the Soviets do not fear a military clash
Speaker 1: with the United.
Speaker 9: States, so I think they might be writing to a conclusion.
Speaker 9: So the conclusion is that there's no real danger. Reagan's
Speaker 9: policy is working, putting more nuclear weapons into Europe is
Speaker 9: a good idea, and the Soviet reaction to able Archer
Speaker 9: and the broader war scare can't be real. So therefore
Speaker 9: it's just propaganda.
Speaker 1: Now this report, it's talking about what the CIA has
Speaker 1: seen the Soviet military do. It doesn't cite Gordievski's account
Speaker 1: of the KGB flash telegram that he says he received,
Speaker 1: and apparently that's because the CIA doesn't know exactly who
Speaker 1: Gordievski is. Six can't just say, yeah, we got a
Speaker 1: guy on the inside. His name is Oleg. He wears
Speaker 1: a fake go tee and a wig, because there was
Speaker 1: always the chance that Oleg's double agent super secret status
Speaker 1: could get back to Russia if the CIA had a
Speaker 1: mole oo foreshadowing. So the CIA doesn't consider Gordievsky's story
Speaker 1: when they write the SNIE. Maybe they thought the source
Speaker 1: was a plant. Maybe they thought he was just another
Speaker 1: victim of the Soviet leader's propaganda or and this is
Speaker 1: the explanation that involves the least amount of tinker tailor
Speaker 1: shadow game hall of Mirror thinking maybe they knew that
Speaker 1: his story made them look really, really bad. And I
Speaker 1: only say that because of what happens next. After the
Speaker 1: CIA writes this report, they need to share it with
Speaker 1: their NATO allies since they all participated Enable Archer together.
Speaker 1: Nate found this version of the report filed in the
Speaker 1: State Department archives. So there are two versions of this.
Speaker 9: There's the version the CIA initially put out, and then
Speaker 9: I foia the State Department and got its version, and
Speaker 9: its version is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Nate knew there was a small chance that the State
Speaker 1: Department's version of this document would be slightly different. Maybe
Speaker 1: there'd be fewer redactions, or maybe there'd be some other
Speaker 1: able Archer clue. When Nate received the State Department's version
Speaker 1: of the SNIE, he ripped the envelope open. He quickly
Speaker 1: scanned through the document and was shocked not at what
Speaker 1: he found but what he didn't find.
Speaker 9: But in this version that they shared with their allies,
Speaker 9: they cut out all mention of able Archer and so
Speaker 9: if you compare it too, you see where the CIA
Speaker 9: version talks about Able Archer. The version of the State
Speaker 9: Department shared with the British and NATO allies just cutting
Speaker 9: out and deleting the most dangerous part of the war,
Speaker 9: scare Able Archer.
Speaker 1: The side by side comparison is pretty wild. Word for word,
Speaker 1: the entire document is exactly the same until you get
Speaker 1: to the paragraph about Able Archer in the State Department version.
Speaker 1: It's just gone erased.
Speaker 9: It Actually, it comes across as kind of absurd.
Speaker 1: Absurd is a good word here. Let's break this down.
Speaker 1: The British asked the CIA to check out Able Archer.
Speaker 1: The CIA finds evidence of a Soviet military reaction to
Speaker 1: Able Archer, but decides not to share it, going as
Speaker 1: far as scrubbing all mention of Able Archer in the
Speaker 1: report they give back to the British. That's not just absurd,
Speaker 1: that's weird. And the obvious question becomes, why did they
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 9: Well, I think to control the narrative, so to speak.
Speaker 9: I think every author had their own point of view
Speaker 9: that they wanted to convey, and they probably thought it
Speaker 9: was true, and they took the facts that they had
Speaker 9: from their intelligence and twisted the conclusions about the facts
Speaker 9: to advocate what they wanted.
Speaker 3: The CIA, the analysts who are involved in that estimate
Speaker 3: have a vested interest in protecting their own reputations. Nobody
Speaker 3: wants to say they got it wrong, right. I don't
Speaker 3: want to turn that into like some great conspiracy theory.
Speaker 3: That's just that's human nature. It's really hard to get
Speaker 3: people to re examine their opinions at the time.
Speaker 1: That's nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 3: Everyone has a dog in the fight, and those stakes
Speaker 3: really come down to this question of whether the people
Speaker 3: who were charged with managing the arms race, whether those
Speaker 3: people were competent and responsible, or whether they were just
Speaker 3: like everybody else and bumbling their way through. And so
Speaker 3: there is an enormous incentive for people to say it
Speaker 3: wasn't that bad, because if it was that bad, then
Speaker 3: that discredits their claimed expertise.
Speaker 1: And we all know there is literally nothing worse in
Speaker 1: the world than having your expertise discredited. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't think of anything worse. I mean, it seems like
Speaker 1: there should be something, I just can't think of it.
Speaker 1: Oh well, able archer would become a hot button issue
Speaker 1: and create a divide in the intelligence community. It would
Speaker 1: separate people into two passionate camps, people who bought into
Speaker 1: the propaganda theory and people who believed that able Archer
Speaker 1: was a catastrophic near miss. The official CIA party line
Speaker 1: was the propaganda theory. That thing really had happened. They
Speaker 1: were happy to shove it under the rug. Big fuck up. Nope,
Speaker 1: not us. We never make mistakes. And I know you're
Speaker 1: going to try to bring up the Iran thing and
Speaker 1: the Congo thing and the Chili thing, but we're not
Speaker 1: talking about those right now. But walking through the halls
Speaker 1: of the Pentagon was a particular US intelligence official who
Speaker 1: just wasn't buying the propaganda theory, propaganda, and he would
Speaker 1: not remain quiet.
Speaker 6: My father was a unique man. He was full of
Speaker 6: energy and passion and love.
Speaker 1: This is John Perutz again talking about his father, Lieutenant
Speaker 1: General Leonard Perutz.
Speaker 6: He was a great man, guys. I mean I miss
Speaker 6: him every day.
Speaker 1: John, like his father, is an intelligence officer. He works
Speaker 1: at the DIA.
Speaker 7: As the director of the Defense Debriefing Service DIA.
Speaker 6: I'm responsible for.
Speaker 7: A global force posture that conducts strategic debriefings and interrogation
Speaker 7: missions for DIA. It's human intelligence and beyond.
Speaker 6: That I can't really tell you a whole lot more.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, that's okay, John.
Speaker 1: A few years after Able Archer, Perutz was home from Germany,
Speaker 1: now the director of the DIA, and one day he
Speaker 1: was told a story of a mysterious MI six source
Speaker 1: who claimed that in nineteen eighty three, the Soviet leadership
Speaker 1: believed NATO was using a military exercise as cover for
Speaker 1: a nuclear attack.
Speaker 7: When he substantiated it, I mean then for Manny Perutes,
Speaker 7: the wheels came off, he said, you know, you got
Speaker 7: to be kidding me.
Speaker 1: Peruts was stunned and furious. This was the side of
Speaker 1: the able Archer store. Sorry, he had never even known
Speaker 1: KGB paranoia, fear and Operation Ryan. Put that together with
Speaker 1: what Perots knew about Soviet military action, and you've got
Speaker 1: yourself a saucy tango with nuclear armageddon. Oh. Lenny went
Speaker 1: up to his attic, got his old soap box and
Speaker 1: plopped it down right in the middle of the Pentagon.
Speaker 1: He was like, guys, we have got to look at
Speaker 1: this again. We didn't get it right the first time.
Speaker 7: He was making his point clear that we, you know,
Speaker 7: let's make sure we learn from this, you know, and
Speaker 7: people didn't want to hear it. Some had been on
Speaker 7: record clearly saying, hey, that Sovie has really fear never
Speaker 7: feared us. We've looked at it more than once, and
Speaker 7: we stand by our view that they didn't fear first
Speaker 7: strike by the United States, and I don't doubt for
Speaker 7: one minute that was their professional belief.
Speaker 1: But this time Leonard Peruts wasn't going to let it go.
Speaker 6: I think at that point, Dad, it said, you know,
Speaker 6: I got it. I'm leaving. I gotta go on record.
Speaker 1: When Leonard Perutz retired from his job as the director
Speaker 1: of the Defense Intelligence Agency in January nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: he did so with guns ablazing. He wrote a letter
Speaker 1: his final parting shot. Listen here, you motherfuckers. Now, I'm joking.
Speaker 1: Obviously this is the honorable Leonard Peruts after all, But
Speaker 1: the letter is badass. Leonard wrote his whole story. He says,
Speaker 1: here's what happened during Abel Archer. I didn't have the
Speaker 1: information I needed. If I did have it, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what decision I would have made. Does that not
Speaker 1: scare you all as much as it scares me? He
Speaker 1: ends the letter by asking an ominous question, what would
Speaker 1: have happened that day. If I had made the other decision.
Speaker 7: I read the letter that my father wrote, just saying, hey,
Speaker 7: what if, And I don't think he contended that nuclear
Speaker 7: war It certainly would have happened, But the notion that
Speaker 7: we would have inadvertently increased the likelihood that it could
Speaker 7: happen was the problem. You might want to look into
Speaker 7: this yet again, because it's too important not to.
Speaker 1: On the day of his retirement, he blasted this memo
Speaker 1: out to anybody and everybody who had the security clearance
Speaker 1: to read it, and truth be told, most of the
Speaker 1: recipients were not interested. The institutional wisdom was let sleeping
Speaker 1: able archers lie, if you get my meaning. But finally
Speaker 1: he caught someone's attention.
Speaker 9: Essentially, that memo spurred the PIFFYAB of presidential Organization to
Speaker 9: undertake this large, very large task.
Speaker 1: That's Nate Jones again, ever, sleuthing behind the able archer scenes.
Speaker 1: PIFYAB is another wonderful acronym short for President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory.
Speaker 1: The PIFYAB is a panel of citizens appointed by the President,
Speaker 1: who by now was George Bush Senior. It's important to
Speaker 1: note these people are not intelligence professionals. They're not even
Speaker 1: necessarily government people. They're an oversight committee of political scientists, historians,
Speaker 1: and lawyers who get special security clearance to access all
Speaker 1: the government's juicy secrets. When they received Leonard Perutz's letter
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine, they read it with as much
Speaker 1: urgency as Perots had written it. They were terrified by
Speaker 1: the tale he told, and since they were unencumbered by
Speaker 1: CIA politics, they were going to investigate able Archer properly.
Speaker 1: This time, the PIFYAB would spend a year digging into
Speaker 1: able Archer. They'd analyze every report, interviewed dozens of people involved,
Speaker 1: and compile it all together in a highly classified, one
Speaker 1: hundred page report build to the brim with government secrets.
Speaker 1: The study was highly restricted, regardless of security clearance. Only
Speaker 1: those who absolutely needed to know got to read it.
Speaker 1: But even intelligence professionals love a little juicy GUS people
Speaker 1: started whispering. The rumor was that this PIFYAB report was
Speaker 1: really critical of operational mistakes, and that it confirmed, contrary
Speaker 1: to the SNIE, that we may have been frighteningly close
Speaker 1: to an all out war in nineteen eighty three. And
Speaker 1: even though almost nobody could actually read the Pifyab report.
Speaker 1: This rumor mill elevated it to a kind of mythical status. Now,
Speaker 1: certain intelligence officials were questioning the conventional wisdom. If the
Speaker 1: Piffy Ab allegedly said that Able Archer was a disaster,
Speaker 1: maybe it really was a near miss. Now at this point,
Speaker 1: Leonard Prutz was running up and down the halls of
Speaker 1: the CIA screaming, I told you so well. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't verify that he actually did that, but it's
Speaker 1: what I would have done, so I guess I'm just projecting.
Speaker 10: I had heard of it in passing, but I'd never
Speaker 10: gotten into it any depth.
Speaker 5: I just knew that people talked about it.
Speaker 1: Listeners, Meet Ben Fisher.
Speaker 5: My name is Ben Fisher.
Speaker 10: I shd arts the German spelling, and I worked for
Speaker 10: the Central Intelligence Agency for over thirty years.
Speaker 1: Ben wasn't involved in the CIA's initial Able Archer investigations
Speaker 1: at that time. He had a very different job at
Speaker 1: the CIA.
Speaker 10: I was undercover for a number of years, about fifteen years.
Speaker 1: Pretty exciting. Right in the nineties. Been left the undercover
Speaker 1: world for a much quieter life as a CIA historian,
Speaker 1: and that's when he decided to look into Able Archer.
Speaker 5: There were differences of opinion.
Speaker 10: The issue had never really been resolved to everyone's satisfaction,
Speaker 10: and so that's what I set out to do.
Speaker 5: When I started the research.
Speaker 10: Colleague of mine got me aside and he said, I
Speaker 10: want you to to know that this is a very
Speaker 10: controversial issue within the intelligence community. That's not just the CIA,
Speaker 10: that's also the Pentagon State Department, and people staked out
Speaker 10: diametrically opposed opinions on this episode. And he said, no
Speaker 10: matter what you find, you're going to offend one side
Speaker 10: or the other, and it's going to hurt your career.
Speaker 1: That didn't really FaZe Ben as far as he was concerned.
Speaker 1: As an historian. He was already in the sunset of
Speaker 1: his career.
Speaker 10: Which of course is the beauty of being on the
Speaker 10: history staff. You don't have anything to risk. You can
Speaker 10: reach your.
Speaker 5: Own conclusions and write it up and let people deal
Speaker 5: with it.
Speaker 1: Ben began his research knowing that he eventually planned to
Speaker 1: publish his work publicly. He was careful to use only
Speaker 1: declassified sources. He did not read the PIFIAD report, but
Speaker 1: even so he was terrified by what he found.
Speaker 10: It was very disturbing, and it led me to believe
Speaker 10: that this was a very serious matter.
Speaker 1: Ben didn't think his CIA colleagues had gotten it right
Speaker 1: in the eighties. From what he could tell, the CIA
Speaker 1: had underestimated the Soviets fear. It was very possible Able
Speaker 1: Archer was a big deal. After all.
Speaker 10: I will say that on several occasions, people much higher
Speaker 10: up the food chain than I called me up or
Speaker 10: asked me to come and see them, and they said,
Speaker 10: I want you to know that I thought this warscare
Speaker 10: thing was a bunch of nonsense for a long time,
Speaker 10: and then I read your monograph and I decided I've
Speaker 10: changed my mind. I think it was a serious matter
Speaker 10: and it deserves more attention than it has received.
Speaker 1: The CIA published Ben's work in nineteen ninety eight. They
Speaker 1: held a conference invited academics and intelligence officials. The story
Speaker 1: of the Able Archer war scare left the obscurity of
Speaker 1: classified government archives. Now it was.
Speaker 10: Public, and a lot of people then decided to take
Speaker 10: a second look at the issue. And so I think
Speaker 10: that I take credit for encouraging other people to go
Speaker 10: beyond where I was able to go.
Speaker 1: By the early two thousands, the Able Archer myth had
Speaker 1: gone through a transformation of sorts a glow up, as
Speaker 1: the kids say. Between whispers about the PIFYABS findings and
Speaker 1: Ben Fisher's work, the propaganda theory receded into the background.
Speaker 1: The intelligence community had come around. Many officials in the
Speaker 1: US government now believed that able Archer was a truly
Speaker 1: dangerous near miss. Plus, any CIA folks who had been
Speaker 1: in power during Abel Archer had long since retired or
Speaker 1: passed away. Basically, by the two thousands, nobody was trying
Speaker 1: to diminish the importance of Able Archer. Not anymore. But
Speaker 1: the thing about mysteries is that they have a tendency
Speaker 1: to linger unless there's one hundred percent in controvertible, undeniable proof.
Speaker 1: Some needling sleuth with a taste for CIA intrigue is
Speaker 1: sure to come along and start asking questions again. Yep,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about my main man, Nate Jones, or, as
Speaker 1: I like to call him, Freedom of Information Act Guy.
Speaker 9: The government's telling me, no, you can have the documents,
Speaker 9: and I want the documents.
Speaker 1: Does that sound like the kind of guy who's gonna
Speaker 1: let the piffy ab the holy Grail of able Archer
Speaker 1: reportage sit untouched in a dusty Manila folder. Somewhere forever,
Speaker 1: of course, not so.
Speaker 9: This one was a slobber knocker, just a big, long,
Speaker 9: nasty fight.
Speaker 1: Nate knew the piffy AB could contain information that wasn't
Speaker 1: found in Fisher's reports or the SNIE, information that may
Speaker 1: lay the mystery of able Archer to rest once and
Speaker 1: for all. He had to get it. It wouldn't take
Speaker 1: long for the Pifyab report to become Nate Jones white Whale.
Speaker 9: I filed a foyer for that pretty quickly. It went nowhere, weighted, weighted, weighted.
Speaker 9: That filed my other foyas, and eventually I started bugging
Speaker 9: them and calling them and saying what is going on?
Speaker 9: And they kind of politely but kind of not said no, listen,
Speaker 9: we're not doing one review. It has to be reviewed
Speaker 9: by essentially six seven eight agencies.
Speaker 1: Something to understand about the Pipeab report. It was special
Speaker 1: because it was comprehensive. It used reports and sources from
Speaker 1: more than a half a dozen agencies, and that, of
Speaker 1: course made it nearly impossible to declassify.
Speaker 9: There's diplomatic sources, there's satellite sources, there's Stigan sources, there's
Speaker 9: CIA sources. It's hard enough to get for example, one
Speaker 9: five page document with only CIA equities reviewed.
Speaker 1: That's years, so you.
Speaker 9: Can imagine one hundred document with equities of seven agencies.
Speaker 1: It's not that the pitheapp wouldn't get declassified, it's just
Speaker 1: that it might take so long that by the time
Speaker 1: it was declassified, Nate would very likely be dead.
Speaker 9: So we were in big trouble.
Speaker 1: But Nate wasn't the only one interested in the mythical
Speaker 1: and mysterious events of Able Archer. Other historians were probing too,
Speaker 1: But instead of trying to crack open the US government's files,
Speaker 1: they were looking east.
Speaker 11: I was excited to try to find, you know, even
Speaker 11: more of the picture on how we all almost perished.
Speaker 1: And I am extremely excited to tell you what they found.
Speaker 11: I got my hands on a exercise report on the
Speaker 11: entire Autumn Forge series of exercises.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I mean this is it.
Speaker 11: This is you know, this is the document. Let's see
Speaker 11: how close we all got to blowing ourselves up.
Speaker 1: That's next time on Snaffo. While Nate tries to get
Speaker 1: his pause on the Piffy App, We're gonna head over
Speaker 1: to the Soviet block with some historical sleuthing that raises
Speaker 1: some critical questions about those spies, oh Leg Gordievski and
Speaker 1: Ryn are Rupp, who saved the day during Able Archer.
Speaker 5: I won't say he's intentionally aligned.
Speaker 1: He might just be mistaken, or you might remember it
Speaker 1: a certain way. Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film,
Speaker 1: Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with
Speaker 1: Gilded Audio. Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Carl Nellis. Associate producer Tory Smith. It's
Speaker 1: executive produced by me Ed Helms, Nolan Papelka, Mike Falbo,
Speaker 1: Andy Chug, and Whitney Donaldson. Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 5: That's Fucking true story.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by Sarah Joyner, with additional writing
Speaker 1: from me Elliott Kalen and Whitney Donaldson. Olivia Kenny is
Speaker 1: our production assistant. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Additional
Speaker 1: research in fact Check by Charles Richter, Engineering and technical
Speaker 1: direction by Nick Dooley. Original music and sound design by
Speaker 1: Dan Rosatto. Additional editing from Ben Chug. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Alison Cohen and Matt Aisenstad.