Speaker 1: Okay, stop me if you've heard this one. What do
Speaker 1: you get when the former head of the KGB and
Speaker 1: the former head of the CIA walk into a funeral.
Speaker 2: Hi atop the Kremlin to night a Soviet flag at
Speaker 2: half staff, a symbol of mourning for Leonide ilitch Reshnev.
Speaker 2: Reshnev will be laid to rest in Red Square beside
Speaker 2: the Kremlin wall.
Speaker 3: They came to Red Square today to bete Reshnev, and
Speaker 3: not particularly to praise him. So it is when dictators die.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's not actually a joke. It's nineteen eighty two, Moscow,
Speaker 1: almost two years before able archer, former Soviet leader and
Speaker 1: now dead corpse leon At Brezhnev is being carried in
Speaker 1: an open coffin procession through Red Square and.
Speaker 3: His companions and friends and rivals watched their last glimpse.
Speaker 1: Software Heads of state from across the world flocked to
Speaker 1: Moscow to attend the funeral. It was the ultimate Cold
Speaker 1: War invitation. I mean, who's who of who might press
Speaker 1: the button? Western leaders are there to pay their respects
Speaker 1: to their longtime adversary leon At Brezhnev, but also there
Speaker 1: to meet their new one, Yuri and drop off CenTra,
Speaker 1: and drop Off delivers Brezhnev's eulogy, which is really more
Speaker 1: of an unofficial inaugural address. And afterward and drop Off,
Speaker 1: the former head of the KGB, takes a private meeting
Speaker 1: with the former head of the CIA and now US
Speaker 1: Vice President George Bush Senior.
Speaker 4: And Andropov says some pretty extraordinary things.
Speaker 1: This is Simon Miles, cold War historian.
Speaker 4: He says to Bush, look, you and I both know
Speaker 4: that we need to say things for public consumption in
Speaker 4: our countries that we don't necessarily meet, primarily mean things
Speaker 4: about one another.
Speaker 1: Is this en coded language?
Speaker 4: Says this explicitly, and then he goes on to say,
Speaker 4: you know, we have the responsibility as leaders of the
Speaker 4: two nuclear armed superpowers to understand the difference between when
Speaker 4: I'm just saying nasty things about you because I've got
Speaker 4: to because that's what you do it parades, and when
Speaker 4: you are actually threatening me.
Speaker 1: And drop Off is essentially saying, I know that Reagan
Speaker 1: will talk shit about me, and you know that I
Speaker 1: will talk shit about him, but we both need to
Speaker 1: know that sometimes it's just for show.
Speaker 4: Two leaders reminding one another about the nature of the
Speaker 4: Cold War, that it is this kind of two level
Speaker 4: game where you have your public consumption and then you
Speaker 4: have your policy.
Speaker 1: Does this mean that and drop Off knew the entire
Speaker 1: time that Reagan's speeches were only speeches es Does it
Speaker 1: mean the reaction to Able Archer was just theater. So
Speaker 1: far this season, we've talked about how Reagan's tough guy
Speaker 1: rhetoric pushed the Soviets to the brink, and the aggressive
Speaker 1: impulses of an evil empire. How the Soviets became blinded
Speaker 1: by their own paranoia and sent their spies looking for
Speaker 1: signs of an impending attack.
Speaker 5: And count the number of lights on in the Pentagon
Speaker 5: at night.
Speaker 1: How the US sent spyplanes to poke the Soviet bear.
Speaker 4: Putting the fear of God like literally into the Soviets.
Speaker 1: How the Soviets were so jumpy they shot down a
Speaker 1: commercial plane.
Speaker 2: I bought a Korean jumber jip that drifted into Soviet territory.
Speaker 1: How the Soviets deployed a faulty missile detection system that
Speaker 1: tested one man's resolve.
Speaker 5: He said it was like sitting in a frying pan.
Speaker 1: How the Soviets believed that an attack was actually happening
Speaker 1: during Able Archer and so they put their nuclear arsenal
Speaker 1: on a hair trigger.
Speaker 5: US wasn't too much moment.
Speaker 1: And after all that, how the CIA was convinced that
Speaker 1: the whole snaffoo was really no big deal. It's just propaganda,
Speaker 1: until one man, Lieutenant General Leonard Breudes, begged the intelligence
Speaker 1: community to take Able Archer seriously. You might want to
Speaker 1: look into this because it's too important not to. And
Speaker 1: how finally, after decades of denial, the intelligence community had
Speaker 1: come to believe that they had made grave errors and
Speaker 1: that Able Archer truly was a nuclear near miss.
Speaker 5: I think it was a serious matter. It deserves more
Speaker 5: attention than it's received.
Speaker 1: But what if that version of the story is all wrong?
Speaker 1: What if the Able Archer war scare really was just
Speaker 1: an act inside an act Rapp did an even bigger
Speaker 1: act man if only Russia had some sort of nesting
Speaker 1: folkloric toy that we could use as a metaphor here.
Speaker 1: Oh well, so, once again, what do you get when
Speaker 1: the former head of the KGB and the former head
Speaker 1: of the CIA walk into a funeral? You get mine
Speaker 1: games of a nuclear proportion?
Speaker 4: Or do you.
Speaker 1: I'm ed Helms and this is Snafu? A podcast about
Speaker 1: history's greatest screw ups. On season one, we're telling you
Speaker 1: the story of a snafu that is gigantic, absurd, and terrifying.
Speaker 1: Able Archer eighty three, the nineteen eighty three NATO military
Speaker 1: exercise that almost led to a real nuclear war? Or
Speaker 1: did it? This episode, we're pulling apart the fabric of
Speaker 1: the able Archer story and asking the question, what if
Speaker 1: we've got this story all wrong.
Speaker 4: I went looking for these documents not with a mind
Speaker 4: to disproving the able Archer thesis, but rather just to
Speaker 4: get even more insight on this amazing Cold War story.
Speaker 1: It was twenty fourteen. Historian Simon Miles, a young researcher
Speaker 1: with a nose for Cold War mysteries, caught a severe
Speaker 1: case of the able Archer bug.
Speaker 4: I was excited to try to find even more of
Speaker 4: the picture on how we all almost perished.
Speaker 1: His plan was to hit the archives in order to
Speaker 1: figure out what the Soviets were actually thinking during Able
Speaker 1: Archer KGB archives in Moscow were still locked down, but
Speaker 1: Simon could look in the archives of former Soviet allies
Speaker 1: where they had helped the Soviets with Operation Ryan. That
Speaker 1: proverbial tic tac toe Board of Death used to gauge
Speaker 1: whether the US was preparing for a nuclear attack.
Speaker 4: In the archives of some of those former Allied states
Speaker 4: who were participants in Project Rion, who were feeding information
Speaker 4: into this thing, we actually have amazing insight into what's
Speaker 4: going on.
Speaker 1: The first leg of his journey takes him to the
Speaker 1: Czech Republic, former Soviet state, czech Isslovakia, where he starts
Speaker 1: to dig into the files of the STB, the Czechoslovakian
Speaker 1: secret police.
Speaker 4: In Prague, right by the river, in this pretty sort
Speaker 4: of staid reading room. It's very sort of communist chic
Speaker 4: because it was, you know, an official STV facility, so
Speaker 4: it's a very sort of atmospheric place to work.
Speaker 1: So Simon walks into the communist chic archive. Imagine his excitement, right,
Speaker 1: He's going to pull back the iron curtain and find
Speaker 1: all the frantic messages the Soviets were sending back and forth,
Speaker 1: the flash telegrams and panicked alerts.
Speaker 4: I remember it pretty well actually, because the archive staff,
Speaker 4: who were all very very young, we're having a party,
Speaker 4: and then kind of behind these doors you can hear
Speaker 4: laughing and classes clinking.
Speaker 1: Hey, archivists like to party too, right and check archivists.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, don't get me started anyway, somehow, ignoring
Speaker 1: the chance to attend the greatest party of his life,
Speaker 1: Simon takes a seat at a big table and begins
Speaker 1: to dig in.
Speaker 4: And so I got my hands on a exercise report
Speaker 4: on the entire Autumn Forge series of exercises. And you know,
Speaker 4: when they give that to you, you think, oh, wow,
Speaker 4: I mean, this is it. This is the document. Let's
Speaker 4: see how close we all got to blowing ourselves up.
Speaker 1: Simon opens the folder and begins scanning.
Speaker 4: I am reading through this Booklet you know, it's got
Speaker 4: these green kind of card paper covers, and you know,
Speaker 4: things are tracking with what I knew about what had happened,
Speaker 4: and in real granular detail, I should say.
Speaker 1: It has the full accounting of Autumn Forge eighty three,
Speaker 1: the nineteen thousand troops flying into West Germany under complete
Speaker 1: radio silence, the massive rehearsal for war, all leading up
Speaker 1: to the final act.
Speaker 4: And then I get to the able Archer piece. And
Speaker 4: the first thing that strikes me is how short it is.
Speaker 4: So the conversation about able Archer is barely a page long.
Speaker 4: When I'm thinking to myself, wow, this is really really weird.
Speaker 5: Well, if this is.
Speaker 4: A big deal, yeah, this should be we should have
Speaker 4: a lot of the play by play here. Did these
Speaker 4: guys miss it?
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert? They did not miss it.
Speaker 4: What it does not talk about is any sense that
Speaker 4: there was heightened danger, that there was sort of something
Speaker 4: more pernicious afoot behind what the NATO and the Americans
Speaker 4: were doing. Rather, it traces, with a striking degree of accuracy,
Speaker 4: exactly what was happening and why it was being done.
Speaker 1: And that's it. That's it. No panic that Able Archer
Speaker 1: was an insidious cover for a re nuclear attack, just
Speaker 1: an accurate account of a routine NATO nuclear exercise, with
Speaker 1: an apparent recognition that it was all simply an enormously
Speaker 1: violent game of let's pretend. So what Simon discovered in
Speaker 1: that archive wild Czech historians were next door sipping champagne
Speaker 1: and making flirty remarks about Franz Kafka, was that, according
Speaker 1: to the East, there was nothing unusual about Able Archer
Speaker 1: eighty three at all.
Speaker 4: And so that didn't sort of change my mind, but
Speaker 4: it made me start asking some really hard questions.
Speaker 1: It wasn't what Simon was expecting, but maybe the Czechs
Speaker 1: were just out of the loop. Maybe the Russians were like, nah,
Speaker 1: why bother filling them in? They never invite us to
Speaker 1: their cool archive parties. But the East Germans, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, they went together like Sonny and Cher, chocolate
Speaker 1: and peanut butter. If the Soviets were scared of a
Speaker 1: nuclear attack during Able Archer, the East Germans would know, Oh,
Speaker 1: so Simon headed to Germany.
Speaker 4: The East German military records are all in a beautiful
Speaker 4: town in Baden Wurtenberg called Freiberg and Breisgau. They're in
Speaker 4: a suburban area next to a kind of the German
Speaker 4: equivalent of home depot, across the street from a brothel.
Speaker 4: But it's a phenomenal place to work, naturally, And I
Speaker 4: start looking through all of these materials, and here again
Speaker 4: we have access to briefings and intelligence reports on what
Speaker 4: is happening. And the most important one I think comes
Speaker 4: to the desk of the East German Defense Minister, and
Speaker 4: it is a report on the impending Able Archer exercise.
Speaker 4: It also talks with pretty impressive accuracy about what is
Speaker 4: going to happen.
Speaker 1: And it actually says explicitly.
Speaker 4: That none of this means that the West sort of
Speaker 4: anticipates a heightened threat of war or anything like that.
Speaker 4: The big messages able archer another phase of Autumn forge.
Speaker 4: Really basically there's nothing to see here.
Speaker 1: Simon begins to pour over transcripts of interviews with Soviet officials.
Speaker 4: And what I'm reading from these people who would be
Speaker 4: in the know by virtue of their positions, they're saying
Speaker 4: that we're not at the brink from apocalypse.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, we have Leonard Brud's account
Speaker 1: of the Soviet Air Force loading nuclear weapons onto planes
Speaker 1: and standing by on high alert, and on the other hand,
Speaker 1: the Soviet records show nothing.
Speaker 4: It's very possible that US intelligence saw those signs. It's
Speaker 4: very possible that leaders in the US intelligence community, the
Speaker 4: US military, maybe even in the US political system drew
Speaker 4: those conclusions.
Speaker 1: But it's still.
Speaker 4: Possible that they were all entirely wrong.
Speaker 1: What so, no misinterpreted NATO messages, no nuclear near miss.
Speaker 4: I think in order to make those claims, we really
Speaker 4: need a strong piece of evidence from the Eastern Block,
Speaker 4: from the other side of the Iron Curtain, and that
Speaker 4: doesn't exist. So now I've kind of got a problem
Speaker 4: on my hands. If you will, because we have this
Speaker 4: universally almost accepted story about a near miss with nuclear war,
Speaker 4: and I've got this body of evidence that's saying the opposite.
Speaker 1: What the hell happened here? If the Soviets were as
Speaker 1: terrified as we thought, with the nukes on planes and
Speaker 1: the tic TAC toe board and the readiness to end
Speaker 1: life on Earth, why was there no record of it
Speaker 1: in Eastern documents? Simon decided to look at all the
Speaker 1: evidence side by side and try to figure out where
Speaker 1: this story, what he came to believe was a myth,
Speaker 1: came from.
Speaker 4: I was funneling down from what's commonly presented as sort
Speaker 4: of this overwhelming body of evidence. Dozens and dozens and
Speaker 4: dozens of sources are saying this, well, really, dozens and
Speaker 4: dozens and dozens of sources are repeating this one pretty
Speaker 4: sketchy claim by a Soviet double agent.
Speaker 1: The double agent with the sketchy claim, you already know
Speaker 1: him well, Oleg Gordievsky.
Speaker 5: The Americans exercise may be preparation to a sudden new
Speaker 5: play attack, But what.
Speaker 1: Reason would Gordievsky have to lie about able archer. I'm
Speaker 1: so glad you asked. It's nineteen eighty five. The world
Speaker 1: is in slack jawed wonder at Sylvester Stallone's pex in
Speaker 1: both Rocky four and Rambo two. And it's been a
Speaker 1: year and a half since Oleg Gordievski met with his
Speaker 1: MI six handler warning that the United States and the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union were on the precipice of nuclear war. Since
Speaker 1: Able Archer eighty three, Oleg has further risen in the
Speaker 1: KGB ranks. He has just been appointed the Chief Resident
Speaker 1: in London, with even greater access to the inner workings
Speaker 1: of the KGB. He's six's prized source their biggest Cold
Speaker 1: War accomplishment. And then one day Gordievski gets a telegram
Speaker 1: from the Kremlin. It says, dearest Comrade Gordievski, please return
Speaker 1: to Moscow immediately. Gordievsky and his six handlers knew that
Speaker 1: returning home to Moscow was risky, but to defy the
Speaker 1: order meant ending his KGB career just when it was
Speaker 1: getting good, He decided to go. Gordievski reviewed his escape
Speaker 1: plan with his six handlers. He would be extracted if
Speaker 1: things went south. He kissed his wife and two daughters goodbye,
Speaker 1: and boarded a plane for the Soviet Union. When he
Speaker 1: arrived at his apartment in Moscow, the dead bolt was locked.
Speaker 1: He never locked to the dead bolt, didn't even have
Speaker 1: a key for it. At that moment, all that Gordievsky
Speaker 1: knew he had been found out because, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: there was a mole in the CIA. The CIA knew
Speaker 1: it had a trader.
Speaker 2: Asked why he did what he did, Aims said money
Speaker 2: was his main motivation.
Speaker 5: That's the case you bill runs as it was abregistration,
Speaker 5: and yes, they decided to play contain mouse game with me.
Speaker 1: The KGB knew they were compromised by a double agent,
Speaker 1: and they suspected it was Gordievski, but they didn't know
Speaker 1: it was him for sure, not yet. One day, they
Speaker 1: scooped him up and drove him to a bungalow. They
Speaker 1: spiked his drink and interrogated him for hours. Gordievski was
Speaker 1: in a daze, hallucinating. He tried to tell himself to deny, deny, deny,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't really aware of what he was saying.
Speaker 1: After five hours, he blacked out. To this day, he
Speaker 1: still doesn't remember what happened in that room. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: KGB had retrieved Gordievsky's wife and two daughters from London,
Speaker 1: and they were now on their way back to Moscow.
Speaker 1: Grdioevsky was released and placed under twenty four hour surveillance.
Speaker 5: I started to look on tho there was behind me.
Speaker 5: It was very intimidating. During the Cold War, everybody who
Speaker 5: was in touch was the foot of the Intelligence Service,
Speaker 5: the service Union, each officer, all the court, and all
Speaker 5: were shot all.
Speaker 1: Gordievski would later describe this moment in his life as
Speaker 1: utterly hopeless. He was thinking, instead of even trying to escape,
Speaker 1: he might as well just give up, wait for the
Speaker 1: bullet in the back of his neck. But his days
Speaker 1: passed constantly looking over his shoulder. Gordievski somehow found his resolve.
Speaker 5: And then they started to preparation to the game.
Speaker 1: But if he had any chance of survival, he'd need
Speaker 1: to leave alone, leave his family behind. There was no
Speaker 1: time to second guess his decision. Gordievski was in a
Speaker 1: race against the clock. Each day he failed to get
Speaker 1: out of the Soviet Union was another day for the
Speaker 1: KGB to confirm his identity as their traitorous double agent.
Speaker 1: Gordievsky activated his escape plan on a Tuesday, at seven
Speaker 1: thirty pm, Gordievski stood under a lamppost outside a bread
Speaker 1: shop near Kievsky metro station. He carried a plastic Safeway
Speaker 1: bag with a giant red s. He wore a peaked
Speaker 1: cap a military hat. It was a signal to six
Speaker 1: that he needed to be extracted. Get me the fuck
Speaker 1: out of here. A few minutes later, Gordievsky watched a
Speaker 1: man in gray trousers remove a green bag from his pocket,
Speaker 1: remove a chocolate Mars bar, and begin eating it. This
Speaker 1: seemingly unassuming gray trousered candy barmunching dude was an MI
Speaker 1: sixter agent, signaling to Gordievski that his request had been recognized.
Speaker 5: This was a scheme. It meant I would be picked
Speaker 5: up on Saturday the same week at two.
Speaker 1: O'clock, which meant by Saturday at two pm. Gordievsky had
Speaker 1: to get himself to the pickup point, a boulder by
Speaker 1: the side of the road in the countryside near the
Speaker 1: Finish border, and he had to do it without being
Speaker 1: detected by the KGB. On Friday, July nineteenth, Gordievsky did
Speaker 1: the hardest thing he'd ever have to do. He packed
Speaker 1: his bags and said goodbye to his family.
Speaker 5: I shook up the Currells Court trained to Lenongrad.
Speaker 1: Gordioevsky had shaken the kgbtail for now, but they could
Speaker 1: catch up at any moment. On the overnight train to Leningrad,
Speaker 1: Gordioewski settled into his top bunk and took to sedatives
Speaker 1: because you know, he was feeling a little anxious. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the sedatives knocked him out so hard that when the
Speaker 1: train abruptly stopped, he rolled right off the top bunk
Speaker 1: and bashed his head. Now blood was dripping down his face,
Speaker 1: which makes it that much harder to blend in. From
Speaker 1: Lennon station, Gordievsky hopped on a different train than a bus.
Speaker 1: The bus approached the rendezvous point, the bus stopped, Gordievsky
Speaker 1: got off. He looked at his watch and was ten
Speaker 1: thirty four hours before six was supposed to pick him up.
Speaker 1: What do you do? Dive into the shadows and wait right,
Speaker 1: Just sit tight. The cavalry is almost there. All you
Speaker 1: gotta do is just keep your head down. But that's
Speaker 1: not our boyo Leg. Instead of hiding in the underbrush
Speaker 1: and patiently waiting for six to arrive, as he certainly
Speaker 1: should have done. Gordievsky made the truly insane decision to
Speaker 1: hitchhike to the town of which is sixteen miles away,
Speaker 1: so that he could have a drink at the local bar.
Speaker 1: After downing a beer manned a chicken leg, he started
Speaker 1: running the sixteen miles back to the rendezvous point in Corduroys.
Speaker 1: Even if I wanted to, I could not make this
Speaker 1: shit up. Evidently, he got tired of running before completing
Speaker 1: his half marathon in Corduroys and decided to hitchhike the
Speaker 1: rest of the way. Kordiewski stuck his thumb out the
Speaker 1: car pulled over. Luckily it was not a KGB officer,
Speaker 1: and Gordievski enjoyed the ride back to the rendezvous point.
Speaker 1: As they approached the boulder by the side of the road,
Speaker 1: literally in the middle of nowhere, Gordiewski asked the driver
Speaker 1: to let him out here please and thank you, ostensibly
Speaker 1: for a booty call, which sounds bonkers, but apparently the
Speaker 1: driver was just like, oh yeah, classic countryside boulder hide
Speaker 1: and hanky panky, go for it, buddy. Kordiewski climbed into
Speaker 1: the underbrush, pulled out a bottle of beer, from his
Speaker 1: pocket that he had somehow carried with him during his run,
Speaker 1: and enjoyed it while he waited for him. I six
Speaker 1: to retrieve him. And here's the best part. He got
Speaker 1: away with it.
Speaker 5: About thirty miles before the border. I was hiding in
Speaker 5: the woods at an appointed time, which was two o'clock
Speaker 5: to British cars stopped just exactly where I was lying.
Speaker 1: You can still hear the wonder in his voice. This
Speaker 1: one in a million miracle had happened.
Speaker 5: I jumped into the boots of the car and they
Speaker 5: went to the border.
Speaker 1: Gordioevsky's brush with death was even closer than he knew.
Speaker 1: He would later learn the KGB had confirmed his identity
Speaker 1: as the double agent the week before he escaped. To
Speaker 1: this day, we still don't know why they waited to pound,
Speaker 1: but they did, and after a miraculous and somewhat claustrophobic escape,
Speaker 1: he was now on his way to building a new life.
Speaker 1: A former KGB spy defected to England. Except it wasn't
Speaker 1: over for Gordievski. Sure he was free, he escaped the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, but he was alone. His wife and his
Speaker 1: children were still trapped back in Moscow and he needed
Speaker 1: to get them out commence Phase two Operation Reagan. After
Speaker 1: his escape, Gordievsky's identity was officially revealed. He was safe
Speaker 1: in the UK. There was no reason to hide. He
Speaker 1: wrote books about his spying and what did he say?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, back in nineteen eighty three, the world almost
Speaker 1: blew up. Not trying to brag, but kind of helped
Speaker 1: cool things down a little, No, biggie, just what any
Speaker 1: super cool double agent, super spy would have done. That's
Speaker 1: when Reagan finally learned who his valuable British source was.
Speaker 5: I'm afraiden and I met George Bush.
Speaker 1: On July twenty first, nineteen eighty seven. Oleg Gordievsky was
Speaker 1: invited for a meeting with Ronald Reagan and then Vice
Speaker 1: President George H. W. Bush at the White House. I
Speaker 1: guess Nancy's astrologer said, Olegg was chill. Yeah, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not letting that go. Reagan's diary that day talked about
Speaker 1: attending an event with Clint Eastwood and getting his contact
Speaker 1: lenses cleaned. Then he writes, forgot this morning had a
Speaker 1: meeting with Colonel Oleg Gordievski, the Soviet KGB officer who
Speaker 1: defected to England.
Speaker 5: Did Reagan ever talk to you about your reports? No,
Speaker 5: the Reagan didn't talk to me about my reports, but
Speaker 5: he short good knowledge how me and my significance. But
Speaker 5: he was not such a brainy man.
Speaker 1: Okay, don't know why you had to throw that burn
Speaker 1: in there, as Gordievsky remembers that their conversation was a
Speaker 1: sober one because Gordioevsky had a favor to ask. He
Speaker 1: wanted to get his family out of Russia. Not actually
Speaker 1: a lot to ask when your calling card is the
Speaker 1: guy who saved the world from nuclear annihilation, and Reagan
Speaker 1: decided to help him.
Speaker 5: He said an important thing, I will give the instruction
Speaker 5: to all the bodies to fight for your family. That
Speaker 5: was enough because immediately the National Security Council, the States Department,
Speaker 5: and the CIA started to also for the family.
Speaker 1: Reagan later wrote in his diary Margaret Thatcher is working
Speaker 1: on the Soviet says we are. We're going to hold
Speaker 1: back and see if she can get his wife and
Speaker 1: two children out of Russia. Continuing on, he wrote, I
Speaker 1: just hope Oleg appreciates this enough that he never makes
Speaker 1: a snide comment about the size of my brain. All Right,
Speaker 1: I made that up. It took four years for them
Speaker 1: to succeed. In the end, it all came down to
Speaker 1: a show of good faith by a new Russian leader
Speaker 1: trying to rebuild Russia's standing with the West. After the
Speaker 1: collapse of the Soviet Union, the press covered the Gordievski
Speaker 1: family reunion. He and his wife were like giggling school children,
Speaker 1: thrilled to be back together at last. It's a beautiful moment.
Speaker 1: I mean, the guy had escaped the Eastern Bloc and
Speaker 1: was separated from his family for six years. This was
Speaker 1: the moment that Gordievski had been dreaming about. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: the kind of moment you do almost anything for, like
Speaker 1: maybe even make up a story about saving the world
Speaker 1: from nuclear destruction.
Speaker 4: Gordievski is, in many ways the er source for the
Speaker 4: Able Archer story.
Speaker 1: Here's Simon Miles again. He says that even though the
Speaker 1: Archer story became larger than life in the West, it
Speaker 1: all goes back to one single source. It was all
Speaker 1: from Oleg Gordievsky. He was the one who told six
Speaker 1: that Soviets were afraid of nuclear war. It was Gordievsky's
Speaker 1: account that prompted the CIA to look into Able Archer.
Speaker 1: And it was Gordievsky's story that spurred Leonard Perutz to
Speaker 1: write his dramatic retirement letter which led to the PIVAB.
Speaker 1: And it was Gordievsky's terrifying tale that influenced the CIA
Speaker 1: history in Ben Fischer's work, which totally shifted the Able
Speaker 1: Archer consensus within the intelligence community. It all goes back
Speaker 1: to Gordievsky. Is it possible, is it even conceivable that
Speaker 1: he's lying? Is it possible that he exaggerated the story
Speaker 1: after his defection to save his family.
Speaker 4: And so you could imagine a situation in which a
Speaker 4: spy is saying, hey, look at what I did.
Speaker 1: I saved you from nuclear war.
Speaker 4: And you won't get my wife and children, whom I
Speaker 4: left behind out of the Soviet Union for me.
Speaker 1: But hold on a second. There's proof, right, definitive proof.
Speaker 1: That flash telegram that Gordievsky says he received on November
Speaker 1: eighth or November ninth, he didn't remember, which, you know,
Speaker 1: the one that said the kg BE believed that the
Speaker 1: countdown to nuclear war had begun under cover of Able Archer.
Speaker 1: Now all at Gordievsky and his handlers kept meticulous records.
Speaker 1: He would go on to publish two books that included
Speaker 1: hundreds of actual cables he received from Moscow during his
Speaker 1: tenure as a spy in London. But the one telegram
Speaker 1: we've never seen a copy of is this one interesting
Speaker 1: and convenient. It's also worth pointing out that in the
Speaker 1: years since Gordievski was reunited with his wife and kids,
Speaker 1: his recollection of events got a little less. I Saved
Speaker 1: the World back in the mid eighties. He was adamant
Speaker 1: that Abel Archer was the peak of Soviet paranoia, that
Speaker 1: the Soviets were convinced Reagan wanted to obliterate them, and further,
Speaker 1: he said it was reasonable to assume his contribution had
Speaker 1: pulled us back from the edge of annihilation. You know
Speaker 1: that version. That's what you've been listening to this whole
Speaker 1: time while doing the dishes, or driving to Milwaukee, or
Speaker 1: whatever it does you do while listening to this podcast.
Speaker 1: Years later, though, when he was asked about it all
Speaker 1: again in two thousand and eight, he doesn't seem quite
Speaker 1: so sure. He contradicts himself. He hedges a.
Speaker 5: Little they're afraid, really, they'll think, because it's regularly as capable.
Speaker 5: But it does mean that, says they will bring it
Speaker 5: to the NUCLEU. That's why it was. I was never
Speaker 5: in panic and didn't drunk to the officers as it
Speaker 5: reports about Abel Archer, because I felt this was not
Speaker 5: hundred percent serious? Is missing sense? It will never come,
Speaker 5: will come to freition.
Speaker 4: Here Gordievski is actually contradicting the Able Archer story and
Speaker 4: saying that really it wasn't a moment of acute danger.
Speaker 4: There wasn't really a sense that this was preparation for
Speaker 4: a surprise attack, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: So what does all this mean for the Able Archer story?
Speaker 1: If the Soviet documents don't make Able Archer sound all
Speaker 1: that serious, and Gordievsky may actually be, you know, exaggerating
Speaker 1: a little, Is this whole story just a bunch of bullshit?
Speaker 1: Can we ever know the truth about Able Archer? Well,
Speaker 1: don't forget there was another man on the inside, that
Speaker 1: other spy, the one in NATO, who said that during
Speaker 1: Able Archer, the Russians panicked and he sent a message
Speaker 1: that snipped the nuclear fuse with his spy Calculatoriner Rup
Speaker 1: or as you may remember him, agent Topaz. So if
Speaker 1: the Able larger story is a bunch of nonsense. Does
Speaker 1: that mean that Rhiner Rupp is lying too? Oh no,
Speaker 1: say it isn't so life had been pretty good for
Speaker 1: Stazi secret agent Rhiner Reup. He was twelve years into
Speaker 1: an undercover stint at NATO HQ. He was good at
Speaker 1: his job, his NATO job where he kept getting promoted,
Speaker 1: and also his Stazi job where he kept stealing NATO
Speaker 1: files to destroy NATO. So I guess he wasn't all
Speaker 1: that good at his NATO job after all. But then
Speaker 1: as nineteen eighty nine came to a close, the ground
Speaker 1: began to shake underneath his comfortable secret agent life. November ninth,
Speaker 1: the Berlin Wall comes down, a massive global event. It
Speaker 1: signaled the beginning of the end for communism. And then
Speaker 1: as Christmas.
Speaker 6: Rolled around, got a message of a top level spy
Speaker 6: in the organization.
Speaker 1: Eh boy, NATO knew there was a mole, some guy
Speaker 1: who went by the code name Topaz. The intel suggested
Speaker 1: that this Topaz was a senior NATO official, not some
Speaker 1: paper pusher. Allowing a Communist spy into the innermost circle
Speaker 1: was beyond humiliating. The discovery was catastrophic.
Speaker 6: As a result, they started to search for this Toolpus.
Speaker 1: So while everyone else in Brussels was roasting chestnuts on
Speaker 1: an open fire and getting busy under the missiletoe like
Speaker 1: they were Czech archivists, Rupp was hurrying to cover his tracks.
Speaker 1: And then shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
Speaker 1: the people raided the stazi's headquarters in Berlin. What they
Speaker 1: found shocked the world. Mountains of files. Somewhere married in
Speaker 1: those Stazi files was the truth about agent Topaz's identity
Speaker 1: repro but it wouldn't be easy to find. Papers had
Speaker 1: been shredded into a gajillion pieces. STAZI digital records were
Speaker 1: encrypted up the wazoo. It would take the West years
Speaker 1: to piece the STAZI records together. And Topaz himself was
Speaker 1: trying to derail the hunt.
Speaker 6: And for reasons I don't want to go into, I
Speaker 6: could follow all their work.
Speaker 1: Remember, Rupp was still on the inside. He was even
Speaker 1: participating in meetings about the Topaz hunt. Hey guys, got
Speaker 1: a hot lead on this Topaz guy. Pretty sure he's
Speaker 1: either in Buenos Aires or Singapore. Anyway. For a while,
Speaker 1: he was able to remain just barely one step ahead.
Speaker 1: NATO began to get desperate.
Speaker 6: They've been big cash rewards offered to my former case officer.
Speaker 6: I mean like in this that spy films, a case
Speaker 6: of cash put on the table.
Speaker 1: Honestly, despite the danger, NATO just couldn't seem to make progress,
Speaker 1: and rhiner Up began to believe maybe he'd make it
Speaker 1: out of this thing unscathed.
Speaker 6: They got closed, but they never got close enough. Eventually
Speaker 6: thought I was basically safe, and I was already looking
Speaker 6: for a new job, because quite clearly I didn't want
Speaker 6: to stay at NATO.
Speaker 1: But piece by piece, those shredded documents were coming together,
Speaker 1: the codes were getting cracked, and NATO was closing in.
Speaker 6: And so they waited until I came back to Germany
Speaker 6: for the anniversary of my mother.
Speaker 1: He means his mom's birthday. It was July thirty first,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three. Seventy German agents hid around Rupp's parents'
Speaker 1: house as Rup and his wife and Christine arrived to celebrate.
Speaker 1: They were both arrested.
Speaker 5: What happened to you once you were caught, Well, i'ment
Speaker 5: to prison.
Speaker 1: Happy birthday, mom, I'm going to prison. Ryaner And and
Speaker 1: Christine Rupp were charged for their crimes, and they each
Speaker 1: faced life in prison.
Speaker 5: It was not easy.
Speaker 1: And Christine was allowed to be home with the Rupp's
Speaker 1: children as she awaited trial, but he would await his
Speaker 1: fate in a prison cell. Rhyiner Rupp would later say
Speaker 1: that in a way he was glad the jig was up.
Speaker 1: He didn't want his kids somehow caught up in his
Speaker 1: double life. Eventually, and Christine Rupp was found guilty of
Speaker 1: a betting treason, but when the judge considered her sentence,
Speaker 1: he noted that she was caring for her children and
Speaker 1: that the damage she did to the West was ultimately
Speaker 1: not that severe. She was given a twenty two month
Speaker 1: suspended sentence. The judge would not be so lenient with
Speaker 1: Rhiner Rupp.
Speaker 6: I was sentenced to.
Speaker 5: Twelve years.
Speaker 1: Eventually twelve years. The judge said that Reiner rupps espionage
Speaker 1: created a danger of particularly grave disadvantage for Western Germany.
Speaker 1: He said, if the Cold War hadn't ended, he would
Speaker 1: have sentenced him to life. So Briner Rupp began his
Speaker 1: twelve year prison sentence, and it's then that he and
Speaker 1: his handlers immediately got to work on a pr campaign,
Speaker 1: a campaign designed to enlist public support in getting RUP's
Speaker 1: sentence reduced. Among other things, they told the story of
Speaker 1: Reiner Rupp's involvement with Able Archer eighty three, a little
Speaker 1: known nuclear near miss. One of his principal advocates was
Speaker 1: a guy named Werner Grossman, the former deputy head of
Speaker 1: the STAZI aka Rupp's boss. He said that back in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 7: He said the KJB was convinced that there's gonna be
Speaker 7: an attack.
Speaker 1: That's the German Spy Museum's Florian Schimakowski. Grossman's account was credible.
Speaker 1: He was, after all, a big dog in the STAZI,
Speaker 1: the KGB's most trusted intelligence ally, and he was trying
Speaker 1: to use RUP's insider NATO intelligence to diffuse all the tension.
Speaker 1: But he said the KGB was so paranoid he couldn't
Speaker 1: get them to see reason.
Speaker 7: When I'm telling a fisherman that there are no fish
Speaker 7: in the pond and they should actually stop fishing, but
Speaker 7: the KJB didn't do it. They just were very, very nervous.
Speaker 7: So they actually, from from their point of view, it
Speaker 7: was very dangerous.
Speaker 1: So dangerous that during NATO's annual Able Archer exercise, the
Speaker 1: Soviets were utterly convinced that the time for a nuclear
Speaker 1: attack had finally arrived.
Speaker 7: And he said that the Russens were actually responding to
Speaker 7: the whole situation at that time in an active way
Speaker 7: and not in a reactive way. So he said, from
Speaker 7: what they know, the Soviet Union was preparing to strike.
Speaker 1: Grossman backed up the story that at the precise moment
Speaker 1: the Soviets were convinced and attack was imminent, rain Or
Speaker 1: Rupp sent a coded message from a calculator, a message
Speaker 1: that may have saved the world.
Speaker 7: Grossmann is convinced that Rubb played the whole part, a
Speaker 7: huge part in that in calming the KJB down.
Speaker 1: Grossman's claim was this, Yeah, Rupp was technically a trader
Speaker 1: to West Germany, but his espionage actually wound up saving
Speaker 1: West Germany, along with the rest of the world, from
Speaker 1: the catastrophe of nuclear war.
Speaker 7: He was not spying to harm anybody, buddy, and he
Speaker 7: was never spying actually to prepare a Soviet attack. And
Speaker 7: that's quite without a doubt. He was always spying to
Speaker 7: prevent war from happening.
Speaker 1: It was a sexy story and a very convenient one.
Speaker 1: Maybe it could get Rupp's sentence reduced. Petitions began to
Speaker 1: circulate advocating for Rhiner RUP's release. Even the winner of
Speaker 1: the German Peace Prize appealed on RUP's behalf and eventually
Speaker 1: it worked.
Speaker 6: So in the end, the political situation kind of I think,
Speaker 6: softened up so that I was released after seven years
Speaker 6: in jail.
Speaker 1: In July of two thousand, Rhiner Up was released from
Speaker 1: prison five years early. He reunited with his wife. They're
Speaker 1: still together to this day, living a long and by
Speaker 1: all accounts, happy life in Germany.
Speaker 7: But of course you have to keep in mind it's
Speaker 7: hard to actually figure out if everything is one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Two thanks to them.
Speaker 8: For example, Rhiner Rupp can say, well, look, we help
Speaker 8: preserve the peace. Actually you should thank because we helped
Speaker 8: you stop a nuclear war.
Speaker 1: This is Douglas Salvage, an historian and probably the world's
Speaker 1: foremost expert on the Stazi. Douglas is one of many
Speaker 1: historians who aren't really buying what the Stazi are selling.
Speaker 1: If you catch my meaning, I'm saying he thinks it's bullshit.
Speaker 8: Now, there are a couple of problems with this. First
Speaker 8: of all, there's a database of basically incoming intelligence reports,
Speaker 8: including black writer. Rupp is sending, we can use this
Speaker 8: and for the year that we're talking about nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 8: It's a very good database of incoming information for Eastrum
Speaker 8: and foreign intelligence. I checked and there's like no new
Speaker 8: incoming intelligence regarding nuclear weapons from Rupp before November of
Speaker 8: nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: Not only that, there was no record in the archive
Speaker 1: of Rupp's emergency calculator message during Able Archer. All we
Speaker 1: have is the word of Rupp and the Stazi.
Speaker 8: I suppose it's possibly gave a film called of role
Speaker 8: for Maybe there's something they forgot to record. I don't
Speaker 8: think that's the case. I won't say he's intentionally aligned.
Speaker 8: He might just be mistaken, or he might remember it
Speaker 8: a certain way.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Doug, he seems pretty sure.
Speaker 6: Do you remember sending a message I remember sending.
Speaker 5: At the time of Abe Lacha. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the time ryaner Rupp began telling his story, Oleg
Speaker 1: Gordievski had already published a couple of books where he
Speaker 1: told his able larger story. It all begs the question
Speaker 1: did Rhiner Rupp hear about Olegg's account and see an
Speaker 1: opportunity to rehabilitate his own image by manufacturing a corroboration.
Speaker 8: I am a firm believer, and the idea that you
Speaker 8: can't say just because you haven't found the evidence or
Speaker 8: the evidence doesn't exist, that it disproves something. So I'm
Speaker 8: not going to say that it disproves that there was
Speaker 8: this heightened sense of thread, or the absence of evidence
Speaker 8: disproves that you Rubb played this important role. Maybe it's
Speaker 8: even true, but there's no other supporting evidence that I've
Speaker 8: found nothing. Now, if it turns out someday, if I'm
Speaker 8: going to through the Stasi files or some book where
Speaker 8: they're talking about the messages they sent to Moscow and
Speaker 8: I find something different than I've change my opinion. But
Speaker 8: I think this has all been overplayed.
Speaker 1: Rubb had a motive. He wanted to shorten his prison sentence,
Speaker 1: and he had the opportunity because he could basically just
Speaker 1: piggyback on the story Gordievsky was already telling. Gordievsky also
Speaker 1: had a motive. He needed to get his family out
Speaker 1: of the Soviet Union, and coincidentally, neither of them have
Speaker 1: been able to produce the key evidence supporting their able
Speaker 1: Archer heroics. Gordievski he was never able to produce a
Speaker 1: copy of the flash telegram. He says he received from
Speaker 1: the KGB on November eighth or ninth, the one that
Speaker 1: said the countdown to a nuclear strike had begun under
Speaker 1: cover of Able Archer. And there is no record of
Speaker 1: Rupp's emergency message either, which means we've found ourselves in
Speaker 1: quite the pickle. Here's a quick recap this Able Archer
Speaker 1: war scare story that the West has finally accepted. There's
Speaker 1: no record of it in Eastern Bloc archives, and the
Speaker 1: two main sources of the story, well, they have pretty
Speaker 1: strong motives to lie and they have no proof. Plus,
Speaker 1: Soviet leaders were pretty into Cold War performance, so maybe
Speaker 1: the propaganda theory was right all along. But Nate Jones
Speaker 1: is still working to prove the opposite. And there's still
Speaker 1: a key document that hasn't been declassified, one that might
Speaker 1: prove Able Archer was a big deal. Next time on Snaffoo.
Speaker 8: It went through the mail slit, so there's kind of
Speaker 8: a thud onto the floor that was about one hundred
Speaker 8: pages thick with government and dress government stamps.
Speaker 1: So I knew it might be good. My heart started
Speaker 1: beating a little bit. Snaffoo is a production of iHeartRadio, Film,
Speaker 1: Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with
Speaker 1: Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Golan Papelka,
Speaker 1: Mike Falbo, Andy Chubb, and Whitney Donaldson. Our lead producers
Speaker 1: are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our producer is Carl Nellis,
Speaker 1: Associate producer Torry Smith. Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis,
Speaker 1: and so I can say any damn thing I want.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by Carl Nellis and Sarah Joyner,
Speaker 1: with additional writing from me Elliott Kalin and Whitney Donaldson.
Speaker 1: Olivia Kenny is our production assistant. Our creative executive is
Speaker 1: Brett Harris. Additional research and fact checking by Charles Richter,
Speaker 1: Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Original music and
Speaker 1: sound design by Dan Rosatto. Additional editing from Ben Chug.
Speaker 1: Some archival audio in this episode originally appeared in Taylor
Speaker 1: Downing's fantastic film nineteen eighty three, The Brink of Apocalypse.
Speaker 1: Thank you, mister Downing for permission to use it. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Alison Cohen and Matt Aisenstadt.