WEBVTT - 7. Where the Mind Starts to Melt 0:00:04.760 --> 0:00:06.800 Okay, stop me if you've heard this one. What do 0:00:06.840 --> 0:00:09.000 you get when the former head of the KGB and 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:12.480 the former head of the CIA walk into a funeral. 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:15.560 Hi atop the Kremlin to night a Soviet flag at 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:19.439 half staff, a symbol of mourning for Leonide ilitch Reshnev. 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:22.759 Reshnev will be laid to rest in Red Square beside 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:23.639 the Kremlin wall. 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:27.280 They came to Red Square today to bete Reshnev, and 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:32.040 not particularly to praise him. So it is when dictators die. 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:36.760 Okay, so it's not actually a joke. It's nineteen eighty two, Moscow, 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:41.040 almost two years before able archer, former Soviet leader and 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:44.720 now dead corpse leon At Brezhnev is being carried in 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:48.720 an open coffin procession through Red Square and. 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:52.640 His companions and friends and rivals watched their last glimpse. 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.600 Software Heads of state from across the world flocked to 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:58.440 Moscow to attend the funeral. It was the ultimate Cold 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:01.680 War invitation. I mean, who's who of who might press 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:04.720 the button? Western leaders are there to pay their respects 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:08.320 to their longtime adversary leon At Brezhnev, but also there 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:13.440 to meet their new one, Yuri and drop off CenTra, 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:19.399 and drop Off delivers Brezhnev's eulogy, which is really more 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:26.119 of an unofficial inaugural address. And afterward and drop Off, 0:01:26.200 --> 0:01:28.720 the former head of the KGB, takes a private meeting 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:31.560 with the former head of the CIA and now US 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:34.480 Vice President George Bush Senior. 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:39.080 And Andropov says some pretty extraordinary things. 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:41.840 This is Simon Miles, cold War historian. 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:45.680 He says to Bush, look, you and I both know 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:51.760 that we need to say things for public consumption in 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:59.080 our countries that we don't necessarily meet, primarily mean things 0:01:59.120 --> 0:01:59.919 about one another. 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:02.400 Is this en coded language? 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:05.880 Says this explicitly, and then he goes on to say, 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:10.040 you know, we have the responsibility as leaders of the 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:15.560 two nuclear armed superpowers to understand the difference between when 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.240 I'm just saying nasty things about you because I've got 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:22.640 to because that's what you do it parades, and when 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:26.680 you are actually threatening me. 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:30.600 And drop Off is essentially saying, I know that Reagan 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:32.560 will talk shit about me, and you know that I 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:35.480 will talk shit about him, but we both need to 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:38.720 know that sometimes it's just for show. 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:46.120 Two leaders reminding one another about the nature of the 0:02:46.160 --> 0:02:49.000 Cold War, that it is this kind of two level 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:52.040 game where you have your public consumption and then you 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:53.080 have your policy. 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:57.519 Does this mean that and drop Off knew the entire 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:01.840 time that Reagan's speeches were only speeches es Does it 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:09.320 mean the reaction to Able Archer was just theater. So 0:03:09.440 --> 0:03:12.200 far this season, we've talked about how Reagan's tough guy 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:15.480 rhetoric pushed the Soviets to the brink, and the aggressive 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:19.000 impulses of an evil empire. How the Soviets became blinded 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:21.800 by their own paranoia and sent their spies looking for 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:23.760 signs of an impending attack. 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:26.480 And count the number of lights on in the Pentagon 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:26.919 at night. 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:30.600 How the US sent spyplanes to poke the Soviet bear. 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:34.160 Putting the fear of God like literally into the Soviets. 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:37.400 How the Soviets were so jumpy they shot down a 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:38.480 commercial plane. 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:42.520 I bought a Korean jumber jip that drifted into Soviet territory. 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:46.440 How the Soviets deployed a faulty missile detection system that 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:48.440 tested one man's resolve. 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:51.240 He said it was like sitting in a frying pan. 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:55.040 How the Soviets believed that an attack was actually happening 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:58.560 during Able Archer and so they put their nuclear arsenal 0:03:58.640 --> 0:03:59.720 on a hair trigger. 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:01.800 US wasn't too much moment. 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:05.680 And after all that, how the CIA was convinced that 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:10.920 the whole snaffoo was really no big deal. It's just propaganda, 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:15.280 until one man, Lieutenant General Leonard Breudes, begged the intelligence 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:19.000 community to take Able Archer seriously. You might want to 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:21.520 look into this because it's too important not to. And 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:24.920 how finally, after decades of denial, the intelligence community had 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:28.800 come to believe that they had made grave errors and 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:32.279 that Able Archer truly was a nuclear near miss. 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:35.240 I think it was a serious matter. It deserves more 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:36.640 attention than it's received. 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:41.760 But what if that version of the story is all wrong? 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.400 What if the Able Archer war scare really was just 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:50.040 an act inside an act Rapp did an even bigger 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.719 act man if only Russia had some sort of nesting 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:56.800 folkloric toy that we could use as a metaphor here. 0:04:57.120 --> 0:05:00.920 Oh well, so, once again, what do you get when 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:02.880 the former head of the KGB and the former head 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:06.920 of the CIA walk into a funeral? You get mine 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:09.560 games of a nuclear proportion? 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:12.320 Or do you. 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:18.640 I'm ed Helms and this is Snafu? A podcast about 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.800 history's greatest screw ups. On season one, we're telling you 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:27.040 the story of a snafu that is gigantic, absurd, and terrifying. 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:30.840 Able Archer eighty three, the nineteen eighty three NATO military 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:35.880 exercise that almost led to a real nuclear war? Or 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:42.159 did it? This episode, we're pulling apart the fabric of 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:45.760 the able Archer story and asking the question, what if 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:47.920 we've got this story all wrong. 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:56.200 I went looking for these documents not with a mind 0:05:56.360 --> 0:06:00.120 to disproving the able Archer thesis, but rather just to 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:03.080 get even more insight on this amazing Cold War story. 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:07.080 It was twenty fourteen. Historian Simon Miles, a young researcher 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:10.039 with a nose for Cold War mysteries, caught a severe 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:12.120 case of the able Archer bug. 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:16.280 I was excited to try to find even more of 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:20.320 the picture on how we all almost perished. 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:23.120 His plan was to hit the archives in order to 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:26.599 figure out what the Soviets were actually thinking during Able 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:31.440 Archer KGB archives in Moscow were still locked down, but 0:06:31.560 --> 0:06:35.000 Simon could look in the archives of former Soviet allies 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:38.360 where they had helped the Soviets with Operation Ryan. That 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:41.560 proverbial tic tac toe Board of Death used to gauge 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:44.359 whether the US was preparing for a nuclear attack. 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:50.000 In the archives of some of those former Allied states 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:54.520 who were participants in Project Rion, who were feeding information 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:58.800 into this thing, we actually have amazing insight into what's 0:06:58.839 --> 0:06:59.240 going on. 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:01.919 The first leg of his journey takes him to the 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:06.480 Czech Republic, former Soviet state, czech Isslovakia, where he starts 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:10.160 to dig into the files of the STB, the Czechoslovakian 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:11.600 secret police. 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:14.679 In Prague, right by the river, in this pretty sort 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:19.520 of staid reading room. It's very sort of communist chic 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:23.320 because it was, you know, an official STV facility, so 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:26.640 it's a very sort of atmospheric place to work. 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:31.840 So Simon walks into the communist chic archive. Imagine his excitement, right, 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:34.040 He's going to pull back the iron curtain and find 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:37.280 all the frantic messages the Soviets were sending back and forth, 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:39.840 the flash telegrams and panicked alerts. 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:43.320 I remember it pretty well actually, because the archive staff, 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:46.320 who were all very very young, we're having a party, 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:48.600 and then kind of behind these doors you can hear 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:50.560 laughing and classes clinking. 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:55.360 Hey, archivists like to party too, right and check archivists. 0:07:55.360 --> 0:08:03.240 Oh my god, don't get me started anyway, somehow, ignoring 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:05.239 the chance to attend the greatest party of his life, 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:08.520 Simon takes a seat at a big table and begins 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:09.240 to dig in. 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:16.440 And so I got my hands on a exercise report 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:21.320 on the entire Autumn Forge series of exercises. And you know, 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:23.160 when they give that to you, you think, oh, wow, 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:26.640 I mean, this is it. This is the document. Let's 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:29.040 see how close we all got to blowing ourselves up. 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:31.880 Simon opens the folder and begins scanning. 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:36.280 I am reading through this Booklet you know, it's got 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:40.360 these green kind of card paper covers, and you know, 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:44.600 things are tracking with what I knew about what had happened, 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:47.000 and in real granular detail, I should say. 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:50.080 It has the full accounting of Autumn Forge eighty three, 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:53.600 the nineteen thousand troops flying into West Germany under complete 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:58.439 radio silence, the massive rehearsal for war, all leading up 0:08:58.480 --> 0:08:59.480 to the final act. 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:03.120 And then I get to the able Archer piece. And 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:05.040 the first thing that strikes me is how short it is. 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:13.880 So the conversation about able Archer is barely a page long. 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:18.200 When I'm thinking to myself, wow, this is really really weird. 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:19.640 Well, if this is. 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:23.480 A big deal, yeah, this should be we should have 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:27.600 a lot of the play by play here. Did these 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:28.839 guys miss it? 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:31.439 Spoiler alert? They did not miss it. 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:35.439 What it does not talk about is any sense that 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:38.559 there was heightened danger, that there was sort of something 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:42.479 more pernicious afoot behind what the NATO and the Americans 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:47.800 were doing. Rather, it traces, with a striking degree of accuracy, 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:51.800 exactly what was happening and why it was being done. 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:58.040 And that's it. That's it. No panic that Able Archer 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:01.680 was an insidious cover for a re nuclear attack, just 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:05.120 an accurate account of a routine NATO nuclear exercise, with 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:08.800 an apparent recognition that it was all simply an enormously 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:14.920 violent game of let's pretend. So what Simon discovered in 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:18.280 that archive wild Czech historians were next door sipping champagne 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:22.280 and making flirty remarks about Franz Kafka, was that, according 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:25.920 to the East, there was nothing unusual about Able Archer 0:10:25.960 --> 0:10:27.080 eighty three at all. 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:36.800 And so that didn't sort of change my mind, but 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:39.240 it made me start asking some really hard questions. 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:42.680 It wasn't what Simon was expecting, but maybe the Czechs 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:45.840 were just out of the loop. Maybe the Russians were like, nah, 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:48.000 why bother filling them in? They never invite us to 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:51.640 their cool archive parties. But the East Germans, on the 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:54.600 other hand, they went together like Sonny and Cher, chocolate 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:56.599 and peanut butter. If the Soviets were scared of a 0:10:56.640 --> 0:11:00.200 nuclear attack during Able Archer, the East Germans would know, Oh, 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:04.520 so Simon headed to Germany. 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:07.760 The East German military records are all in a beautiful 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:11.400 town in Baden Wurtenberg called Freiberg and Breisgau. They're in 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:14.240 a suburban area next to a kind of the German 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:16.560 equivalent of home depot, across the street from a brothel. 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:21.680 But it's a phenomenal place to work, naturally, And I 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:25.640 start looking through all of these materials, and here again 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:30.320 we have access to briefings and intelligence reports on what 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:34.040 is happening. And the most important one I think comes 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:37.440 to the desk of the East German Defense Minister, and 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:41.080 it is a report on the impending Able Archer exercise. 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:44.920 It also talks with pretty impressive accuracy about what is 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:46.040 going to happen. 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:49.720 And it actually says explicitly. 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:54.079 That none of this means that the West sort of 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:58.280 anticipates a heightened threat of war or anything like that. 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:03.079 The big messages able archer another phase of Autumn forge. 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:06.280 Really basically there's nothing to see here. 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:13.319 Simon begins to pour over transcripts of interviews with Soviet officials. 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:17.880 And what I'm reading from these people who would be 0:12:18.000 --> 0:12:21.160 in the know by virtue of their positions, they're saying 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:22.920 that we're not at the brink from apocalypse. 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:25.640 So on the one hand, we have Leonard Brud's account 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:29.000 of the Soviet Air Force loading nuclear weapons onto planes 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:33.120 and standing by on high alert, and on the other hand, 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:36.400 the Soviet records show nothing. 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:41.600 It's very possible that US intelligence saw those signs. It's 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:44.760 very possible that leaders in the US intelligence community, the 0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:48.839 US military, maybe even in the US political system drew 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:50.040 those conclusions. 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:51.880 But it's still. 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:54.480 Possible that they were all entirely wrong. 0:12:55.320 --> 0:13:00.280 What so, no misinterpreted NATO messages, no nuclear near miss. 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:05.000 I think in order to make those claims, we really 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:08.559 need a strong piece of evidence from the Eastern Block, 0:13:08.600 --> 0:13:10.920 from the other side of the Iron Curtain, and that 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:15.560 doesn't exist. So now I've kind of got a problem 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:19.760 on my hands. If you will, because we have this 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:25.480 universally almost accepted story about a near miss with nuclear war, 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:29.079 and I've got this body of evidence that's saying the opposite. 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:34.280 What the hell happened here? If the Soviets were as 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:37.000 terrified as we thought, with the nukes on planes and 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:40.319 the tic TAC toe board and the readiness to end 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:43.120 life on Earth, why was there no record of it 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:46.240 in Eastern documents? Simon decided to look at all the 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:48.880 evidence side by side and try to figure out where 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:51.600 this story, what he came to believe was a myth, 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:53.040 came from. 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:58.120 I was funneling down from what's commonly presented as sort 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:02.000 of this overwhelming body of evidence. Dozens and dozens and 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:06.199 dozens of sources are saying this, well, really, dozens and 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:10.559 dozens and dozens of sources are repeating this one pretty 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:14.040 sketchy claim by a Soviet double agent. 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:17.520 The double agent with the sketchy claim, you already know 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:20.040 him well, Oleg Gordievsky. 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:23.880 The Americans exercise may be preparation to a sudden new 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:25.920 play attack, But what. 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:30.600 Reason would Gordievsky have to lie about able archer. I'm 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:38.000 so glad you asked. It's nineteen eighty five. The world 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:41.280 is in slack jawed wonder at Sylvester Stallone's pex in 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:44.960 both Rocky four and Rambo two. And it's been a 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:48.000 year and a half since Oleg Gordievski met with his 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:51.080 MI six handler warning that the United States and the 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:55.760 Soviet Union were on the precipice of nuclear war. Since 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:58.960 Able Archer eighty three, Oleg has further risen in the 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:02.880 KGB ranks. He has just been appointed the Chief Resident 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:05.920 in London, with even greater access to the inner workings 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:11.720 of the KGB. He's six's prized source their biggest Cold 0:15:11.720 --> 0:15:16.960 War accomplishment. And then one day Gordievski gets a telegram 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:21.720 from the Kremlin. It says, dearest Comrade Gordievski, please return 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:28.360 to Moscow immediately. Gordievsky and his six handlers knew that 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:32.160 returning home to Moscow was risky, but to defy the 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:36.320 order meant ending his KGB career just when it was 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:42.240 getting good, He decided to go. Gordievski reviewed his escape 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:45.920 plan with his six handlers. He would be extracted if 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:51.640 things went south. He kissed his wife and two daughters goodbye, 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:54.640 and boarded a plane for the Soviet Union. When he 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:58.440 arrived at his apartment in Moscow, the dead bolt was locked. 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:01.480 He never locked to the dead bolt, didn't even have 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:04.680 a key for it. At that moment, all that Gordievsky 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:08.480 knew he had been found out because, as it turns out, 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:12.440 there was a mole in the CIA. The CIA knew 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:13.280 it had a trader. 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:16.560 Asked why he did what he did, Aims said money 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:18.000 was his main motivation. 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:22.320 That's the case you bill runs as it was abregistration, 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:27.080 and yes, they decided to play contain mouse game with me. 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.000 The KGB knew they were compromised by a double agent, 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:34.760 and they suspected it was Gordievski, but they didn't know 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:39.280 it was him for sure, not yet. One day, they 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:41.600 scooped him up and drove him to a bungalow. They 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:46.000 spiked his drink and interrogated him for hours. Gordievski was 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:50.400 in a daze, hallucinating. He tried to tell himself to deny, deny, deny, 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:53.320 but he wasn't really aware of what he was saying. 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:59.880 After five hours, he blacked out. To this day, he 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:03.440 still doesn't remember what happened in that room. Meanwhile, the 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:06.959 KGB had retrieved Gordievsky's wife and two daughters from London, 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:09.440 and they were now on their way back to Moscow. 0:17:10.160 --> 0:17:13.560 Grdioevsky was released and placed under twenty four hour surveillance. 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:17.560 I started to look on tho there was behind me. 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:23.200 It was very intimidating. During the Cold War, everybody who 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:25.879 was in touch was the foot of the Intelligence Service, 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:30.679 the service Union, each officer, all the court, and all 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:32.680 were shot all. 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:37.880 Gordievski would later describe this moment in his life as 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:42.720 utterly hopeless. He was thinking, instead of even trying to escape, 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:45.560 he might as well just give up, wait for the 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:48.639 bullet in the back of his neck. But his days 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:54.919 passed constantly looking over his shoulder. Gordievski somehow found his resolve. 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:59.959 And then they started to preparation to the game. 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.080 But if he had any chance of survival, he'd need 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:09.959 to leave alone, leave his family behind. There was no 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:12.840 time to second guess his decision. Gordievski was in a 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:15.680 race against the clock. Each day he failed to get 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:17.800 out of the Soviet Union was another day for the 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:21.919 KGB to confirm his identity as their traitorous double agent. 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:27.440 Gordievsky activated his escape plan on a Tuesday, at seven 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:30.760 thirty pm, Gordievski stood under a lamppost outside a bread 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:34.880 shop near Kievsky metro station. He carried a plastic Safeway 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:38.240 bag with a giant red s. He wore a peaked 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:41.880 cap a military hat. It was a signal to six 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:45.560 that he needed to be extracted. Get me the fuck 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:49.600 out of here. A few minutes later, Gordievsky watched a 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:52.720 man in gray trousers remove a green bag from his pocket, 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:57.600 remove a chocolate Mars bar, and begin eating it. This 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:02.159 seemingly unassuming gray trousered candy barmunching dude was an MI 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:07.119 sixter agent, signaling to Gordievski that his request had been recognized. 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:11.520 This was a scheme. It meant I would be picked 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:15.960 up on Saturday the same week at two. 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:22.880 O'clock, which meant by Saturday at two pm. Gordievsky had 0:19:22.880 --> 0:19:25.800 to get himself to the pickup point, a boulder by 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:28.080 the side of the road in the countryside near the 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.440 Finish border, and he had to do it without being 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:38.040 detected by the KGB. On Friday, July nineteenth, Gordievsky did 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:41.159 the hardest thing he'd ever have to do. He packed 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:43.720 his bags and said goodbye to his family. 0:19:44.560 --> 0:19:49.640 I shook up the Currells Court trained to Lenongrad. 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:54.040 Gordioevsky had shaken the kgbtail for now, but they could 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:57.200 catch up at any moment. On the overnight train to Leningrad, 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:01.320 Gordioewski settled into his top bunk and took to sedatives 0:20:01.640 --> 0:20:07.040 because you know, he was feeling a little anxious. Apparently, 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:10.080 the sedatives knocked him out so hard that when the 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:12.960 train abruptly stopped, he rolled right off the top bunk 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:16.399 and bashed his head. Now blood was dripping down his face, 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:20.879 which makes it that much harder to blend in. From 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:24.119 Lennon station, Gordievsky hopped on a different train than a bus. 0:20:24.640 --> 0:20:28.400 The bus approached the rendezvous point, the bus stopped, Gordievsky 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:31.360 got off. He looked at his watch and was ten 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.880 thirty four hours before six was supposed to pick him up. 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:38.520 What do you do? Dive into the shadows and wait right, 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:42.119 Just sit tight. The cavalry is almost there. All you 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:46.240 gotta do is just keep your head down. But that's 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:50.320 not our boyo Leg. Instead of hiding in the underbrush 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:53.920 and patiently waiting for six to arrive, as he certainly 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:58.399 should have done. Gordievsky made the truly insane decision to 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:02.959 hitchhike to the town of which is sixteen miles away, 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:06.040 so that he could have a drink at the local bar. 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:10.680 After downing a beer manned a chicken leg, he started 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:15.680 running the sixteen miles back to the rendezvous point in Corduroys. 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:18.600 Even if I wanted to, I could not make this 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:22.640 shit up. Evidently, he got tired of running before completing 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:25.399 his half marathon in Corduroys and decided to hitchhike the 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:28.440 rest of the way. Kordiewski stuck his thumb out the 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:31.840 car pulled over. Luckily it was not a KGB officer, 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:34.880 and Gordievski enjoyed the ride back to the rendezvous point. 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:37.880 As they approached the boulder by the side of the road, 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:41.639 literally in the middle of nowhere, Gordiewski asked the driver 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:45.040 to let him out here please and thank you, ostensibly 0:21:45.480 --> 0:21:49.920 for a booty call, which sounds bonkers, but apparently the 0:21:50.040 --> 0:21:53.359 driver was just like, oh yeah, classic countryside boulder hide 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:57.240 and hanky panky, go for it, buddy. Kordiewski climbed into 0:21:57.240 --> 0:22:00.439 the underbrush, pulled out a bottle of beer, from his 0:22:00.520 --> 0:22:03.560 pocket that he had somehow carried with him during his run, 0:22:04.359 --> 0:22:07.000 and enjoyed it while he waited for him. I six 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:11.160 to retrieve him. And here's the best part. He got 0:22:11.200 --> 0:22:11.840 away with it. 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:22.159 About thirty miles before the border. I was hiding in 0:22:22.240 --> 0:22:25.920 the woods at an appointed time, which was two o'clock 0:22:26.800 --> 0:22:31.280 to British cars stopped just exactly where I was lying. 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:34.720 You can still hear the wonder in his voice. This 0:22:34.840 --> 0:22:37.080 one in a million miracle had happened. 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:41.080 I jumped into the boots of the car and they 0:22:41.160 --> 0:22:42.639 went to the border. 0:22:46.160 --> 0:22:49.800 Gordioevsky's brush with death was even closer than he knew. 0:22:50.520 --> 0:22:53.760 He would later learn the KGB had confirmed his identity 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:57.399 as the double agent the week before he escaped. To 0:22:57.440 --> 0:23:00.000 this day, we still don't know why they waited to pound, 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:05.919 but they did, and after a miraculous and somewhat claustrophobic escape, 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:08.919 he was now on his way to building a new life. 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:19.520 A former KGB spy defected to England. Except it wasn't 0:23:19.520 --> 0:23:22.879 over for Gordievski. Sure he was free, he escaped the 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:27.119 Soviet Union, but he was alone. His wife and his 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:30.719 children were still trapped back in Moscow and he needed 0:23:30.720 --> 0:23:40.840 to get them out commence Phase two Operation Reagan. After 0:23:40.880 --> 0:23:44.879 his escape, Gordievsky's identity was officially revealed. He was safe 0:23:44.880 --> 0:23:47.240 in the UK. There was no reason to hide. He 0:23:47.280 --> 0:23:49.600 wrote books about his spying and what did he say? 0:23:50.040 --> 0:23:52.480 Oh yeah, back in nineteen eighty three, the world almost 0:23:52.560 --> 0:23:55.639 blew up. Not trying to brag, but kind of helped 0:23:55.640 --> 0:23:57.920 cool things down a little, No, biggie, just what any 0:23:57.960 --> 0:24:01.080 super cool double agent, super spy would have done. That's 0:24:01.119 --> 0:24:05.040 when Reagan finally learned who his valuable British source was. 0:24:06.400 --> 0:24:09.400 I'm afraiden and I met George Bush. 0:24:09.720 --> 0:24:12.960 On July twenty first, nineteen eighty seven. Oleg Gordievsky was 0:24:13.000 --> 0:24:15.840 invited for a meeting with Ronald Reagan and then Vice 0:24:15.920 --> 0:24:19.359 President George H. W. Bush at the White House. I 0:24:19.359 --> 0:24:22.840 guess Nancy's astrologer said, Olegg was chill. Yeah, no, I'm 0:24:22.840 --> 0:24:25.920 not letting that go. Reagan's diary that day talked about 0:24:25.960 --> 0:24:29.280 attending an event with Clint Eastwood and getting his contact 0:24:29.359 --> 0:24:34.520 lenses cleaned. Then he writes, forgot this morning had a 0:24:34.560 --> 0:24:39.320 meeting with Colonel Oleg Gordievski, the Soviet KGB officer who 0:24:39.359 --> 0:24:40.520 defected to England. 0:24:41.200 --> 0:24:45.800 Did Reagan ever talk to you about your reports? No, 0:24:46.000 --> 0:24:50.199 the Reagan didn't talk to me about my reports, but 0:24:50.400 --> 0:24:59.560 he short good knowledge how me and my significance. But 0:24:59.680 --> 0:25:01.680 he was not such a brainy man. 0:25:02.200 --> 0:25:04.119 Okay, don't know why you had to throw that burn 0:25:04.160 --> 0:25:08.159 in there, as Gordievsky remembers that their conversation was a 0:25:08.160 --> 0:25:11.560