Speaker 1: Hey there, it's your host ed helms.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted
Speaker 1: to remind you that my brand new book is coming
Speaker 1: out on April twenty ninth. It's called Snaffo, The Definitive
Speaker 1: Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups, and you can pre
Speaker 1: order it right now at snafudashbook dot com. Trust me,
Speaker 1: if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
Speaker 1: It's got all the wild disasters spectacular face plants we
Speaker 1: just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker.
Speaker 1: I am also going on tour to celebrate that's right.
Speaker 1: I'm coming to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago,
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and my hometown Los Angeles. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q
Speaker 1: and A or dramatically read about a kiddie cat getting
Speaker 1: turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head
Speaker 1: to Snaffo dashbook dot com to pre order the book
Speaker 1: and check out all the tour details and day, or
Speaker 1: just click the link in the show notes that'll work too.
Speaker 1: Did you ever watch a movie as a kid and
Speaker 1: convince yourself that it was real that its outlandish premise
Speaker 1: could possibly come true. I know I did, and for me,
Speaker 1: one of those movies was Wargames.
Speaker 3: Great to meet you, Great to meet you too.
Speaker 1: I'm ed by the way. Yeah that's Matthew Broadrick. He's
Speaker 1: a national treasure and also the star of Wargames, a
Speaker 1: movie about an almost accidental nuclear war that I watched
Speaker 1: maybe one hundred times as a kid, came out in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, and it was Matthew's breakout role.
Speaker 4: The fact that I had gotten the lead of a
Speaker 4: you know, studio movie was incredible, Yeah, absolutely incredible.
Speaker 1: His character was a hacker, a tech genius. David Lightman
Speaker 1: was a moister at computer games, and Matthew was great
Speaker 1: in it. I mean, obviously, right, he's an incredible actor.
Speaker 4: But wait, now do I adjust my volume? Can you speak?
Speaker 1: You guys talking talking talking? Say?
Speaker 5: Gee?
Speaker 4: No, nodding because I want to now pretend that it's working. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 4: so it's perfect.
Speaker 1: Matthew Broderick is clearly not a tech genius in real life,
Speaker 1: but that's just further proof what a great actor he is.
Speaker 1: So in War Games, teenage hacker David Leitman tries to
Speaker 1: impress a girl at school, Jennifer, played by another eighties icon,
Speaker 1: Ali Sheety. Along the way, he accidentally hacks into a
Speaker 1: supercomputer that the US is using to game out World
Speaker 1: War three scenarios, hence wargamell.
Speaker 3: How about global thermallear.
Speaker 1: It gets misinterpreted as a real nuclear attack and almost
Speaker 1: starts World War three?
Speaker 6: Launch detiction.
Speaker 1: We have a story launch detction.
Speaker 7: Terrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I am not charmed by that. I am terrified
Speaker 1: by that. When I was nine years old, wargames really
Speaker 1: captured my imagination in the sense that I became utterly
Speaker 1: convinced it was real. I even had a breakdown at
Speaker 1: summer camp because of it. All the other kids were
Speaker 1: having a grand old time. Meanwhile, I was just terrified
Speaker 1: that at any moment we'd all die in a fiery
Speaker 1: nuclear armageddon. Yeah, I guess I was a bit of
Speaker 1: a wet blanket while everyone else was just trying to
Speaker 1: get pumped up for s'mores. So why am I talking
Speaker 1: to Matthew Broderick about wargames? After all, It's just a movie,
Speaker 1: an outlandish premise, a fantasy.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Eventually we all grow up and realize that movies aren't real.
Speaker 1: There are no accidental nuclear wars. Right, Well, my friends,
Speaker 1: imagine my surprise when I learned that the premise of
Speaker 1: Wargames was fucking real. Yeah, it came true only months
Speaker 1: after the movie's release. That's right. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three, a real life military exercise, a wargame,
Speaker 1: almost started an actual nuclear war, just like Wargames. This
Speaker 1: exercise that almost ended at all. It goes by the
Speaker 1: code name Able Archer eighty three, and that's what this
Speaker 1: show is about.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's an amazing story.
Speaker 7: I I'm surprised.
Speaker 8: I don't know about that, but I don't think I
Speaker 8: do know about it.
Speaker 1: Too bad they don't give out an oscar for best
Speaker 1: nuclear war prediction. The Wargames screenwriters would have been a
Speaker 1: shoe in. It's like kind of a perfect screenplay. I
Speaker 1: don't think they were too far off. When I first
Speaker 1: heard the story of Abel Archer eighty three, let's just
Speaker 1: say my childhood fears were instantly validated. Thinking back on
Speaker 1: that moment at summer camp, paralyzed by the fear that
Speaker 1: the outlandish plot of war Games would come true, camp
Speaker 1: counselors hovering around me, trying to console me, saying, come on, dude,
Speaker 1: it's just a movie. Let's go canoeing. Everything's gonna be fine. Well,
Speaker 1: looking back, I realize now it was not fine. It
Speaker 1: was so incredibly not fine. They were wrong and I
Speaker 1: was right. I'd just like to say, on behalf of
Speaker 1: nine year old me, I fucking told you so? Who
Speaker 1: That felt good? But vindication aside, Learning this story still
Speaker 1: leaves me a little unnerved, maybe even alarmed, Because if
Speaker 1: a military exercise almost caused a nuclear war in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three and nobody knew about it, what a complete
Speaker 1: and utter snaffoo. Snaffoo is a military term first used
Speaker 1: by soldiers in World War Two. It's an acronym snaffho.
Speaker 1: It stands for situation normal, all fucked up, meaning this
Speaker 1: is so fucked up. But then again, isn't it always?
Speaker 1: That's what this show is about. The gas, the disasters,
Speaker 1: history's greatest screw ups. This season the story of Able
Speaker 1: Archer eighty three. It's the ultimate Cold War mystery, a
Speaker 1: stew of espionage, paranoia, shady politics, and dangerous miscalculations. Oh
Speaker 1: and a lot of mind games. Put on your hazmat suits, listeners,
Speaker 1: I'm ed Elmes. Your host and this is Snaffo Able
Speaker 1: Archer eighty three.
Speaker 9: It's just this whole game of deception and count deception
Speaker 9: of who can you trust?
Speaker 5: Oh wait, he's preparing a sudden.
Speaker 10: I heard a young father saying, I love my little
Speaker 10: girls more than anything, and I would rather see my
Speaker 10: little girls die now than have them grow up under communism.
Speaker 3: Really, for the first time in my life, I felt
Speaker 3: like there could be nuclear war.
Speaker 9: It wasn't a question of would it happen, It was
Speaker 9: a question of when was it going to happen.
Speaker 1: We were preparing to fight armageddon.
Speaker 9: That's what we're.
Speaker 1: Told, That's what we believed.
Speaker 9: We were training to fight the end of the world.
Speaker 6: It was a week just like every other week. Abral
Speaker 6: Archer eighty three was not anything out of the ordinary.
Speaker 1: This is Jean Gay. He was a participant in the
Speaker 1: nineteen Able Archer wargame. Gene like a lot of men
Speaker 1: who participated in Able Archer that year recall it the
Speaker 1: same way, which is to say, they don't really recall
Speaker 1: much at all.
Speaker 2: Nothing to me from that exercise at the time. You know,
Speaker 2: jumped out.
Speaker 1: That's Colonel Spike Calendar and he says the same thing Nope,
Speaker 1: nothing of note to these men. That week in early
Speaker 1: November nineteen eighty three was just a week like any
Speaker 1: other week, just another week of standard military exercises, practicing
Speaker 1: how to fight the end of the world as one does.
Speaker 2: The whole purpose of able Archer was the emphasis on
Speaker 2: the practice of the nuclear weapons release for caizures.
Speaker 1: Able Archer was a NATO exercise in November of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three. The Able Archer players sat in a bunker
Speaker 1: in Belgium practicing how if it came to it, they'd
Speaker 1: fight a nuclear war against the Soviet Union. It's like
Speaker 1: a soccer team doing drills, but instead of training for
Speaker 1: a game, they're training for armageddon, which, like a soccer game,
Speaker 1: you can't use your hands because they got blown off.
Speaker 2: The whole idea was if you ever had to do it,
Speaker 2: you know you didn't want to do it for the
Speaker 2: first time.
Speaker 1: When Spike says do it, he's referring to the task
Speaker 1: of launching planet destroying weapons. It's an example of how
Speaker 1: military professionals are weirdly cavalier when they're talking about their work.
Speaker 1: It's kind of shocking how something so gnarly can sound
Speaker 1: so routine.
Speaker 2: How do you look at what the requirements truly are,
Speaker 2: you know, for those weapons systems and the numbers of them.
Speaker 2: So it would be a matter of being counting and
Speaker 2: in some respects if you have a Soviet division, what
Speaker 2: is the number of weapons that might be required to
Speaker 2: reduce the effectiveness of that division to where it was
Speaker 2: no longer military capable?
Speaker 1: See what I mean? My point is this, to men
Speaker 1: like Gene and Spike, there was nothing exceptional about gaming
Speaker 1: out of fictional war during a b large It was routine.
Speaker 1: But a few decades later Gene and Spike would learn
Speaker 1: that Able Archer eighty three was anything but routine.
Speaker 2: I was in my own little world. I hate to
Speaker 2: use the word oblivious, but I've used that word before.
Speaker 6: It was many years later they found out about it,
Speaker 6: that anything other than the exercise took place in the
Speaker 6: real world situation that occurred at during that time. I
Speaker 6: was not aware of that until years afterwards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I never heard of anything more about this exercise
Speaker 2: until what twenty or twenty five years later.
Speaker 1: What Gene and Spike would come to learn is that
Speaker 1: while they were sitting in their bunker back in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three rehearsing the end of the world missiles to
Speaker 1: strike targets in Moscow. How the Soviets were listening, and
Speaker 1: they seemed to be convinced it was not a rehearsal
Speaker 1: at all. Soviet missile commanders were placed on high a.
Speaker 1: Soviet leaders retreated to their bunkers, fingers hovering over the
Speaker 1: proverbial big red button, and NATO had no idea.
Speaker 9: I mean, it is a miracle. We did not all die,
Speaker 9: Like it's just goofy.
Speaker 1: This is Jeffrey Lewis. He's an expert on nuclear history
Speaker 1: and geopolitics, and he finds the whole story of Able Archer,
Speaker 1: what he calls the war Scare to be sort of funny.
Speaker 9: Almost all of the war scare is totally self inflicted,
Speaker 9: which makes it like really darkly comic.
Speaker 1: I have to agree. There's an old saying that tragedy
Speaker 1: plus time equals comedy. Well, if that's true, then a
Speaker 1: story about a nuclear near miss plus about forty years
Speaker 1: should be fucking hilarious.
Speaker 9: Because if you step back, it sounds crazy, right, It
Speaker 9: sounds crazy that we could have had a serious nuclear
Speaker 9: crisis that nobody knew about. Like that's nuts.
Speaker 1: It is nuts. Jeffrey because it's not just that able
Speaker 1: archer participants like Gene and Spike didn't know that a
Speaker 1: newnuclear crisis was unfolding under their noses. No one knew.
Speaker 1: Let that sink in for a second. If it's possible
Speaker 1: that a nuclear crisis could unfold right under our noses,
Speaker 1: that we were in danger without knowing it, does that
Speaker 1: mean it's still possible? All right, let's set the stage
Speaker 1: a little bit. It's the nineteen eighties. There was certainly
Speaker 1: a general and very pervasive anxiety about nuclear weapons. Pretty
Speaker 1: Much everywhere you looked, you'd find nuclear paranoia. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just wargames. It was all over pop culture. This delightful
Speaker 1: little number is ninety nine Loft Balloons by Nina. It's
Speaker 1: about one hundred red balloons accidentally inciting a nuclear war.
Speaker 1: Kind of heavy for a kitchy pop hit. The nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three Bond film had a nuclear plot. The doctor
Speaker 1: Seuss was feeling.
Speaker 3: The heat this bomb on the zekes just as fast
Speaker 3: as you can.
Speaker 1: Evening chimed in, I love that shit personally, I love
Speaker 1: that song, and I just love that Sting threw his
Speaker 1: hat right in the middle of an international conflict. Anyway,
Speaker 1: when it comes to examples of nuclear anxiety in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three pop culture, there's actually one that stands above
Speaker 1: all the rest. It was just a made for TV movie,
Speaker 1: but it became a cultural event and it would actually
Speaker 1: play a role in our Cold War mystery.
Speaker 11: It was a movie like no other movie, and it
Speaker 11: had a profound impact on New York.
Speaker 3: That's story.
Speaker 11: Next, we'll hear from people who like you watch the
Speaker 11: Ultimate Disaster.
Speaker 1: Movie the day after, a movie that would scare the
Speaker 1: living shit out of America.
Speaker 7: More than seven hundred people packed Riverside Church tonight to
Speaker 7: watch the day after.
Speaker 3: Many said they came here because they were afraid to
Speaker 3: watch it alone.
Speaker 1: Everyone, and by everyone, I mean a hundred million people,
Speaker 1: almost half the US population at the time, gathered around
Speaker 1: their TVs on the evening of November twentieth, nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: and tuned into ABC to watch it.
Speaker 11: Before the movie begins, I would like to caution parents
Speaker 11: about the graphic depiction of nuclear explosions and then devastating
Speaker 11: effects in a moment.
Speaker 1: The day after that, gather around kids, time to fill
Speaker 1: your innocent little heads with deep, reverberating drama. Past the popcorn.
Speaker 8: I tried to do my part in making people keenly
Speaker 8: aware of what the real consequences would be.
Speaker 1: This is Ed Hume, he wrote the day after. The
Speaker 1: film is set at the border of Kansas and Missouri.
Speaker 1: That's where the US nuclear missile silos are. The main
Speaker 1: characters are average townspeople in the American heartland.
Speaker 8: A bunch of people living in the Midwest doing ordinary things.
Speaker 1: At first, the whole nuclear war thing isn't really front
Speaker 1: and center. It just kind of lurks in the periphery.
Speaker 1: But even as it creeps in, the characters can't accept
Speaker 1: their fate.
Speaker 8: What was that. There's one saying where a woman is
Speaker 8: so in denial that she's running around making beds as
Speaker 8: they know that missiles are being launched.
Speaker 5: Don't bother with the.
Speaker 8: Bed just now, even we've got to get down below. Listen,
Speaker 8: those missiles have all gone off.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Wow, she really wants to make those beds.
Speaker 8: And then it happens.
Speaker 1: It happens, the heartland is evaporated. The rest of the
Speaker 1: film is stomach churning. To put it lightly, It showed
Speaker 1: what a nuclear war would actually look like. Flashes of light,
Speaker 1: lives instantaneously incinerated. But the whole explosion part isn't the
Speaker 1: worst of it, because you get to see what happens
Speaker 1: the day after nuclear fallout, radiation, poisoning, blistering skin and
Speaker 1: dying organs, piles of bodies and rubble, looting, hoarding, and
Speaker 1: everyday Americans turning on each other. I mean, all jokes aside,
Speaker 1: this is grim fucking stuff.
Speaker 8: The general pabla, they were pardon my language, what they
Speaker 8: were scared of shutless.
Speaker 10: I for one, felt that it was just devastating.
Speaker 5: Like every horror story you've ever read. Roamed to one story.
Speaker 3: We got a glimpse of what is really at stake
Speaker 3: in a nuclear war.
Speaker 5: I just want to go die, went to blast and
Speaker 5: not have to live and start all over again.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, didn't heed the parental advisory. This is how
Speaker 1: that clip makes me feel. Okay. So yeah, in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three, there was a general sense of nuclear doom. Hell,
Speaker 1: it's why I had a mental break down at summer camp.
Speaker 1: But we didn't know that there was a specific crisis
Speaker 1: to be afraid of. We didn't know that we might
Speaker 1: have almost had a nuclear war. During NATO's annual able
Speaker 1: archer exercise. So then the question becomes why.
Speaker 11: Not there is and you probably need it. About now,
Speaker 11: there is some good news.
Speaker 1: This is Ted Copple from Nightline. He's hosting a live
Speaker 1: panel about the day after right after the movie aired.
Speaker 11: If you can take a quick look out the window,
Speaker 11: it's all still there.
Speaker 1: Wow, deeply reassuring Ted. Anyway, Celebrity scientist Carl Sagan was there,
Speaker 1: telling an already nauseous audience that he thought the film's
Speaker 1: portrayal of nuclear war was actually not as bad as
Speaker 1: it would be if it really happened. Yeh boy. Henry
Speaker 1: Kissinger was there too, probably talking about feasting on the
Speaker 1: souls of innocent children or something, but before the panel began.
Speaker 11: Joining us live from his home in suburban Washington is
Speaker 11: the Secretary of State, mister George Schultz.
Speaker 1: Ted Copple brings out US Secretary of State George Schultz,
Speaker 1: President Reagan's right hand man. He was a serious man,
Speaker 1: loyal to the president, famously bragged about enjoying staring contests
Speaker 1: with the Soviets, waiting for them to blink, comforting and so.
Speaker 1: Mere minutes after the American public watched this horrifying film,
Speaker 1: hearts still in their stomachs. The man who would be
Speaker 1: standing next to the button pusher in chief answers the
Speaker 1: burning question at the front of every viewer's mind.
Speaker 11: The future as we've just viewed it tonight. Is that
Speaker 11: the future as it will be, or only the future
Speaker 11: as it may be?
Speaker 7: Neither that is not the future at all. The film
Speaker 7: is a vivid and dramatic portrayal of the fact that
Speaker 7: nuclear war is simply not acceptable, and that fact and
Speaker 7: the realization of it has been the policy of the
Speaker 7: United States for decades now, the successful policy of the
Speaker 7: United States.
Speaker 1: If you watch the clip, George Schultz is shifty as hell.
Speaker 1: His eyes keep flickering just to the right of the
Speaker 1: camera and then back again, like he's reading Q cards.
Speaker 1: He looks scared. Ted Season's journalist that he is smells
Speaker 1: a little bullshit, he presses George.
Speaker 11: Mister Schultz, that is the answer of a Secretary of
Speaker 11: State to a reporter. And that's fair enough, because that's
Speaker 11: what you and I, respectively are. But what would a
Speaker 11: George Schultz who is talking to a member of his
Speaker 11: family say in response to the same question, same answer, Well,
Speaker 11: I would give the same answer.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why I think George is nervous. It's
Speaker 1: because eleven days before this interview able Archer eighty three
Speaker 1: could have caused a nuclear war. A man in Schultz's
Speaker 1: position would have known about that, right. Surely he was
Speaker 1: shitting his slacks for the past eleven days trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how such a colossal fuck up could have happened.
Speaker 1: Now would be a great time to come clean, to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna shake things up with our nuclear policy, because
Speaker 1: the movie's right, this is scary shit. And yet, after
Speaker 1: watching the day after, George Schultz, Secretary of State, assures
Speaker 1: the American public that the administration status quo is effective
Speaker 1: in preventing nuclear war. In eleven days after a nuclear war.
Speaker 9: Scare, it's a very different kind of crisis because it's
Speaker 9: so clumsy.
Speaker 1: Here's Jeffrey Lewis again.
Speaker 9: You know, this is more like two drunks in a
Speaker 9: bar circling one another. And it's not so much that
Speaker 9: anybody would deliberately choose to start the war. It's just
Speaker 9: that things would spiral out of control.
Speaker 1: The two drunks here are, of course, the United States
Speaker 1: and the Soviet Union their drink bombs. And I'm not
Speaker 1: talking Jaeger. Here's the part of the show where I
Speaker 1: give you a crash course on the Cold War. Get
Speaker 1: out your pencils, kids, Welcome to Arms Race one oh one.
Speaker 11: An ADAM bomb destroys or injures in three ways by blast, heat,
Speaker 11: and radioactivity.
Speaker 1: The og atomic bomb was invented by the Americans in
Speaker 1: the forties, you know, the one Hiroshima, Nagasaki. It only
Speaker 1: took the Soviets five years to figure it out for themselves,
Speaker 1: and once they had the bomb too, it began a
Speaker 1: decades long race for bigger and better death machines.
Speaker 9: The fun thing about the Cold War is that there
Speaker 9: were a huge variety of nuclear weapons and nuclear yields.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey and I have very different definitions of fun.
Speaker 9: So pretty soon after the end of World War II,
Speaker 9: the United States developed a much more powerful nuclear weapon
Speaker 9: than even the sea the destroyers that we saw dropped
Speaker 9: on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and these were called therma nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: This is the early fifties. A thermonuclear weapon uses the
Speaker 1: radiation from the initial blast to ignite an even bigger blast,
Speaker 1: a bomb within a bomb. The result is a warhead
Speaker 1: that's about the same size as the atom bomb, but
Speaker 1: way more destructive, like a million tons of explosive power
Speaker 1: instead of ten thousand. In other words, it was economical
Speaker 1: a bigger catastrophe for a smaller cost. You can't argue
Speaker 1: with savings like that.
Speaker 9: Once the United States, followed by other countries, developed therm
Speaker 9: nuclear weapons, there was no limit to how large a
Speaker 9: nuclear weapon one could make. The freeze that came to
Speaker 9: be used about the amount of nuclear destructive power was
Speaker 9: overkill because each side was worried that the other side
Speaker 9: would strike them first, so they needed to have backups
Speaker 9: and redundancy and more than you needed. And so in
Speaker 9: practice what that led to was each side having the
Speaker 9: capacity to destroy the other many, many times over, to
Speaker 9: make the rubble bounce. In one particular phrase.
Speaker 1: Back in the sixties, the US had enough nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: to destroy the Soviet Union fifty times over, you know,
Speaker 1: just in case some little cockroach escaped the first forty
Speaker 1: nine blasts, which set the table quite nicely for this.
Speaker 7: Good evening, my fellow citizens.
Speaker 1: That's John F. Kennedy back in nineteen sixty two telling
Speaker 1: the world in a televised speech from the White House
Speaker 1: that a nuclear crisis was unfolding in Cuba. US biplanes
Speaker 1: had discovered that the Soviet Union was building nuclear missile
Speaker 1: sites on the Caribbean island nation, a little too close
Speaker 1: to the United States for comfort.
Speaker 7: The purpose of these bases can be none other than
Speaker 7: to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 1: The US Navy set up a blockade, trying to prevent
Speaker 1: any Soviet ships from bringing their nukes anywhere near the island.
Speaker 1: The Soviet Chips approached the blockade nuclear weapons in tow
Speaker 1: It was a full fledged nuclear standoff. The news coverage
Speaker 1: of the Cuban missile crisis was impossible to ignore. A
Speaker 1: major world event became television drama. For thirteen days, Americans
Speaker 1: sat glued to their televisions until finally it was over.
Speaker 11: Under aerial surveillance, the missiles that had threatened the United
Speaker 11: States went back where they came from.
Speaker 1: Everyone breathed a sigh of Marlborough smoke filled relief. And
Speaker 1: did we learn our lesson? Did we scale down operations
Speaker 1: at the bomb factory and literally cool our jets? No, No,
Speaker 1: my dear listener, of course we didn't. In the late
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, the US would build more weapons. The
Speaker 1: Soviets would build a lot more weapons, We'd get rid
Speaker 1: of some and then build some more. By the early
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, our nuclear fruit basket contained big nukes, small nukes,
Speaker 1: extremely precise nukes.
Speaker 9: And so the question naturally arises, like, why the hell
Speaker 9: did we do that? And I think the answer lies
Speaker 9: in the fact that we didn't have a better idea.
Speaker 9: I'm just going to build as many nuclear weapons as
Speaker 9: I can to keep the bad guys away from me.
Speaker 9: How am I going to think about it any more
Speaker 9: than that? And that's a very powerful, simple idea, wrong
Speaker 9: but incredibly powerful. And it's how you end up with
Speaker 9: two countries with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons pointed
Speaker 9: at each other, ready on a moment's notice to end
Speaker 9: civilization as we know it. You know, over who controls Berlin,
Speaker 9: which admittedly is a very nice city.
Speaker 1: And that just about sums up that successful nuclear policy
Speaker 1: George Schultz was talking about earlier.
Speaker 7: The successful policy of the United States.
Speaker 1: Each side made a gamble that if they could just
Speaker 1: build enough weapons, their adversary wouldn't dare test them, so
Speaker 1: they didn't need diplomacy. They were bound by the contract
Speaker 1: of mutually assured destruction. It was a horrific game of
Speaker 1: nuclear chicken, and it would lead right to Able Archer
Speaker 1: eighty three, which some say is the closest we came
Speaker 1: to a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile crisis. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Able Archer isn't anything like the Cuban
Speaker 1: missile crisis. In fact, it's not like most crises we've experienced,
Speaker 1: not just because no one knew about it, but because
Speaker 1: it was completely unintentional, a mistake. It's not like I
Speaker 1: don't know the Vietnam War or Russia's insane invasion of Ukraine. Today,
Speaker 1: during Able Archer, two countries with absolutely no desire to
Speaker 1: get into a nuclear conflict may have almost started one
Speaker 1: in spite of themselves.
Speaker 9: If the Reagan administration nearly sleepwalked into a nuclear war,
Speaker 9: that suggests those people shouldn't be let anywhere near positions
Speaker 9: of power. And if the intelligence community the fact that
Speaker 9: the Reagan administration was sleepwalking toward nuclear war, that suggests
Speaker 9: we need different analysts.
Speaker 1: If all that's true, then it makes perfect sense the
Speaker 1: Reagan administration would not want to leak a snaffoo this massive,
Speaker 1: so the public would never hear about Abel Archer eighty three. Instead,
Speaker 1: it would become nothing more than a Cold War rumor,
Speaker 1: a myth only whispered about in the back hallways of
Speaker 1: the Pentagon. And it might have stayed that way if
Speaker 1: it wasn't for Nate Jones.
Speaker 3: Walking through.
Speaker 1: This is the vault.
Speaker 3: It really looks like the warehouse at the end of Indiana.
Speaker 3: Jones of just boxes, boxes, boxes. Sometimes I used to
Speaker 3: come here and just do a little bit of work
Speaker 3: because the atmosphere of thousands of boxes looming over and
Speaker 3: me helps me work.
Speaker 1: This is Nate Jones, an historian. Actually he's really more
Speaker 1: of a sleuth, like a history detective who has dedicated
Speaker 1: almost twenty years of his career to you uncovering what
Speaker 1: the hell really happened during Able Archer eighty three.
Speaker 3: My desk is overrun with Foyer requests. It looks like
Speaker 3: at least ten thousand pages of Foyer requests and responses.
Speaker 3: So it's definitely a tree unfriendly business. But the government
Speaker 3: works on paper, so we got to work on paper.
Speaker 1: This FOYA that Nate is talking about, like everything in government,
Speaker 1: it's an acronym. It stands for the Freedom of Information Act.
Speaker 1: And if you can't tell it has dominated his life
Speaker 1: for the past decade. For ten years, Nate worked at
Speaker 1: the National Security Archive, where he and his colleagues used
Speaker 1: the Freedom of Information Act to pry classified information about
Speaker 1: able Archer eighty three out of the government's clause. I
Speaker 1: like to picture them wrestling with a very stubborn bald eagle.
Speaker 1: But let's not get ahead of ourselves. At one point
Speaker 1: in time, Nate was like most people. He didn't know
Speaker 1: about Able Archer eighty three until one day in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, a professor of his uttered a few
Speaker 1: words that totally changed the course of his life. He said, Hey, Nate,
Speaker 1: I heard about this nuclear fuck up in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three called Able Archer. Why don't you look into it?
Speaker 3: And he said, I really think this is an unsolved
Speaker 3: mystery of the Cold War. And I was pretty hooked
Speaker 3: right there.
Speaker 1: Like me, Nate heard about the mysterious able Archer eighty
Speaker 1: three story and asked himself, why doesn't anyone know about it?
Speaker 1: If we narrowly escaped nuclear armageddon, shouldn't there be a
Speaker 1: national holiday or something? We should have Able Archer Day,
Speaker 1: a day that commemorates our wonderful avoidance of nuclear annihilation.
Speaker 1: I'm not just saying this because I want an extra
Speaker 1: Monday off work, not dying that's caused for celebration. All
Speaker 1: jokes aside. Nate was seriously concerned. I mean, if something
Speaker 1: like able Archer can happen, what does that say about
Speaker 1: how precarious our situation really is? Is the world safe?
Speaker 1: One thing is clear. If we're going to learn anything
Speaker 1: from this, we got to know exactly what happened, Thank
Speaker 1: god for Nate Jones. At first, there just wasn't much
Speaker 1: out there as far as sources go. Anybody who knew
Speaker 1: the details of the crisis wasn't talking. There were a
Speaker 1: few mentions of a nineteen eighty three crisis, and various
Speaker 1: memoirs from retired politicians and so forth, but it was
Speaker 1: also vague. I'll let Nate paraphrase.
Speaker 3: We're not exactly sure, but it was a very tense
Speaker 3: situation and we were worried.
Speaker 1: There was only one primary source available that even mentioned
Speaker 1: Able Archer eighty three by name, a CIA document written
Speaker 1: shortly after it happened.
Speaker 3: So here we have so this is implications of recent
Speaker 3: Soviet military political activities, and this is the first CIA
Speaker 3: report on what happened during the war scand what happened
Speaker 3: during n Able Archer.
Speaker 1: This document is a crucial piece of the Able Archer
Speaker 1: puzzle because it reveals what the CIA thought about the
Speaker 1: crisis at the time, and it provides a hint as
Speaker 1: to why the public wouldn't learn about it until decades later.
Speaker 1: Classic CIA bullshit. I mean, they still haven't told us
Speaker 1: why they killed Kennedy. It was written in May of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, six months after Able Archer, and it says, yeah,
Speaker 1: during the Able Archer eighty three exercise, it sort of
Speaker 1: looked like the Soviets were getting battle.
Speaker 3: Ready, and it listed all these alarming things. But it
Speaker 3: came to the conclusion that quote, we believe strongly that
Speaker 3: Soviet actions are not inspired and Soviet leaders do not
Speaker 3: perceive a genuine danger of imminent conflict or confrontation with
Speaker 3: the United States.
Speaker 1: The report says, yeah, sure it looks scary, but in hindsight,
Speaker 1: we don't think the Soviets were actually gonna do anything.
Speaker 3: So the conclusion was that the war scare is not real.
Speaker 1: That's right. The reason nobody knows about the Able Archer
Speaker 1: war scare is because for decades the CIA would deny
Speaker 1: that anything dangerous happened during that exercise, but rumors still
Speaker 1: swirled in the intelligence community. Maybe there was more to
Speaker 1: the story, which you've probably guessed because there's a bunch
Speaker 1: more episodes left in this podcast. Nate Jones, fresh out
Speaker 1: of college, had a hunch that he could piece together
Speaker 1: the truth about Able Archer given access to the right records.
Speaker 3: We couldn't really tell a good history without the records,
Speaker 3: and we couldn't get the good records without a fight
Speaker 3: against the government.
Speaker 1: Oh it's on now, might be a good time to
Speaker 1: introduce another main character.
Speaker 10: I don't know whether you know it or not, but
Speaker 10: I have a new hobby. I am collecting stories.
Speaker 1: Ronald Wilson Reagan, the man knew the power of a
Speaker 1: good anecdote. I mean, the guy could really spin a yarn.
Speaker 10: But I remember the story of a fellow, which makes
Speaker 10: me think of a story. Everything makes me think of
Speaker 10: a story. I wanted to tell a story, whether anything
Speaker 10: reminded me or not.
Speaker 1: He also famously loved movies. No surprise there. He was
Speaker 1: a movie star. Only president ever to make a movie
Speaker 1: with a chimp. To be fair, Calvin Coolidge was in
Speaker 1: a play with a baboon once, but it's not the
Speaker 1: same thing, and it's also not true. Where was I?
Speaker 1: Reagan hosted regular screenings at Camp David throughout his presidency.
Speaker 1: In fact, he loved movies so much he used to
Speaker 1: write film reviews in his diary Saturday, February fourteenth, nine
Speaker 1: to five. Funny, but one scene made me mad, A
Speaker 1: truly funny scene. If the three gals had played getting drunk,
Speaker 1: but no, they had to get stoned on pot. It
Speaker 1: was an endorsement of pot smoking for any young person
Speaker 1: who sees the picture. Yeah, so that's actually a totally
Speaker 1: real Ronald Reagan diary entry. I shit you not. The
Speaker 1: man took movies very seriously and really overestimated the influence
Speaker 1: of a stoned Dolly parton Ronald Reagan's presidency was like
Speaker 1: the plot a movie, and he was the hero, an
Speaker 1: American cowboy with a white hat, fighting his nemesis, the
Speaker 1: evil Communist menace. And he played the part beautifully.
Speaker 10: When action is called for, we're taking it. Our response
Speaker 10: can make the difference between peaceful change or disorder in violence.
Speaker 1: In fact, he played the part so well that he
Speaker 1: may have pushed it a little too far. Now if
Speaker 1: you ask just about anybody how the Cold War ended,
Speaker 1: you'll get one of two answers. Either A. Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: was strong, showed those Soviets who was boss and they
Speaker 1: backed down. Or B. Reagan was just lucky enough to
Speaker 1: be the guy sitting in the White House when a
Speaker 1: young Soviet leader stepped in and reformed the Joint. But
Speaker 1: what if there was an entirely different reason the Cold
Speaker 1: War ended? What if the Cold War really ended because
Speaker 1: of Abel Archer.
Speaker 5: He was Ronald evil Empire. Reagan talked a tough game
Speaker 5: against the Soviets, engaged a military build up.
Speaker 1: Meet Beth Fischer. She's an historian and author of a
Speaker 1: book called The Reagan Reversal, where she writes about a
Speaker 1: drastic shift in Ronald Reagan's attitude towards the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: and listeners. That shift has very interesting timing.
Speaker 5: I was doing my doctoral research and it was on
Speaker 5: US foreign policy, and I was going through a lot
Speaker 5: of speeches from the Reagan administration from the early eighties.
Speaker 1: Beth says that Reagan's speeches were pretty consistent from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one to about October thirty first, nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: just before able Archer.
Speaker 5: The Reagan administration was pretty confrontational. They charged that the
Speaker 5: Soviet Union was immoral, they lied, they cheat, They were
Speaker 5: the greatest source of international insecurity.
Speaker 10: One of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights and
Speaker 10: the value of human life, and seeks constantly to expand
Speaker 10: and dominate other nations.
Speaker 5: The next major speech came on January sixteenth, nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: In his first major speech since Able Archer, Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: steps on stage and the American public meets a very
Speaker 1: new president.
Speaker 10: During these first days of nineteen eighty four, I would
Speaker 10: like to share with you and the people of the
Speaker 10: world my thoughts on a subject of great importance to
Speaker 10: the cause of peace, relations between the United States and
Speaker 10: the Soviet Union. Just suppose with me for a moment.
Speaker 10: But an Ivan and an Anya could find themselves, say
Speaker 10: in a waiting room, or sharing a shelter from the
Speaker 10: rain or a storm, with a Jim and Sally, and
Speaker 10: there was no language barrier to keep them from getting acquainted.
Speaker 5: President Reagan told this little story about these two couples,
Speaker 5: Ivan and Anya, and Jim and Sally.
Speaker 1: Ivan and Anya, a lovely couple from Moscow, and our
Speaker 1: beloved Jim and Sally from I don't know Toledo. They
Speaker 1: just feel Midwestern to me.
Speaker 10: And as they went their separate ways, maybe Anya would
Speaker 10: be saying to Ivan, wasn't she nice? She also teaches music.
Speaker 10: They might even have decided they were all going to
Speaker 10: get together for dinner some evening soon.
Speaker 1: Ah, dinner, How cute. Two months ago, Reagan would have
Speaker 1: ended that story with Jim poking Ivan's eyeballs out and
Speaker 1: Sally shoving Anya in front of a bus for freedom.
Speaker 5: And it was really different. It was different in tone,
Speaker 5: it was different in substance.
Speaker 10: We do not threaten the Soviet Union. Our two countries
Speaker 10: have never fought each other. There's no reason why we
Speaker 10: ever should let us begin now than cute.
Speaker 1: The media picked up on Reagan's shift, the Ivan and
Speaker 1: Anya tail would go down and speech writing history. But
Speaker 1: when Beth came across this speech, what caught her attention
Speaker 1: was one sentence, so slight, so discreet, that if you
Speaker 1: didn't know what to listen for, you might miss it
Speaker 1: all together.
Speaker 5: Let's see, I have a quote here. We need to
Speaker 5: find meaningful ways to reduce the uncertainty and potential for misinterpretations.
Speaker 5: Surrounding military activities. I eventually learned that early drafts of
Speaker 5: the speech had been circulating within Washington in mid December.
Speaker 1: And remember the old Reagan, the tough guy, was still
Speaker 1: giving hard line speeches right up until November one.
Speaker 5: So my question became, what happened between November one and
Speaker 5: mid December? And that's when I discovered Able Archer.
Speaker 1: Two months ago, a very secret nuclear near fuck up
Speaker 1: may have unfolded during November's Able Larger exercise. And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, this very aggressive, very anti communist
Speaker 1: president is talking about Sally braiding Anya's hair. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, he's worried about reducing the potential for misinterpretation
Speaker 1: surrounding military activities. Pretty interesting timing. I mean, I'm know
Speaker 1: erk Gio Plaurot, but seem like there might be a
Speaker 1: connection here.
Speaker 10: To reduce the uncertainty and potential for misinterpretations surrounding military activities.
Speaker 1: And boom, did you hear that? That's Able Archer right
Speaker 1: in the speech. Over twenty years after Able Archer, Nate
Speaker 1: Jones began his quest to find out what really happened.
Speaker 1: As a student of history and a living human being,
Speaker 1: he was more than a little concerned about how a
Speaker 1: nuclear near miss was just a rumor in academic circles.
Speaker 1: Was George Schultz hiding something when he spoke to Americans
Speaker 1: during that panel? And is it just a coincidence that
Speaker 1: Reagan changed his tune so dramatically Only months later? Nate
Speaker 1: started at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. It's a massive
Speaker 1: building overlooking mountains and the Pacific Ocean in the heart
Speaker 1: of Semi Valley, California. Inside the Reagan Foundation has completely
Speaker 1: reconstructed Reagan's air one, which sits perched above a giant
Speaker 1: souvenir shop. Nancy and Ronald Reagan are even buried there
Speaker 1: at the library, not the souvenir shop, parded by a
Speaker 1: fridge magnet when the great Communicator's corpse is staring right
Speaker 1: at you, and a couple of floors down in the basement,
Speaker 1: there's an archive. And that's where Nate begins his fight.
Speaker 3: I go to the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library and
Speaker 3: go through all the boxes.
Speaker 1: Looking through reams and reams of paperwork from our government's past,
Speaker 1: hoping to discover some shred of evidence amongst the redactions
Speaker 1: for anything to do with able Archer eighty three, the
Speaker 1: National Security Advisors files US military documents, documents from our allies,
Speaker 1: anything that could paint a picture of how a NATO
Speaker 1: exercise might have changed the course of history. And as
Speaker 1: you might assume, the archive isn't small. Presidential libraries contain
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: It really essentially is a dumping ground.
Speaker 1: But hidden amongst all of them, there could be a
Speaker 1: needle in the haystack.
Speaker 3: Well, when I was there, if my spidy senses went up.
Speaker 1: Nate finds a box. He blows off decades of cobwebs.
Speaker 1: He opens it, swats away the moths as they see
Speaker 1: light for the first time in twenty No, I'm being dramatic.
Speaker 1: The point is the box is important. It's labeled NATO
Speaker 1: Military Exercises November nineteen eighty three, jackpot.
Speaker 3: So I go through that and pull out the folder,
Speaker 3: open it up and it has this I believe it's
Speaker 3: a green card that says every historian's nightmare withheld classified.
Speaker 3: Go to the next folder, same thing. So it's a
Speaker 3: little bit heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: But this young historical treasure hunter will not be deterred.
Speaker 3: But I go to the archivist on duty and say, hey,
Speaker 3: what's the mechanism for getting this withheld stuff released. And
Speaker 3: I still remember he kind of gave me a kind
Speaker 3: of a mean laugh. He said, well, you could file
Speaker 3: a foyer or a review request, but don't hold your breath.
Speaker 3: You can file, but you'll never get it.
Speaker 1: What a motherfucker god bureaucratic piece of self righteous do
Speaker 1: dag motherfucker? Am I right?
Speaker 11: Then?
Speaker 8: I go too far?
Speaker 1: I went too far.
Speaker 3: I felt that we had a right to know what happened.
Speaker 3: It's possible that it shows this danger unacceptable danger of
Speaker 3: nuclear weapons. And if they're that dangerous in the world,
Speaker 3: was that dangerous then in nineteen eighty three and might
Speaker 3: still be that dangerous now? That danger shouldn't be hidden
Speaker 3: your classification. And that right there got me a little
Speaker 3: bit angry and said, you know what, I'm gonna fight
Speaker 3: this until the end. And I don't think the government
Speaker 3: should be keeping this secret. And I'm gonna learn about
Speaker 3: FOYA and I'm going to learn about appeals and maybe
Speaker 3: even sue because the government's telling me, no, you can't
Speaker 3: have the documents, and I want the document.
Speaker 1: Here's a message to that asshole who worked as the
Speaker 1: arkivist on duty at the Reagan Presidential Library in the
Speaker 1: year two thousand and four, our fearless for your warrior.
Speaker 1: Get the dacks and what would they show? A very
Speaker 1: alarming account of what really went down in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: spurred by intelligence failures, reckless policies, failed diplomacy, and outright arrogance.
Speaker 1: Buckle up, boys and girls. That's going to be a
Speaker 1: terrifying ride over the rest of the season. Will spin
Speaker 1: a yarn so nuts that it would have Reagan himself
Speaker 1: shitting in his ten gallon stetson. We'll tell you how
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three was a truly batshit year for the
Speaker 1: human race, complete with fake military invasions, a commercial airliner
Speaker 1: full of passengers shot down, and a calculator right out
Speaker 1: of a spy movie that might have saved the world.
Speaker 1: And all that craziness would set the stage for the
Speaker 1: Big Snaffo, a close call with nuclear war that would
Speaker 1: be kept top secret for decades. Next week on Snaffoo,
Speaker 1: we'll get into the minds of the button pushers themselves,
Speaker 1: President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Yuri and drop Off,
Speaker 1: two men whose provocations in paranoia would push the world
Speaker 1: to the brink.
Speaker 10: It did give me a real understanding of the communist menace.
Speaker 9: Ronald Reagan, having campaigned on being top, is not going
Speaker 9: to stand up and say.
Speaker 1: Oh, that was just for the cameras.
Speaker 9: I'm actually an old softie.
Speaker 1: I love borsh.
Speaker 5: Really, for the first time in my life, I felt
Speaker 5: like there could be nuclear.
Speaker 1: Warf SNAFU is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment,
Speaker 1: and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio.
Speaker 1: Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Carl Nellis. Associate producer Tory Smith. It's executive
Speaker 1: produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo, Andy
Speaker 1: Chug and Whitney Donaldson. This episode was written by Sarah Joyner,
Speaker 1: with additional writing from me Elliott Kalen, and Whitney Donaldson.
Speaker 1: Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis Make the rubble Bouts.
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 designed by Dan Rosatto. Some archival audio from this
Speaker 1: episode originally appeared in Taylor Downing's fantastic film nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: The Rink of Apocalypse. Thank you, mister Downing for permission
Speaker 1: to use it. Special thanks to Alison Cohen and Matt Aisenstadt.