THE 1983 WAR SCARE IN US-SOVIET RELATIONS

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 05584199
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 28, 2022
• Document Release Date: April 19, 2018
• Case Number: F-2010-01551
• Publication Date: December 1, 1995

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ecret IVuk,ul
(b)(1)
(b)(3)
Threat Perception, Scare Tactic, or False Alarm?
The 1983 War Scare in US-Soviet Relations (SNE),
Ben B. Fischer
66
Reagan was repeatedly
compared to Hider and
accused of "fanning the
flames of war"�a more
sinister image than
Andropov as a Red Darth
Vader.
99
Ben B. Fischer is in CIA's Center for
the Study of Intelligence.
Never, perhaps, in the postwar decades
was the situation in the world as explo-
sive, and hence, more difficult and
unfavorable, as in the first halfof the
1980s.
Mikhail Gorbachev,
February 1986
US-Soviet relations had come full
circle in 1983. Europeans were
declaring the outbreak of a Cold
War II, and President Mitterrand
compared the situation to the 1962
Cuban crisis and the 1948 Berlin
blockade. Such fears were exagger-
ated. Nowhere in the world were
the superpowers squared off in a
conflict likely to erupt into war.
But a modern-day Rip Van Winkle
waking up that year would not have
noticed much change in the interna-
tional political landscape or realized
that a substantial period of d�nte
had come and gone while he slept.
(u)
The second Cold War was mainly a
war of words. In March, President
Reagan referred to the Soviet Union
as the "focus of evil in the world," as
an "evil empire." General Secretary
Andropov suggested Reagan was
insane and a liar. Then things got
nasty. Following Andropov's lead
and no doubt his direction, the
Soviet media launched a verbal offen-
sive of a kind not seen since Stalin
that far surpassed Reagan's broad-
sides. Reagan was repeatedly
compared to Hitler and accused of
"Fanning the flames of war"�a more
sinister image than Andropov as a
Red Darth Vader. (u)
The Soviet War Scare
Such rhetoric was the consequence
rather than the cause of tension, but
frightening words masked real fears.
The Hitler analogy was more than
an insult and may have been a Freud-
ian slip, because war was on the
minds of Soviet leaders. Moscow was
in the midst of a "war scare" that had
two distinct phases and two different
dimensions�one concealed in the
world of clandestine intelligence
operations since 1981, and the other
revealed in the Soviet media two
years later. (U)
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The KGB assessment was more of a
storm warning than a hurricane alert.
But Politburo forecasters reached a
stark political judgment: the chances
of a nuclear war, including a US sur-
prise nuclear attack, were higher
than at any time during the entire
Cold War. In May 1981, General
Secretary Brezhnev and then KGB
chief Andropov briefed the Politburo
assessment to a closed KGB confer-
ence. Then Andropov took the
podium to tell the assembled intelli-
gence managers and officers that the
KGB and the GRU were being
placed on a permanent intelligence
watch to monitor indications and
warning of US war-planning and
preparations. Codenamed RYAN,
this alert was the large et peace-
time intelligence effort
During 1982, KGB Center assigned
RYAN a high, but not overriding,
priority. Then, on 17 February
1983, KGB residents already on alert
received "eyes only" cables telling
them that it had "acquired an espe-
cial degree of urgency" and was "now
of particularly grave importance."
They were ordered to organize a per-
manent watch using their entire
operational staff, recruit new agents,
and redirect existing ones to RYAN
requirements. A circular message
from the Moscow Center to all KGB
residencies put on alert status stated:
Therefore one of the chief direr-
tions for the action:)' of the KGB's
.foreign service is to organize
detection and assessment ofsigns
of preparation for RYAN in all
possible areas, i.e., political, eco-
nomic, and military sectors, civil
defense and the activity ofspe-
dal services. Our military
neighbors /the GNI" are
actively engaged in similar work
And, for the first time since
1953, a Soviet leader was
telling the Soviet people
that the world was on the
verge of a nuclear
holocaust.
99
in relation to the activity of the
adversary's armed forces. (u)
Moscow's urgency was linked to the
impending US deployment of Persh-
ing II intermediate-range missiles in
West Germany. Very accurate and
with a flight time under 10 minutes,
these missiles could destroy hard tar-
gets, including Soviet command and
control bunkers and missile silos, -
with little or no warning. Guidance �
cables referred to RYAN's critical
importance to Soviet military strat-
egy and the need for advance
warning "to take retaliatory mea-
sures." But Soviet leaders were less
interested in retaliation than in pre-
emption and needed RYAN data as
strategic warning to launch an attack
on the new US missile sites. (U)
The overt war scare erupted two
years later. On 23 March 1983, Presi-
dent Reagan announced a program
to develop a ground- and space-
based, laser-armed, anti-ballistic-mis-
sile shield designated Strategic
Defense Initiative (SDI) but quickly
dubbed "Star Wars" by the media.
Four days later�and in direct
response�Andropov lashed out. He
accused the United States of prepar-
ing a first-strike attack on the USSR
and asserted that Reagan was "invent-
ing new plans on how to unleash a
nuclear war in the best way, with the
hope of winning it." The war scare
had joined the intelligence alert. (U)
Andropov's remarks were unprece-
dented. He violated a longstanding
taboo by describing US nuclear weap-
ons' numbers and capabilities in the
mass media. He referred to Soviet
weapons and capabilities�also
highly unusual�and said explicitly
that the USSR had, at best, only par-
ity with the United States in strategic
weaponry. And, for the first time
since 1953, a Soviet leader was tell-
ing the Soviet people that the world
was on the verge of a nuclear holo-
caust. If candor is a sign of sincerity,
Moscow was worried. (U)
The War Scare as an Intelligence
Issue
The Soviet war scare posed two ques-
tions for the Intelligence Community:
was it genuine, that is, did the Soviet
leadership actually believe that the
United States might attack? If so, why
had the Kremlin reached that conclu-
sion? If the alarm was not genuine,
then what purpose did it serve? (U)
By and large, the Community played
down both the intelligence alert and
the war-scare propaganda as evidence
of an authentic threat perception. It
did so in part because the informa-
tion reaching it about the alert came
primarily from British intelligence
and was fragmentary, incomplete,
and ambiguous. Moreover, the Brit-
ish protected the identity of the
source�KGB Col. Oleg Gordievsky,
number two in the London resi-
dency� and his bona fides could
not be independently established. US
intelligence did have partially corrob-
orating information from a
Czechoslovak intelligence officer,
but apparently it was not detailed
enough or considered reliable
enough to confirm what was coming
from Gordievsky. (U)
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The Intelligence Community contin-
ued to scoff at the war scare even
after Gordievsky defected�actually,
after MI6 exfiltrated him from the
USSR�and was made available for
debriefing.' But intelligence analysts
were not alone in their skepticism.
For example, one critic who
attributes many of the problems in
US-Soviet relations to the Reagan
administration concluded /0 years
later and with the benefit of hind-
sight: "Above all, the idea that the
new American administration might
actually attack the Soviet Union
seems too far out of touch with real-
ity to have been given credence."3 A
Soviet emigre scholar who wrote the
most perceptive article on Soviet war-
scare propaganda found the analytic
task so daunting that he refused to
speculate on why the Kremlin had
adopted this line or to whom the mes-
sage was directed�West European
governments, the US electorate, or
the Soviet people. (U)
Searching for an explanation of the
war scare, intelligence analysts and
other interested observers offered
three answers: propaganda, paranoia,
and politics. (u)
The consensus view regarded RYAN
and the war scare as grist for the
KGB disinformation mill�a sophis-
ticated political-psychological scare -
tactic operation. Who was the KGB
trying to scare? Answers differed.
Most agreed that the Soviets wanted
to frighten the West Europeans and
above all the nervous West Germans
into backing out of an agreement to
deploy US intermediate-range Persh-
ing H and cruise missiles on their
territory. Besides. Moscow was
engaged in an all-out, go-for-broke
propaganda and covert action pro-
gram that was flagging and needed a
boost. (U)
Searching for an
explanation of the war
scare, intelligence analysts
and other interested
observers offered three
answers: propaganda,
paranoia, and politics.
9
Some observers, however, believed
that the campaign was inwardly, not
outwardly, directed toward the
Soviet people. There was evidence to
support this interpretation.
Andropov had launched an anticor-
ruption and discipline campaign to
get the long-suffering proletariat to
work harder, drink less, and sacrifice
more while cutting down on the
theft of state property. War scares
had been used in the past to prepare
people for bad times, and, with ideol-
ogy dead and consumer goods in
short supply, the Kremlin was trot-
ting out a tried and true
mobilization gimmick. (U)
A second explanation argued that the
war scare was clearly bogus but
potentially dangerous because it was
rooted in Soviet leadership paranoia.
Paranoia is a catchall explanation for
Russian/Soviet external behavior that
goes back to early tsarist times. But it
was given credence. This was how
Gordievsky explained the war scare,
and the advanced age and poor
health of Andropov and the rest of
the gerontocracy suggested that the
leadership's debilitation might be
mental as well as physical. (U)
The third explanation held that the
%vat scare was rooted in internal
bureaucratic or succession politics.
The military and intelligence services
might be using it as a form of bureau-
cratic turfbuilder to make their
budgets and missions grow at a time
when the competition for resources
was fierce. Or the war scare might
have been connected in some way�
a debate over foreign and defense pol-
icy?�to a succession struggle that
was continuing despite, or because
of, Andropov's poor health. Explana-
tions were plentiful, but evidence
was scarce. (U)
Although quite different, these expla-
nations had much in common. Each
started from the premise, whether
articulated or not, that there was no
objective threat of a US surprise
attack on the USSR; therefore, the
war scare was all smoke and mirrors,
a false alarm being used for some
other purpose. In most instances,
outside observers did not give the
war scare credence, refusing to imag-
ine that the Soviet leadership could
view the United States as the poten-
tial aggressor in an unprovoked
nuclear war, because they themselves
could not imagine the United States
in that role. This idea was "too far
out of touch with reality." Reagan
was not Hitler, and America does
not do Pearl Harbors. (U)
US perceptions of the US-Soviet bal-
ance of strategic power also weighed
against the idea that the war scare
could indicate genuine, even if
greatly exaggerated, concern on Mos-
cow's part. The United States was in
the midst of the largest military
buildup in its history whose aim was
to close a perceived "window of vul-
nerability" in the mid-1980s created
by US loss of superiority in delivery
vehicles and then counterforce capa-
bilities. The buildup had begun
during the previous administration,
but was greatly accelerated during
Reagan's first term in the belief that
the USSR might exploit a temporary
advantage�appropriately called a
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window of opportunity�to engage
in adventuresome behavior, use
nuclear blackmail, or even perhaps
attack the United States. Moreover,
Soviet claims about the "irreversibil-
ity" of changes in the "correlation of
forces" in the I 970s�a reference to
both Soviet gains in the Third
World and achievement of "robust
parity" in strategic power with the
US�did little to allay US concerns.
(u)
US observers were half right in dis-
missing the war scare as groundless,
but also half wrong in viewing it as
artificially contrived. Moscow appar-
ently was worried about something.
(U)
Evidence From the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe
For a long time, Gordievsky was the
only publicly acknowledg
of information on RYAN
eanwhile, former Soviet
m assa or to the United States
Anatoly Dobryinin and ex-KGB
officers Oleg Kalugin and Yuriy
Shvets have published memoirs that
dovetail with Gordievsky's account.
We know a lot more than we did
about the war scare, even though a
coninkrnrderstanding is still elu-
siv
Gordievsky, the original source, is
also the most prolific. Almost a
decade after he arrived in London,
he and British coauthor Christopher
Andrew published a sheaf of KGB
64 Secret
cables that describe the alert and col-
lection requirements. No one in the
US, British, or Soviet/Russian intelli-
gence communities has questioned
these documents, so silence is tanta-
mount to authentication. (U)
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Spooking the Russians
During the first Reagan administra-
tion, US policy toward the Soviet
Union was conducted on two tracks.
The first encompassed normal diplo-
matic relations and arms control
negotiations. The second was a
covert political-psychological effort
to attack Soviet vulnerabilities and
undermine the system. According to
a recent account based on interviews
with Reagan-era policymakers, it was
a "secret offensive on economic, geo-
strategic, and psychological fronts
designed to roll back and weaken
Soviet power."5For most of 1981-
83, there were more trains running
on the second track than on the first.
(u)
RYAN may have been a response to
the first in a series of US military
probes along Soviet borders initiated
in the Reagan administration's first
months. These probes�called psycho-
logical warfare operations, or PSYOP,
in Pentagon jargon�aimed at exploit-
ing Soviet psychological vulnerabilities
and deterring Soviet actions. The
administration's "silent campaign"
was also practically invisible, except to
a small circle of White House and
Pentagon aides�and, of course, the
Kremlin. "It was very sensitive,"
recalls former Undersecretary of
Defense Fred lkle. "Nothing was writ-
ten down about it, so there would be
no paper trail." 6 (U)
The PSYOP was calculated to play
on what the White House perceived
as a Soviet image of the President as
a "cowboy" and reckless practitioner
of nuclear politics. US purpose was
not to signal intentions so much as
keep the Soviets guessing what might
happen next:
"Sometimes we would send
bombers over the North Pole,
and their radars would click
on, recalls Gen. Jack Chain the
former Strategic Air Command
commander. "Other times
fighter-bombers would probe
their Asian or European periph-
ery." During peak times, the
operation would include several
maneuvers a week. They would
come at irregular intervals to
make the effect all the more
unsettling. Then, as quickly as
the unannounced flights began,
they would stop, only to begin a
few weeks later. (U)
Another participant echoes this
assessment:
"It really got to them," recalls
Dr. William Schneider, Under-
secretary ofState for Military
Assistance and Technoky, who
saw classified "after-action
reports" that indicated US flight
activity. "They didn't know
what it all meant. A squadron
would fly straight at Soviet air-
space, and other radars would
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light up and units would go on
alert. Then, at the last minute,
the squadron would peel offand
return home."
The Navy played an even bigger role
than SAC after President Reagan
authorized it in March 1981 to oper-
ate and exercise in areas where the
US fleet had rarely�or never�gone
before. Major exercises in 1981 and
1983 in the Soviet far northern and
far eastern maritime approaches dem-
onstrated US ability to deploy
aircraft carrier battle groups close CO
sensitive military and industrial areas
without being detected or chal-
lenged.9 Using sophisticated and
carefully rehearsed deception and
denial techniques, the Navy eluded
the USSR's massive ocean reconnais-
sance system and early-warning
systems.") Some naval exercises
included "classified" operations in
which carrier-launched aircraft man-
aged to penetrate Soviet shore-based
radar and air-defense systems and
simulate "attacks" on Soviet targets.
Summing up a 1983 Pacific Fleet
exercise, the US chief of naval opera-
tions noted that the Soviets "are as
naked as jaybird there [on the Kam-
chatka Peninsula], and they know
it." " His remark applied equally to
he Kola Peninsula in the far north.
Was there a connection between
PSYOP and RYAN? There clearly
was a temporal correlation. The first
US missions began in mid-February
1981; Andropov briefed RYAN to
the KGB the following May. More-
over, when top officials first learned
of RYAN, they reportedly connected
it to the Soviet border probes, noting
that the Soviets were "increasingly
frightened by the Reagan
administration.' '2 (U)
Andropov's advisers urged
him not to overreact, but
overreact he did, accusing
the President of
"deliberately lying" about
Soviet military power to
justify SDI.
99
The Intelligence Community, not
clued in to the PSYOP program,
could be forgiven for not understand-
ing the cause-and-effect relationship.
This is a reminder of a perennial
problem in preparing estimates that
assess another country's behavior in
terms of its interaction with the
United States and in response to US
actions. The impact of the action- �
reaction-interaction dynamic is often
overlooked or neglected, not because
of analytic failure or conceptual inad-
equacy, but for the simple reason
that the intelligence left hand does
not always know what the policy
right hand is doing. (U)
There may have been another prob-
lem in perception that affected
policymakers as well as intelligence
analysts. While the US probes
caught the Kremlin by surprise, they
were not unprecedented. There was a
Cold War antecedent that Soviet
leaders may have found troubling.
From 1950 to 1969, the Strategic
Air Command conducted similar
operations, both intelligence-gather-
ing and "ferret" missions aimed at
detecting the location, reaction, and
gaps in radar and air-defense installa-
tions along the USSR's Eurasian
periphery in preparation for nuclear
war." It is possible, though not prov-
able, that the Soviets remembered
something the American side had
already forgotten. (U)
1983 Through the War-Scare Prism
Despite their private assessment,
Soviet leaders maintained a public pos-
ture of relative calm during 1981-82.
Even Reagan's erstwhile Secretary of
State Alexander Haig gave them
credit, saying "Wile Soviets stayed
very, very moderate, very, very respon-
sible during the first three years of this
administration. I was mind-boggled
with their patience." But that patience
wore thin as 1983 wore on. In Sep-
tember, Andropov would officially
close off an internal debate over the
causes and consequences of the col-
lapse of detente in an unusual foreign
policy "declaration." In it, he limned
the outline of the war scare:
The Soviet leadership deems it
necessary to inform the Soviet
people, other peoples, and all
who are responsible for determin-
ing the policy ofstates, of its
assessment of the course pursued
in international affairs by the
current United States adminis-
tration. In brief it is a militarist
course that represents a serious
threat to peace.... If anyone had
any illusions about the possibility
ofan evolution for the better in
the policy of the present Ameri-
can administration, recent events
have dispelled them once and for
all [emphasis added]
What were those "recent events"?
SDI. The SDI announcement came
out of the blue for the Kremlin�
and most of the Cabinet. Andropov's
advisers urged him not to overreact,
but overreact he did, accusing the
President of "deliberately lying"
about Soviet military power to justify
SDI. He denounced it as a "bid to
disarm the Soviet Union in the face
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of the US nuclear threat." Space-
based defense, he added,
... would open the floodgates of
a runaway race of types of
strategic arms, both offensive and
defensive. Such is the real signifi-
cance, the seamy side of so to
say, of Washington's 'defensive
conception'.... The Soviet Union
will never be caught defenseless
by any threat.... Engaging in
this is not just irresponsible, it is
insane.... Washington's actions
are putting the entire world in
jeopardy. (u)
SDI had obviously touched a sensi-
tive nerve. The Soviets seemed to
treat it more seriously than many US
scientists and even some White
House aides did at the time. There
were two reasons. First. the Soviets,
despite their boasting in the 1970s,
had practically unlimited faith in US
technical capability. Second, SDI
had a profound psychological impact
that reinforced the trend predicted
by the computer-based "correlation
of forces" model. In a remarkable
tete-a-tete with a US journalist and
former arms control official, Marshal
Nikolai Ogarkov, first deputy
defense minister and chief of the gen-
eral staff, assessed the symbolic
significance of SDI:
...We cannot equal the quality
of United States arms for a gener-
ation or two. Modern military
power is based on technology,
and technology is based on
computers.
In the United States, small
with computers....
Here, we don't even have
computers in every office of the
Defense Ministry. And, for rea-
sons you know well, we cannot
make computers widely avail-
able in our society.
...We will never be able to catch
up with you in modern arms
until we have an economic revo-
lution. And the question is
whether we can have an eco-
nomic revolution without a
political revolution. (Li)
Ogarkov's private rumination is all
the more remarkable because in his
public statements he was a hawk's
hawk, frequently comparing the
United States to Nazi Germany and
warning of the advent of new
�weapon systems based on entirely
"new physical principles." The dual-
ity, even dichotomy, between
Ogarkov's public stance calling for
continuation of the Cold War and
his private acknowledgment that the
USSR could not compete may have
been typical of other Soviet leaders
and contributed to their frustration
and anxiety. (u)
!CAL 007. At 3:26 a.m. Tokyo time
on 1 September 1983, a Soviet Su-15
interceptor fired two air-to-air mis-
siles at a Korean Boeing 747 airliner,
destroying the aircraft and killing all
269 crew and passengers. Soviet air-
defense units had been tracking KAL
Flight 007 for more than an hour as
it first entered and then left Soviet air-
space over the Kamchatka Peninsula.
The order to destroy the aircraft was
given as the airliner was about to
leave Soviet airspace for the second
time after overflying Sakhalin Island.
The ill-fated Boeing 747 was proba-
bly downed in international airspace.
(U)
the White House learned
about the shootdown within a few
hours of the event and, with Secre-
tary of State Shultz taking the lead,
denounced the Soviet act as one of
deliberate mass murder of innocent
civilians. President Reagan called it
an act of barbarism, born of a soci-
ety which wantonly disregards
individual rights and the value of
human life and seeks constantly to
exnatid and dominate other nations."
Air Force intelligence dissented at
the time of the incident, and eventu-
ally US intelligence reached a
consensus view that the Soviets prob-
ably did not know they were
destroying a civilian airliner. The
charge should have been criminally
negligent manslaughter, not premedi-
tated murder. But the official US
position never deviated from the ini-
tial assessment. The incident was
used to keep up a noisy campaign in
the UN and to spur worldwide
efforts to punish the USSR with com-
mercial boycotts, law suits, and
denial of landing rights for Aeroflot
airliners. These various efforts
focused on indicting the Soviet sys-
tem itself and the top leadership as
being ultimately responsible. (U)
Moscow's public response to the inci-
dent came more than a week later on
9 September in the form of an
unprecedented two-hour ivc press
conference conducted by Marshal
Nikolai Ogarkov with support from
Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi
Kornienko and Leonid Zamyatin,
chief of the Central Committee's
International Information Depart-
ment. The five-star spin-doctor's
goal was to prove�despite 269 bod-
ies to the contrary�that the Soviet
Union had behaved rationally in
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deciding to destroy Flight 007. At
first, Ustinov said the regional Soviet
air defense unit had identified the air-
craft as a US intelligence platform,
an RC-135 of the type that routinely
performed intelligence collection
operations along a similar flightparh.
In any event, Ogarkov asserted,
whether an RC-135 or a 747, the
plane was unquestionably on a US or
joint US-Japanese intelligence mis-
sion, and the local Soviet
commander had carried out the cor-
rect order. The real blame for the
tragedy, he argued, lay with the
United States, not the USSR. (U)
Remarkably, a classified memoran-
dum coordinated by the Ministry of
Defense and the KGB shows that pri-
vately the Soviet leadership took
pretty much the same view as their
public pronouncement on KAL 007.
Released in 1992, the secret memo-
randum was sent to Andropov by
Ustinov and KGB Chairman Che-
brikov. It claimed that:
...We are dealing with a major,
dual-purpose political provoca-
tion carefully organized by the
US special [intelligence] services.
The first purpose was to use the
incursion of the intruder aircraft
into Soviet airspace to create a
favorable situation for the gather-
ing of defense data on our air-
defense system in the Far East,
involving the most diverse sys-
tems, including the Ferret
reconnaissance satellite. Second,
they envisaged, if this flight were
terminated by us, using that fact
to mount a global anti-Soviet
campaign to discredit the Soviet
Union. (U)
Soviet angst was reflected in the
rapid and harsh propaganda reaction,
with Andropov once again taking the
lead rather than remaining silent. He
moved quickly to exploit KAL 007,
like SDI before it, for US-baiting
propaganda. Asserting that an "outra-
geous military psychosis" had
overtaken the United States, he
declared that:
The Reagan administration, in
its imperial ambitions, goes so
far that one begins to doubt
whether Washington has any
brakes at all preventing it from
crossing the point at which any
sober-minded person must stop.
[emphasis added]
the Soviet
air-defense commander made an hon-
est, though serious, error because the
entire air-defense system was on high
alert and in a state of anxiety. He
claims this was a result of incursions
by US aircraft from the Pacific Fleet
in recent months during a joint fleet
exercise with the Japanese. He could
not provide details, but he did know
that there was concern about both
military and military reconnaissance
aircraft. (U)
The specific incident to which he
almost certainly was referring
occurred on or about 4 April, when
at least six US Navy planes from the
carriers Midway and Enterprise flew
simulated bombing runs over a
heavily fortified Soviet island in the
Kuril chain called Zeleny. The two
carriers were part of a 40-ship
armada that was patrolling in the
largest-ever exercise in the north
Pacific. According to the Soviet
arnarche protesting the incursion,
the Navy aircraft flew 20 miles inside
Soviet airspace and remained there
for up to 20 minutes each time." As
a result, the Soviet air-defense organi-
zation was put on alert for the rest of
the spring and summer�and per-
haps longer�and some senior
officers were transferr 1-
manded, or dismissed.
Andropov himself
issued a "draconian" order that readi-
ness be increased and that any
aircraft discovered in Soviet airspace
be shot down. Air-defense command-
ers were warned that if they refused
to execute Andropov's order, they
would be dismissed. There is corrob-
orating information for this from a
curious source�an apparent KGB
disinformation project executed in
Japan and then fed back into the
USSR. A Novosti news agency pam-
phlet entitled President's Crime:
Who Ordered the Espionage Flight of
KAL 007? revealed that two impor-
tant changes�one in Article 53 of
the Soviet Air Code on 24 Novem-
ber 1982 and the other in Article 36
of the Soviet Law on State Borders
on 11 May 1993�in effect had
closed Soviet borders to all intruders
and made Andropov's shoot-to-kill
order a matter of law, changing the
Soviet (and internationally r
nized) rules of engagement.'
This incident raised Soviet fears of a
possible US attack and made Moscow
more suspicious that US military exer-
cises might conceal preparations for
an actual attack. Within weeks, Soviet
intelligence would react in exactly
that way to a US-NATO exercise in
Western Europe�with potentially
dangerous consequences. (u)
Able Archer 83. The second signifi-
cant incident of 1983 occurred during
an annual NATO command post
exercise codenamed Able Archer 83.
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The Soviets were familiar with Able
Archer from previous years, but the
1983 version included several
changes. First, in the original scenario
that was later changed, the exercise
was to involve high-level officials,
including the Secretary of Defense
and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff in major roles with cameo
appearances byche President and Vice
President. Second, the exercise
included a practice drill that took
NATO forces from the use of conven-
tional forces through a full-scale mock
release of nuclear weapons. (U)
The story of Able Archer has been
told many times, growing and chang-
ing with each retelling. The original
version came from Gordievsky, who
claims that on the night of 8 or 9
November�he cannot remember
which�Moscow sent a flash cable
from the Center advising, incorrectly,
that US forces in Europe had been
put on alert and that troops at some
US bases were being mobilized. The
cable reportedly said that the alert
may have been in response to the
recent bombing attack on a US
Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon,
or related to impending US Army
maneuvers, or the US may have
begun the countdown to a surprise
nuclear war. Recipients were asked to
evaluate these hypotheses. At two air-
bases in East Germany and Poland,
Soviet fighters were put on alert�for
the first and last time during the Cold
War. As Gordievsky described it:
In the tense atmosphere gener-
ated by the crises and rhetoric of
the past few months, the KGB
concluded that American forces
had been placed on alert�and
might even have begun the count-
down to war.... The world did
not quite reach the edge of the
nuclear abyss during Operation
RYAN. But during Able Archer
83 it had, without realizing it,
come frighteningly close�cer-
tainly closer than at any time
since the Cuban missile crisis of
1962. [emphasis added] (u)
British and US journalists with
inside access to Whitehall and the
White House have repeated the same
story.16 Three themes run through it.
The United States and USSR came
close to war as a result of Kremlin
overreaction; only Gordievsky's
timely warning to Washington via
MI6 kept things from going too far;
and Gordievsky's information was an
epiphany for President Reagan, who
was shaken by the idea that the
Soviet Union was fearful of a US sur-
prise attack. According to US
journalist Don Oberdorfer:
Within a few weeks after.. .Able
Archer 83, the London CIA sta-
tion reported, presumably on the
basis of information obtained by
the British from Gordievsky, that
the Soviets had been alarmed
about the real possibility that the
United States was preparing a
nuclear attack against them. A
similar report came from a well-
connected American who had
heard it from senior officials in
an East European country closely
allied to Moscow. McFarlane,
who received the reports at the
White House, initially dis-
counted them as Soviet scare
tactics rather than evidence of
real concern about American
intentions, and told Reagan of
his view in presenting them to
the President. But a more exten-
sive survey of Soviet attitudes
sent to the White House early in
1984 by CIA Director William
Casey, based in part on reports
from the double agent Gordi-
evsky, had a more sobering effect.
Reagan seemed uncharacteristi-
cally grave after reading the
report and asked McFarlane,
"Do you suppose they really
believe that?"... I don't see how
they could believe that�but it's
something to think about,"
Reagan replied. In a meeting
that same day, Reagan spoke
about the biblical prophecy of
Armageddon, a final world-end-
ing battle between good and evil,
a topic that fascinated the Presi-
dent. McFarlane though it was
not accidental that Armageddon
was on Reagan's mind.''
For all its drama, however, Able
Archer seems to have made more of
an impression on the White House
than on the Kremlin. A senior Soviet
affairs expert who queried Soviet
political and military leaders
reported that none had heard of Able
Archer, and all denied that it had
reached the Politburo or even the
upper levels of the defense minis-
try." The GRU officer cited above
said that watch officers were con-
cerned over the exercise. Tensions
were high as a result of the KAL 007
incident, and Soviet intelligence
always worried that US military
movements might indicate war, espe-
cially when conducted during major
holidays." Other than that, he saw
nothing unusual about Able Archer.
The Iron Lady and the Great
Communicator
Did Gordievsky's reporting, espe-
cially his account of the KGB
Center's reaction to Able Archer,
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66
influence US attitudes toward the
Soviet Union? Gordievsky and coau-
thor Andrew believe so and have
repeated the story dozens of times in
books, articles, and interviews. The
British agent's information, Andrew
noted, "was of enormous importance
in providing warning of the almost
paranoid fear within some sections of
the Reagan leadership that President
Reagan was planning a nuclear first
strike against the Soviet Union:" (U)
But did the British go further and
put their own spin on the reporting
in an effort to influence Reagan? Ana-
lysts who worked with the
Gordievsky file during the war scare
think so, and their suspicions are sup-
ported, if not confirmed, in British
accounts. Prime Minister Thatcher
was engaged in an effort to moderate
US policy toward the USSR, con-
vinced that the US hard line had
become counterproductive, even
risky, and was threatening to under-
mine the NATO consensus on INF
deployments. She also was mindful
of the growing strength of the peace
movement in Britain and especially
in West Germany. (u)
Thatcher launched her campaign to
modify US policy, appropriately
enough, in Washington at the
annual dinner of the Churchill Foun-
dation Award on 29 September,
where her remarks were certain to
reach the White House and attract
US media coverage. Her theme�
"we live on the same planet and
must go on sharing it"�was a plea
for a more accommodating alliance
policy that she repeated in subse-
quent addressees. As her biographer
notes, Thatcher did not make an
urgent plea or sudden flight to Wash-
ington to press her views, rather:
70 Secret
Stalin's heirs decided that
it is better to look through
a glass darkly than through
rose-colored glasses.
99
... the essence of the IThatcher-
Reagan] partnership at this stage
was that the two governments
were basing their decisions on
much the same evidence and on
shared assessments at professional
[sic] level. In particular, both
governments would have had the
same intelligence. A critical con-
tribution in this field was made
over a period of years by Oleg
Gordievski [sic].... 21(U)
British intelligence sources confided �
to a US journalist that London used
the Gordievsky material to influence
Reagan, because his hardline policy
was strengthening Soviet hawks:
Since KGB reporting is thought
to be aimed at confirming views
already held in Moscow�to bol-
ster the current line�the British
worried that the impact on Mos-
cow of the bluster in Washington
would be enlarged by the KGB
itself They had cause to worry."
(U)
The question is: how much spin did
MI6 use? Unfortunately, Gordievsky
did not include the KGB Center's
flash message on Able Archer in his
otherwise comprehensive collection
of cables published in 1992. Gordi-
evsky's claim to fame for influencing
White House perceptions of Soviet
"paranoia" is probably justified, but
.his assertion that a paranoid Kremlin
almost went to war by overreacting
to Able Archer is questionable. (U)
RYAN and the Soviet Pearl Harbor
A Czechoslovak intelligence officer
who worked closely with the KGB
on RYAN noted that his counter-
parts were obsessed with the
historical parallel between 1941 and
1983. He believed this feeling was
almost visceral, not intellectual, and
deeply affected Soviet thinking. (u)
The German invasion was the Soviet
Union's greatest military disaster,
similar to�but much more trau-
matic than�Pearl Harbor. It began
with a surprise attack that could have
been anticipated and countered, but
was not because of an intelligence
failure. The connection between sur-
prise attack and inadequate warning
was never forgotten. (U)
The historical example of Operation
Barbarossa may account for the
urgency, even alarm, that field intelli-
gence officers like Gordievsky and
Shvets attributed to Kremlin para-
noia. This gap in perceptions may
have reflected a generation gap. The
Brezhnev�Andropov generation had
experienced the war firsthand as the
formative experience of their political
lives; for younger Soviets, it was his-
tory rather than living memory. (u)
The intelligence "failure" of 1941 was
a failure of analysis, not collection."
Stalin received multiple detailed and
timely warnings of the impending
attack from a variety of open and clan-
destine sources. But he gave the data
a best case or not-so-bad case interpre-
tation, assuming�incorrectly�that
Hitler would not attack without issu-
ing an ultimatum or fight a two-front
war while still engaged in the West.
Stalin erred in part because he
deceived himself and in part because
German counterintelligence also
deceived him. Stalin's heirs decided
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64
that it is better to look through a glass
darkly than through rose-colored
glasses. This was probably one reason
why RYAN employed an explicit
worst case methodology. (U)
RYAN appears to have incorpo-
rated�or misappropriated�another
lesson from 1941. Despite the prow-
ess of his intelligence services, the
ever-suspicious Stalin ironically dis-
trusted clandestinely acquired
intelligence, including agent report-
ing and even communications and
signals intercepts. He did so because
he believed that all sources could be
controlled by the enemy and cor-
rupted by disinformation, leading
him to reject both accurate and inac-
curate information. As a corrective,
he insisted that Soviet intelligence
select indirect indicators of war plan-
ning that could not be concealed or
manipulated. His chief of military
intelligence had the idea of surveying
mutton prices in Nazi-occupied
Europe, arguing that the Germans
would need sheepskin coats for win-
ter campaigning in Russia, and, by
buying up available livestock supplies
for skins, they would flood the mar-
ket with cheap mutton.24This
deceptively simple indicator turned -
out to be simply deceptive. Hitler
believed he could defeat the Red
Army by fall and did not prepare for
wintertime operations. (u)
RYAN requirements reveal the same
kind of unorthodox thinking. For
example, the KGB residency in Lon-
don was instructed to monitor prices
paid for blood at urban donor
banks. The Center assumed that
prices would increase on the eve of
war as the banks scurried to stock-
pile supplies. But there was a
problem: British donor banks do not
pay donors, all of whom are volun-
teers. Another example: the London
What the Soviets feared
most was that they were
losing the Cold War and
the technological arms race
with the US.
99
residency was told to visit meat-pack-
ing plants, looking for signs of "mass
slaughter of cattle and putting of
meat into long cold storage" in prep-
aration for RYAN. The parallel with
1941 is so close as to suggest that
some of the RYAN requirements
were dug out of the NKVD and
GRU files. (U)
Finally, there is another plausible,
but unprovable, lesson learned from
1941. The prewar intelligence failure
was Stalin's, but he blamed the-intel-
ligence services. This left an indelible
stain on Soviet intelligence that
Andropov, as KGB chief and later
parry chief, may have been deter-
mined not to let happen again.
Soviet intelligence certainly had a
vested interest in promoting a dire
threat assessment of US intentions,
but bureaucratic self-interest may
not have been as important as profes-
sional, not to say hurt, pride. (u)
Conclusion
RYAN was for real. Skeptics should
consider Dobrynin's response to a
doubting Thomas TV interviewer:
"Make your conclusions from what
he fAndropovi said in telegrams to
his residents." The KGB-GRU�or
more appropriately the joint Warsaw
Pact�alert was a crash effort to
build a strategic warning system by
substituting manpower for technol-
ogy, HUMINT for satellites and
sensors. Soviet actions were panicky,
but not paranoid or unprecedented.
As one historian noted, even under
the tsars Russian strategists were
often quite fearful when confronted
by superior Western military technol-
ogy, but their fears, while
exaggerated, were scarcely insane.25
Dobrynin claims that Andropov wor-
ried because President Reagan was
"unpredictable." But this places too
much weight on a single personality.
What the Soviets feared most was
what their "correlation of forces" cal-
culations told them�that they were
losing the Cold War and the techno-
logical arms race with the US. (U)
The real war scare almost certainly
was not the one the Kremlin envi-
sioned. The presumed threat of a US
surprise nuclear attack was nonexist-
ent. The possibility of Soviet
Preemptive strike may have been
more likely. Well-informed observers
like Gyula Horn, the last Commu-
nist foreign minister and current
Prime Minister of Hungary, revealed
in his memoirs that Soviet marshals,
fortified with a little vodka, openly
advocated an attack on the West
"before the imperialists gain superior-
ity in every sphere." The information
is anecdotal, but there is a certain
grim logic to it.
The war scare was the last paroxysm
of the Cold War. It was a fitting
end. (u)
NOTES
1. This was a reference to the 1973
overthrow of Marxist President Salva-
dor Allende.
2. According to interviews conducted
by Murray Marder, "Imlany senior
administration officials scoff now, as
they did then, at the suggestion that
the Soviet Union was genuinely
alarmed by US military moves or
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public statements, or that Moscow
had any justification for feeling
vulnerable. The "war scare" in the
Soviet Union in 1982-83 was deliber-
ately engineered for propaganda
purposes, these officials maintain�a
pretext to create a siege mentality in
the Soviet Union and to frighten the
outside world about US intentions.
("Defector Told of Soviet Alert;
KGB Station Reportedly Warned
US Would Attack," Washington Post,
8 August 1986, p. Al.)
3. Raymond L. Garthoff, The Great
Transition: American-Soviet Relations
and the End of the Cold War (Wash-
ington, DC: The Brookings
Institution, 1994), p. 60. Garthoff
carefully considers all the details sur-
rounding Gordievsky's recruitment
and espionage for British intelli-
gence, his bona fides, and his
defection, but still questions whether
the Soviets could have really believed
in the war-scare scenario. Garthoff
states, wrongly, that Gordievsky's
information on RYAN was given to
US intelligence only after his defec-
tion in May 1985. The British
shared the information�in sanitized
form to conceal the source�contem-
poraneously with the United States.
Garthoff speculates that the British
had some doubts about Gordievsky's
reporting and did not want to offend
the Reagan administration with intel-
ligence that might suggest that its
hardline policies were raising Soviet
anxiety to an unusually high level.
In fact, one reason the British
pressed Gordievsky's information on
CS intelligence was precisely to influ-
ence Reagan's views on the USSR.
4. Vladimir Shlapentokh, "Moscow's
War Propaganda and Soviet Public
Opinion," Problems of Communism,
Vol. 33 (September-October 1983),
p. 88.
5. Peter Schweizer, Victoiy: The Reagan
Administration's Secret Strategy That
Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet
Union (New York: The Atlantic
Monthly Press, 1994), p. xvi.
6 Ad
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. See Gregory L. Vistica, Fall from
Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S.
Navy (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1996), pp. 105-108, 116-
118, and 129-135, passim.
10. Equally important, the Navy was
able to offset the Soviets' ability to
track the fleet by reading naval com-
munications, which the KGB had
been able to decrypt since the late
1960s, thanks to ex-sailor John
Walker and his spy ring. The FBI
arrested Walker in 1985.
11. As cited in Seymour Hersh, "The
Target is Destroyed": What- Really
Happened to Flight 007 and What
Americans Really Knew About It
(New York: Random House, 1986),
p. 18.
12. Schweizer, Victory, p. 190.
13. In 1970, the United States aban-
doned the risky practice of flying
into Soviet, Chinese, and North
Korean airspace to provoke reactions
by radar and air-defense installa-
tions. For recently declassified
information on the US overflight
program, see "Secrets of the Cold
War," U.S. News e3- World Report,
Vol. 114, No. 10(15 March 1993),
pp. 30-50.
14. This incident is recounted in Sey-
mour Hersh, "The Target is
Destroyed': chapter 2, passim. The
Soviets saw both political and mili-
tary machinations in the overflight,
because Zeleny is one of several
islands that comprise the so-called
northern territories that have been in
dispute between Moscow and Tokyo
since the Soviets seized them in
1945. The United States does not
recognize the Soviet claim to the
islands and supports Japan. The
Soviets viewed the overflight as
provocative and a challenge to their
sovereignty over the islands. Hersh
notes on p. 18 that the "Navy never
publicly acknowledged either the
overflight or its error; it also chose to
say nothing further inside the
government."
15. This strange pamphlet was issued by
a one-room Japanese "publishing"
firm in editions of 1,000 each in
English and Japanese. However,
Novosti "reprinted" 100,000 copies
in Russian. This suggests two
things: the pamphlet was intended
primarily for the internal Soviet audi-
ence, and the Soviet people did not
believe their government's explana-
tion of the KAL 007 tragedy. See
Murray Sayle, "Closing the File on
Flight 007," The New Yorker, Vol.
LXIX, No. 42 (13 December 1993),
pp. 90-101, especially 94-95.
16. The two British accounts of Gordi-
evsky's role and how British
intelligence used him to influence
President Reagan's thinking on
Soviet policy are: Gordon Brook-
Shepherd, The Storm Birds: The Dra-
matic Stories of the Top Soviet Spies
Who Have Defected Since World War
II (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicol-
son, 1989), chapter 18, passim; and
Geoffrey Smith, Reagan and
Thatcher (New York W.W. Norton
SL Company, 1991), pp. 122-23.
See also Nicholas Bethell, Spies and
Other Secrets: Memoirs from the Sec-
ond Cold War (New York: Viking:
1994), p. 191. Brooke-Shepard
received assistance from British and
US intelligence. Smith's book is an
"authorized" inside account of its
subject. Bethell is a Tory MP and
friend and fan of Gordievsky's. The
US version, which is identical in
many respects, is Don Oberdorfer,
The Turn: From Cold War to a New
Era (New York: Poseidon Press,
1991), p. 67.
17. Oherdorfer, The Turn, p. 67.
18. Garthoff, The Great Transition,
p. 139, n. 160.
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19. Able Archer coincided with October
Revolution Day. the USSR's
national holiday. Holidays turned
into national drinking binges that
incapacitated practically the entire
country. This is an interesting bit of
mirror-imaging, because NATO mili-
tary planners almost certainly did
not factor the holiday into Allied war
plans.
20. Christopher Andrew, "We Will
Always Need Spies," The London
Times, 3 March 1994, Features, p. 1
21. Smith, Thatcher and Reagan, p. 122.
22. John Newhouse, War and Peace in
the Nuclear Age (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1989), p. 338.
23. For a discussion of the wealth of
accurate information that was avail-
able to Stalin, see John Costello and
Oleg Tsarev, Deadly Illusions: The
KGB Dossier Reveals Stalin's Master
Spy (New York: Crown Publishers,
1993), pp. 85-90. This analysis is
based on declassified Soviet intelli-
gence reports from the KGB
archive. See also Barton Whaley,
Codtword BARBAROSSA (Cambridge,
MA.: MIT Press: 1973), which
details more than 80 indications and
warnings received by Soviet
intelligence.
24. Viktor Suvorov. Icebreaker: Who
Started World War II? (I.ondon:
Hamish Hamilton, 1990),
pp. 320-321.
25. William J. Fuller. Jr., Strategy and
Power in Russia 1600-1914 (New
York: The Free Press, 1992), p. 12.
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