忘却からの帰還〜Atomic Age

1-0:01
In 1983, there were two super powers, both poses nuclear weapons to destroy the planet several times over.
Neither knew what the other side is thinking.

In a course of the year, series of disconnected events convince soviet elderly leadership that America was about to attack.
And that precise moment, NATO began an exercise toward harsh Armageddon,
It almost triggered real thing.

Now for the first time on television, the secret crisis in this year, reconstructed, reveal just how closed we came to the third world war.
Story is really still not known, still not known extent should be
We were ready for the third world war if the American started.
We may have been at the brink of nuclear war, not even known.

1-1:11
If we are attacked by nuclear weapons, these are the warning sounds, you must recognize.
When you hear the attack warning, you and your family must take cover at once.

1-1:52
1983, Ronald Reagan was in the white house, Yuri Andropov is in the Kremlin.
A nuclear war was in the air,

Oblivious to the world outside, in November that year, high ranking NATO officers descended into a nuclear vault in Belgium.
They had come from across Europe and North America to take part in annual communications exercise, called Able Archer.

1-2:22
Able Archer was a routine command post procedural exercise, not the forces taking part.
In a command post exercise are not the whole armies in division and tanks, nothing deploys except rather unfortunate signals,
Squadrons and signals regiments, who got men wartime post, practice sending messages each other.


1-2:53
Abe Archer was a war game designed to test communications.
Out in the forest of West Germany, signalers would send messages according to the tightly controlled scripts.
These messages were then picked up by NATO command bunker and passed on to the players of the game.

The story was always the same.
It began with a diplomatic incident, quickly escalated into a full-scale Soviet invasion Europe.
And last day on the exercise, it would end in an imaginary nuclear Armageddon.

1-3:29
It was treated very very seriously,
At the atmosphere I think as much as anything it became quite realistic way.
The only thing that wasn't realistic is that the end of your shift, you went home for twelve hours or so,
Then came back again.


1-3:54
All across the Soviet Union, listening stations are keeping close watch on Able Archer.
Though they knew this was just a war game, its timing could not have been worse.

It came at the end of the year when the relations between east and west had reached an all-time low.

1-4:14
Perhaps this exercise above all seemed very provocative.
It was the provocative indictment over major event, designed to destabilize as it where for in some way, test the military and political leadership of the Soviet Union.
1-4:40
Soviet suspicions on the West were deeply rooted.
For years they have been preparing to defend themselves against a surprise attack.

By the dawn of the 1980s, they had gained a clear advantage.
In addition to massive standing army deployed in Eastern Europe.
They had over 11,000 nuclear warheads.
2020 SS20 mobile ballistic missiles, each had 45 times the power of Hiroshima

1-5:12
They started the point SS 20's at the rate of one a week, You know till they had 100 of 100, which was a new class missile designed to go after our European allies, and we have nothing in Europe to measure.
So that look like strategic nuclear balance is coming unglued,

1-5:39
Ladies and gentlemen, president of the United States, Ronald Reagan.
1-5:46
President Reagan was patriotic figure but not a romantic and yet he believed that you had to have at least parity and the ability to negotiate from a position of strength.
Hence the buildup in the first four years of his term,

1-6:07
To counter the perceived soviet superiority, Reagan began spending over a trillion dollars a year defense.
By 1983, there were 10,000 American nuclear warheads aimed at the Soviet Union.

1-6;21
Deterrence, carrying the biggest stick, no one how to use it and hoping you won't have to

1-6:31
Principal nuclear deterrence, that strategy was a strategy desperation that was adopted in the immediate aftermath of Second World War to avoid a third World War that surely would destroy civilization as we know it

1-6:47
A pride of Reagan's arm buildup with a new medium range nuclear missile to be introduced into Europe in November 1983.
It was called Pershing II and its imminent arrival unnerved Soviet military.

1-7:07
The really dangerous thing was that the flight time of this missiles was only six to eight minutes, which allowed the Americans to inflict certain nuclear strike and decapitate the Soviet Union.
That is to destroy the leadership inside the Kremlin launching a counterstrike would have been almost impossible way.

1-7:29
The stakes were enormous for both sides
And to the Soviets, it seemed that Ronald Reagan was now prepared to go even further.
On 8th of March 1983, he made his most provocative speech of the Cold War

1-7:49
To ignore the facts of history in the aggressive imposes of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the straggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

1-8:03
This speech was designed to offend the Kremlin, and it did.
1-8:07
When he called the Soviet Union the evil empire, the Soviet leadership was shocked.
Shocked and said we are to expect something terrible from this reckless president.
That all made the Soviet feel that something is really growing and they have to be ready for their nuclear attack.

1-8:38
In the face of growing American hostility, the Soviet Union needed a strong leader, but the new president Yuri Andropov was not around man. A clear spy, who had never visited the West.
He succeeded Brezhnev in November 1982.

1-8:55
I knew chairman of KGB Yuri Andropov very well.
In fact I would often report to him directly.
A people from the old guard looked at him with suspicion.
They thought this guy is he was intellectually superior and that's was what made them feel uneasy with him.
I'm drop-off wanted to look at a tough politician not a liberal guy.

1-9:24
Barely months of to come into office, Andropov's kidney began to fail.
And he spent much of the time at the Kremlin hospital, south of Moscow.
Here a small cabal of politburo members would gather each week to govern country.

1-9:42 The Politburo was essentially a geriatric ward at the point.
The average age I think was around 74, 75 somewhere in the

2-0:01
There were men who obviously had clung to power for a long long time.

2-0:09
The only American intelligence on them came from an unusual source.

2-0:13
We have received considerable intelligence on their personalities and their personal relationships, by intercepting the radio traffic among their limousines.
Principally a value in giving us a feel for them as human beings.

Mean what we would get is which soccer teams these guys were foe.
And they would gossip about each other.
And they would talk about their health problems and some other got pretty graphic.
You basically have the impression all these guys were about to die.
And they in fact work.

2-0:53
If Reagan's arm buildup and belligerent speech nerve agents of Soviet, this was just beginning,
Only two weeks after the evil empire speech, Reagan announce his most expensive technically demanding weapon project to date, the strategic defense initiative, better known a star wars.

2-1:14
My fellow Americans, thank you for sharing your time with me tonight.
Let me share with you a vision of the future which offers hope.

It is that we embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive.
What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?

2-1:49
In the minds of the Soviet leadership, this was a clear statement of intent shooting down their missiles in space with one stroke, render their vast nuclear arsenal redundant.

2-2:00
Shouldn't be a defenseless, and all but all our expenses on the rockets, they were all waste
They will just string us up.
Hi is anti-communist.
He says this is evil empire.
He will string us up or just destroy us now bunkers,

2-2:22
Our presumption was that surely they'll understand that our deployment of SDI is not intended to threaten them.
Alright and they say it is.
That's gotta be disinformation because we don't start World War 3.
You now do Pearl Harbor with United States
Naive but I mean that's the way people far, that's the people still think frankly

2-2:51
The idea of a surprise attack with edged into the mind of the Soviet leadership, they could not forget the humiliation in June 1941.
Under the guise of an exercise, Hitler marched into the Soviet Union, launching Operation Barbarossa.

2-3:10
For the Soviet military and for millions of Russians, the tragedy of a world war two, the so called unexpected attack, was something they would never forget that was a painful tragic experience.
It was a national disgrace for the armed forces.
They would never want to have again.

2-3:40
Anyone who live to the crucible those times, they are not going to have a benign attitude for the Reagan administration and are going to do everything in their power to prepare for a nuclear Operation Barbarossa which is what haunted all of men.

2-4:03
The combination of Reagan's speeches, the US military buildup and the imminent arrival of Pershing into Europe, encourage the Soviet to track NATO's exercise Able Archer with suspicion.

Yuri Andropov was determined not to be taken by surprise again.
He decided to commit the vast resources of the KGB to make absolutely sure.

2-4:35
Haunted by the prospect of a surprise nuclear attack, the ailing Soviet leader Yuri Andropov translated his worst fears into actions.
Once head of the KGB, he had launched Operation RYAN.
This has one aim to collect every single warning signs of an impending western attack,

2-4:54
Andropov said then I remember, at no time in post World War II history, we had such a dangerous situation, close to war as we up to date.
That was amazing to me.
This slogan was Do not miss that moment when the West is about to launch a war.

2-5:19
Across the world, agents were ordered to find the evidence.
Among them, is Oleg Gordievsky the KGB Colonel stationed in London.

2-5:30
Worthwhile, instruction, each fortnight to write a report of the sings of preparation to sudden nuclear attack.
What should we do?
To write there is no signs, you'll get such a blow to you have you write that such thing.

2-5:59
Miss the signs of impending nuclear war was seemingly endless.
Agents around the world were asked to keep a watch on the price of blood, stockpiles of petrol, supplies of meat, the movements of diplomatic cars,

2-6:14
Soviet Spies were given orders like game round, counting how many lights were on in the ministry of defense, white hall after 9 o'clock in the evening.
Those who know about these things, will realize the lights long to the cleaners could do their work, but apparently for eyes of Soviet spies it might be an indicator preparing for nuclear war.
That I think is right but have absurd system also have potentially dangerous some of the miscalculations could be.


2-6:43
All of this intelligence was reported back to Moscow.
Here the future boss of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, took over the running or operation RYAN.

2-6:54
Well I served on the intelligence for 32 years and U met difference chiefs of intelligence,
The most paranoid, most anti-western, totally inflexible man was Vladimir Kryuchkov, the last chairman of KGB.
He would never receive information, which say something nice or simply objective about the West.
He would never accept that.
He said this was disinformation.

2-7:29
Even today aged 83, Vladimir Kryuchkov remains convinced the American intentions.

2-7:37
Operation RYAN had one aim to give advance warning in good time.
Failed to give advance warning that the missiles had closed, and it would already be too late.

The problem was then articulate, they had the right to use nuclear weapons first.
And they did everything to ensure that there was the possibility.

2-8:05
Inside the Lubyanka, headquarters of the KGB, Kryuchkov setup a dedicated RYAN room.
Here every report was fed into the vast computer and choked up on a board.

2-8:18
Then analysts were putting crosses on the squares,
As so they were seeing, reports from the stations about signs of preparations.
A number, of courses, was slowly slowly growing.
This was making voices, yes, they're preparing, so the concept is correct.

2-8:44
Once the RYAN board was full, every sign of an impending nuclear attack would be in place.
At that point, it would be time to press the button.

2-9:12
By the 4th of November 1983, NATO's war game had begun to accelerate.
According to the script, Soviet forces were approaching West Germany, Norway and Greece.

We now know that Vladimir Kryuchkov had already sent an urgent directive to KGB agents across the world.

2-9:32

The threat about the break up nuclear war is reaching extremely dangerous point as surprise nuclear attack on USSR at great urgency and immediacy.

---

3-0:01
What did unnerve the Soviet leadership so much to issue this warning?
It wasn't just the escalation of exercise Able Archer.
It was the suspicion eight weeks earlier, the Americans might have just found pretext needed to go to war

On the night of the 31st in August 1983, Soviet air defenses in the Far East picked up an unknown aircraft heading towards a sensitive naval base

3-0:38
The trespassing plane was already south of Kamchatka.
And as it came out over the Sea of Okhotsk, there appeared above it an interesting satellite.
And then the plane send a telegram to the satellite.

3-0:53
The Soviet military were convinced that this was a US spy plane probing airspace.
In 1983, American pilots regularly flew this kind of reconnaissance mission.

3-1:06
They would gather as much intelligence as they did, before returning to international airspace.
But this mysterious aircraft did not turn back.
A pair of Soviet fighters was immediately scrambled in response.

3-1:31
First into the air was Gennadi Osipovich.

3-1:37
They said to me, test your weaponry.
That kind of command is given rarely, send it put me on my guard.
So I tested it.

3-1:48
Everything is OK,
I asked what has happened.
They said the plane has violated Soviet airspace.
It's coming right to toward you

3-1:58
In less than a minute, Osipovich caught up with mysterious airplane.

3-2:01
I positioned like this. This is him flying and this is me.
And I'm flashing flashing my lights.

Everything is visible.
I could even see the portholes illuminating, two rows of portholes

3-2:18
As the airplane failed to respond, Osipovich was then ordered to fire warning salvo across its bow

3-2:25
They weren’t tracer bullets
I didn't even see them
They were just normal armor piercing shells.

3-2:34
At last the airplane began to change course.
It broke way to international airspace.

3-2:45
As soon as I got this information, I reported Ogarkov, the Chief of the General Staff.
He ordered me to destroy the plane immediately.

3-2:56
Unknown to the Soviet Controllers, their conversations with Osipovich had been picked up by an American listening post on the Far East. This is what they heard.

3-3:07
"I'm closing on the target"
"I have executed the launch"
3-3:19
"The target is destroyed"
3-3:28
I had no emotion, even at that time I had no emotion.
I was simply pleased that I had carried out my task.

3-3:35
Osipovich had not shut down a spy plane.
In fact, it was Korean Airline flight 007 from Anchorage to Seoul.
There were 269 people on board.

3-3:59
What can we think of a regime that so broadly trumpets its vision of peace and global disarmament and yet so callously and quickly commits a terrorist act to sacrifice the lives of innocent human beings?

3-4:14
At first, the Soviet leadership refused to admit shooting the airline down.
Then when they did, they claimed it was on a spy mission, went to went to elaborate lengths to prove it.


3-4:28
Well, we altered the tape.
I had said "The wing lights are flashing."
So now I had to say they are not flashing.

They took an electric razor, turn it on, and made me say "They are not flashing"
Using the razor to imitate the background noise in the cockpit.
I did over and over again.
I didn't know you could fake this noise with a razor.

3-4:59
The worry was, did it reflect a lack of control of the military,
That may be some local commander on his own initiative had been able to do this without any direct instruction from Moscow.
If it had been the case, what would that tell you about ability to use tactical nuclear weapons for instance, as I remember that was a worry at that time.

3-5:22
I think the Soviet leaders, in a strange sort of way, deeply offended and hurt anything that question their legitimacy you're there, or the fact that they were civilized people, really god under their skin,

3-5:37
It was not humane regime, but they felt guilty, they felt affected, that it happened like this,
And so it was terrible crime,
I was very depressed.

3-5:58
In the face of worldwide condemnation, KGB stations were warned that the shoot down was being exploited by America, to whip up anti-Soviet hysteria.
It was the against this backdrop that exercise Able Archer was gathering pace

3- 6:25
Deep inside the NATO nuclear bunker in Belgium, the war game continued according to the script.
Though it was only testing communications, the soviets tracked Able Archer with increasing alarm.

They were convinced that when the West attacks, it would do so under the guise of an exercise.

3-6:48a
The Soviet had cars running round the whole Belgium, a whole of Western Europe with listening devise on while we were there.
That is why it was so important that you never use an open phone line, you never did anything that would compromise the information you'd got.

3-7:07
By now, signal from the imaginary front, coming in from the Mediterranean to the Baltic,
On an occasion the whole exercise would go quit for an hour.
The it mysteriously start again

It was a large puzzle that the Soviet could not quite decipher

3-7:29
The Soviets, like all intelligence organizations would be able to read much of the signal traffic that passed out.

They say you have a divisional headquarters there, squawking away sending
Remember when you transit, anyone can hear it.
The soviets would pick that up as a divisional headquarter.
And it’s sending to a headquarter down here.
And it’s also sending to perhaps one or two more.
That must be divisions and that must be core headhunters.
And you can build up chain a network, a web
It’s called traffic analysis.
You don't have to read signals to actually work out, the order of battle.

3-8:12
To make sure that the listening Soviets did not get the wrong impression
Each NATO signal had exercise exercise exercise written all over it.

3-8:24
Does that mean to the suspicious Soviet mind well, of course, they say that anyway it's all part of the big deception? It’s all part of NATO’s mask obscure.
It doesn't matter what we were doing
Soviet believed it was a masque for something much worse.

3-8:46
These large scale military exercises, would just fraught with the possibility that the under the cover of such exercise, unexpected nuclear missile strike could be launched.
This was the danger that presented itself.

3-9:03
To give themselves warning, Soviet had invested heavily in their satellite technology
These monitor the status of every western nuclear base, relaying the information directly to military intelligence, KGB and Andropov himself.
This system was not foolproof.
Three weeks after the Korea airline shoot down, far less public event occurred that had eventually catastrophic consequences.

On the night of 26th of September 1983, lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov assumed command of the early warning bunker on south of Moscow, who's taking another one shift.

4-0:01
Any other could have been the replacement for that night, but the choice fell to me I supposed.
And that was mothing extraordinary because after all, it was the ordinary work/

4-0:13
Petrov's ordinary work was to monitor a satellite taking photographs at the American continent.
Its computer could detect the launch of American nuclear missiles from the underground silos in the Midwest.


старт пуск


4-0:53
It was truly shocking sight.
The siren began to scream and the word launch flashed, in big red letters on the white background.
It was written Launch.
The whole thing was incredible.

4-1:12
Without any indication of malfunction, Petrov expected the satellite photographs to confirm that missile had been launched.
As the Sun was now setting across America, American missile bases were hidden evening shadows,

4-1:30
Points of light are sparkling over the place.
Trying to pick out an actual rocket launch from among them, was virtually impossible.

4-1:39
Unable to see any sign of missile flash, Petrov trusted his instinct.
He ignored the computer and disable the system.


4-2:01
No sooner had returned sound, the computer registered a second launch.
Now Petrov was forced to inform his boss that he was overriding the satellite for a second time.

4-2:14
Literally as I took the receiver off from my ear.
I said there goes another one.
4-2:25
After the third launch, the computer warning changed to missile attack.
This terrifying new information was relayed to Andropov himself.

The leadership now sort urgent confirmation but the satellite was correct.
Only Petrov stood away from massive nuclear retaliation

4-2:51
The moment the third warning went on, I started feeling like I was sitting in the Count frying pans.
I broke out to sweat. I couldn’t feel my feet


4-3:04
Petrov knew that these American missiles take 12 minutes to reach to Soviet Airspace.
During that time, the computer registered two more launches.
Now five missiles appeared to be in the air.

4-3:31
I'm the sort of person that when I make a decision, I never changed.
Now military training told us that what a missile with US began, it would not start with just a few missiles.
It would be massive launch.

4-3:40
Incredibly Petrov’s instinct proved correct. The five nuclear missiles were nothing more than high-altitude clouds.
These reflected sunlight directly into the satellite infrared sensors.
Twenty minutes later, they were gone
But Petrov's deal was not over yet
After explaining why he had overridden the computer, he was later discharged the Army,

4-4:13
"The bird sitting higher up, and craps of the bird sitting lower down." and that's how he acted with me, He really offended me.

4-4:26
Petrov's extraordinary action that night kept a state secret until the fall of Soviet Union.
West never understood how fallible the Soviet early warning system had become.
It made the leadership feel truly vulnerable.

No wonder then that exercise Able Archer which was rehearsing the step toward nuclear Armageddon, as having the affected worlds.

4-4:51
One of the things that kept the Cold War scary was the lack of understanding on each side of mentality of others.

4-5:06
In the autumn of 1983, there was only one man who could tell the West what. Soviet Union is really thinking.
He was a double agent, turned by British intelligence.
Now he was only the reliable source on the paranoia of top of Soviet hierarchy,
His name was Oleg Gordievsky.

---

4-5:40

In 1983 the tensions between two super powers were at their highest for a generation
So it may seem strange, incredibly even, that there was only one man who could tell the West what soviet was really thinking.

4-5:57
We had some highly restricted but extremely good intelligence of general thinking of Russian leadership, which came from a source in the KGB, subsequently revealed to be Oleg Gordievsky.



4-6:15
I met my British contact once in four weeks.
It was in a Bayswater, a small flat, was rented by the service.

At the lunch time, it was officer who was a John Scarlett and Secretary was there, took photograph documents, if I would come with documents in my pocket, which I sometimes did.
4-6:46
John Scarlett who had met him, passed the information to his superiors.
It was so important that was then sent to CIA in Washington,
At every step, the intelligence carefully disguised Gordievsky's actual source.
It impressed US leadership.

4-7:08
When we did provide the president with the information that Gordievsky had given us, his natural response, do we have anything like Gordievsky?
Answer that we had given was no.

We had some very good Soviet sources. Our sources of Soviet Union tented to be those that provided us with the information about military.
What Gordievsky had given us were information of the thinking of the leadership.

4-7:42
We believed what he told us,
We believed too, knowledge man reporting these he thought.
But one always has to weigh this against so called wider picture.
If you ever believe only intelligence in your lost.
#Ninety nine red balloons floating in the summer sky

4-8:00
The month of October 1983, was one of tensest of the entire cold war.
With the imminent arrival of American cruising Pershing missiles to Europe, CND, the campaign to nuclear disarmament, held biggest rally ever.
200,000 people marched in London.
Another 600,000 in West Germany.

4-8:25
They poured into Bonn this morning in their tens of thousands.
4000 coaches alone had been laid on to bring them in.
Rarely half million people gathered to form a human chain across the Rhine.
Former chancellor Willy Brandt told them later he firmly against Pershing in this country already has own missiles than any other in Europe.


4-8:49
Pershing II could reach Moscow in 8 minutes, though their locations were supposed top secret, they were well known to Soviet, courtesy of East German intelligence.

4-9:05
The situation between east and west was very explosive in 1983.
There was an actual risk of cold war turning into hot war.
We have around 500 very important sources in West Germany at that time.
And we knew the missile locations exactly.

4-9:35
Finding enough this information was paramount important to Moscow.
But even greater cue to discover the intention of NATO itself.

4-9:49
5-0:00
If exercise Able Archer was mask for sudden nuclear strike, there was only one man who could confirm it.
He was a German spy at the very heart of NATO.
Known only as Topaz,

5-0:19
He had chosen the code name topaz himself.
Topaz was precious stone and this is how I would describe his activities.
He was the jewel of our crown.

5-0:34
NATO from the beginning was my enemy, and I went in to destroy it.
I mean, that was, if I could have, I would have, and that was my purpose.

5-0:49
For five years, Rainer Rupp (Topaz) patiently worked his way up to NATO hierarchy, gaining access to more and more secret information.

5-1:01

I did it with door open, and I was taking the pictures, and if the bang came.

• Sorry I keep moving things around
• Get those off by 0200, please
• Ok

And went on making notes

• Good night
• Good night

After a while it get routine, your heart doesn’t even go.

5-1:31
Agent Topaz's intelligence was unique.
And the Soviets were hungry for more.
He responded by gaining access to the most secret document of NATO
It was called MC 161.

5-1:47
It was cosmic top secret which was the highest level of classification
You had to read it in the registry,
You couldn’t' take it to your office.
Both eyes only.

Did you photograph it?
Yes, I photographed it in its entirety, which was quite a lot of work and I'm not going to tell you how.

5-2:19
MC161 was guarded so closely, because it contained the crown jewels of NATO's intelligence.
It was not a battle plan, but a detailed account of everything Soviets knew about NATO.

5-2:33
If you know what your enemy knows about you, you know, for instance, 30 ignores the strengths of there and that he ignores some of your weakness.
I mean it's a tremendous advantage.

5-2:52
Throughout 1983, Rainer Rupp kept the Soviet informed that NATO's intentions using a pre-arrange system

5-3:01
I always said that there was not the kind of big plan to, you know, attack the Soviet Union at 12 o’clock tomorrow, kind of thing, because European government just wouldn't have participated, especially not the German government, because they would have been, if not completely destroyed, but to a large degree also destroyed.
But all this talk of the Reagan administration, yes I do think that it could have provoked a nuclear war.

5-3:33
In Moscow, the KGB received these reports and they shed agent Topaz's opinion about Reagan.
But unlike him, they were convinced that NATO was planning an attack.

5-3:50
In the middle of 1982, I had a private discussion with general Kryuchkov.
Kryuchkov was very concerned by an imminent nuclear strike of NATO against the Soviet Union.
Even talked about the start of third world war, obviously my question was, where did you get this information from?
You remain vague.
In intelligence you never reveal your true sources.

5-4:18
The circle of intelligence remained unbroken.
Eager to please their masters of Moscow, agents around the world continued to foul beyond the course.
Whether they were true or not no longer mattered.
They only fuel the paranoia, the heart of the Soviet machine.

5-4:41
The RYAN program was absolutely vital, because it would provide the immediate signal to the party leadership that something is about to happen.
So the government, the Politburo, all the bosses would get in the lift, very deep down under the Central Committee of the KGB building, catch the special train, and then go about 30 or 40 kilometers to a special underground town, where they would seek out the consequences of a nuclear attack on Moscow.

5-5:22
President Reagan also had Armageddon on his mind.
On the 10th of October, he held a private screening of "The Day After", highly controversial TV movie, which for the first time on American television showed a full horror of nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

5-5:43
President saw at the Camp David, and was quite moved by it
It evoked in him renewed fear of Armageddon, of the significance of nuclear weapon as a prelude stage, history leading inevitably toward catastrophe

5-6:13
Reagan committed the private feeling to his diary.
It's very effective, and left me greatly depressed.
So far they haven't sold any of the 25 ads scheduled and I can see why,

5-6:35
Shortly after viewing "The Day After", Reagan was force to confront Armageddon yet again.
He reviewed his first briefing on the single integrated operational plan, the SIOP, which describe what happened in the event of a nuclear war.

5-6:53
For the president, this means the first time he was actually exposed to these scenarios that was a very sobering moment.

5-7:01
In his diary, he wrote:
One of the first statistics I saw as president was one of the most sobering and startling I'd ever heard. I'll never forget it:
The Pentagon said at least 150 million American lives would be lost in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union -- even if we "won."
There are still some people at the Pentagon who claim a nuclear war is 'winnable,'
I thought they were crazy.

5-7:30
Reagan's response was to order American scientists to speed up research into his beloved Star Wars project.
In the eyes of KGB, this acceleration was yet another sign that the Americans were preparing for war.
By the end of Saturday 5th of November, in the war game of Able Archer, the script predicted the imminent use of chemical weapon by the Soviet Union.
Out in the real world, we now know at the same evening, Oleg Gordievsky received another unnerving telegram from Moscow. It contained the timetable for a Western first strike.

5-8:18
It can be assumed that once the preliminary decision for RYAN is taken, the first strike will follow soon after possibly 7 to 10 days.

5-8:32
The telegram added that the countdown had already begun.

5-8:58
On Monday the 7th of November, the war game of Able Archer entered the new phase.
The next page of scenario indicated that the Soviet had launched chemical weapons.
This would force player to nuclear response.

5-9:17
The idea that anyone could deviate from the exercise planning staff script, is frankly bizarre, because one of the problems with exercises is if someone started to do a free play, as it's called and actually do rather well and maybe start to win the war, it spoil the exercise for everybody else.
So everyone sticks to the script.

5-9:46/6-0:00
As the soviet military struggle to follow the imaginary war that NATO were fighting, new and potentially alarming news has been passed on to the KGB.
Around the world, American military installations were moving onto a heightened state of alert.
But this had nothing to do with imminent nuclear war.
On the 23rd of October, two weeks before the Able Archer had begun, a massive suicide bomb exploded on the US Marines base in Beirut.
241 soldiers were killed.

6-0:35
One of the consequences of the attack on marines and in Beirut, was tightening of security at all US facilities and I started parking trucks next to the entrance at the White house as a barrier never been hit by a truck bomb before.
Soviet would have seen the tightening of security and US installations all over the world was tied to what happened in Beirut, not to anything that was going to happen in Europe.

6-1:11
And the everything had gone before was not enough.
Here's another RYAN indicator occurred the day after the Beirut bomb.
6-1:24
Without any prior warning, American marines landed on the tin commonwealth island of Grenada.
They were there to overthrow the fledgling communist regime.

6-1:39
Mrs. Thatcher's reaction to the American Invasion of Grenada was one of deep indignation.

First of all, she had not been informed or consulted in advance.
And second is that the Americans have marched into one part of the Queen's dominions without so much as a by your leave.

6-2:00
The invasion provoked a storm cipher communication between Mrs. Thatcher and White house.

6-2:04
It was extremely tetchy, not to say, irritable telephone conversations at the time,
I think from hindsight, president Reagan probably deeply regretted that he hadn't got around to mentioning it

6-2:16
To the KGB in Moscow, this barrage of communication was precisely what they expected to happen prior to a nuclear strike.

6-2:26
One of the things to understand about the KGB that made it different from American intelligence, and for that matter from British intelligence, is it really had no analytical capability.
You had all the spies out there reporting information, and there was no one analyzing and for accuracy or whether it was real or not.

6-2:52
If President Reagan did intend to attack the Soviet Union, he was going to elaborate length to conceal it.
Early on the morning of Tuesday the 8th of November, he set off on a trip to South Korea and Japan.
He had with him the nuclear football and 18 kilogram briefcase.
This contained launch codes to be used by the president in the event of a nuclear war.

6-3:24
On the same morning, the war game Able Archer enter its final phase, having failed to contain Soviet chemical attack, the script now demanded the use of nuclear weapons.
The nuclear planners began to identify their targets.

6-3:40
They were exercising people like myself, in making the right response, and of course we did use our actual plans.

6-3:53
That afternoon, the Supreme Allied commander approved 25 targets in Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia.
The nuclear request was immediately transmitted to London and Washington.
This top secret frequency was picked up by the Soviet listening.

6-4:19
Another question of whether the Soviets could read the nuclear released procedures is a very interesting question.
We have to assume they couldn't but it appears they reacted like a scalded cats

6-4:33
Determined not to be taken by surprise, Soviet military began to take defensive measures against Able Archer.
In Eastern European tanks and troops deployed to their wartime positions.
Nuclear bombers were put on standby.

6-4:53
All the air crews were stationed right by their planes.
Then command came, all pilot into your cockpits.
Start your engines.
And then we waited, either to take off or to remain in the cockpit.
It was very tense, for waiting that command.
You are not so shuddering

6-5:13
Up in the Baltic, the vast Northern Fleet prepared for imminent attack,

6-5:23
Our big ships, the cruisers, sailed right in close toward the cliffs, of which there were many.
Because to distinguish grey ships against a background of cliffs is extremely difficult.

6-5:38
Up on the edge of the Arctic, massive nuclear submarines dash for the cover of the ice.
In the event of a nuclear exchange, their intercontinental ballistic missiles would prove decisive.

6-5:53
(Sergei Lokot)
It is almost impossible to find a submarine under the ice.
We waited wait by our hole, making sure we could receive every signal.
So that the time needed to make a counter strike is as shoot as possible.

6-6:07
In the eyes of the Soviet leadership, these serious defensive measures were absolutely necessary.

6-6:15
On the military side, there might have been quite several dozen senior officers who believed it.
That's why they had the weight behind them, to persuade central committee, and then KGP, Andropov, that it was really idea.

6-6:35
Nevertheless they knew that the releases if any nuclear weapon by the United States, ultimately require the permission of the president himself.
In the original script of Able Archer, Reagan was due to participate.
But at the last moment, Robert McFarlane quietly changed the plan.

6-6:55
Anytime we conduct an operation like that, it's watched carefully by the Soviet Union and if you go to the point of having the principles the decision makers actually involved, the question raised is this exercise or are we not facing a possible attack, the president came around to my view that however misguided so it perceptions were, we shouldn't even at any possibility of their raising the stakes, and he withdraw.

6-7:31
With Ronald Reagan no longer involved, NATO leaders also declined to participate.
Their roles were taken by military aids.
On the evening of the 8th of November, they sent back the signal approving the use of nuclear weapons.

To the watching Soviets, it appeared that the final price of the jigsaw was known place.

6-8:00
It was a very seriously problem.
Sadly seemed as if the Americans with just about to launch a surprise nuclear attack.

6-8:10
Vladimir Kryuchkov has already warn that a nuclear attack might happen in the next seven to ten days.
Now it seemed that his prediction was correct.
The world was on the verge of Armageddon.
6-8:25
That evening, Oleg Gordievsky received an extraordinary cable from Moscow.

6-8:31
When it was a flash telegram, it wasn't super urgent telegram,
Which was now critical situation, the Americans exercise maybe preparations to sudden a nuclear attack. Watches on the signs and report immediately us anything unusual,
How can be taken such a task seriously.

6-8:54
The KGB Center flashed telegrams to every station in the world.
They also alerted Topaz, the star agent at the heart of NATO.

6-9:05
The courier at first brought me the message.
“High alert, the Russians are really scared,”
“They want know everything,”
“NATO is preparing for war.”
I was really upset.
I was thinking “where is this leading.”

6-9:26
Rainer Rupp was expected to give the KGB warning of the imminent attack, using a special device concealed inside a calculator.

6-9:37
I would write my message down with coded.
And this little machine, would this condensed all this into very short sounds like KUUU.
With that, I would go to normal telephone.

7-0:00
Did you send a message during Able Archer?
7-0:02
Yeah.
7-0:08
What did it say?
7-0:09
There was no indication of NATO preparing for war at that time.
I'm talking about NATO, not about the United States, because the all is too quite different things.

7-0:29
CIA spy satellites watched these military preparations without concern.
They photographed nuclear bombers alongside runway at East Germany.
Troops and tanks at the battle position in Eastern Europe.
Soviet submarines hiding in Arctic ice.
They were blind to paranoia gripping Soviet leadership.
7-0:55
Nor could they pick up most powerful weapons on earth, would poise to unleash Armageddon
7-1:16
In imaginary war game Able Archer, the script have reached the final page, having obtained permission to use nuclear weapons.
Then nuclear commanders now had to wait the whole night before they're allowed to press the button

7-1:31
By the time the exercise came to its fruition, it would have gone nuclear, and there was a kind of wave of rising interest and enthusiasm.
But gone critical, you're asking for nuclear unleash, bang! And we go home.

7-1:46
They were not aware that these very night was a special date in Soviet calendar.

7-1:53
In November 1983, I was a captain serving for strategic missile force.
Our commander always told us that the war would begin on the eve of some holiday, when people were celebrating, when people were relaxed.

7-2:17
7th of November 1983, was revolution day, which began several days of celebration,
In the minds of the Soviet leaders, this was their moment in greatest weakness.

7-2:30
We expected that a precisely at that moment Americans might unleash the third world war.

7-2:47
When we reach the command bunker that night, we received a special order.
We were told to immediately go to raise combat alert.
It was so seriously there was a third man there with us to maintain an interrupted communications.

7-3:06
Unseen by watching American satellites, over 300 intercontinental ballistic missiles, prepared for a massive retaliatory strike.

7-3:16
The strategic nuclear forces, secretly, I emphasize, that it would secretly went up to increased combat readiness.
This fact was not communicated to the rest of the armed forces.

7-3:33
Under my command were 10 intercontinental ballistic missiles, on each missile there were 10 warheads.
Each of these was aimed at a particular city, like Washington, New York, Philadelphia, and so on.
The targeting is very very precise.
The devastation would have been total.

7-4:02
Each missile has force of 150 Hiroshima’s.
And these were not the only nuclear forces preparing for war.
Unseen by the west, 75 SS-20s had also dispersed into the field.

7-4:21
Back then, spy satellites were not powerful enough to pinpoint the allocations once they were in place.
And SS-20s also have camouflage devices, so they could not be spotted by visual or radio reconnaissance

7-4:39
Controlling this vast secret escalation, was the chief of the army himself, Marshal Ogarkov.
That night he descended into the central command bunker.

Back in the nuclear vault Able Archer, the mood could not have been more different.

7-4:55
I can see no reason why it would have alarmed Soviet at all.
They held their exercises.
They went through exactly the same sort of procedure as we did.
And certainly I mean the Able Archer were well known just a paper exercise, a command post exercise.

7-5:20
This was not that Soviet saw it.
Cocooned inside his hospital sweet, Yuri Andropov knew that he would be amongst the first of the NATO's target.

7-5:32
What we in the nuclear forces, fear the most was that too much time might be lost in the decision-making process.
If the flying time of the Pershing was only eight minutes, then the window in which they had to make their decision was drastically reduced.



7-5:52
In Soviet Russia, three men that the authority to launch nuclear weapons.
Besides Andropov both defense minister and the head of the army had to check its Soviet equivalent nuclear football. These contain the launch codes to the nuclear weapons.

7-6:15
In the background of 1983, level of tensions they really were I think concerned that maybe United States getting range strike

7-6:24
There is one important consideration that we often forget.
Remember their Americans did use nuclear weapons once.
It wasn't just a test.
They destroyed two Japanese cities.

7-6:44
Throughout the night of 8th November, the entire Soviet war machine waited for the nuclear signal.

7-6:53
Every event of 1983 had led up to this moment.
Now surely, the Americans would launch a nuclear attack.
They had the desire, the motives, and in Able Archer, they had the perfect cover.

All the Soviets could do now was wait for them to press the button, and then retaliate.

7-7:47
# Sweet dreams are mad of this
# Who am I to disagree
# I travel the world and seven seas
# Everybody's looking for something.
# Some of them want to use you

7-8:07
Anything could have happened.
We were ready for the Third World War, if the Americans unleashed it.

7-8:16
At dawn the following day, the Soviets intercepted the NATO signal that nuclear missiles had been launched.

7-8:33
We were waiting for the one most important order.
That is, the order to open the safe with the launch codes.
When you open the documents, your hands are shaking, it is the most terrifying thing.
But we knew that if we had received the order, American missiles were already flying towards us.

7-8:54
The targets had been chosen, the coded messages had been sent.
But the missiles remained nothing more than piece of paper in a war game.

On the last morning, 350 imaginary nuclear weapons were launched at targets in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

7-9:28
And then, quite suddenly, the exercise ended.

7-9:40
After all, it was the 11th of November, Armistice Day.

8-0:03
Can you imagine people like Andropov starting a war?
How would they spend their last month of their life in the condition of a nuclear war?
Who wants to have such a disastrous, uncomfortable end of their life?
It was absolutely human feeling.

8-0:25
I know these people personally.
They would never resort to arms first, that's part of the Russian culture, which is often not properly understood in the West.
We had too many wars, we lost millions of people.
For us, the war is a last resort.

8-0:47
And Yuri Andropov was well aware that his beloved operation RYAN was still not complete.

8-0:56
It was just about half.
So this so called proof, it was not a proof.
The proof was saying no, there is no sign of the preparation to nuclear attack.

8-1:09
No one was more relived that it was over than the men with their fingers on the button -- the Soviet missile crews.

8-1:16
I returned home after serving my combat duty.
My wife was so pleased to see me.
They were all so happy, and the very next day, we had another party to celebrate the Revolution Day holiday.
In fact, even today we still celebrate it.

8-1:44
It was only after Able Archer had finished that the West discovered the extraordinary Soviet reaction.

8-1:55
I spoke to John Scarlett about everything which I experienced.
I knew it was a dramatic moment,
I knew Moscow was nervous.
The KGB regarded it as a folly.
The KGB station in London, regarded it as a folly, it didn't matter for him.
It was important for him what was happening in Moscow.

8-2:20
This intelligence was also taken seriously by the Americans.
And it was greeted with universal surprise.

8-2:30
The president didn't actually read each word, but he did receive from the CIA, the key core issues that were exposed in Gordievsky's reports, and was very moved by them.

8-2:49
My first reaction to the Gordievsky reporting was no only that we might have had a major intelligence failure, but further, that the most terrifying thing about Able Archer was that we may have been at the brink of nuclear war and not even known it.

8-3:13
Three days after the end of the exercise, the first cruise missiles arrived at Greenham Common airbase in England.
Hundreds of Pershing IIs met a similar reception in West Germany, Italy and Greece.
To the protestors, nuclear war was coming closer.
They had no idea just how close it had really been.

8-3:43
For Yuri Andropov, the war scare of Able Archer was the last crisis of his leadership.
Two months later he was dead.

8-3:56
A year later, Oleg Gordievsky was recalled to Moscow.
Realizing he was under surveillance, he contacted MI6.

8-4:10
Everybody during the Cold War, who was in touch with the foreign intelligence service, all were caught and all were shot. All

8-4:25
Recognizing the danger he was in, British agents smuggled Gordievsky out over the Finnish border in July 1985.

8-4:37
I am the only one of those ten heroic officers.

You're a luck man.
Incredibly lucky, it's like a second life.
8-4:40
Rainer Rupp was not so fortunate.
In 1993, the CIA finally caught up with Topaz.

8-4:57
I hurt NATO very much, in particular, I hurt the United States, and I'm still pleased that I did it.

8-5:05
Rupp was awarded a maximum 12 year sentence, of which he served seven.

8-5:12
Do you think the Americans would like you to still be jail?
8-5:16
Oh, quite clearly, and they would prefer not only me to be in jail, but throw the key.

8-5:24
During 1983, an accidental nuclear war between East and West almost happened.
Neither side wanted but they did not communicate.

Only the spies on opposite side kept the peace.
Ironically the Soviet panic in November 1983 cause Ronald Reagan to change his mind.
He was determined to start talking to new Soviet leader himself.

After series of meetings, he visited Moscow in the last year of his presidency.

You still think evil empire, Mr. President?
8-6:02
No.
8-6:03
It marked the beginning of the end of the cold war.

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