[00:00:01] Due to the themes of this podcast, listener discretion is advised. Lock your doors, close the blinds, change your passwords. This is Secrets and Spies.

[00:00:27] Secrets and Spies is a podcast that dives into the world of espionage, terrorism, geopolitics, and intrigue. This podcast is produced and hosted by Chris Carr. On today's episode, I am joined by former US Air Force intelligence officer turned author Brian J. Morra, and we discuss his excellent book, The Able Archers, which looks at how close we came to a nuclear exchange with Russia in 1983. I hope you find this episode interesting. Thank you for watching.

[00:00:55] Thank you for listening. Take care. The opinions expressed by guests on Secrets and Spies do not necessarily represent those of the producers and sponsors of this podcast. Brian, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you

[00:01:24] on. Thank you for joining me. Well, thank you very much, Chris. It's delightful to be with you and to meet you virtually, but we've corresponded a lot. Nice to see your face. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Well, Brian, for the benefit of listeners, can you just tell us a little bit about your background in intelligence and national security? I started out in the business as an intelligence officer,

[00:01:49] in the United States Air Force. I went through Air Force intelligence training, some CIA training, and training with the National Security Agency also. And my first real assignment after all those training

[00:02:13] schools was to be assigned to Tokyo, Japan. And I was in Tokyo for the better part of four years. And that's relevant to the story of the Able Archers. In as much as I was there through the Korean

[00:02:34] Airlines shoot down, KAL 007. I was an actor in that particular event. And then I was, the fall of 1983 was when the Able Archer crisis played out really, I think, triggered by the Korean airline shoot down. And I was reassigned to Washington around the first of November and went to a specialized

[00:03:03] unit in Washington, DC, called the Directorate of Soviet Affairs, which covered a lot of ground. I should point out that I was a Soviet specialist. I studied Russian in college and spent some time in the Soviet Union when I was in college. So that was my specialty as an Air Force intelligence officer.

[00:03:28] In that capacity in Washington, I was involved in the Able Archer 83 crisis itself and our analysis of what the Soviet Union was doing. And then that winter after the crisis ended, I was involved in a number of discussions within the intelligence community, especially with Defense Intelligence Agency and CIA over

[00:03:53] those events and just their significance. Then later in life, I left active service when I was 30 years old and went into industry, but I stayed in the Air Force Reserve. And I served as a reserve officer during the Persian Gulf War, during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm,

[00:04:24] as one of the few intelligence officers assigned to the air campaign planning operation. So I was involved in that and I'm watching what's happening in Iran closely for many reasons, but one reason is its similarity really with the air campaign that we conducted during Desert Storm. And then I spent the rest of my career in industry

[00:04:52] working on many different, usually major intelligence systems development, and as well as defense systems, including things that your listeners might be familiar with, like the B-2 bomber and the F-35 and even the B-21 bomber. So that's a quick snapshot. Brilliant. What does Air Force intelligence do? Because obviously the US has quite a few different

[00:05:19] intelligence sort of agencies, some connected to the military, some civilian. What is the sort of focus of Air Force intelligence? What kind of things are they looking for? Well, within Air Force intelligence, you will find all of the different intelligence disciplines. So there are imagery analysts, there are signals intelligence specialists, there are human officers,

[00:05:42] officers, and then there are more generalist officers that support flying units with intelligence. And in the Air Force, intelligence is a major part of any operation. And for those of you who've seen old World War II movies, whether American films or British films,

[00:06:08] you'll see when the crews are being briefed before they go to their bombers to fly against targets in Europe during World War II, they're getting a briefing on the targets, on the defenses that the Germans have around the targets and all. Well, that's all being done by Air Force intelligence. And so Air Force intelligence,

[00:06:35] one of its key roles is to prepare the crews for those missions, and both in terms of the targets and the target packages, as well as the threats they're going to encounter. And as I mentioned during Desert Shield Desert Storm, the role I played in helping to construct the air campaign, how are we

[00:07:00] going to go after the enemy? The intelligence part of the Air Force is kind of the Air Force's intelligentsia for how should we attack this enemy? How are we going to hit their centers of gravity? How are we going to degrade their command and control, their air defenses, of course, first and foremost. But

[00:07:22] if you look at the war in Iran today, and the target sets that are being prosecuted, those have been selected largely, not exclusively by Air Force intelligence. It's a very cooperative, collaborative effort with the operational people. But from a combat standpoint, that's one of the things they do. And then

[00:07:46] in peacetime, there's, again, as I mentioned, all the intelligence disciplines that you see in the intelligence community more broadly are represented in Air Force intelligence, and they're doing those disciplines for specific Air Force needs, if you will. So, Brian, I was wondering if you could just give us sort of an overview of your book, The Able Archer 83, and sort of what it's about. And I suppose, in a sense, why somebody should pick it up.

[00:08:15] Yes, well, they should pick it up because it's a great read. And it's written like a thriller, even though it's an historical novel. And I guess, Chris, one thing I could note at the outset here is to answer the question, why did I write it as a novel? Why did I not write a nonfiction book?

[00:08:40] And you may know, and I'm sure you know, and many of your readers may know that there have been a couple of nonfiction books written about the Able Archer crisis. And one is written by a British gentleman. And that's actually, I think, a really excellent book. And he was one of the endorsers authors of The Able Archers. But in any event, I, when those books came out, and they both came out in 2018,

[00:09:11] they, they were able to be written because the United States government was finally declassifying documents related to the Able Archer crisis. The documents didn't really begin to be declassified until 2014, 2015. So many, many decades after the events. That's how those nonfiction books came to be.

[00:09:35] I read those books, and I decided that if I was going to write about the events of 1983, I, I thought I would do it from a, a personal perspective. And because I was a player in many of those events. And I thought the best way to do that would be in a, a fictionalized account that's

[00:10:02] based on the real events, and not try to create another nonfiction treatment, but do something different that would imbue the story with, with drama, really, because it is a dramatic series of events that could have ended in the, with the catastrophic nuclear war. So, um, is,

[00:10:27] so that's why I did what I did. Now, in turn, to answer your question directly, what is it about the 1983 crisis, uh, really is a result of the end of detente. And your listeners will probably know that detente was a relaxation of tensions between the West and the Soviet bloc

[00:10:51] that began in 1969 under Richard Nixon, uh, as the U S president, uh, and extended into the Jimmy Carter administration in the late 1970s. Uh, uh, detente really crashed and burned as a result of a number of things. But one of the biggest events was the Soviets invasion of

[00:11:13] Afghanistan at the end of 1979. Uh, Jimmy Carter was not reelected president. Uh, Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 and he essentially declared the end of detente and that we were going to approach the Soviet union through a policy of peace through strength, and that we're going to rebuild

[00:11:38] the American military, which had atrophied to a large degree after the end of the Vietnam war and so on and so forth. So that's kind of the backdrop and, and the, the Soviets for their part, uh, as you enter 1983 are increasingly paranoid about the potential for a nuclear war and specifically

[00:12:00] for a NATO first strike on the Kremlin, the decapitation attack using nuclear weapons. And one of the reasons they felt that way was that at the end of 1983, the Soviets knew that the United States was going to deploy a new generation of nuclear, uh, weapon systems to Europe, specifically

[00:12:26] ground launch cruise missiles, which were being installed in the United Kingdom and in Belgium and Pershing ballistic missiles, which were going into West Germany. So the Soviets thought the combination of those things, um, uh, the fact that these weapon systems are going to be deployed, their paranoia that the United States,

[00:12:49] NATO, particularly under the leadership of Ronald Reagan might launch a nuclear first strike made them very concerned about that possibility. And the fact that these new weapons were coming into the theater, it sort of, it gave the NATO the means to execute a nuclear first strike. So the Soviets are very paranoid.

[00:13:12] And, um, the, as I mentioned earlier, the, uh, trigger event for the crisis in 1983 really was the shoot down of a Korean airliner north of Japan on the 1st of September, 1983. And that led to a cascade of events over the fall of 83 that

[00:13:33] culminated in a NATO nuclear war exercise called able archer 83 in the first 12 or 13 days of November of 83. So the book is about, um, the lead up to the Korean airline shoot down and then the events that follow. Yeah. Particularly like your choice of, um, dual perspectives of the events. It was, it was very interesting.

[00:13:58] Yeah. So I, I wasn't quite sure how to approach the story as a novelist, as a novice novelist at that time. Um, and I, I through trial and error, I think Chris, I, I came up with the notion that I'll use first person narration and have two different narrators, one American based on me and the other

[00:14:23] of Soviet GRU military intelligence officer who's based on Soviet GRU and KGB officers that I knew during that era. And, uh, and, and his name in the book is Levchenko, his last name. And Levchenko is a blend of the best characteristics of these GRU and KGB officers that I knew. I wanted Levchenko to be a

[00:14:52] sympathetic character and not, not an ogre. Yeah. Yeah. You did very well at that. Also, um, my favorite KGB officer, Oleg Gordievsky appeared. Now, I actually met Oleg Gordievsky a few times when I was a teenager, because he used to be a customer at a shop I worked at and I recognized him from a documentary and, uh, and asked him if he was who he was. So it was interesting to see him and play a part in that as well. Cause he does play a part in, in, in Abel Archer. We'll talk about him a bit later, but it was nice to see him play a significant

[00:15:22] part in that. So when, when you asked him if he was who he was, uh, or you suspected he was, did he answer? How did he answer? He did. Yeah. He was fine. It was, this was in the, so it was in the, in 1990, was it 98. So back then things weren't quite as they are now, but I'd asked him later, I'm sure, you know, in the sort of, uh, post Litvinenko, I've been post that, I think he'd been a bit more cagey, but back then when I was a teenager, he was, he was okay about it.

[00:15:49] So yeah. That's fascinating. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Um, so, uh, one, one other question we've gone in your book, uh, why did you choose to sort of tell this story now? Was there a particular reason behind that? Yeah. I think there are several reasons. I, one was that, uh, I had time because I had retired and,

[00:16:13] I actually had the time to devote to a project like this. And also the declassification of key documents, um, enabled me to even think about contemplate writing a book like this without getting a visit from the FBI. And, uh, yes. I swear that must be quite tricky actually that, but yeah.

[00:16:38] Yeah. And I, I did this book and, and the followup of the righteous arrows, both what through the pre-publication review process, uh, with the intelligence community and the department of defense. Uh, so I, I wanted to make sure I, I didn't get any unwelcome knocks on the door from the FBI, but nobody wants that. Yes. So timing was from personal standpoint. Again, I had the,

[00:17:03] I had free time to actually do it. There, the, there was documents that had been declassified that would enable one to be able to really tell the story. And, uh, I, uh, because of my background, uh, I'm very concerned about nuclear proliferation and about the nuclear balance today.

[00:17:29] And I hoped that writing about this story, even though it takes, it takes place in 1983 would highlight for readers that this is still a problem. It has not gone away. And, and, and Chris, I, I do a lot of public speaking, uh, and speaking in academic institutions about usually about the able archers,

[00:17:57] sometimes about the second book, the righteous arrows and, and the discussions about the, uh, the able archers always come around to what's happening today. And what it does the nuclear balance or imbalance look like today? And, and it's, it's, it's quite interesting for me to hear the

[00:18:22] questions I get from audiences about that. So I thought it was timely in that sense. And then it came out, the book came out actually, um, a month after the Russians general invasion of Ukraine. So it also had a timeliness attached to it because of those events. Indeed, indeed. Well, there may be some listeners who are not overly familiar with what able archer was. So I was wondering if you could

[00:18:51] just talk to us a little bit about sort of, um, what it was, why it matters and how close the world came to kind of a nuclear war. Able archer 83 was the final stage of a series of interconnected exercises that NATO conducted every fall. And they were general, the, the general rubric, uh, for these exercises was

[00:19:17] autumn forge and they would, the, the exercise would begin every fall in September, uh, with us forces in reality being moved from North America to Europe to reinforce NATO forces in Europe. Uh, we would practice all the logistics associated with that and so on and so forth. And, and then the war when it breaks

[00:19:45] out is a conventional war, uh, for the first phase, the second phase, which happens sometime in October, the war transitions into a chemical war. So chemical weapons are, uh, exchanged. And then the third and final phase is the nuclear war phase, which it in NATO parlance was always called able archer. So there

[00:20:14] were, there were able archers for years before able archer 83. Able archer 83 is distinguished by a sense of, uh, a sense of realism that did not exist. Certainly not as strongly in previous exercises. The initial plan called for both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to participate in the exercise,

[00:20:41] uh, to authorize the release of nuclear weapons. They were, they actually ended up not participating. Um, I think Dordievsky had a lot to do with that. Um, and then, uh, the other, another thing that made it different than past exercises was something I mentioned earlier in the conversation, which is that

[00:21:05] in November of 83, coincident with the able archer exercise, the United States was deploying ground launch cruise missiles and Pershing two ballistic missiles to Europe. There were other elements that were, some people use the term hyper realistic with B 52s flying from the United States and engaging in

[00:21:31] mock nuclear attacks that had not occurred before. Um, and then there were some particular things that happened during the able archer exercise that, uh, heightened the Soviets fear that this was, this exercise was camouflaging an actual nuclear first strike. Yeah. Yeah. Cause from the Russian point of view, training exercises could be seen as a prelude to

[00:21:57] invasion. So this was a, yeah, cause obviously we saw a similar tactic with Ukraine where there was a training exercise on the border for some time until the Russian invasion. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the, the Kremlin leadership in 1983, uh, almost, most of them were World War II veterans and they, the, their singular greatest fear was, uh, another operation Barbarossa, which was the

[00:22:26] Germany's attack, surprise attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, which, which was also done under the guise of an exercise. The Germans did that under the guise of an exercise. So they, and, and Soviet military doctrine, um, it, it doesn't mandate that you attack under the guise of an exercise as the, if the Soviets

[00:22:53] are going on the offensive, but they sure practice that a lot. So mirror imaging from their point of view, they were looking at what NATO was doing and thinking, well, yeah, that's what we would do. So this may be the real thing. Yeah. Yeah. Why was the crisis of so little understood at the time? Um, and what were the kind of key misunderstandings between the U S and the Soviet Union that made it so dangerous? Yes, that's a, that's a very good question. And I would, I would also suggest it's,

[00:23:22] it's not well understood even today, but, um, but yeah, at the time, um, I, I think there was, I used the term, the phrase mirror imaging a moment ago where one side looks at the other side's actions through their own lens. And that was happening on both sides for certain during the fall of 1983

[00:23:51] with respect to the April Archer 83 exercise itself. Again, the Soviets were viewing it as, well, this looks certainly looks like preparation for war. We've already had several crises with the United States in 1983, most notably the Korean airline shoot down, which nearly led to a shooting war, which is not well understood either. And so the Soviets were, they had also initiated in

[00:24:20] 1981 when Urian Tropov was, was chairman of the KGB. He initiated the largest intelligence collection effort in the Soviet Union since world war II. And it went by the code name of operation GRION. GRION is the Russian acronym and GRION stands for nuclear rocket attack.

[00:24:43] And the purpose of this intelligence collection effort that Urian Tropov set up in 1981 and which was still operating in 1983 was it started with a premise really, which was, we're pretty sure the United States and NATO were going to initiate a nuclear first strike. So we're starting with that

[00:25:06] premise. KGB officers and GRU officers around the world, go find evidence of it, go find evidence to support this conclusion that they are going to launch a nuclear first strike. So that is evidence of the degree of

[00:25:26] paranoia that Gordievsky knew and Gordievsky told MI6, which MI6 then did report to CIA, but CIA was unconvinced that it was accurate. And, and MI6 wisely also did not reveal Gordievsky's identity to CIA. So they were

[00:25:52] even more skeptical of the intelligence, but Gordievsky was correct. There was that degree of paranoia in the Kremlin on the U S side. And I was in many meetings with CIA and DIA officers during the winter or during from November of 83 through April of 84,

[00:26:16] where almost no one believed in the U S intelligence community, almost no one believed that the Soviets believed what they believed. And, and, and there was this fundamental lack of understanding that was based on, well, we're the good guys.

[00:26:38] We would never do that. We would never launch it. A first nuclear strike. So they can't possibly believe that the Kremlin can't possibly believe that this notion and this operation, which only CIA knew about because they did never shared it with air force intelligence. They never shared it with DIA. That it's just, it must be there. They must be doing this for internal reasons for propagandistic reasons.

[00:27:07] It's not a real paranoia. It's a phony paranoia designed to drum up some sort of nationalist fervor or to, to enable the, uh, uh, police bureau to exercise tighter control, whatever. They must have reasons for doing this because it's, they can't possibly believe it. Well, unfortunately they really did believe it, but the mirror imaging,

[00:27:37] especially at CIA was, uh, it was a real problem. And, and, uh, to your point, uh, and, and this is a distinction between November of 1983 and October of 1962, when the Cuban missile crisis occurred and president John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev were communicating frequently during the 12 days,

[00:28:05] uh, or 13 days rather of the, uh, Cuban missile crisis. Reagan and Andropov were not communicating at all during November of 83. And Dropoff was asked about it. And his answer was essentially, I, I have nothing to say to him. I have nothing to say to Reagan. Reagan for his part, and this is my, my opinion, but I think

[00:28:30] it's supported by fact. He didn't really know what was going on because CIA was not telling him. And there, um, and you're, you are probably aware that just in the last couple of years, CIA has gone to court to quash key documents and even conclusions from documents and analysis that the state department

[00:28:56] has done on the crisis of 1983. So at the time in 1983, if, if you look at the presidential daily briefings, which unfortunately none of us could do because they're still classified, but I was reading them

[00:29:12] every day then, um, Reagan was basically not briefed on this. And, and so he had no reason to be concerned. And he only, he really only learned of the severity of the crisis in November of 1983. He only learned of it in May of 1984.

[00:29:42] Let's take a break and be right back with more. Before the events of Abel Archer, there was obviously, as you mentioned earlier, the shoot down of Korean airlines flight 007. So I was wondering if you could talk just a bit about

[00:30:07] sort of why that happened, um, and how it sort of shaped perceptions in decision making on both sides. Yes. I mentioned earlier the end of detente and, and Reagan coming into office with a much more aggressive posture toward the Soviet Union, uh, both in terms of increasing

[00:30:29] defense procurement, but also in defense posture. And, uh, a, an example of that happened in March and early April of 1983 when the United States Navy conducted its largest Pacific fleet exercise since

[00:30:50] World War II. And it sent three carrier battle groups, which consists of upwards of 50 ships and lots of aircraft, of course, um, into the sea of Okhotsk, which is in the, for geographic minded folks, it's in the Northwestern part of the Pacific ocean. It's, and it's bounded today by

[00:31:18] completely by Russian territory as it was then. And the Soviets and the Russians, they consider it their lake and, and they do use it as a bastion for ballistic missile submarines, their nuclear deterrent. Uh, they're not happy with anyone going in there and the Navy, not only when in there, but went in there with three carrier battle groups and spent 10 days doing operations

[00:31:48] in the sea of Okhotsk. At the end of that exercise, two of the three carrier battle groups, uh, returned to the Tokyo area. Uh, and on route while they were on their return, uh, they passed through the Kuro Island chain, which the Soviets had seized from Japan at the end of World War II. And the Soviets and militarized, there were Soviet military facilities and there are Russian there today,

[00:32:17] including a fighter base and, uh, Navy F-14s and F-4s overflew Soviet military facilities on, uh, um, I believe it was the 2nd of April, uh, 1983. And, uh, F-4s even practiced Bob runs on those Soviet military facilities. So highly, highly provocative. The whole exercise was provocative,

[00:32:46] but this end of the exercise was the most provocative thing. The Soviets complained, they issued an official demarche, uh, to the U S embassy in Moscow. They talked about it at the United Nations. They were very upset. They responded by sending, uh, nuclear armed bombers to overfly Alaskan airspace a couple of days later. The entire Soviet air defense network in the far east,

[00:33:15] after that Navy U S Navy overflight went to a state of alert we'd never seen before. And my job at the time, uh, I was the chief of intelligence analysis in Tokyo for U S forces, Japan headquarters. And part of our job was to protect U S reconnaissance aircraft

[00:33:39] in the entire Pacific. And so any heightened threat against our U two or SR 71s or RC one 35s Navy P threes. Um, that was my job. If there was a heightened threat, I had to analyze it with my team and brief it

[00:34:02] to the relevant commanders in the Pacific, which I did. And, um, uh, the, the alerts were so severe. We were really concerned about air to air collisions about the potential for even in air to air combat, because the Soviets were being that provocative. And I, I briefed the commander in chief of

[00:34:29] United States Pacific command in Hawaii in July of 1983 about the situation. And he was alarmed. He had just arrived in theater from Europe, in fact, so he was not even aware of this until I briefed. And at the conclusion of that briefing, this four-star admiral asked me with the Soviets, you're telling me our aircraft are at risk. How about civilian aircraft?

[00:34:57] Would they shoot down a civilian aircraft? And my answer to him was essentially, well, yes, if the Soviets view it as a border violator, they will, that, that is an aircraft in their airspace. I think they'll, they will abide by international law. They will try to alert it. They'll try to force it down, but if all else fails, they'll shoot it down. And then the Korean airline shoot down occurred about five weeks later.

[00:35:26] Gosh, what was your feeling when that happened? I mean, especially as you had given this sort of warning that this could happen. Yes. Well, I, I just coincidentally was on duty the night of the Korean airline shoot down. Part of my job was to brief the commanding general and his staff every day in Tokyo. And I didn't personally get the briefing every day, but this particular night,

[00:35:54] I assigned myself to get the briefing the next morning. So I was, I was, I was on scene at 1am and then for the rest of the night. And we, we saw this very unusual activity that the Soviets were conducting initially over Kamchatka, over the Kamchatka peninsula.

[00:36:18] And I, I was, it wasn't really my role to, because I was chief of analysis. I wasn't a watch officer. It was really their job to kind of mind the store on things like this, but I was the senior intelligence officer in the building. So I took over and I, I just dropped the briefing completely for the next

[00:36:43] morning because this seemed like this was a real world scenario that, and we, we didn't know what was going on and we didn't know if it was just a Soviet exercise. I thought the possibility of it being an exercise. I thought the probability of that was low. I thought this had to be real world situation,

[00:37:04] but we didn't know what phantom aircraft they were looking for. Um, so we, I described this in detail in the able archers, but we, we, we did everything we could that night to try to identify what it is. There are real aircraft out there, including a civilian airliner, because one of the first things that occurred to me was maybe a civilian airliner has gone off course. And we, we checked

[00:37:32] with the Japanese ministry of transport in Tokyo frequently that night to the point where they got annoyed with us. Um, and we were asking, do you have any airliners, trans-Pacific airliners off coast, off course? And they kept saying, no, everybody's reporting in. Normally there's no one off course. And of course the Korean airliner was drastically off course, but, but in fairness to the folks in

[00:38:01] Tokyo, the ministry of transport, they had no way of knowing that because the airline, they had no, what means of independently confirming the location of any airliner once it left Alaska. So, uh, they, they were as much in the dark as well, they were more in the dark than we were because we knew what the Soviets were doing in my office. And, uh, so we knew that we suspected

[00:38:29] there was something out there. And then, um, and we were working also very closely with Japanese intelligence that night. And we were sharing information with the Japanese, um, the sometimes Japan, uh, again, you're familiar and many of your listeners will be familiar with the five eyes

[00:38:53] concept of, you know, the intelligence sharing between the United States, UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Japan is often referred to as the sixth eye, uh, because we have very close sharing with the Japanese as well. And so we were working together that night. I was working with my colleagues in Japanese intelligence, trying to figure out what's going on. What is this?

[00:39:22] What, what are we dealing with? And then it was Japanese collection that actually heard the shoot down there. They, they, it was the Japanese that actually collected the shoot down. There's some dispute about that with the national security agency, but, um, in any event, yeah. So we were, yeah, I was, I was, um, alarmed to put it mildly once we learned of the shoot down. And then

[00:39:51] in the, um, subsequent 48 hours, we had two incidents of air to air near combat that nearly put us into a shooting order with the Soviets. Yeah. Yeah. That's insane. I mean, what do you feel KAL sort of reveals about, um, sort of fear signaling and misinterpretation? And how did that event you think feed into the Abel Archer crisis? Well, I think in terms of fear, uh,

[00:40:20] the, uh, everyone in the Soviet air defense network was, uh, had been on heightened alert since early April. They retired. They were literally, the planes were wearing out. They were, uh, there was a degree of exhaustion. I, I, that we were detecting in our intelligence collection. Um, there was also a fear of

[00:40:48] failure. They, no one wanted to be the Colonel who let another border intruder get away. And the Colonel who let the U S Navy F fours and F four teams fly with impunity in Soviet airspace. He did not fare well after that event. So nobody wanted to be that guy. And, and so I, there was,

[00:41:13] I think there was no question, uh, that if they could not force whatever the aircraft was, they couldn't force it down. They were going to shoot it down. Um, so there was fear of failure, I think was a major component for the Soviets that night. Um, I think that, uh, and, and, and that fear of failure continued in the next 48 hours that the most serious incident was, and I describe it and I'm the first

[00:41:43] one to describe it and to say, let me do it. Um, in the able archers is the near shootout of a Navy, U S Navy EP three intelligence collection plane by two Soviet make 23s. Yeah. And that would have been terrible if that happened. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's almost hard for us to imagine today, but for those of

[00:42:05] us who lived through those events and the aftermath, the level of animosity between the Soviet Union and the United States in particular, after the Korean airline shoot down that was played out globally was,

[00:42:25] it was shocking. And the, I think it does feed into the able larger crisis clearly because the rhetoric that the Reagan administration used to vilify and condemn the Kremlin after the shoot down of the Korean airliner could not have been more severe. It, it, it, it just, when you back,

[00:42:53] go back and look at it today, it's, it's pretty shocking. And the Soviets for their part were claiming in public that this was a CIA, a combined CIA U S air force intelligence operation and that they had every right to shoot it down. And by the way, that even to this day is the Kremlin's position.

[00:43:19] And so, but it, yes, it feeds into this whole sense of mistrust and, and failure to communicate even after the Korean airline shoot down. Well, I think the Korean airline shoot down aftermath is so instructive for what happens during Abel Archer because, um, the, uh, the ambassador, uh,

[00:43:45] of the Soviet Union to the United States, uh, a day or two after the Korean airline shoot down, went to see the American secretary of state in Washington, George Shultz and Shultz threw him out of his office. And he, and the ambassador said, well, uh, foreign minister, Grameko would like to come and meet with you. And he said, I'm not meeting with any of you people, you know? And so there was the diplomatic channels were open, but there was no communication.

[00:44:15] Mm. Your story sort of highlights individuals who prevented catastrophe. And I was wondering who some of those real world figures were behind that and what they did. Well, I think Chris, there are three, in my mind, there are three, uh, in critically important figures in the fall of 1983 that helped to prevent a nuclear catastrophe. And, and the first one was in

[00:44:40] Japan, um, uh, in the aftermath of the Korean airline shoot down. And it was, uh, General Charles L. Donnelly Jr. Who was the commander of U.S. forces, Japan at that time. And, and, and later, not much later, actually, he moved to Germany to become the commander of all the NATO air forces. Um, so he was dealing with the aftermath of the April Archer crisis in Germany.

[00:45:08] Uh, so he would, he bookends this story. So, uh, yeah, so Chuck Donnelly instrumental because Donnelly could have triggered World War III, um, in the first couple of days of September, 1983, after the Korean airline shoot down, when our EP, the Navy EP3 was threatened. And when an NHK

[00:45:35] television plane was almost shot down by the Soviets as well. And he didn't do it. He exercised extremely cool judgment. I was with him in the command post when these events occurred. And, um, he pulled us back from the brink when others were urging retaliation. And we had F-15 fighters locked and loaded, so to speak, that could have shot down the MiGs easily.

[00:46:02] And Donnelly, he, he recalled them and said, you guys are coming back. You're not going to shoot anybody today. We're not starting World War III today was his quote. Yeah. Then just a few weeks after the, um, Korean airline shoot down and the world is in this turmoil that, again, it's hard to appreciate today. Um, maybe it's easier today than it would have been a year ago.

[00:46:27] But, um, and the, the antipathy between the, the two sides was so public and, and so vitriolic. Uh, at the end of September, um, just a few weeks after the Korean airline shoot down on the night of the 26th, 27th of September, 1983, uh, the Soviet National Missile Defense Center detected, uh,

[00:46:57] multiple waves of intercontinental ballistic missile launches from the United States heading toward the Soviet Union, which could have been interpreted as a first strike that they're now. And it certainly fit the pattern of operation. It's noted that they're going to hit us with the first strike. It's just a matter of when, uh, and, but fortunately for the world, the officer on duty that night, uh, what the

[00:47:26] watch officer in command of the, uh, missile defense center that night was a Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov who, um, was not a normal watch officer. He'd been called in that night because he was a colleague was ill and he was his day job was he was in charge of signal processing for the

[00:47:48] Soviets relatively new missile warning satellites. So he was an expert on these, on the satellites, the way they collected in the signals they collected. And he was unconvinced that these reports were real. And in the business, we call those false alarms. If they're, they look real, but they're not. And,

[00:48:14] and at, under enormous pressure over the course of 25 to 30 minutes, he had to make decisions very rapidly about, is this a real attack? If it is, how do we respond? If it isn't, how do I report it? How could I be sure? Uh, so he had really the weight of the world on his shoulders, um, that night. And he,

[00:48:39] he made the call that both from his analytical perspective and the context and everything that this was not a real attack and that there was no reason for the Kremlin to retaliate. Yeah. So we, we dodged a bullet, the world dodged a bullet that night and, you know, there had it, it been a different watch officer that night with the decision making had been different.

[00:49:05] Yeah. Uh, retired Soviet officers who were involved in the chain of command that night, some of them say, no, I think any watch officer would have done what Petrov did. Others have said, no, I think, I'm not so sure. And, but in any event, we were fortunate that Petrov was there. And then the third, I think major actor was, uh, another us air force general, but he was an intelligence general and

[00:49:34] intelligence officer, uh, Leonard Perutz, who was the chief of air force intelligence in Europe. And, um, he, he, he, during the able Archer exercise, the, we saw, uh, Soviet preparations for nuclear war, both theater nuclear war in Europe and intercontinental nuclear war. We saw preparations we'd never seen

[00:50:01] before and we've never seen since fortunately. And I won't go into all the details, but suffice to say that we were all extremely alarmed. And Perutz, when he briefed the NATO leadership on these Soviet, uh, preparations, he was asked, well, what do you recommend general? Should we raise our nuclear alert status? Should we put more, should we bring bombers from the United States? You have, what do

[00:50:30] you propose? And his advice was do nothing and let's wind down the able Archer exercise as quickly as we can to take that source of paranoia off the table. And I, at his view, his gut feeling was that if we respond in kind, then they're just going to escalate. And where does this escalatory ladder end? Uh,

[00:50:59] and, and, and we were fortunate that they took his advice that the NATO leadership agreed with him and, um, and took his advice. So the, the, the, um, crisis just kind of dissipated gradually over the next several days. But as I was looking at this problem myself, and I was in Germany, actually,

[00:51:28] I had to send to Germany to help, um, with this. Um, we didn't see the Soviets really shut down their nuclear alert until Andropov died the following spring. Let's take a break and be right back with more.

[00:51:57] How much this sort of crisis have came down to human judgment versus systems and are modern systems more or less vulnerable to misinterpretation today? Yeah. That is the $64 trillion question. Especially in the age of AI now as well. I mean, you know, where are we going to go with that? But... Yes. Well, yeah. And the Soviets had an AI system at that time called the Dead Hand,

[00:52:25] which, um, was their doomsday system to launch their missiles if there was a nuclear attack on the Kremlin. And they were unable to, you know, issue orders. But, uh, and, and we were aware of that at the time. So the, uh, I think in the able larger crisis, I think human judgment was of

[00:52:50] utmost importance. And I, I think to some degree, the systems helped us in that we, we were able through the intelligence collection systems, we were able to see what the Soviets were doing. And, and, and men of sound judgment, like General Perutz decided

[00:53:14] the wrong thing to do would be to escalate. But on the other hand, other systems failed us. So one dramatic example, I think is, uh, uh, after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, White House and the Kremlin agreed to set up a hotline between the White House and the Kremlin that was to be used in times of crisis. So the communication would remain open, uh, between

[00:53:42] the leadership of each country to prevent a World War III. The hotline was never used during the April larger crisis. It was never used that entire fall. And, and drop off again, was asked about it. We, we, we have seen some of the general staff records of that time because the, uh, Ukrainians have given them

[00:54:04] to us just in the last two or three years. And, and drop off just was asked about it. He said, well, what would we talk about? There's nothing to talk about. Why do I, I'm not going to initiate the hotline. So I, uh, and I think our entire diplomatic system failed us, uh, beyond the hotline because there was both, neither side was talking to each other really from the 1st of September through the Able Archer

[00:54:34] crisis. They were talking past each other in public. So I think to that extent, those systems failed us, um, on a, on a lower level. And I, I talk about the, the military liaison mission in the Able Archers, which was set up by the Potsdam Accords after World War II. The British had a military liaison mission. The French did, the United States did, and the Soviets did. That was a mechanism for us to

[00:55:02] talk at low levels. And I talk about that in the book. And we were using the military liaison mission during, during that crisis. Not exactly the way I depicted in the book, but we were using it. And did that help? It certainly didn't hurt that we had officers talking to each other during the

[00:55:26] Able Archer crisis. But this was at, these were at low levels. These are majors and Lieutenant Colonel's talking to each other, not presidents and general secretaries. Yeah. I still think we're highly reliant on human judgment today in crisis situations. And I think you've seen, um,

[00:55:47] you, one positive thing is I think you have seen a willingness, uh, even during these recent events in Iran for, uh, the president of the United States to pick up the phone and talk to Putin. And, you know, and he, those communications may not be completely satisfactory, but at least they're

[00:56:12] happening. And now we all have any communication directly with the Iranians. So we are speaking through intermediaries in that sense, the situation in visa of Iran is somewhat similar to that, which we experienced in the fall of 1983, where there's not direct communication between the leadership. Um,

[00:56:34] the stakes are not quite as high today. It would, these of Iran as they were in 1983. Um, but that's an example, I think of a current crisis where the system is not working, but I do think human judgment remains paramount. Yeah. And are we doing, are we doing enough with training to make sure that, um,

[00:57:00] you know, that there are people are in the system making kind of the right choices because it seems like, um, this catastrophe of able arch, it was sort of somewhat prevented by people not following the, uh, kind of Soviet or anti-Soviet line at the time. Unfortunately, I, I have to agree with you with that assessment. Um, and, uh, do we have people like that today? I think I'll speak for the U S military,

[00:57:28] which I remain pretty close to. Um, I have high confidence in the military leadership of the United States in N N NATO and central command and saw in the chairman and the joint chiefs. So I do think we have quality people in those positions who were in, who are very capable of exercising

[00:57:57] sound judgment and of providing objective advice. Um, so I, I'm not sure I, you know, I could go any further than that. I think that, yeah, I'll, I'll stop there, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. Well, Brian, thank you so much for joining me. Where can listeners find out more about you, your work and your excellent book?

[00:58:20] Sure. Uh, well, I, I have an author's website, which I encourage everyone to visit. It's, um, www.bryanjmora.com. And, uh, there are, there are descriptions of the books there. Uh, my second book, the righteous arrows is about CIA operations during the Soviet war in Afghanistan,

[00:58:45] which I also had a role in. And, um, we'll have another chat about that in the future, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a fascinating story and it really, it was a harbinger of things to come. I think that war and that's, and I wrote the righteous arrows with that in mind, the, um, yeah, so that's a spot and there are links on my web page to Amazon and Barnes and Noble and other

[00:59:14] booksellers. Um, but there's, there's lots of information on my website, their film clips, their podcasts, that sort of thing. So. Brilliant. Brian, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been great chatting with you. Thank you very much for the opportunity, Chris. I really appreciate it. Best to you and your listeners. Thank you.

[01:00:03] Thanks for listening. This is Secrets and Spies.