Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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Did you ever watch a movie as a kid and convince yourself that it was real? That its outlandish premise could possibly come true? I know I did. And for me, one of those movies was War Games. Great to meet you. Great to meet you, too. I'm Ed, by the way. Yeah.
That's Matthew Broderick. He's a national treasure and also the star of War Games, a movie about an almost accidental nuclear war that I watched maybe 100 times as a kid. It came out in 1983, and it was Matthew's breakout role. The fact that I had gotten the lead of a studio movie was incredible. Yeah. Absolutely incredible. His character was a hacker.
A tech genius. David Lightman was a master at computer games. And Matthew was great in it. I mean, obviously, right? He's an incredible actor. Wait, now how do I adjust my volume? Can you speak, you guys? Yeah, talking, talking.
Talking, speaking. Okay, I'm now nodding because I want to now pretend that it's working. Okay. Yeah, so it's perfect. Matthew Broderick is clearly not a tech genius in real life, but that's just further proof what a great actor he is.
So, in War Games, teenage hacker David Lightman tries to impress a girl at school, Jennifer, played by another 80s icon, Ally Sheedy. Along the way, he accidentally hacks into a supercomputer that the U.S. is using to game out World War III scenarios. Hence, War Games. Shall we play a game? How about Global Thermonuclear War?
It gets misinterpreted as a real nuclear attack and almost starts World War III. We have a launch detection. We have a Soviet launch detection. Cobra Day, is this an exercise? This is not an exercise. Terrifying. Yeah. I am not charmed by that. I am terrified by that. When I was nine years old, war games really captured my imagination in the sense that I became utterly convinced it was real.
I even had a breakdown at summer camp because of it. All the other kids were having a grand old time. Meanwhile, I was just terrified that at any moment we'd all die in a fiery nuclear Armageddon. Yeah, I guess I was a bit of a wet blanket while everyone else was just trying to get pumped up for s'mores.
So why am I talking to Matthew Broderick about war games? After all, it's just a movie. An outlandish premise of fantasy, right? Eventually, we all grow up and realize that movies aren't real. There are no accidental nuclear wars, right? Well, my friends, imagine my surprise when I learned that the premise of war games was fucking real. Yeah, it came true only months after the movie's release. That's right.
As it turns out, in 1983, a real-life military exercise, a war game, almost started an actual nuclear war. Just like war games. This exercise that almost ended it all, it goes by the codename Able Archer 83. And that's what this show is about. Wow, that's an amazing story. I...
I'm surprised I don't know about that, but I don't think I do know about it. Too bad they don't give out an Oscar for best nuclear war prediction. The war game screenwriters would have been a shoo-in. It's like kind of a perfect screenplay. I don't think they were too far off. No, I guess not. When I first heard the story of Able Archer 83, let's just say my childhood fears were instantly validated.
Thinking back on that moment at summer camp, paralyzed by the fear that the outlandish plot of war games would come true, camp counselors hovering around me, trying to console me, saying, come on, dude, it's just a movie. Let's go canoeing. Everything's going to be fine. Well, looking back, I realize now it was not fine. It was so incredibly not fine. They were wrong and I was right. I'd just like to say on behalf of nine-year-old me, I fucking told you so. That felt good.
But vindication aside, learning this story still leaves me a little unnerved, maybe even alarmed. Because if a military exercise almost caused a nuclear war in 1983 and nobody knew about it, what a complete and utter snafu. Snafu is a military term first used by soldiers in World War II. It's an acronym, snafu. It stands for situation normal, all fucked up.
Meaning, this is so fucked up. But then again, isn't it always? That's what this show is about. The gaffes, the disasters, history's greatest screw-ups.
This season, the story of Able Archer 83. It's the ultimate Cold War mystery. A stew of espionage, paranoia, shady politics, and dangerous miscalculations. Oh, and a lot of mind games. Put on your hazmat suits, listeners. I'm Ed Helms, your host, and this is Snafu, Able Archer 83. Situation in Orlando.
It's just this whole game of deception and counter-deception and who can you trust. America is preparing a sudden nuclear attack on our country. I heard a young father saying, I love my little girls more than anything and I would rather see my little girls die now than have them grow up under communism. Really, for the first time in my life, I felt like there could be nuclear war. It wasn't a question of would it happen, it was a question of when was it going to happen.
We were preparing to fight Armageddon. That's what we were told. That's what we believed. We were training to fight the end of the world. ♪
It was a week just like every other week. Able Archer 83 was not anything out of the ordinary. This is Gene Gay. He was a participant in the 1983 Able Archer war game. Gene, like a lot of men who participated in Able Archer that year, recall it the same way, which is to say they don't really recall much at all. Nothing to me from that exercise at the time, you know, jumped out. That's Colonel Spike Callender, and he says the same thing. Nope, nothing of note.
To these men, that week in early November 1983 was just a week like any other week. Just another week of standard military exercises, practicing how to fight the end of the world, as one does. The whole purpose of Able Archer was the emphasis on the practice of the nuclear weapons release procedures. Able Archer was a NATO exercise. In November of 1983, the Able Archer players sat in a bunker in Belgium, practicing how, if it came to it,
They'd fight a nuclear war against the Soviet Union. It's like a soccer team doing drills, but instead of training for a game, they're training for Armageddon. Which, like a soccer game, you can't use your hands because they got blown off. The whole idea was, if you ever had to do it, you know, you didn't want to do it for the first time.
When Spike says do it, he's referring to the task of launching planet-destroying weapons. It's an example of how military professionals are weirdly cavalier when they're talking about their work. It's kind of shocking how something so gnarly can sound so routine.
How do you look at what the requirements truly are for those weapons systems and the numbers of them? So it would be a matter of bean counting in some respects. If you have a Soviet division, what is the number of weapons that might be required to reduce the effectiveness of that division to where it was no longer military capable?
See what I mean? My point is this: to men like Gene and Spike, there was nothing exceptional about gaming out a fictional war during Able Archer. It was routine. But a few decades later, Gene and Spike would learn that Able Archer 83 was anything but routine.
I was in my own little world. I hate to use the word oblivious, but I've used that word before. It was many years later that I found out about it, that anything other than the exercise took place in the real world situation that occurred during that time. I was not aware of that until years afterwards. I never heard of anything more about this exercise until, what, 20 or 25 years later.
What Gene and Spike would come to learn is that while they were sitting in their bunker back in 1983, rehearsing the end of the world, the Soviets were listening. And they seemed to be convinced it was not a rehearsal at all. Soviet missile commanders were placed on high alert. Soviet leaders retreated to their bunkers, fingers hovering over the proverbial big red button. And NATO had no idea.
I mean, it is a miracle we did not all die. Like, it's just goofy. This is Jeffrey Lewis. He's an expert on nuclear history and geopolitics. And he finds the whole story of Abel Archer, what he calls the war scare, to be...
Sort of funny? Almost all of the war scare is totally self-inflicted, which makes it like really darkly comic. I have to agree. There's an old saying that tragedy plus time equals comedy. Well, if that's true, then a story about a nuclear near miss plus about 40 years should be fucking hilarious. Because if you step back, it sounds crazy, right? It sounds crazy that we could have had a serious nuclear crisis that nobody knew about. Like, that's nuts.
It is nuts, Jeffrey, because it's not just that Able Archer participants like Gene and Spike didn't know that a nuclear crisis was unfolding under their noses. No one knew. Let that sink in for a second. If it's possible that a nuclear crisis could unfold right under our noses, that we were in danger without knowing it, does that mean it's still possible?
Alright, let's set the stage a little bit. It's the 1980s. There was certainly a general and very pervasive anxiety about nuclear weapons. Pretty much everywhere you looked, you'd find nuclear paranoia. It wasn't just war games. It was all over pop culture.
This delightful little number is 99 Luftballons by Nina. It's about 100 red balloons accidentally inciting a nuclear war. Kind of heavy for a kitschy pop hit. The 1983 Bond film had a nuclear plot.
Dr. Seuss was feeling the heat. Even Sting chimed in. Personally, I love that song. And I just love that Sting threw his hat right in the middle of an international conflict. Anyway, when it comes to examples of nuclear anxiety in 1983 pop culture...
there's actually one that stands above all the rest. It was just a made-for-TV movie, but it became a cultural event.
And it would actually play a role in our Cold War mystery. It was a movie like no other movie, and it had a profound impact on New York. That story next. We'll hear from people who, like you, watched the ultimate disaster movie. The Day After, a movie that would scare the living shit out of America. More than 700 people packed Riverside Church tonight to watch The Day After. Many said they came here because they were afraid to watch it alone.
Everyone, and by everyone I mean a hundred million people, almost half the U.S. population at the time, gathered around their TVs on the evening of November 20th, 1983, and tuned in to ABC to watch it. Before the movie begins, we would like to caution parents about the graphic depiction of nuclear explosions and their devastating effects. In a moment, the day after.
Gather around, kids. Time to fill your innocent little heads with deep, reverberating drama. Pass the popcorn. I tried to do my part in making people keenly aware of what the real consequences would be.
This is Ed Hume. He wrote the day after. The film is set at the border of Kansas and Missouri. That's where the U.S. nuclear missile silos are. The main characters are average townspeople in the American heartland. "A bunch of people living in the Midwest, doing ordinary things." At first, the whole nuclear war thing isn't really front and center. It just kind of lurks in the periphery. But even as it creeps in, the characters can't accept their fate.
What was it? There's one scene where a woman is so in denial that she's running around making beds as they know that missiles are being launched. Don't bother with the bed just now. Eva, we've got to get down below. Listen, those missiles have all gone off. Oh, my gosh. Wow. She really wants to make those beds. And then it happens. It happens. The heartland is evaporated.
The rest of the film is stomach-churning, to put it lightly. It showed what a nuclear war would actually look like. Flashes of light, lives instantaneously incinerated. But the whole explosion part isn't the worst of it, because you get to see what happens the day after.
Nuclear fallout, radiation poisoning, blistering skin and dying organs, piles of bodies and rubble, looting, hoarding, and everyday Americans turning on each other. I mean, all jokes aside, this is grim fucking stuff. The general public, they were, pardon my language, but they were scared shitless. I, for one, felt that it was just
Devastating. Like every horror story you've ever read rolled into one story. We got a glimpse of what is really at stake in a nuclear war. I just want to go die with the blast and not have to live and start all over again. Okay. Didn't heed the parental advisory. This is how that clip makes me feel. No!
Okay, so yeah, in 1983, there was a general sense of nuclear doom. Hell, it's why I had a mental breakdown at summer camp. But we didn't know that there was a specific crisis to be afraid of. We didn't know that we might have almost had a nuclear war during NATO's annual Able Archer exercise. So then the question becomes, why not?
There is, and you probably need it about now, there is some good news. This is Ted Koppel from Nightline. He's hosting a live panel about the day after, right after the movie aired. If you can, take a quick look out the window. It's all still there. Wow, deeply reassuring, Ted. Anyway...
Celebrity scientist Carl Sagan was there, telling an already nauseous audience that he thought the film's portrayal of nuclear war was actually not as bad as it would be if it really happened. Oh, boy. Henry Kissinger was there, too, probably talking about feasting on the souls of innocent children or something. But before the panel began... Joining us live from his home in suburban Washington is the Secretary of State, Mr. George Shultz.
Ted Koppel brings out U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, President Reagan's right-hand man. He was a serious man, loyal to the president, famously bragged about enjoying staring contests with the Soviets, waiting for them to blink, comforting.
And so mere minutes after the American public watched this horrifying film, hearts still in their stomachs, the man who would be standing next to the button pusher in chief answers the burning question at the front of every viewer's mind. The future as we've just viewed it tonight, is that the future as it will be or only the future as it may be? Neither. That is not the future at all.
The film is a vivid and dramatic portrayal of the fact that nuclear war is simply not acceptable. And that fact and the realization of it has been the policy of the United States for decades now, the successful policy of the United States.
If you watch the clip, George Shultz is shifty as hell. His eyes keep flickering just to the right of the camera and then back again, like he's reading cue cards. He looks scared. Ted, seasoned journalist that he is, smells a little bullshit.
He presses George. Mr. Schultz, that is the answer of a secretary of state to a reporter, and that's fair enough because that's what you and I respectively are. But what would a George Schultz who is talking to a member of his family say in response to the same question? Same answer? Well, I would give the same answer. I'll tell you why I think George is nervous. It's because 11 days before this interview, Abel Archer, 83, could have caused a nuclear war.
A man in Schultz's position would have known about that, right? Surely he was shitting his slacks for the past 11 days trying to figure out how such a colossal fuck-up could have happened. Now would be a great time to come clean, to say, "Yeah, we're gonna shake things up with our nuclear policy because the movie's right. This is scary shit."
And yet, after watching the day after, George Shultz, Secretary of State, assures the American public that the administration's status quo is effective in preventing nuclear war. 11 days after a nuclear war scare.
For 25 years, Brightview Senior Living Associates have been committed to creating a vibrant culture and delivering exceptional services, making Brightview a great place to work and live. If you're looking for a rewarding opportunity to serve your local community and grow, we want you to join our team. Brightview Senior Living is growing and actively seeking vibrant associates to join our community teams, including directors, healthcare, activities, hospitality, and dining. Apply today at careers.brightviewseniorliving.com. Equal employment opportunities.
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It's a very different kind of crisis because it's so clumsy. Here's Jeffrey Lewis again. You know, this is more like two drunks in a bar circling one another. And it's not so much that anybody would deliberately choose to start the war. It's just that things would spiral out of control. The two drunks here are, of course, the United States and the Soviet Union. Their drink? Bombs. And I'm not talking Jaeger.
Here's the part of the show where I give you a crash course on the Cold War. Get out your pencils, kids. Welcome to Arms Race 101. An atom bomb destroys or injures in three ways. By blast, heat, and radioactivity.
The OG atomic bomb was invented by the Americans in the 40s. You know the one. Hiroshima, Nagasaki. It only took the Soviets five years to figure it out for themselves. And once they had the bomb too, it began a decades-long race for bigger and better death machines. The fun thing about the Cold War is that there were a huge,
huge variety of nuclear weapons and nuclear yields. Jeffrey and I have very different definitions of fun. So pretty soon after the end of World War II, the United States developed a much more powerful nuclear weapon than even the city destroyers that we saw dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And these were called thermonuclear weapons. This is the early 50s. A thermonuclear weapon uses the radiation from the initial blast to ignite an even bigger blast.
A bomb within a bomb. The result is a warhead that's about the same size as the atom bomb, but way more destructive. Like a million tons of explosive power instead of 10,000. In other words, it was economical. A bigger catastrophe for a smaller cost. You can't argue with savings like that.
Once the United States, followed by other countries, developed thermonuclear weapons, there was no limit to how large a nuclear weapon one could make. The phrase that came to be used about the amount of nuclear destructive power was overkill. Because each side was worried that the other side would strike them first, so they needed to have backups and redundancy and more than you needed. And so in practice, what that led to was
Each side having the capacity to destroy the other many, many times over, to make the rubble bounce in one particular phrase. Back in the 60s, the U.S. had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the Soviet Union 50 times over. You know, just in case some little cockroach escaped the first 49 blasts, which set the table quite nicely for this.
Good evening, my fellow citizens. That's John F. Kennedy back in 1962 telling the world in a televised speech from the White House that a nuclear crisis was unfolding in Cuba. U.S. spy planes had discovered that the Soviet Union was building nuclear missile sites on the Caribbean island nation. A little too close to the United States for comfort. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
The U.S. Navy set up a blockade, trying to prevent any Soviet ships from bringing their nukes anywhere near the island. The Soviet ships approached the blockade, nuclear weapons in tow. It was a full-fledged nuclear standoff. The news coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis was impossible to ignore. A major world event became television drama. For 13 days, Americans sat glued to their televisions. Until, finally, it was over.
Under aerial surveillance, the missiles that had threatened the United States went back where they came from. Everyone breathed a sigh of Marlboro smoke-filled relief. And did we learn our lesson? Did we scale down operations at the bomb factory and literally cool our jets? No, no, my dear listener. Of course we didn't.
In the late 60s and 70s, the U.S. would build more weapons. The Soviets would build a lot more weapons. We'd get rid of some and then build some more. By the early 1980s, our nuclear fruit basket contained big nukes, small nukes, extremely precise nukes. And so the question naturally arises, like, why the hell did we do that? And I think the answer lies in the fact that we didn't have a better idea. I'm just going to build as many nuclear weapons as I can to keep the bad guys away from me. I'm not going to think about it any more than that.
And that's a very powerful, simple idea. Wrong, but incredibly powerful. And it's how you end up with two countries with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at each other, ready on a moment's notice to end civilization as we know it, you know, over who controls Berlin, which admittedly is a very nice city. And that just about sums up that successful nuclear policy George Shultz was talking about earlier. The successful policy of the United States.
Each side made a gamble that if they could just build enough weapons, their adversary wouldn't dare test them. So they didn't need diplomacy. They were bound by the contract of mutually assured destruction.
It was a horrific game of nuclear chicken. And it would lead right to Able Archer 83, which some say is the closest we came to a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. But here's the thing: Able Archer isn't anything like the Cuban Missile Crisis. In fact, it's not like most crises we've experienced. Not just because no one knew about it, but because it was completely unintentional. A mistake!
It's not like, I don't know, the Vietnam War or Russia's insane invasion of Ukraine today. During Able Archer, two countries with absolutely no desire to get into a nuclear conflict may have almost started one in spite of themselves.
If the Reagan administration nearly sleepwalked into a nuclear war, that suggests those people shouldn't be let anywhere near positions of power. And if the intelligence community missed the fact that the Reagan administration was sleepwalking toward nuclear war, that suggests we need different analysts. If all that's true, then it makes perfect sense the Reagan administration would not want to leak a snafu this massive.
So, the public would never hear about Able Archer 83. Instead, it would become nothing more than a Cold War rumor, a myth, only whispered about in the back hallways of the Pentagon. And it might have stayed that way if it wasn't for Nate Jones.
Walking through, this is the vault. It really looks like the warehouse at the end of Indiana Jones of just boxes, boxes, boxes. Sometimes I used to come here and just do a little bit of work because the atmosphere of thousands of boxes looming over me helps me work. This is Nate Jones, an historian. Actually, he's really more of a sleuth.
Like a history detective who has dedicated almost 20 years of his career to uncovering what the hell really happened during Able Archer 83. My desk is overrun with FOIA requests. It looks like at least 10,000 pages of FOIA requests and responses. So it's definitely a tree-unfriendly business. But the government works on paper, so we got to work on paper. ♪
This FOIA that Nate is talking about? Like everything in government, it's an acronym. It stands for the Freedom of Information Act. And if you can't tell, it has dominated his life for the past decade. For 10 years, Nate worked at the National Security Archive, where he and his colleagues used the Freedom of Information Act to pry classified information about Able Archer 83 out of the government's claws. I like to picture them wrestling with a very stubborn bald eagle.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. At one point in time, Nate was like most people. He didn't know about Able Archer 83 until one day in 2004, a professor of his uttered a few words that totally changed the course of his life. He said, hey, Nate, I heard about this nuclear fuck up in 1983 called Able Archer. Why don't you look into it? And he said, I
I really think this is an unsolved mystery of the Cold War. And I was pretty hooked right there. Like me, Nate heard about the mysterious Able Archer 83 story and asked himself, why doesn't anyone know about it? If we narrowly escaped nuclear Armageddon, shouldn't there be a national holiday or something? We should have Able Archer Day, a day that commemorates our wonderful avoidance of nuclear annihilation. I'm not just saying this because I want an extra Monday off work. Not dying? That's cause for celebration.
All jokes aside, Nate was seriously concerned. I mean, if something like Able Archer can happen, what does that say about how precarious our situation really is? Is the world safe? One thing is clear. If we're going to learn anything from this, we got to know exactly what happened. Thank God for Nate Jones.
At first, there just wasn't much out there as far as sources go. Anybody who knew the details of the crisis wasn't talking. There were a few mentions of a 1983 crisis in various memoirs from retired politicians and so forth, but it was all so vague. I'll let Nate paraphrase.
We're not exactly sure, but it was a very tense situation and we were worried. There was only one primary source available that even mentioned AbleArcher83 by name, a CIA document written shortly after it happened. So here we have...
So this is implications of recent Soviet military political activities. And this is the first CIA report on what happened during the war scare and what happened during Able Archer. This document is a crucial piece of the Able Archer puzzle because it reveals what the CIA thought about the crisis at the time. And it provides a hint as to why the public wouldn't learn about it until decades later.
Classic CIA bullshit. I mean, they still haven't told us why they killed Kennedy. It was written in May of 1984, six months after Able Archer, and it says, yeah, during the Able Archer 83 exercise, it sort of looked like the Soviets were getting battle-ready.
And it lists all these alarming things, but it came to the conclusion that, quote, we believe strongly that Soviet actions are not inspired and Soviet leaders do not perceive a genuine danger of imminent conflict or confrontation with the United States. The report says, yeah, sure, it looks scary, but in hindsight, we don't think the Soviets were actually going to do anything. So the conclusion was that the war scare is not real.
That's right, the reason nobody knows about the Able Archer war scare is because for decades, the CIA would deny that anything dangerous happened during that exercise. But rumors still swirled in the intelligence community. Maybe there was more to the story, which you've probably guessed because there's a bunch more episodes left in this podcast.
Nate Jones, fresh out of college, had a hunch that he could piece together the truth about Abel Archer, given access to the right records. We couldn't really tell a good history without the records, and we couldn't get the good records without a fight against the government. Oh, it's on. Now might be a good time to introduce another main character.
I don't know whether you know it or not, but I have a new hobby. I am collecting stories. Ronald Wilson Reagan. The man knew the power of a good anecdote. I mean, the guy could really spin a yarn. But I remember the story of a fellow... Which makes me think of a story. Everything makes me think of a story. I wanted to tell a story, whether anything reminded me or not.
He also famously loved movies. No surprise there. He was a movie star. Only president ever to make a movie with a chimp. To be fair, Calvin Coolidge was in a play with a baboon once, but it's not the same thing. And it's also not true. Where was I? Reagan hosted regular screenings at Camp David throughout his presidency. In fact, he loved movies so much, he used to write film reviews in his diary. Saturday, February 14th, 9 to 5.
Funny, but one scene made me mad. A truly funny scene if the three gals had played getting drunk. But no, they had to get stoned on pot. It was an endorsement of pot smoking for any young person who sees the picture. Yeah, so that's actually a totally real Ronald Reagan diary entry. I shit you not. The man took movies very seriously and really overestimated the influence of a stoned Dolly Parton.
Ronald Reagan's presidency was like the plot of a movie, and he was the hero. An American cowboy with a white hat fighting his nemesis, the evil communist menace. And he played the part beautifully. "When action is called for, we're taking it. Our response can make the difference between peaceful change or disorder and violence." In fact, he played the part so well that he may have pushed it a little too far.
Now, if you ask just about anybody how the Cold War ended, you'll get one of two answers. Either A, Ronald Reagan was strong, showed those Soviets who was boss, and they backed down. Or B, Reagan was just lucky enough to be the guy sitting in the White House when a young Soviet leader stepped in and reformed the joint. But what if there was an entirely different reason the Cold War ended? What if the Cold War really ended because of Abel Archer?
He was Ronald Evil Empire Reagan, talked a tough game against the Soviets, engaged in a military buildup. Meet Beth Fisher. She's an historian and author of a book called The Reagan Reversal, where she writes about a drastic shift in Ronald Reagan's attitude towards the Soviet Union. And listeners, that shift has very interesting timing. I was doing my doctoral research, and it was on U.S. foreign policy, and I was going through a lot of speeches that
from the Reagan administration, from the early 80s.
Beth says that Reagan's speeches were pretty consistent from 1981 to about October 31, 1983, just before Abel Archer. The Reagan administration was pretty confrontational. They charged that the Soviet Union was immoral. They lied. They cheat. They were the greatest source of international insecurity. Born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights and the value of human life and seeks constantly to expand and dominate other nations.
The next major speech came on January 16th, 1984. In his first major speech since Abel Archer, Ronald Reagan steps on stage and the American public meets a very new president. During these first days of 1984, I would like to share with you and the people of the world my thoughts on a subject of great importance to the cause of peace: relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Just suppose with me for a moment
that an Ivan and an Anya could find themselves, say, in a waiting room or sharing a shelter from the rain or a storm with a Jim and Sally. And there was no language barrier to keep them from getting acquainted. President Reagan told this little story about these two couples, Ivan and Anya and Jim and Sally. Ivan and Anya, a lovely couple from Moscow, and our beloved Jim and Sally from, I don't know, Toledo.
"They just feel Midwestern to me." "And as they went their separate ways, maybe Anya would be saying to Ivan, 'Wasn't she nice? She also teaches music.' They might even have decided they were all going to get together for dinner some evening soon." Aw, dinner! How cute. Two months ago, Reagan would have ended that story with Jim poking Ivan's eyeballs out and Sally shoving Anya in front of a bus. For freedom.
And it was really different. It was different in tone. It was different in substance. We do not threaten the Soviet Union. Our two countries have never fought each other. There's no reason why we ever should. Let us begin now. Thank you. Thank you.
The media picked up on Reagan's shift. The Ivan and Anya tale would go down in speechwriting history. But when Beth came across this speech, what caught her attention was one sentence. So slight, so discreet, that if you didn't know what to listen for, you might miss it altogether. Let's see, I have the quote here. "We need to find meaningful ways to reduce the uncertainty and potential for misinterpretation surrounding military activities."
I eventually learned that early drafts of the speech had been circulating within Washington in mid-December. And remember, the old Reagan, the tough guy, was still giving hardline speeches right up until November 1st. So my question became, what happened between November 1st and mid-December? And that's when I discovered Able Archer. Two months ago, a very secret nuclear near-fuck-up may have unfolded during November's Able Archer exercise.
And then, all of a sudden, this very aggressive, very anti-communist president is talking about Sally braiding Anya's hair. All of a sudden, he's worried about reducing the potential for misinterpretation surrounding military activities? Pretty interesting timing. I mean, I'm no Hercule Poirot, but seems like there might be a connection here. "...to reduce the uncertainty and potential for misinterpretation surrounding military activities."
And boom. Did you hear that? That's Abel Archer, right in the speech.
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Over 20 years after Abel Archer, Nate Jones began his quest to find out what really happened. As a student of history and a living human being, he was more than a little concerned about how a nuclear near-miss was just a rumor in academic circles. Was George Shultz hiding something when he spoke to Americans during that panel? And is it just a coincidence that Reagan changed his tune so dramatically only months later?
Nate started at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. It's a massive building overlooking mountains and the Pacific Ocean in the heart of Simi Valley, California. Inside, the Reagan Foundation has completely reconstructed Reagan's Air Force One, which sits perched above a giant souvenir shop. Nancy and Ronald Reagan are even buried there. At the library, not the souvenir shop. Hard to buy a fridge magnet when the great communicator's corpse is staring right at you.
And a couple of floors down, in the basement, there's an archive. And that's where Nate begins his fight.
I go to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and go through all the boxes. Looking through reams and reams of paperwork from our government's past, hoping to discover some shred of evidence amongst the redactions for anything to do with Able Archer 83. The National Security Advisor's files, U.S. military documents, documents from our allies, anything that could paint a picture of how a NATO exercise might have changed the course of history.
And as you might assume, the archive isn't small. Presidential libraries contain a lot of stuff. It really essentially is a dumping ground. But hidden amongst all of it, there could be a needle in the haystack. Well, when I was there, my spidey senses went up. Nate finds a box.
He blows off decades of cobwebs. He opens it, swats away the moths as they see light for the first time in 20 years. No, I'm being dramatic. The point is, the box is important. It's labeled NATO Military Exercises, November 1983. Jackpot. So I go through that and pull out the folder, open it up, and it has this, I believe it's a green card that says Every Historian's Nightmare. Withheld. Classified. Classified.
Go to the next folder, same thing. So it's a little bit heartbreaking. But this young historical treasure hunter will not be deterred. But I go to the archivist on duty and say, hey, what's the mechanism for getting this withheld stuff released? And I still remember he kind of gave me a kind of a mean laugh. He said, well, you could file a FOIA or a review request, but don't hold your breath. You can file, but you'll never get it.
What a motherf***ing god*** bureaucratic piece of s*** self-righteous douchebag motherf***er. Am I right? Did I go too far? I went too far.
I felt that we had a right to know what happened. It's possible that it shows this danger, unacceptable danger of nuclear weapons. And if they're that dangerous and the world was that dangerous then in 1983 and might still be that dangerous now, that danger shouldn't be hidden through classification.
And that right there got me a little bit angry and said, you know what? I'm going to fight this until the end. And I don't think the government should be keeping this secret. And I'm going to learn about FOIA and I'm going to learn about appeals and maybe even sue because the government's telling me, no, you can't have the documents and I want the documents. Here's a message to that asshole who worked as the archivist on duty at the Reagan Presidential Library in the year 2004. Our fearless FOIA warrior, get the DAX.
And what would they show? A very alarming account of what really went down in 1983. Spurred by intelligence failures, reckless policies, failed diplomacy, and outright arrogance. Buckle up, boys and girls, it's gonna be a terrifying ride. Over the rest of the season, we'll spin a yarn so nuts that it would have Reagan himself shitting in his 10-gallon Stetson.
We'll tell you how 1983 was a truly batshit year for the human race. Complete with fake military invasions, a commercial airliner full of passengers shot down, and a calculator right out of a spy movie that might have saved the world. And all that craziness would set the stage for the Big Snafu, a close call with nuclear war that would be kept top secret for decades.
Next week on Snafu, we'll get into the minds of the button pushers themselves, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov.
Two men whose provocations and paranoia would push the world to the brink. It did give me a real understanding of the communist menace. Ronald Reagan, having campaigned on being tough, is not going to stand up and say, oh, that was just for the cameras. I'm actually an old softie. I love borscht. Really, for the first time in my life, I felt like there could be nuclear war.
Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our producer is Carl Nellis, associate producer Tori Smith. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Andy Chug and Whitney Donaldson.
This episode was written by Sarah Joyner with additional writing from me, Elliot Kalin, and Whitney Donaldson. Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis. Make the rubble bounce.
Olivia Canney is our production assistant. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Additional research and fact-checking by Charles Richter. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Original music and sound design by Dan Rosato. Some archival audio from this episode originally appeared in Taylor Downing's fantastic film, 1983, The Brink of Apocalypse. Thank you, Mr. Downing, for permission to use it. Special thanks to Allison Cohen and Matt Eisenstadt.
For 25 years, Brightview Senior Living Associates have been committed to creating a vibrant culture and delivering exceptional services, making Brightview a great place to work and live. If you're looking for a rewarding opportunity to serve your local community and grow, we want you to join our team. Brightview Senior Living is growing and actively seeking vibrant associates to join our community teams, including directors, healthcare, activities, hospitality, and dining. Apply today at careers.brightviewseniorliving.com. Equal employment opportunities.
Text BVJOBS to 97211 to apply. This episode is brought to you by FX's The Old Man. The hit show returns starring Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow. The former CIA agent sets off on his most important mission to date, to recover his daughter after she's kidnapped. The stakes get higher and more secrets are uncovered. FX's The Old Man premieres September 12th on FX. Stream on Hulu.