RONALD REAGAN

CSI 97-10002September 1997

CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF INTELLIGENCE

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

An Intelligence Monograph

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YURI ANDROPOV

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A Cold War Conundrum:The 1983 Soviet War Scareby Ben B. Fischer

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CM 97-10002September 1997

. An Intelligence Monograph

A Cold War Conundrum:The 1983 Soviet War Scare

by Ben B. Fischer

The views expressed in this study are those of the author. They do notnecessarily reflect the views of the Central Intelligence Agency or anyother government entity.

Summary

Soviet intelligence services went on alert in 1981 to watch for US preparations forlaunching a surprise nuclear attack against the USSR and its allies. This alert wasaccompanied by a new Soviet intelligence collection program, known by theacronym RYAN, to monitor indications and provide early warning of US intentions.Two years later a major war scare erupted in the USSR. This study traces theorigins and scope of Operation RYAN and its relationship to the war scare.

Some observers dismissed the alert and the war scare as Soviet disinformationand scare tactics, while others viewed them as reflecting genuine fears. The latterview seems to have been closer to the truth. The KGB in the early 1980s saw theinternational situation—in Soviet terminology, the "correlation of world forces"—asturning against the USSR and increasing its vulnerability. These developments,along with the new US administration's tough stance toward the USSR, promptedSoviet officials and much of the populace to voice concern over the prospect of aUS nuclear attack.

New information suggests that Moscow also was reacting to US-led naval and airoperations, including psychological warfare missions conducted close to the SovietUnion. These operations employed sophisticated concealment and deceptionmeasures to thwart Soviet early warning systems and to offset the Soviets' ability—greatly bolstered by US spy John Walker—to read US naval communications.

In addition, this study shows how:

• The war scare affected Soviet responses to the Reagan administration'sStrategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the administration's condemnation of theSoviet Union following the 1983 shootdown of a South Korean airliner, and aNATO nuclear-release exercise late that same year.

• British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sought to use the Soviet alert/war scareto influence President Reagan's thinking about the USSR.

III

• Moscow's threat perceptions and Operation RYAN were influenced by memoriesof Hitler's 1941 surprise attack on the USSR (Operation BARBAROSSA).

• The Kremlin exploited the war scare for domestic political purposes, aggravatingfears among the Soviet people.

• The KGB abandoned caution and eschewed proper tradecraft in collectingindications-and-warning intelligence and relied heavily on East German foreignand military intelligence to meet RYAN requirements.

This monograph is Unclassified in its entirety.

iv

Table of Contents

Page

Summary HI

Introduction 1

Context: Soviet Cold War Setbacks 3

The Soviet Intelligence Alert and Operation RYAN

4

Why an Intelligence Alert?

5

Spooking the Soviets 6

PSYOP

6

RYAN, Phase II: A New Sense of Urgency 12

RYAN and East German Intelligence 14

The War Scare Goes Public 17

"Star Wars"

17

KAL 007

19

ABLE ARCHER 83

24

The "Iron Lady" and the "Great Communicator"

26

War Scare Frenzy in the USSR

27

The Enduring Trauma of BARBAROSSA

28

Conclusion: The War Scare Was for Real

30

Appendix A: RYAN and the Decline of the KGB

33

Appendix B: The Gordievsky File

35

A Cold War Conundrum:The 1983 Soviet War Scare

Never, perhaps, in the postwar decades wasthe situation in the world as explosive andhence, more difficult and unfavorable, as in thefirst half of the 1980s.

—Mikhail GorbachevFebruary 1986

Introduction

Union as the "focus of evil in the world" and asan "evil empire."3 Soviet General SecretaryYuri Andropov responded by calling the USPresident insane and a liar. 4 Then things gotnasty 5

Following Andropov's lead—and presumablyhis orders—the Soviet propaganda machinelet loose a barrage of harsh verbal assaults onthe United States reminiscent of the early daysof the Cold War. 6 Moscow repeatedly accused

A modern-dayRip van Winklewaking up in1983 . . . wouldnot haverealized that asubstantialperiod ofdetente hadcome and gonewhile he slept.

US-Soviet relations had come full circle by1983—from confrontation in the early postwardecades, to detente in the late 1960s and1970s, and back to confrontation in the early1980s. Europeans were declaring the outbreakof "Cold War II." French President FrancoisMitterrand compared the situation that year tothe 1962 Cuban missile cnsis and the 1948face-off over Berlin. On this side of the Atlantic,the doyen of Soviet-watchers, GeorgeKennan, exclaimed that the new superpowerimbroglio had the "familiar characteristics, theunfailing characteristics, of a march towardwar—that and nothing else."'

Such fears were exaggerated. Even at thistime of heightened tension, nowhere in theworld were the superpowers squared off in acrisis likely to escalate into full-scale nuclearwar. But a modern-day Rip van Winkle wakingup in 1983 would have noted little if anyimprovement in the international politicalclimate; he would not have realized that asubstantial period of detente had come andgone while he slept.2

The post-detente "second Cold War" wasessentially a war of words—strong and attimes inflammatory words. In March 1983,President Reagan denounced the Soviet

'See George F Kennan, "The State of U S -Soviet Relations(1983); in At A Century's Ending Reflections 1982-1995(New York W W Norton & Company, 1996), p 822 Time magazine's "Man of the Year" issue for 1984provides a good summary of the issues and atmosphencsin US-Soviet relations dunng 1983 Time chose RonaldReagan and Yun Andropov as co-honorees See "Men ofthe Year, Reagan and Andropov," Time, January 2, 1984,pp 16-25

3 The "evil empire" speech is often regarded as a maimforeign policy address or even a defining moment in US-Soviet relations, although the venue in which it wasdelivered—an evangelical ministers' convention inFlonda—suggests that it may not have been intended assuch The media seized on the speech pnmanly for itssound-bite quality and its be-in with the popular film StarWars, a futunstic morality play about Good versus Evil inouter space Former Soviet ambassador to the US AnatolyDobrynin has wntten that the speech "was not intended tobe a history-making event in foreign policy, and accordingto [Secretary of State George] Shultz, no one outside theWhite House, including him, had a chance to review thetext in advance, but the phrase quickly spread throughoutthe world" Dobiynin does not say how he portrayed thespeech to Moscow See Anatoly Dobrynin, In ConfidenceMoscow's Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents (NewYork Times Books/Random House, 1995), p 5024 This was the first personal attack by a top Soviet leaderon a US president in many years Andropov's allegationwas in response to President Reagan's assertion that theUSSR had violated a self-imposed moratonum ondeployment of SS-20 intermediate-range missiles facingWestern Europe The President's statement wastechnically incorrect, the Soviet moratonum had beencleverly worded to give the impression that alldeployments would cease immediately, but the fine pnntshowed that the Soviets did not include SS-20 launchersunder construction but not completed3 In a pnvate conversation in Moscow with Vice PresidentBush, Secretary of State Shultz, and US AmbassadorArthur Hartman in November 1982 after LeonidBrezhnev's funeral, Andropov said "Penodically excessesof rhetonc will appear in our relationship, but it is best topay attention to the business at hand " George Shultz,Turmoil and Tnumph My Years as Secretary of State (NewYork Charles Scnbner's Son, 1993), p 126 Andropov didnot heed his own advice and soften his own attacks on theUnited States even after President Reagan moderated hisstatements on the Soviet Union6 As Harry Gelman put it "The [Soviet] oligarchy deployeda degree and volume of propaganda vituperation not seensince the 19508, and far surpassing Mr Reagan inrhetoncal extravagance "See The Rise and Fall ofDetente Causes and Consequences, Occasional Paper-OPS-002 (Santa Monica, CA The RAND Corporation,1985),p 25

1

Time chose President Reagan andGeneral Secretary Andropov as "Men of

The Year" for 1984, saying that "US-Soviet rivalry colored, when it did notdominate" nearly all the "seeminglydisconnected events" of the previouscrisis year.

I MEN OF THE yEARrm1 IN V I

InIss1on

2

(By 1981,) the"correlation ofworld forces"between the USand the USSRwas seen (by theKGB) as turningInexorablyagainst the(Soviets).

President Reagan of fanning the flames of warand compared him to Hitler—an image evenmore menacing than that of Andropov as theevil empire's Darth Vader. Such hyperbole wasmore a consequence than a cause of tension,but it masked real fears.

Context: Soviet Cold War Setbacks

The Hitler comparison was more than arhetoncal excess; war was very much on theminds of Soviet leaders. Moscow was in themidst of a war scare that had two distinctphases—a largely concealed one starting in1981 and a more visible one two years later.

In early 1981 the KGB's foreign intelligencedirectorate, using a computer programdeveloped several years earlier, prepared anestimate of world trends that concluded theUSSR in effect was losing—and the US waswinning—the Cold War.' Expressed in Sovietterms, the "correlation of world forces"between the US and the USSR was seen asturning inexorably against the latter.8

7 William T Lee, "The nuclear bnnk that wasn't — and theone that was," Washington Times, February 7, 1995,p A19

See Vernon V Aspartunan, "Soviet Global Power and theCorrelation of Forces," Problems of Communism, vol 29(May-June 1990), pp 1-18, for a discussion of the nse andfall of Soviet expectations of supplanting the United Statesas the pnmary international power Aspartunan (pp 10-11)defines "correlation of forces" as follows

[The] Soviet concept of the "correlation of forces"differs fundamentally from the concept [of] "balanceof power" While the balance of power can be theproduct of deliberate policy, the "correlation offorces" represents "balance determined by socialand histoncal processes" in which policy of states isonly a component As developed by Soviet wnters,the "correlation of forces" constitutes the basicsubstructures upon which the interstate systemrests Thus, the "correlation of forces" can beaffected only marginally by state policy, but ingeneral, state policies are shaped by the changing"correlation of forces" Even today, this Sovietconcept is barely understood in the West, hence themuddle over "assessments" and "militarybalances"

This assessment was profoundly different fromthat of 10 years earlier, when Foreign MinisterAndrei Gromyko had asserted that: "Todaythere is no question of any significance thatcan be decided without the Soviet Union or inopposition to lt."8 The Soviet ambassador toFrance, for example, had proclaimed that theUSSR "would not permit another Chile,"implying that Moscow was prepared to counterthe Monroe Doctrine in Latin America and theCarter Doctrine in the Persian Gulf with theBrezhnev Doctrine, which the Soviets invokedto justify the use of military power to keep pro-Soviet regimes in power and "repel. . . thethreat of counterrevolution or foreignintervention." 0 Such rhetoric reflected Marxisttheoreticians' conviction in the 1970s that thecorrelation of forces was scientifically basedand historically ordained and would endure.

But the Politburo faced a new set of realities inthe early 1980s. The United States, late in theCarter administration and continuing in the first

° As cited in ibid 'p 1 In retrospect it is difficult to imaginethat this was the Soviet perception of the internationalsituation on the eve of Communism's collapse But it wasAnalysis of voluminous wntings by Soviet experts on theWest shows that

By the mid-1970s Soviet leaders were convincedthat they were gaining the upper hand During thebnef penod of detente, America was acknowledgedto be the dominant force in the world, but its relativestrength appeared to be in decline RichardNixon's pursuit of detente was interpreted asevidence of a weakened Amenca's need for peace,markets, and new sources of energy When Nixontraveled to Moscow in 1972, Soviet specialists onAmencan affairs enthusiastically proclaimed thatthe USSR was emerging as the victor in the globalstruggle that had begun a quarter of a centuryearlier See Richard B Day, Cold War CapitalismThe View from Moscow 1945-1975 (New YorkM E Sharpe, 1995), pp xi and xvi-xvii

1° As cited in Aspartunan, "Soviet Global Power andthe Correlation of Forces," p 17 AmbassadorS V Chervonenko made this statement in an Apnl 1980speech He was implicitly ref ernng to the US effort todestabilize the Marxist regime of Salvador Allende in theearly 1970s The immediate purpose of the speech was tosignal the United States that Moscow was determined tokeep a Marxist regime in power in Afghanistan, but thespeech was widely interpreted as meaning that the USSRwas prepared to apply the Brezhnev Doctrine, formulatedto Justify the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, outside theSoviet bloc and anywhere in the world

3

Andropovasserted bluntlythat the UnitedStates wasmakingpreparationsfor a surprisenuclear attackon the USSR.

years of the Reagan administration, hadstarted playing catch-up. To many observers itbegan to seem that Marxist gains in the 1970sin such places as Indochina, Angola,Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua hadowed more to US divisions, diversions, anddefeats than to Soviet power and influence."Now it appeared that Moscow had not reallygained very much from its foreign adventures.For example:

activists in the USSR and Poland and themujahedin in Afghanistan. 12 In WesternEurope, where the Kremlin had spent adecade trying to win friends and influencepeople—especially on the left—with its peace-and-detente policies, Chancellor HelmutSchmidt of West Germany favored installingnew US missiles to counter Soviet SS-20saimed at his country and other NATO allies.

• In Afghanistan, the Soviet Army was caughtin its own version of America's Vietnamquagmire.

• Cuba, Moscow's foothold in the WesternHemisphere, was foundering economicallyand draining Soviet funds.

• The pro-Soviet regime in Angola wasstruggling to contain a potent, sometimesUS-backed insurgency.

• Nicaragua's Marxist government faced agrowing challenge from US-supportedopposition forces.

In an even more fundamental reversal for theSoviet Union, US public opinion, disillusionedwith detente and arms control, was nowsupporting the largest peacetime defensebuildup in the nation's history.

These trends for the most part began underPresident Carter and accelerated underPresident Reagan. The Carter administration,moreover, began revitalizing CIA covert actionagainst the USSR. President Reagan, inaddition to accelerating the US militarybuildup, expanded programs launched underhis predecessor to support human nghts

"By the early 1970s it was widely believed that the USSRcould profit from Amencies problems Evidence ofArnencan decline, both at home and abroad, seemedoverwhelming " Day, Cold War Capitalism, p 260

In sum, the wheel of history appeared to havestopped in its tracks in the 1980s and seemedto be turning in the opposite direction—in theWest's favor. What a difference a decademakes'

The Soviet Intelligence Alertand Operation RYAN

The 1981 KGB assessment was more of along-range forecast than a storm warning, butthe Politburo issued what amounted to a full-scale hurricane alert. Andropov and Sovietleader Leonid Brezhnev made a jointappearance in May 1981 before a closedsession of KGB officers. 13 Brezhnev took thepodium first and bnefed the assembled

12 Robert M Gates makes a major contnbution by settingthe record straight on this issue in From the Shadows TheUltimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How TheyWon the Cold War (New York Simon & Schuster, 1996),pp 89-96, 135-16913 The bnefing is recounted in Chnstopher Andrew andOleg Gordievsky, KGB The Inside Story of Its ForeignOperations from Lenin to Gorbachev (New YorkHarperCollins Publishers, 1991), p 583, and also inChnstopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, eds ,Instructions from the Center Top Secret Files on KGBForeign Operations 1975-1985 (London Stodder &Houghton, 1991), p 67 Former KGB officer Oleg Kalugin,who was stationed in Leningrad at the time, notes that "in1981, we received what I can only descnbe as a paranoidcable from Andropov warning of the growing threat of anuclear apocalypse "See Oleg Kalugin with FenMontaigne, The First Directorate My 32 Years inIntelligence and Espionage Against the West (New YorkSt Martin's Press, 1994), p 302

4

RYAN Tasking for Warsaw PactMilitary Intelligence Services

Operation RYAN was the main topic onthe agenda of the 1983 annualconference of Warsaw Pact militaryintelligence chiefs. A top secret protocolstated that "in view of the increasingdanger of war unleashed by the US andNATO," the chiefs of services wouldassign the highest prionty to collectinginformation on:

• Key US/NATO political and strategicdecisions vis-a-vis the Warsaw Pact.

• Early warning of US/NATOpreparations for launching a surprisenuclear attack.

• New US/NATO weapons systemsintended for use in a surpnse nuclearattack.16

KGBrezidenturasin the UnitedStates, WesternEurope, Japan,and selectedThird Worldcountriesreceived the firstset of RYANrequirements inNovember 1981.

intelligence officers on his concerns about USpolicy under the new administration inWashington. Andropov then asserted bluntlythat the United States was makingpreparations for a surprise nuclear attack onthe USSR. The KGB and the GRU, hedeclared, would join forces to mount a newintelligence collection effort codenamedRYAN." Its purpose: to monitor indicationsand provide early warning of US warpreparations.

According to later revelations by ex-KGBofficer Oleg Gordievsky, KGB rezifienturas(field stations) in the United States, WesternEurope, Japan, and selected Third Worldcountries received the first set of RYANrequirements in November 1981. (GRUrezdenturas presumably received theirssimultaneously.) The KGB Center(headquarters in Moscow) transmittedadditional guidance in January 1982, directingthose rezdenturas that were on alert to placea high priority on RYAN in their annual workplans. In March 1982, the senior KGB officer incharge of coordinating requirements at theCenter was assigned to Washington tooversee collection of indications-and-warningintelligence.

In discussing the heightened emphasis onRYAN, Yuri Shvets, a former KGB officer in theWashington rezdentura, observed in his 1994book that information cabled to Moscow fromthe RYAN collection program was used in dailybriefing books for the Politburo. He also notedthat the program required an inordinateamount of time. 15

Why an Intelligence Alert?Several former KGB officers, among themOleg Gordievsky, Oleg Kalugin, and YuriShvets, have confirmed the existence of theSoviet intelligence alert, but its origins areunclear. Gordievsky disclaims any firsthandknowledge of what prompted the Politburo toimplement Operation RYAN. His own view isthat it was both a reaction to "Reaganiterhetoric" and a reflection of "Soviet paranoia."Andropov and Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov,both of whom harbored more alarmist views on

14 RYAN is the acronym for raketno-yademoye napadense,or nuclear-missile attack Another ex-KGB officer who wasinvolved with RYAN uses the term VRYAN, the additionalletter stood for vnezapnoe or surpnse See Yuri B Shvets,Washington Station My Life as a KGB Spy in Amenca(New York Simon & Schuster, 1994), p 74 Kalugin,The First Directorate, p 302, refers to a "brand-newprogram (the English-language acronym was RYAN)" that"was created to gather information on a potential Amencanfirst nuclear stnke "

Shvets, Washington Station, p 75

18 German military authonbes found this document in thefiles of the former East German army and gave it to themedia See Markus Lesch, "Wm die Phantasm der SEDNATO-Divisionen zuhauf gebar," Die Welt, February 2,1992, p 3

5

RYAN may havebeen a responseto the first in aseries of USpsychologicalwarfareoperations. US intentions than other Politburo members,

may have urged the alert on Brezhnev,although Gordievsky has not documented this.Former Soviet Ambassador to the UnitedStates Anatoly Dobrynin mentions RYAN in hismemoirs but adds little to Gordievsky'saccount.'7

In short, something is missing in this picture.Exactly what precipitated the alert andOperation RYAN? The decision to order anintelligence alert was highly unusual.Moreover, in terms of its mission, scope, andconsumption of operational resources—not tomention cooperation between Soviet civilianand military services—RYAN wasunprecedented.' s The threat perception onwhich it was based was new as well; asDobrynin notes in his memoirs, Andropov wasthe first Soviet top leader since Stalin whoseemed to believe that the United States mightlaunch a surpnse attack on the USSR. 19

RYAN must be viewed in its temporal context.It began just a few months into the Reaganadministration—that is, well before the new USadministration's policies had been fullyformulated, much less implemented—andalmost two years before the Soviet war scareerupted publicly in late 1983. As of early 1981,the Politburo was cautiously optimistic thatPresident Reagan's rhetoric was more a

11 Dobrynin, In Confidence, p 523 Dobrynin claims hewas not officially informed of the alert because it was anintelligence matter, but learned about it from the KGBrezident (chief of station) in Washington He mistakenlystates that RYAN (misspelled Ryon in his book) began in1983la Two former East German intelligence officers say thatbefore the early 1980s the collection of indications-and-warning intelligence had been assigned exclusively tomilitary intelligence in the Warsaw Pact Peter Richter andKlaus Rosier, Wolfs West-Spione Emn Insider Report(Berlin Elefanten Press, 1992), p 72 The Czechoslovakrezident in London told Gordievsky that, before RYAN, hisservice had never been tasked to collect militaryintelligence Chnstopher and Gordievsky, KGB, p 58819 Dobrynin, In Confidence, pp 522-523

campaign plank than a policy framework. TheSoviet leadership was hoping that, as in thepast, a more "realistic" attitude would take holdin Washington once diplomacy got down tobusiness. 20 Nonetheless, in internationalrelations as in other spheres of human activity,actions generally speak louder than words,and the well-known proverb about sticks andstones applies as much to diplomacy as to theplayground Clearly, the Politburo wasresponding to something more than verbaltaunts. Was it reacting to taunts of anotherkind?

Spooking the Soviets

PSYOPRYAN may have been a response to the first ina series of US psychological warfareoperations (PSY0Ps in military jargon)initiated in the early months of the Reaganadministration. 2 ' These operations consistedmainly of air and naval probes near Sovietborders. The activity was virtually invisibleexcept to a small circle of White House andPentagon officials—and, of course, to theKremlin. "'It was very sensitive,' recalls former

20 The first major assessment of Reagan policies was ajoint memorandum submitted to the Politburo by ForeignMinister Andrei Gromyko, Defense Minister Ustinov, andthe KGB's Andropov on May 12, 1981 in response to thenew President's foreign policy address several daysearlier The Soviet assessment was pessimistic ThePolitburo accepted it as the official view of US policy, but incommunications with Washington the Soviets continued toseek a dialogue and a summit meeting See Dobrynin,In Conhdence, pp 502-50321 The initial probes were aimed at deternng Moscow fromusing military force to suppress the Solidarity movement inPoland Dunng 1980-81 Soviet ground forces wereexercising on both sides of the USSR-Poland border, bothto intimidate the political opposition and to rehearse for anintervention that was called off when the Polish regimedeclared martial law on December 12/13, 1981

6

undersecretary of defense Fred lkIe. 'Nothingwas written down about it, so there would beno paper trail.'"22

The purpose of this program was not so muchto signal US intentions to the Soviets as tokeep them guessing what might come next.The program also probed for gaps andvulnerabilities in the USSR's early warningintelligence system:

"Sometimes we would send bombers overthe North Pole and their radars would clickon," recalls Gen. Jack Chain, [a] formerStrategic Air Command commander."Other times fighter-bombers would probetheir Asian or European penphery."During peak times, the operation wouldinclude several maneuvers in a week.They would come at irregular intervals tomake the effect all the more unsettling.Then, as quickly as the unannouncedflights began, they would stop, only tobegin again a few weeks later.23

Another former US official with access to thePSYOP program offered this assessment:

"It really got to them," recalls Dr. WilliamSchneider, [former] undersecretary ofstate for military assistance andtechnology, who saw classified "after-action reports" that indicated U.S. flightactivity. "They didn't know what it allmeant. A squadron would fly straight atSoviet airspace, and other radars wouldlight up and units would go on alert. Thenat the last minute the squadron wouldpeel off and return home." 24

22 Peter Schweizer, Victory The Reagan Administration'sSecret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the SovietUnion (New York The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994), pThis book first revealed the existence of the PSYOPprogram While the book's main thesis—that a Reaganadministration "secret offensive on economic,geostrategic, and psychological fronts" was the key factorin the Soviet Union's downfall—is controversial, there hasbeen little, if any, challenge to the author's descnpbons ofthe PSYOP program23 Ibid24 lb

Naval Muscle-Flexing. According topublished accounts, the US Navy played a keyrole in the PSYOP program after PresidentReagan authorized it in March 1981 to operateand exercise near maritime approaches to theUSSR, in places where US warships hadnever gone before. 25 Fleet exercisesconducted in 1981 and 1983 near the farnorthern and far eastern regidins of the SovietUnion demonstrated US ability to deployaircraft-carrier battle groups close to sensitivemilitary and industrial sites, apparently withoutbeing detected or challenged early on. 26 These

25 As reported in Seymour Hersh, "The Target isDestroyed" What Really Happened to Right 007 andWhat Amenca Knew About It (New York Random House,1986), p 17 Hugh Fanngdon notes that the Navy "was thearm of service that benefited most from the Reaganadministration, and it is the one that gives the clearestevidence of the ways the Americans thought at the time"A new US manbme strategy envisioned a three-stageprocess of nonnuclear "honzontal escalation" in wartime(1)aggressive forward movement of antisubmanne forces,submannes, and manbme patrol aircraft, aimed at forcingthe Soviets to retreat into defensive "bastions" in order toprotect their nuclear-powered ballistic missile submannes,(2) destroying Soviet naval forces and pushing the fightingtoward Soviet home waters, and (3) complete destructionof Soviet naval forces by US aircraft carriers with airstnkesagainst the Soviet interior and the northern and/or centralNATO–Warsaw Pact fronts See Fanngdon's StrategicGeography NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and theSuperpowers, 2d ed (New York Routledge, 1989), p 14428 A declassified US National Intelligence Estimate issuedin 1983 summanzed the Soviets' assessment of the role ofaircraft carners in American naval strategy as follows

They regard the aircraft carners not only as thebackbone of Amencan general purpose navalforces, but also an important nuclear reserve forcethat could play a significant role in determining theoutcome of the final phases of hostilities Wnbngsand exercise activity indicate that the Sovietsexpect US camer battle groups to undertakevigorous offensive actions in the maritimeapproaches to the USSR They believe that camerbattle groups would attempt to use the Norwegian,the North, and the eastern Mediterranean Seas andthe northwestern Pacific Ocean to attack WarsawPact temtory, deployed naval forces, includingSSBNs (nuclear-powered ballistic missilesubmannes) and their supporting forces, and Pactground force operations Destruction of the aircraftcarriers, then, is a critical element of several Sovietnaval tasks (See Director of Central Intelligence,"Soviet Naval Strategy and Programs," NationalIntelligence Estimate NIE 11-15/82D, March 1983,pp 18-19)

7

The projectionof naval and airpower exposedgaping holes inSoviet oceansurveillanceand earlywarningsystems.

exercises reportedly included secretoperations that simulated surprise naval airattacks on Soviet targets.

In the August-September 1981 exercise, anarmada of 83 US, British, Canadian, andNorwegian ships led by the carrier Eisenhowermanaged to transit the Greenland—Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap undetected,using a variety of carefully crafted andpreviously rehearsed concealment anddeception measures. 27 A combination ofpassive measures (maintaining radio silenceand operating under emissions controlconditions) and active measures (radar-jamming and transmission of false radarsignals) turned the allied force into somethingresembling a stealth fleet, which evenmanaged to elude a Soviet low-orbit, active-radar satellite launched to locate it. 28 As thewarships came within operating areas ofSoviet long-range reconnaissance planes, the

27 This account is based on Gregory L Vistica, Fall fromGlory The Men Who Sank the US Navy (New YorkSimon & Schuster, 1996), pp 105-108, 116-118, and 129-135 The author's version of the 1981 exercise appears tobe accurate and based on sources who had firsthandknowledge He errs, however, by saying that US navaloperations occurred in "Soviet waters" or ''Soviet temtonalwaters" when they actually took place in internationalwaters

The GIUK Gap is an imaginary line stretching from NorthAmenca through Greenland and Iceland to Scotland andNorway In wartime the Soviet Northern Fleet would havehad to transit it to reach the north Atlantic, while NATOforces would have deployed naval and air power there tobottle up Soviet naval forces2° The Navy was testing more than its capabilities fordefeating Soviet surveillance systems, it also was testingthe hypothesis held by some senior admirals that Sovietintelligence was intercepting and reading US militarycommunications These admirals were vindicated in 1985when the FBI arrested ex-sailor John Walker andmembers of his espionage nng, who had been giving theKGB cipher material, among other things, since 1967 Fora Soviet assessment of Walker's information, see PeteEarley, "Interview with the Spymaster," Washington PostMagazine, Apnl 23, 1995, pp 20-22 The spymaster isGen Bons Solomatin, who was KGB rezident inWashington when Walker began spying According to theex-KGB man (p 21) "For more than 17 years, Walkerenabled your enemies to read your most sensitive militarysecrets We knew everything' There has never been abreach of this magnitude and length in the history ofespionage"

Soviets were initially able to identify but nottrack them Meanwhile, Navy fightersconducted an unprecedented simulated attackon the Soviet planes as they refueled in-flight,flying at low levels to avoid detection by Sovietshore-based radar sites.29

In the second phase of this exercise, a cruiserand three other ships left the carrier battlegroup and sailed north through the NorwegianSea and then east around Norway's CapeNorth and into the Barents Sea They thensailed near the militarily important KolaPeninsula and remained there for nine daysbefore rejoining the main group.

In April-May 1983, the US Pacific Fleet held itslargest exercises to date in the northwestPacific. 3° Forty ships, including three aircraftcarrier battle groups, participated along withAWACS-equipped B-52s. At one point the fleetsailed within 720 kilometers (450 miles) of theKamchatka Peninsula and Petropavlovsk, theonly Soviet naval base with direct access toopen seas. US attack submarines andantisubmarine aircraft conducted operations inprotected areas ("bastions") where the SovietNavy had stationed a large number of itsnuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines(SSBNs). US Navy aircraft from the carriersMidway and Enterprise carried out a simulatedbombing run over a military installation on thesmall Soviet-occupied island of Zelenny in theKuril Island chain.31

22 The fighters "attacked" from 1,600 kilometers (1,000miles) away Until then, conventional wisdom held that thenormal operating range of carrier-based aircraft was abouthalf that distance See Vistica, Fall from Glory,pp 131-1323° Details of the 1983 exercise are recounted in Hersh,"The Target is Destroyed. "chap 2 ("A Fleet Exercise")Vistica does not discuss the 1983 exercise or cite Hersh'saccount but does give details of an even larger and morecomplex US-Japanese exercise in the Seas of Okhotskand Japan and in the Benng Sea in August-September1986 See Vistica, Fall from Glory, pp 212, 214-2183' For accounts of this incident, see Hersh, "The Target isDestroyed, "p 18, and James Oberg, "The Truth AboutKAL 007, "Air Force Magazine, November 1991, p 66Oberg fixed the date of the overflight as Apnl 6, 1983

8

Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) Gap

reenland(Denmark)

BarentsSea \

NorwegianSea

Note: Names and international boundaries areshown as they appeared in 1983. Boundary ftpresenta twn

not nocessanly authontatnre

743553 (802446) 7.97

9

RYAN, itappears, wasdesigned to testa worst caseinterpretation ofUS actions andto compensatefor technicaldeficiencies inSoviet strategicand tacticalwarningcapabilities.

In addition to these exercises, according topublished accounts, the Navy applied a full-court press against the Soviets in venousforward areas. Warships began operating inthe Baltic and Black Seas and routinely sailedpast Cape North and into the Barents Sea.Intelligence ships were positioned off theCrimean coast. Aircraft carriers withsubmarine escorts were anchored inNorwegian fjords. US attack submannespracticed assaults on Soviet SSBNs stationedbeneath the polar ice cap.

These US demonstrations of military mightwere aimed at deterring the Soviets fromprovocative actions and at displaying USdetermination to respond in kind to Sovietregional and global exercises that had becomelarger, more sophisticated, and moremenacing in preceding years. The projection ofnaval and naval air power exposed gapingholes in Soviet ocean surveillance and earlywarning systems. For example, in-aCongressional briefing on the 1983 Pacificexercise, the chief of naval operations notedthat the Soviets "are as naked as a jaybirdthere [on the Kamchatka Peninsula], and theyknow it." 32 His comment applied equally to thefar northern maritime area and the KolaPeninsula. In short, the Navy haddemonstrated that it could:

• Elude the USSR's large and complex oceansurveillance systems.33

• Defeat Soviet tactical warning systems.

• Penetrate air defense systems.

32 Hersh, "The Target is Destroyed,"p 1833 According to Director of Central Intelligence, "SovietNaval Strategy and Programs," p 35

These systems—which are designed to locate,identify, and track the movement of foreign navalforces posing a threat to the Soviet homeland andmilitary forces—include land-based signalsintelligence (SIGINT) stations, space-basedelectronic intelligence (ELINT) and radar satellites,intelligence-collection ships (AGIs), andreconnaissance aircraft

RYAN and PSYOP—A Link? Was there aconnection between PSYOP and RYAN?There clearly was a temporal correlation. Thefirst PSYOP probes began in mid-February1981; in May, Andropov directed the KGB towork with the GRU to launch the RYANprogram (see earlier section entitled "TheSoviet Intelligence Alert and OperationRYAN"), and the KGB Center informedrezidenturas about the program's existence.

When Reagan administration officials firstlearned of RYAN, they reportedly drew aconnection between the US-led military probesand the Soviet alert, noting that the Sovietswere increasingly frightened. 34 While Moscowpresumably took account of the tit-for-tatnature of the US military operations and did notdraw hard-and-fast conclusions as to whatthese operations might portend about USintentions, it could not ignore either theirimplications for a surprise attack scenano orthe gaps they exposed in the USSR's technicalearly warning systems.

In addition, the ability of Soviet intelligence tomonitor US naval operations by readingencrypted communications had been reduced,if not neutralized. Moscow did not know whatthe US would do Even so, it had learned adisturbing lesson about what Washingtoncould do in a wartime situation or other crisis.RYAN, it appears, was designed to test a worstcase interpretation of US actions and tocompensate for technical deficiencies in Sovietstrategic and tactical warning capabilities byaugmenting them with human intelligenceoperations.

While a narrow circle of US officials may havegained an appreciation of the PSYOP-RYANcause-and-effect relationship suggestedabove, this apparently was not true of the US

32 Schweizer, Victory, p 190

10

Moscow . . .was goingconsiderablyfurther (thanbefore] bycharging that(US/NATOexercises andreconnaissanceoperations]werepreparationsfor a surprisenuclear attack.

Intelligence Community as a whole. Adeclassified 1984 Special National IntelligenceEstimate (SNIE), commissioned to assessindications of an "abnormal Soviet fear ofconflict with the United States," was a case inpoint.35

The SNIE did not refer specifically to RYAN,although allusions to war-scare statementssuggest some knowledge of the alert. In theabsence of other information, the SNIEattributed Soviet statements to US foreign anddefense policy "challenges"; it attributed recentSoviet military exercises to force developmentand training requirements. The SNIE playeddown the significance of Soviet assertionsabout US preparations for a surprise nuclearattack, arguing that the "absence of forcewidecombat readiness and other war preparationsin the USSR" apparently meant that theKremlin did not believe war was imminent orinevitable. 36 The "war scare" was morepropaganda than threat perception, accordingto this assessment.37

'35 Director of Central Intelligence, "Implications of RecentSoviet Military-Political Activities," SNIE 11-10-841JX, 18May 1984 (CIA declassified this estimate in early 1996and released it to the National Archives and RecordsAdministration )

RAND Corporation expert Jeremy Azrael alsodownplayed the significance of the Soviet intelligence alertbecause it was not accompanied by a military alert or othermilitary actions He offers Iwo explanations Either Sovietleaders believed that the threat of war was higher thantheir public statements indicated, or they had ordered thealert to discredit Cassandras in the high command—including First Deputy Defense Minister and Chief of theGeneral Staff Nikolai Ogarkov—by showing that even amassive indications-and-warning effort could not yieldevidence of US war preparations Azrael leans toward theformer explanation without spelling out his reasons fordoing so—that is, he does not clarify what, if anything,Soviet leaders may have found troubling in US actionsJeremy R Azrael, The Soviet Civilian Leadership and theMilitary High Command, 1976-1986, R-3521-AF (SantaMonica, CA The RAND Corporation, 1986), p 20, n 3237 Azrael shares this view, arguing that the war scare wasa "carefully prearranged and closely coordinateddiplomatic script" whose "nice-guy, tough-guycounterpoint" between top Soviet civilian and militaryleaders was intended for Western consumption—specifically, to support the then-current Soviet "peaceoffensive" aimed at forestalling US intermediate-rangemissile deployments in West Germany Ibid , pp v, 30-31

Nonetheless, the SNIE drafters evidentlysensed that there might be more to the storyand raised the possibility that "recent US/NATO military exercises and reconnaissanceoperations" might have been factors in Sovietbehavior. The main clue was the differencebetween past and present Sovietcharactenzations of such exercises andoperations. In the past, Moscow had routinelycnticized such activities as indications ofWestern hostile intentions, but now it wasgoing considerably further by charging thatthey were preparations for a surpnse nuclearattack. In the final analysis, however, theSNIE's authors were unable to make a specificconnection between the Soviet alert andWestern military moves, noting that a "detailedexamination of simultaneous 'red' and 'blue''actions had not been accomplished."38

While the US probes caught the Kremlin bysurpnse, they were not unprecedented; therewas a Cold War antecedent. During the 1950sand 1960s, the US Strategic Air Command andthe Navy had conducted similar operations-intelligence-gathering missions, including

The US Intelligence Community remained skepticalabout the strategic warning role of the KGB-GRU alert wellafter Gordievsky had defected and been debnefed Forexample, Gordievsky recalls meeting a senior US experton Soviet affairs in Washington who appeared quiteknowledgeable about the alert but "cast doubt on all myinformation about Operation RYAN His theory was thatthe whole thing had been no more than a deceptionexercise by the Soviet leadership " See Oleg Gordievsky,Next Stop Execution The Autobiography of OlegGordievsky (New York Macmillan, 1995), p 377 A USdiplomatic correspondent notes that such skepticism wasrather widespread

Many senior administration officials scoff now, asthey did then, at the suggestion that the SovietUnion was genuinely alarmed by U S militarymoves or public statements, or that Moscow hadany justification for feeling vulnerable The 'warscare' in the Soviet Union in 1982-1983 wasdeliberately engineered for propaganda purposes,these officials maintain—a pretext to create siegementality in the Soviet Union, and to fnghten theoutside world about U S intentions (MurrayMarder, "Defector Told of Soviet Alert, KGB StationReportedly Warned U S Would Attack,"Washington Post, August 8, 1986, p Al)

11

KGB Center Pushes Operation RYAN,February 1983 (excerpt)

Top SecretCopy No 1

LondonComr[ade]Yermakov

(A. V. Guk](strictly personal)

No. 373/PR/5217.02.83

Permanent OperationalAssignment to Uncover NATO

Preparations for a Nuclear MissileAttack on the USSR

In view of the growing urgency of the taskof discovering promptly any preparationsby the adversary for a nuclear missileattack (RYAN) on the USSR, we aresending you a permanently operativeassignment (POA) and briefing on thisquestion.

The objective of the assignment is to seethat the residentura works systematicallyto uncover any plans in preparation bythe main adversary [the United States]for RYAN and to organize a continualwatch to be kept for indications of adecision being taken to use nuclearweapons against the USSR or immediatepreparations being made for a nuclearmissile attack.

On February 17,1983, the(KGB) Centernotified . . .rezidenturasthat RYAN had"acquired anespecial degreeof urgency" andwas "now ofparticularlygraveimportance."

"ferret" operations aimed at detecting locationsof, reactions by, and gaps in Soviet radar andair defense installations—along the USSR'sEurasian periphery in preparation for possiblenuclear war.39

RYAN, Phase II: A New Sense of Urgency

Operation RYAN was assigned a high but notoverriding priority in 1982. Then, on February17, 1983, the Center notified all rezidenturason alert that RYAN had "acquired an especialdegree of urgency" and was "now ofparticularly grave importance." 40 Rezidents(station chiefs) received new orders marked"strictly personal," instructing them to organizea "continual watch" using their entireoperational staff.'" They also were ordered toredirect existing agents who might have had

3r1 In 1970 the United States abandoned the practice offlying into foreign airspace to provoke reactions by airdefense and radar installations—so-called ferretmissions—after a Navy EC-121 reconnaissance planewas shot down off the coast of North Korea A DefenseDepartment study concluded that the nsk of such flightsoutweighed the gain The same study recommended thatregular reconnaissance missions be closely monitoredSee Hersh, "The Target is Destroyed,"p 221n Forrecently declassified information on the US overflightprogram, see "Secrets of the Cold War," U S News &World Report, March 15, 1993, pp 30-50

Official documents show that in the pre-satellite era theUS launched some 10,000—and perhaps as many as20,000—reconnaissance missions along Soviet andChinese borders The United States portrayed thesemissions as "electromagnetic research" and "photographicmapping" operations, but they actually were ferret flightsaimed at determining the precise location and capabilitiesof air defense and radar systems along approaches to bothcountnes Most missions targeted against the SovietUnion were flown along the penphery of its borders, butothers deliberately penetrated Soviet airspace One majorfinding Until the early 1960s the USSR had no earlywarning radars along its northern borders

President Truman authonzed the first ferret missions inlate 1950, and President Eisenhower made overflights anational policy in 1954 with the beginning of the U-2program At least 30 Air Force and Navy aircraft were lost,most of them along Soviet borders40 Andrew and Gordievsky, Instructions from the Center,pp 74, 75

Ibid , p 70

access to RYAN-related information; to recruitnew agents; and to have operations officersput selected targets under surveillance.

The new orders assumed that a preliminaryUS decision to launch a nuclear missile attack,even if made in secret, would require a varietyof consultations and implementing actions that

12

Moscow'snew sense ofurgency wasexplicitly linkedto the impendingdeployment ofUS PershingIRBMs in WestGermany.

could be detected through a combination ofovert and clandestine scrutiny. According tothe KGB Center:

One of the chief directions for the activityof the KGB's foreign service is toorganize detection and assessment ofsigns of preparation for RYAN in allpossible areas, i.e., political, economicand military sectors, civil defense and theactivity of the special services.

Our military neighbors [the GRU] areactively engaged in similar work inrelation to the activity of the adversary'sarmed forces."

(IRBMs) in West Germany. The Soviets as wellas some Western military experts saw thePershings as a new destabilizing element in thenuclear balance for two reasons. First, thesehighly accurate IRBMs were capable ofdestroying Soviet hard targets, includingcommand-and-control bunkers and missilesilos." Second, their flight time from Germanyto European Russia was calculated to be onlyfour to six minutes, giving the missiles a "super-sudden first strike" capability." In a crisis, theSoviets could be attacked with little or nowarning, and therefore would have to considerstnking at the Pershing launchsites beforebeing struck by the US missiles."

Three categories of targets were identified forpriority collection. The first included US andNATO government, military, intelligence, andcivil-defense installations that could bepenetrated by agents or visually observed bySoviet intelligence officers. Service andtechnical personnel at such installations wereassigned a high prionty for recruitment. Thesecond target category consisted of bilateraland multilateral consultations among the USand other NATO members. The third includedUS and NATO civilian and military"communications networks and systems."

Rendenturas were instructed to focus onchanges in the operations of US/NATOcommunications networks and in staffinglevels. They also were ordered to obtaininformation on "the organization, location, andfunctioning mechanism of all forms ofcommunications which are allocated by theadversary for controlling the process ofpreparing and waging a nuclear war—that is,information on command-and-controlnetworks."

Moscow's new sense of urgency was explicitlylinked to the impending deployment of USPershing ll intermediate-range ballistic missiles

42 'bid43 Ibid, p 81

The new instructions from Moscow alsoindicated, without being specific, that the alertwas linked to revisions in Soviet militaryplanning, noting that RYAN "now lies at thecore of [Soviet] military strategy." 47 The alertwas designed to give Moscow a "period ofanticipation essential. . . to take retaliatorymeasures. Otherwise, reprisal time would beextremely limited.""

But the repeated emphasis on providingwarning of a US attack "at a very early stage"and "without delay" suggests that the Sovietswere planning to preempt, not retaliate. If theyacquired what they considered to be reliableinformation about an impending US attack, it

"See the discussion in John Newhouse, War and Peacein the Nuclear Age (New York Alfred A Knopf, 1989),p 35645 The phrase "super-sudden first strike" was coined byMcGeorge Bundy and cited in !bid , p 328 Andrew andGordievsky in Instructions from the Center, p 74,mistakenly assert that the KGB message was wrong inclaiming a four- to six-minute flight bme for the Pershingus Western estimates used the same numbers"Of course, Soviet missiles could reach West Germany inthe same short time, but this fact did not receive muchattention in Western debates over the deployment of USintermediate-range missiles47 Andrew and Gordievsky in Instructions from the Center,p 74"!bid , p 76

13

RYAN: Retaliatory or PreemptiveStrike? February 1983 (excerpt from

KGB cable translated byOleg Gordievsky)

No 373/PR/52

Top SecretCopy No 1

Attachment 2

The Problem of DiscoveringPreparation for a Nuclear Missile

Attack on the USSR

Uncovenng the process of preparation bythe adversary to take the decision for anuclear attack and the subsequentmeasures to prepare the country for anuclear war would enable us to increasethe so-called period of anticipationessential for the Soviet Union to takeretaliatory measures. Otherwise, reprisaltime would be extremely limited. Forinstance, noting the launching ofstrategic missiles from the continentalpart of the USA and taking into accountthe time required for determining thedirection of their flight in fact leavesroughly 20 minutes' reaction time. Thispenod will be considerably curtailed afterdeployment of the 'Pershing-2' missile inthe FRG, for which the flying time toreach long-range targets in the SovietUnion is calculated at 4-6 minutes.

The Soviethigh commandprobablyintended totarget thePershings forpreemptivedestruction ifRYAN indicatedplans for a USattack.

would not have made sense for them to wart forthe attack to begin before responding; it wouldhave made sense to try to destroy the USmissiles before they were launched Hence thereference to military strategy probably meantthat the Soviet high command intended totarget the Pershings for preemptivedestruction if RYAN indicated plans for a USattack."

RYAN and East German Intelligence

The KGB's declining effectiveness by the1980s (see Appendix A) led the Kremlin to turnto its liaison services in Eastern Europe forhelp with RYAN. It assigned a major role toEast Germany's Hauptverwaltung Aufkldrung(HVA), a civilian agency headed by legendaryspymaster Markus Wolf that was probably thebest foreign intelligence service in the WarsawPact—"even better than the KGB," accordingto Gordievsky.50

" The West valued the Pershings more for their presencethan their capabilities, viewing them pnmanly as a symbolof US commitment to defend Western Europe in the eventof a Warsaw Pact attack The Soviets, however, could notignore the military implications of the new missiles as afactor in their strategy The Pershings were sited in anexposed position vulnerable to capture in the event of amassive attack by conventional forces, so that, despiteNATO's doctnne of no-early-use of nuclear weapons, theUnited States would have been forced to use or lose thePershings sooner rather than later Thus, the "threat posedby the missiles was so great that they [sic] compelled theRussians to plan on preempting their use early in a warAnd it was argued that the Russians could be confidentabout preempting only by nuclear means • See Dana Allin,Cold War Illusions Amenca, Europe and Soviet Power,1969-1989 (New York St Martin's Press, 1995), p 9155 Andrew and Gordrevsky, More Instructions from theCenter, p 37 Gordievsky and Kalugin both give EastGerman intelligence high marks According to Kalugin(see Kalugin, The First Directorate, p 171)

The East German Foreign Intelligence Agency,headed by the bnlhant Markus Wolf, had so deeplypenetrated the West German government, military,and secret services that about all we had to do waslay back [sic] and stay out of Wolf's way KGBIntelligence naturally had ties with the secretservices of aU of the 'fraternal countnes' of EasternEurope, though none would be as fruitful as ourrelationship with East Germany and Wolf

The KGB viewed West Germany as its "door tothe West" and to NATO, and the HVA had thekey to that door. 51 As a result, the KGBrezidentura in East Berlin was the largest in theworld and produced as much intelligence as asingle directorate at the KGB Center in

5, Andrew and Gordievsky, More Instructions from theCenter, p 38

14

Wolf created aspecial staff and. . . a situationcenter . . .dedicated tomonitoring . . .Indicators of animpending USattack (on theUSSR), . .also) put hisextensive WestGerman agentnetwork atMoscow'sdisposal.

Moscow. 52 Indeed, German countenntelligenceofficials believe that the HVA by itself may haveobtained up to 80 percent of all Warsaw Pactintelligence on NATO.

The demise of East Germany, the survival ofsome HVA files, and Wolf's recently publishedautobiography have all contributed in somemeasure to documenting the Soviet war scareand how it affected Soviet bloc intelligenceoperations. Wolf gives some insight intothe war scare's origins in a revealingconversation he had with Yuri Andropov inFebruary 1980, when Andropov was still headof the KGB:

We began discussing the East-Westconflict. I had never before seenAndropov so somber and dejected. Hedescribed a gloomy scenano in which anuclear war might be a real threat. Hissober analysis came to the conclusionthat the US government was stnving withall means available to establish nuclearsuperiority over the Soviet Union. Hecited statements of President Carter, hisadviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, and ofPentagon spokesmen, all of whichincluded the assertion that under certaincircumstances a nuclear first-strikeagainst the Soviet Union and its allieswould be justified.

Carter's presidency had created greatconcern in the Kremlin, because he hadpresented a defense budget of more than$157 billion, which he invested in the MXand Trident missiles and nuclearsubmarines. One of the top Sovietnuclear strategists confided to me that

52 Estimates of KGB officers stationed in East Germanyrange from 450 to 1,200 The GRU residency, given thepresence of the Soviet Group of Western Forces, wasprobably larger

See "Observation of Extreme Rightists To Be Improved,"Suddeutsche Zeitung, December 14-15, 1991, p. 5Translated in Foreign Broadcast Information Service'sDaily Report West Europe, FBIS-WEU-91-242,December 14, 1991, p 15

the resources of our alliance were notsufficient to match this. 54 [emphasisadded]

By the early 1980s, Wolf goes on to say, "ourSoviet partners had become obsessed with thedanger of a nuclear missile attack." 55 Heclaims: "Like most intelligent people, I foundthese war games a burdensome waste of time,but these orders were no more open todiscussion than other orders from above."58Wolf created a special staff and built a round-the-clock situation center with a "specialcommunications link" to Moscow dedicated tomonitoring a "catalogue" of political and militaryindicators of an impending US attack. The EastGerman leadership even ordered constructionof dispersed command bunkers for top political,military, and intelligence officials.

Wolf put his extensive West German agentnetwork at Moscow's disposal. Priority numberone was surveillance of Pershing II and cruisemissile sites, which HVA sources had alreadylocated and reported to Moscow. 57 The HVAordered agents in West German ministries,agencies, and defense firms to be on thelookout for technical breakthroughs inweapons research. 58 These agents were

" Markus Wolf, Spionage Chef im geheimen KnegEnnneningen (Dusseldorf and Munich List Verlag, 1997),pp 326,330-331 These passages appear in the US editionof Wolf's memoir, but in slightly edited form that omits thereference to Andropov's concern over a nuclear attack Infact, the German edition contains an entire chapter on the"war scare" as it affected the USSR and the two Germanysin the early 1980s that does not appear in the US edition.55 See Markus Wolf with Anne McElvoy, Man Without aFace . The Autobiography of Communism's GreatestSpymaster (New York Times Books/Random House,1997),p 222

Ibid"" Wolf, Spionage Chef im geheimen Kneg, p 331.so Peter Siebenmorgen, "Staatssicherheir der DDR DerWesten im Fadenkreuz der Stasi (Bonn Bouvier Verlag,1993), pp 197-198 This effort was probably focused ontechnologies being developed for the US SDI program andits European counterpart EUREKA, which were top pnontytargets

15

D Konnerth/Lichtblock Fotogratie

The control room of an underground bunker built for the East German foreignintelligence service (H VA). This was one of five dispersed command centersconstructed by the East Germans in 1983 in response to the Soviet war scare.

instructed to report any new informationimmediately, without waiting for regularlyscheduled meetings with their couriers fromEast Berlin. 59 The most important requirementwas for sensitive data on the Pershing ballisticmissile and the Tomahawk cruise missile. Thisdata eluded the East Germans, but they wereable to obtain information on the construction,transportation, assembly, and stationing ofthese missiles.6°

The HVA and the VA (the military intelligenceservice) launched an agent-recruiting drivelinked to Operation RYAN. According to onenews report, the HVA went after "dozens" ofUS servicemen, businessmen, and students in

Until the war scare, the HVA had rarely felt a sense ofurgency in scheduling agent meetings.60 Peter Siebenmorgen, "Staatssicherheit" der DOR,p. 198.

West Germany and West Berlin. 6 ' The WestGerman armed services were also a top-priority target for recruitment; Germancounterintelligence authorities documented atleast 1,500 attempted recruitments of WestGerman officers and NCOs by East Germanintelligence between 1983 and 1989. Most ofthose pitched were asked to report onweapons developments, troop strengths,mobilization plans, and/or alert procedures.62

61 Jamie Dettmer, "Stasi lured Americans to spy for E.Germany; moles may be serving Moscow now,"Washington Times, November 14, 1994, pp. Al , A14. Thisarticle refers to a senior civilian employee of the US Army.a retired US Army colonel, an unidentified US citizen, andan employee of a US firm in West Germany as havingbeen in agent contact" with the HVA. This means thatagents had targeted but not necessarily recruited theseUS citizens. In most it not all of these cases, the HVA wasprobably using West German citizens working for it to elicitinformation from US contacts on an unwitting basis.62 Friedrich W. Schlomann, Die Maulwürfe.. Noch sind sieunter uns, die Helfer der Stasi im Westen (Munich:Universitas Verlag, 1993), p. 23.

16

RYAN and East German Intelligence

The war scare had a major impact onEast German intelligence and the way itconducted business. At Sovietinsistence, State Secunty Minister ErichMielke made RYAN the overndingoperational mission of the Ministry forState Security (MfS), the HVA's parentorganization, issuing a ministerial orderthat outlined the entire Soviet collectionprogram.63 The East Germans alsofollowed—or were ordered to follow—theSoviet example of merging civilian andmilitary intelligence operations. Welkesigned a memorandum of agreementwith his counterpart in the Ministry ofNational Defense and the chief of militaryintelligence (Verwaltung Aufklarung orVA) that called for across-the-boardcooperation in running joint operations,sharing tradecraft, and developing agentcommunications equipment. 64 During theearly 1980s the chief of militaryintelligence became such a frequentvisitor of MieIke's (and Wolf's) that hewas given his own entry permit to MfSheadquarters.65

In directresponse (tothe US's SDIannouncement],Andropovlashed out. Heaccused theUnited Statesof preparinga first-strikeattack on theSoviet Union.

The War Scare Goes Public

Despite their private concerns, Soviet leadersmaintained a public posture of relative calmduring 1981-82. Even President Reagan's first

63 The full title of the document is Order of Minister MieIke1/85, "On the Early Detection of Acute AggressiveIntentions and Surprise Military Activities of the ImperalistStates and their Alliance, in particular the Prevention of aSurprise Nuclear-Rocket Attack on the Countries of theSocialist Community, GVS-000," 13/85 See RitaSelitrenny and Thilo Weichert, Das unheimhche Erbe DieSpionage-abteilung der Stasi (Leipzig Forum Verlag,1991),p 33,n 3364 See "Start in eel besseres Leben," Der Spiegel, August10, 1992, p 5465 Siebenmorgen, -Staatssicherheit" der DDR, p 155

Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, later gaveMoscow credit for doing so. "The Sovietsstayed very, very moderate, very, veryresponsible during the first three years of thisadministration. I was mind-boggled with theirpatience."66 But that patience wore thin in 1983.

"Star Wars"The overt phase of the war scare eruptedbarely a month into the second phase ofRYAN. On March 23, 1983, President Reaganannounced the Strategic Defense Initiative(SDI), quickly dubbed "Star Wars" by themedia. SDI was a plan for a ground- andspace-based, laser-armed antiballistic missilesystem that, if deployed, would create a shieldfor US land-based missiles. Four days after thePresident's announcement—and in directresponse—Andropov lashed out. He accusedthe United States of preparing a first-stnkeattack on the Soviet Union and asserted thatPresident Reagan was Inventing new planson how to unleash a nuclear war in the bestway, with the hope of winning it."67

Andropov's remarks were unprecedented.68He violated a longstanding taboo by citingnumbers and capabilities of US nuclearweapons in the mass media. He also referredto Soviet weapons with highly unusualspecificity. And for the first time since 1953, thetop Soviet leader was telling his nation that theworld was on the verge of a nuclear holocaust.If candor is a sign of sincerity, then Moscowwas worned.

66 Roy Guttman, "Bad Tidings The World According toHaig," Newsday Magazine, August 12, 1984, p 18, ascited in Raymond L Garthoff, The Great TransitionAmerican-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War(Washington The Brookings Institution, 1994), p 13167 "Replies of Yu V Andropov to questions from a Pravdacorrespondent," Pravda, March 27, 198366 This analysis of Andropov's remarks is based onVladimir E Shlapentokh, "Moscow's War Propaganda andSoviet Public Opinion," Problems of Communism, vol 33(September-October 1983), p 92

17

Second, SDI had a profound psychologicalimpact that reinforced the trend alreadyanticipated in the new Soviet assessment ofthe "correlation of forces." In a remarkabletete-a-tete with a US journalist and formerarms control official, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov,First Deputy Defense Minister and Chief of theGeneral Staff, interpreted the real meaning ofSDI:

We cannot equal the quality of U.S. armsfor a generation or two. Modern militarypower is based on technology, andtechnology is based on computers. In theUS, small children play withcomputers. . . . Here, we don't even havecomputers in every office of the DefenseMinistry. And for reasons you know well,we cannot make computers widelyavailable in our society. We will never beable to catch up with you in modern armsuntil we have an economic revolution.And the question is whether we can havean economic revolution without a politicalrevolution. 72

This private rumination was all the moreremarkable because Ogarkov's publicstatements showed him to be a hawk's hawkwho compared the United States to NaziGermany and argued repeatedly for moreresources to continue the arms competition.The dichotomy between his public statementsand his confidential remarks to the USjournalist was striking; it indicated that heunderstood better than most political and othermilitary leaders the challenge posed byAmerican military technology.

12 See Leslie H Gelb, "Foreign Affairs Who Won the ColdWar9," New York Times, August 20, 1992, p 27 Gelb heldthis conversation with Ogarkov Just days after Reagan'sSDI announcement, but he did not report it until 1992

SDI had aprofoundpsychologicalimpact (on theSoviets].

The SDI announcement came out of the bluefor the Kremlin—and for most of the ReaganCabinet. 69 Andropov's advisers urged him not tooverreact, but he ignored their advice, accusingPresident Reagan of "deliberately lying" aboutSoviet military power to justify SDI. Hedenounced the missile shield as a "bid to disarmthe Soviet Union in the face of the US nuclearthreat." Space-based defense, he added:

would open the floodgates of a runawayrace of all types of strategic arms, bothoffensive and defensive. Such is thereal significance, the seamy side, soto say, of Washington's "defensiveconception.". . . The Soviet Union willnever be caught defenseless by anythreat. . . . Engaging in this is not justirresponsible, it is insane.Washington's actions are putting theentire world in jeopardy.7°

SDI had touched a sensitive nerve. TheSoviets treated it as an extremely seriousdevelopment for two reasons. First, despitetheir boasting in the 1970s, Soviet leaders—and perhaps Andropov most of all—had greatrespect for US technological capabilities.7'

69 The speech was not coordinated within the governmentSecretary of State Shultz, for example, was not told aboutit until a few hours before it was delivered See Schweizer,Victory, p xix7° See note 67

Andropov had an unusual fascination with thingsAmerican and marveled at US human and matenalpotential, especially in military matters According to aformer KGB officer who served on his personal staff, thiswas not the case with most other Soviet leaders SeeWiatcheslaw Keworkow, Der geheime Kanal Moskau, derKGB und die Bonner Ostpohtik (Berlin Rowohlt, 1995), p155 Former Soviet ambassador Dobrynin noted thatAndropov, more than any other Politburo member, had abroad grasp of Soviet foreign, defense, and domesticpolicy, thanks to his long tenure as KGB chief Hisknowledge of military affairs was especially impressive,and he could hold his own with professional militaryofficers See Dobrynin, In Confidence, pp 512-513 Ex-KGB officer Kalugin recounts an incident in whichAndropov, while still head of the KGB, exploded when herealized that Soviet labs were incapable of producing spygear comparable to a small transmitter thecounterintelligence service had taken from a US agentKalugin, The First Directorate, pp 260-261

18

KAL 007At 3:26 a.m. Tokyo time on September 1, 1983,a Soviet Su-15 interceptor fired two air-to-airmissiles at a Korean Airlines Boeing 747airliner, Flight 007, destroying the aircraft andkilling all 269 crewmembers and passengers.Soviet air defense units had been tracking theaircraft for more than an hour while it enteredand left Soviet airspace over the KamchatkaPeninsula. The order to shoot down the airlinerwas given as it was about to leave Sovietairspace for the second time after flying overSakhalin Island. It was probably downed ininternational airspace.

From US and Japanese communicationsintercepts, the White House learned about theshootdown within a few hours, and, withSecretary Shultz taking the lead, denouncedthe Soviet act as deliberate mass murder.President Reagan called it "an act ofbarbarism, born of a society which wantonlydisregards individual rights and the value ofhuman life and seeks constantly to expand anddominate other nations."73

Air Force intelligence dissented from the rushto judgment at the time, and eventually USintelligence reached a consensus that theSoviets probably did not know they wereattacking a civilian airliner. 74 The chargeprobably should have been something akin tocnminally negligent manslaughter, notpremeditated murder. But the official USposition never deviated from the initialassessment. The incident was used to start a

73 Hersh, "The Target is Destroyed," p 16174 By the day after the shootdown, CIA and NSA hadconcluded that the Soviets probably did not know that theintruder was a civilian aircraft and may have thought that itwas on an intelligence mission See Shultz, TUIM011 andTnumph, p 363, as cited in Garthoff, The Great Transition,p 199, n. 107 The US Intelligence Community briefed thisassessment to Congress in early 1988 See Tim Ahem,"Assessment Says Soviet Probably Didn't Know PlaneWas Civilian Airliner," Associated Press report, January1988

vociferous campaign in the United Nations andto spur worldwide efforts to punish the USSRthrough commercial boycotts, lawsuits, anddenial of landing rights for Aeroflot. Theseefforts focused on indicting the Soviet systemand the top leadership as being ultimatelyresponsible.75

Moscow did not even acknowledge theincident until September 6, and it delayed anofficial explanation for three more days. OnSeptember 9, Marshal Ogarkov held a livepress conference that ran for two hours. 76 Thefive-star spin doctor's goal was to prove that-269 innocent victims notwithstanding—theSoviet Union had acted rationally. Ogarkovasserted that the regional air defense unit hadidentified the aircraft as a US intelligenceplatform, an RC-135 of the type that routinelyperformed intelligence operations along asimilar fight path. In any event, regardless ofwhether it was an RC-135 or a 747, he argued,the plane was unquestionably on a US or jointUS-Japanese intelligence mission, and thelocal air defense commander had made the

75 In a presentation to the UN General Assembly, USAmbassador Jeane Kirkpatrick said

The fact is that violence and ties are regularinstruments of Soviet policy Soviet officialsregularly behave as though truth were only afunction of force and will—as if truth were only whatthey say it is, as if violence were an instrument offirst resort in foreign affairs Whichever the case—whether the destruction of KAL Flight 007 and itspassengers reflects only utter indifference tohuman life or whether it was designed tointimidate—we are dealing here not with pilot errorsbut with decisions and prionbes charactenstic ofa system (Hersh, 'Tire Target Is Destroyed,"pp 164-166)

76 In the meantime, the KGB's disinformation unit waspreparing guidance for "active measures" in the West topin the blame for the tragedy on the United States SeeAndrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp 594-596

19

Actual flightpath

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20

Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov during his September 9, 1983 press conference on theshootdown of KAL 007. Ogarkov gave a good performance, but his remarks werea coverup from beginning to end.

correct decision. The real blame for thetragedy, he insisted, lay with the United States,not the USSR."

" The press conference was a coverup from beginning toend. Ogarkov claimed, among other things, that Sovietpilot Maj. Gennady Osipovich had tried to make radiocontact; that he had fired visible warning shots using tracerammunition; and that the jumbo jet did not have itsnavigation lights on. In 1991 Osipovich admitted that theseassertions were false and that Soviet military authoritieshad ordered him to lie. The Soviets went to considerablelengths to protect themselves. They recovered three "blackboxes," using a phony oil-drilling rig and "fishing trawlers"to conceal their diving operation, but denied having doneso until 1991. They also planted a bogus flight-datarecorder at some distance from the crash site that the USNavy recovered. See Oberg, "The Truth about KAL 007,"p. 66, and Michael Dobbs, "Soviet Journalists Attack KALStory; Reports Shed New Light On '83 Downing of Airliner,"Washington Post, May 26, 1991, p. Al.

A classified memorandum submitted to thePolitburo by the Defense Ministry and the KGBshows that the Soviet leadership held muchthe same view in private. Released in 1992,the memorandum concluded:

We are dealing with a major, dual-purpose political provocation carefullyorganized by the US special services.The first purpose was to use theincursion of the intruder aircraft intoSoviet airspace to create a favorablesituation for the gathering of defensedata on our air defense system in the FarEast, involving the most diverse systems

21

Yuri Andropov on KAL-007

The sophisticated provocation,organized by the US special services andusing a South Korean airplane, is anexample of extreme adventunsmpolicy. We have given the factual aspectof this action a detailed and authenticelucidation. The guilt of its organizers—no matter how they twist and turn or howmany false stories they put out—havebeen proved.

The Soviet leadership has expressedregret in connection with the loss ofhuman lives that was the result of thisunprecedented act of criminal sabotage.It is on the conscience of those whowould like to arrogate to themselves theright to disregard the sovereignty ofstates and the inviolability of theirborders, who conceived of and carriedout this provocation, who literally the nextday hurried to push through Congresscolossal military appropriations and noware rubbing their hands in satisfaction.

As reported inPravda and lzvestiya,September 29, 1983

The local Soviet air defense commanderappears to have made a serious but honestmistake. The situation in the region was notnormal; his forces had been on high alert andin a state of anxiety following incursions by USaircraft dunng the spnng 1983 Pacific Fleetexercise recounted above. A Soviet demarchecontended that US planes had flown some32 kilometers (20 miles) into Soviet airspaceand remained there for up to 20 minutes during

Once again,Andropov tookthe lead inbashing theUnited States.

including the Ferret satellite. Second,they envisaged, if this flight wereterminated by us, [the US would use]that fact to mount a global anti-Sovietcampaign to discredit the Soviet Union.78

Soviet angst was reflected in the harshpropaganda reaction that followed Once againAndropov took the lead in bashing the UnitedStates. Asserting that an "outrageous militarypsychosis" had overtaken the US, he declaredthat "the Reagan administration, in its impenalambitions, goes so far that one begins to doubtwhether Washington has any brakes at allpreventing it from crossing the point at whichany sober-minded person must stop."79

" The memorandum was wntten in December 1983 andpublished in lzvestiya on October 16, 1992 Cited inChnstopher Andrew, "KGB Foreign Intelligence fromBrezhnev to the Coup,* Intelligence and National Security,vol 8, no 3 (July 1993), p 60 The same memorandumwarned the Politburo that the Soviet Union should notadmit it had the flight voice and data recorders, becausethe tapes tended to support the US position more than theSoviet one and the KGB and military intelligence had notbeen able to prove the plane was on an intelligencemission

For whatever reason, the Soviets seemed convincedthat there was more to the KAL 007 story than pilot errorWhen American investigative reporter Seymour Hershvisited Moscow to conduct interviews for a book on theincident, Marshal Ogarkov said "I'm sure that the day willcome when we know the reasons why this mission wasarranged" Hersh, "The Target Is Destroyed, "p 191 Fiveyears later, Defense Minister Gen Dmitn Yazov askedvisiting Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci "Tell me, whydid you Amencans use that Korean airliner as a spyplane" Carlucci could not convince the Soviet generalthat his suspicions were unfounded Somewhat laterOgarkov's replacement, Marshal Serge, Akhromeyev,adamantly insisted to American journalist Don Oberdorferthat KAL 007 was on a secret mission See DonOberdorfer, The Turn From the Cold War To A New EraThe United States and the Soviet Union 1983-1990 (NewYork Poseidon Press, 1991), p 55 This could have beena high-level "deception" effort, but it seems more likely thattop leaders either believed the United States was behindthe Intrusion or were captives of their own contnvedinterpretation" "Declaration by Yu V Andropov, General Secretary ofthe CPSU Central Committee and Chairman of thePresidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet," Pravda andlzveshya, September 29, 1983, p 1 Publication of thedeclaration in both of the leading newspapers underscoredits importance and the leadership's full endorsement

22

For Moscow,the (KAL 0071episode seemedto encapsulateand reinforcethe Soviets'worst caseassumptionsabout USpolicy.

several overflights." As a result, the Soviet airdefense command was put on alert for the restof the spnng and summer—and possiblylonger—and some senior officers weretransferred, repnmanded, or dismissed.81

The KAL 007 incident was not only a tragedy;it also touched off a dangerous episode in US-Soviet relations, which already had been

exacerbated by the war scare. As Dobrynin putIt, both sides "went slightly crazy." ForWashington, the incident seemed to expressall that was wrong with the Soviet system andto vindicate the administration's critique of theSoviet system. For Moscow, the episodeseemed to encapsulate and reinforce theSoviets' worst case assumptions about USpolicy for several reasons:

00 Hersh, "The Target is Destroyed," p 18, says the Navy"never publicly acknowledged either the overflight or itserror, it also chose to say nothing further inside thegovernment"

The Soviets perceived both political and militarymachinations in these overflights, which occurred overpart of the Kuril Island chain, seized by the USSR andoccupied along with the southern part of Sakhalin island inAugust 1945 Japan refers to the occupied Kunl Islands asthe Northern Terntones and has refused to sign a peaceaccord with the USSR until they are returned The UnitedStates has long supported Japan's claim to the NorthernTerntones•, Ibid , p 19 According to Oberg, Soviet interceptorsbased closest to where the Pacific Fleet overflightsoccurred were fogged in, and those located elsewhere inthe vicinity lacked drop-tanks and therefore sufficient fuelto pursue the US planes Drop-tanks had been removed in1976 to prevent Soviet pilots from defecting after a pilotflew a MIG-25 equipped with a drop-tank to Japan

Several accounts add that local air defense commandersfailed to detect KAL 007 as it flew over Kamchatka andthen panicked later when it flew over Sakhalin because keytracking radars were not working properly Gordievskysays he was told that eight of 11 radars on Kamchatka andSakhalin were out of commission See Andrew andGordievsky, KGB, p 594 A former Soviet pilot whodefected in 1991 said that Arctic gales had damaged theradar sites Oberg, who closely studied the incident,discounts the radar failure explanation, claiming that thelocal air defense commander at Sokol Air Base onSakhalin was "trigger-happy" after the US intrusion intoSoviet airspace on Apnl 6, 1983 and "was lust itching to getback at the next intruder" See "Faulty radar blamed in KALattack," Chicago Tnbune, January 2, 1993, p 16

This implies that the commander ignored Soviet rules ofengagement, but there is still another twist to the story ASoviet investigative reporter who wrote a senes of articleson KAL 007 said in 1991 that, after the US air intrusiondunng the Pacific Fleet exercise, the Supreme Sovietpassed a national law declanng USSR borders "sacred"—an expression Foreign Minister Gromyko used in an officialstatement after the shootdoi,vn—and authonzing local airdefense commanders to destroy any intruding aircraft SeeDobbs, "Soviet Journalists Attack KAL Story" If thisaccount is accurate, then the shootdown was due more tocalculation and less to confusion, panic, and frayednerves, and the Soviet leadership bears moreresponsibility than is generally acknowledged in Russia orin the West

• President Reagan was quick to seize on theshootdown to broadly indict the Sovietsystem and its leaders. Andropov,notwithstanding whatever he actually mayhave believed about Soviet responsibility,was forced onto the defensive and evidentlyfelt compelled to justify the USSR's actions atall costs.

• The US follow-on campaign at the UN and inother channels to embarrass and isolate theUSSR in the international communityundoubtedly contributed to Moscow'spenchant to see an anti-Soviet plot." In theSoviet view, a campaign of this scope andmagnitude that just happened to dovetail withthe Reagan administration's moral critique ofthe USSR must have been more than simplya chance opportunity seized by Washingtonin the heat of the moment."

• President Reagan's decision to use the KAL007 shootdown to persuade Congress tosupport his requests for increased defense

a2 On 5 September 1983, President Reagan signedNational Secunty Decision Directive 102 on `U SResponse to the Soviet Destruction of KAL 007 Airliner"This directive ordered a "major pubhc diplomatic effort tokeep international and domestic attention focused on thisSoviet action "As cited in Jeffrey T Richelson, A Centuryof Spies Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (New YorkOxford University Press, 1995), p 385▪ Gordievsky notes that the US response to KAL 007"strengthened belief at both the Center and in the Kremlinin a far-reaching anti-Soviet plot by the ReaganAdministration " Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p 597

23

The net effect ofthe [007] crisiswas to closeoff whateverdebate wasstill going onwithin the Sovietleadership overUS intentions.

spending and the new MX missile pointed inthe same direction, in Moscow's view. Giventhe Soviets';-predilection for conspiracytheonzing, it was not farfetched that theywould see a US design behind thecombination of circumstances.

The net effect of the crisis was to close offwhatever debate was still going on within theSoviet leadership over US intentions. OnSeptember 29, Andropov issued an unusual"declaration" on US-Soviet relations thatbrought the war scare into sharper publicfocus:

The Soviet leadership deems itnecessary to inform the Soviet people,other peoples, and all who areresponsible for determining the policy ofstates, of its assessment of the coursepursued in international affairs by thecurrent US administration. In brief, it is amilitarist course that represents a seriousthreat to peace... If anyone had anyillusion about the possibility of anevolution for the better in the policy of thepresent American administration, recentevents have dispelled them completely."[emphasis added]

Dobrynin says the last phrase was the key one;the word "completely" was carefully chosen toexpress the Politburo's consensus that theUSSR could not reach any agreement with theReagan administration. 85 In sum, the aftermathof the downing of KAL 007 heightened Sovietanxiety Within weeks Soviet intelligence andthe Soviet military, almost certainly with theKAL 007 episode in mind, would overreact to aUS/NATO military exercise.

ABLE ARCHER 83Another notable incident in 1983 occurredduring an annual NATO command postexercise codenamed ABLE ARCHER 83. The

64 See note 7985 Dobrynin, In Confidence, p 540

Soviets were familiar with this exercise fromprevious years, but the 1983 version includedtwo important changes:

• In the onginal scenano (which was latermodified), the 1983 exercise was to involvehigh-level officials, including the Secretary ofDefense and the Chairman of the JointChiefs of Staff in major roles, with cameoappearances by the President and the VicePresident. Such high-level participationwould have meant greater publicity andvisibility than was the case during pastrunnings of this exercise.

• ABLE ARCHER 83 included a practice drillthat took NATO forces through a full-scalesimulated release of nuclear weapons.

According to Gordievsky, on the night ofNovember 8 or 9—he was not sure which—theKGB Center sent a flash cable to WestEuropean residencies advising them,incorrectly, that US forces in Europe had goneon alert and that troops at some bases werebeing mobilized. The cable speculated that the(nonexistent) alert might have been ordered inresponse to the then-recent bomb attack onthe US Manne barracks in Lebanon, or wasrelated to impending US Army maneuvers, orwas the beginning of a countdown to a surprisenuclear attack. Recipients were asked toconfirm the US alert and evaluate thesehypotheses.

Gordievsky described the reaction in starkterms:

In the tense atmosphere generated bythe crises and rhetoric of the past fewmonths, the KGB concluded thatAmencan forces had been placed onalert—and might even have begun thecountdown to war. . . . The world did notquite reach the edge of the nuclear abyss

24

during Operation RYAN. But duringABLE ARCHER 83 it had, withoutrealizing it, come frighteningly close—certainly closer than at any time since theCuban missile crisis of 1962. 86 [emphasisadded]

The ABLE ARCHER story has been told andretold by journalists with inside contacts in theWhite House and Whitehall." Three themesrun though the various versions: The US andUSSR came close to war as a result of Sovietoverreaction; only Gordievsky's timely warningto the West kept things from getting out ofhand; and Gordievsky's information was anepiphany for President Reagan, convincinghim that the Kremlin indeed was fearful of a USsurprise nuclear attack:

Within a few weeks after. . . ABLEARCHER 83, the London CIA stationreported, presumably on the basis ofinformation obtained by the British fromGordievsky, that the Soviets had beenalarmed about the real possibility that theUnited States was preparing a nuclear

96 Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p 605 See pp 583-560for the full story, which is repeated in Andrew andGordievsky, Instructions from the Center, pp 87-88 Seealso Chnstopher Andrew, For the President's Eyes OnlySecret Intelligence and the Amencan Presidency fromWashington to Bush (New York HarperCollinsPubhshers,1995), pp 471-478, for a account of ABLE ARCHER andGordievsky's 1985 post-defection bnefing of PresidentReagan" For Bntish accounts of ABLE ARCHER, see GordonBrook-Shepherd, The Storm Birds The Dramatic Stonesof the Top Soviet Spies Who Have Defected Since WorldWar t! (New York Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), pp 329-330, Geoffrey Smith, Reagan and Thatcher (New York WW Norton & Company, 1991), pp 122-123, and NicholasBethell, Spies and Other Secrets Memoirs from theSecond Cold War (New York Viking, 1994), p 191Brook-Shepherd wntes (p 330) "What it [the West] wastotally unaware of at the time was how far it had reallypassed through a war danger zone This was not asurge of Soviet aggression, but a spasm of Soviet panic"Bethell wntes on the same incident (p 191) "The Sovietsdid apparently fear that the West might be about to launcha nuclear stnke upon them This was the most dramaticand the most conclusive confirmation there has been ofthe Soviet need for reassurance"

attack against them. [National SecurityAdviser Robert] McFarlane, who receivedthe reports at the White House, initiallydiscounted them as Soviet scare tacticsrather than evidence of real concernabout American intentions, and toldReagan of his view in presenting them tothe President. But a more extensivesurvey of Soviet attitudes sent to theWhite House early in 1984 by CIA directorWilliam Casey, based in part on reportsfrom the double agent Gordievsky, had amore sobering effect. Reagan seemeduncharacteristically grave after readingthe report and asked McFarlane, "Do yousuppose they really believe that?. . . Idon't see how they could believe that—but it's something to think about." . . . In ameeting the same day, Reagan spokeabout the biblical prophecy ofArmageddon, a final world-ending battlebetween good and evil, a topic thatfascinated the President. McFarlanethought it was not accidental thatArmageddon was on Reagan's mind.a8

Is Gordievsky's stark description credible?According to a US foreign affairscorrespondent, the "volume and urgency" ofWarsaw Pact communications increaseddunng the exercise 89 In addition, US sourcesreported that Soviet fighter aircraft with nuclearweapons at bases in East Germany andPoland were placed on alert. 90 But a US expertwho queried a number of senior Soviet politicaland military officials reports that none hadheard of ABLE ARCHER, and all denied that ithad come to the attention of the Politburo oreven the upper levels of the DefenseMinistry. 9, Moreover, Dobrynin, who argues

a'Oberdorfer, The Turn, p 67e° lbw!99 Ibid See also Director of Central Intelligence,"Implications of Recent Soviet Military-Political Activities,"p491 Garthoff, The Great Transition, p 139, n 160

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The informationGordievskyprovided to theBritish "was ofenormousimportance inproviding warningof the almostparanoid fear[among someSoviet leaders]that PresidentReagan wasplanning anuclear strike. . ."—ChristopherAndrew

that the top leadership took the war threatseriously and devotes several pages in hismemoirs to the KAL 007 tragedy, makes nomention of ABLE ARCHER.

An important piece of evidence—the Center'sflash message referred to above—is missingfrom the RYAN cables that Gordievskypublished in 1991. ABLE ARCHER 83, itseems, made more of an impression in theWhite House than in the Kremlin." In anyevent, It was not comparable to the Cubancrisis, when the superpowers were on acollision course, US nuclear forces were on fullalert, and—as recently revealed—the USSRhad deployed nuclear weapons in Cuba.

threatening to undermine NATO's consensuson deployment of US intermediate-rangemissiles. Thatcher also was mindful of thegrowing strength of the peace movement inEurope and especially in West Germany.

Thatcher publicly urged a shift in policy onSeptember 29 in an address at the annualdinner for the Churchill Foundation Award inWashington, where she knew her remarkswould attract media—and White House—attention. Her theme—"we live on the sameplanet and must go [on] sharing it—was a pleafor a more accommodating Alliance policy thatshe spelled out in subsequent speeches. Shedid not, according to a chronicler of theThatcher-Reagan partnership, pick up thephone or approach Reagan directly, because:

The "Iron Lady" and the "GreatCommunicator

Did Gordievsky's reporting bring home themessage that the war scare in the Kremlin wasserious and that it posed a potential danger ofSoviet overreaction? Gordievsky and Britishco-author Chnstopher Andrew have said sorepeatedly. The information Gordievskyprovided to the British "was of enormousimportance in providing warning of the almostparanoid fear within some sections of theSoviet leadership that President Reagan wasplanning a nuclear strike against the SovietUnion," according to Andrew."

Prime Minister Thatcher herself apparentlydelivered the chilling message to PresidentReagan, hoping to convince him to moderatehis rhetonc and actions She evidentlybelieved that US policy toward the USSR hadbecome risky and counterproductive by

92 An intelligence assessment concluded that, while theSoviet reaction was "greater than usual, by confiningheightened readiness to selected units Moscow clearlyrevealed that it did not in fact think that there was apossibility at this time of a NATO attack' Director ofCentral Intelligence, "Implications of Recent SovietMilitary-Political Activities," p 493 Chnstopher Andrew, "We Will Always Need Spies,"Times (London), March 3, 1994, Features, p 1

The essence of the partnership at thisstage was that the two governments werebasing their decisions on much the sameevidence and on shared assessments atprofessional level. In particular, bothgovernments would have had the sameintelligence. A critical contribution in thisfield was made over a period of years byOleg Gordievsky -94

A US journalist who interviewed Britishintelligence sources believes Gordievsky'sreporting had a significant impact on the WhiteHouse. 95 He adds an interesting twist to thestory. The British claimed the KGB wasexploiting, and perhaps manipulating, "blusterin Washington" to hype the US threat to Sovietleaders for the KGB's own bureaucraticpurposes and interests. London's message toWashington was: stop helping the hawks andstart supporting the doves. Whether the Britishwere acting as analysts or spin doctors is opento question.

" Smith, Thatcher and Reagan, p 122" Newhouse, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, p 338

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Interviews withSoviet citizenstravelingabroadsuggestedthat much ofthe Soviet publicwas genuinelyalarmed.

President Reagan says in his memoirs—without reference to Bntish intelligence reportsor ABLE ARCHER—that in late 1983 he wassurpnsed to learn that "many people at the topof the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid ofAmerica and Americans," and "many Sovietofficials feared us not only as adversaries butas potential aggressors who might hurl nuclearweapons at them in a first strike.""

In the broad scheme of things, election-yearpolitics and polls showing that the President'santi-Soviet rhetoric was his highest "negative"with US public opinion probably played themain role in the more conciliatory tone headopted in early 1984. But the Presidenthimself said the war scare was "something tothink about " The British intelligence reportsappear to have influenced PresidentReagan—as they were no doubt intended todo—more than they influenced senior WhiteHouse policy aides, who remained skeptical ofthe Soviet war scare during 1981-83 and evenafter Gordievsky had defected and publiclysurfaced in 1985.97

War Scare Frenzy in the USSR

Soviet attacks on President Reagan reached afever pitch. Moscow compared him to Hitlerand alleged that he had ties to the Mafia. TheSoviet media hammered home that the dangerof nuclear war was higher than at any timesince World War II.

Radio Liberty interviews with Soviet citizenstraveling abroad suggested that much of theSoviet public was genuinely alarmed. A seriesof officially sponsored activities at home fedthe frenzy. Moscow organized mass "peace"rallies; sponsored "peace" classes in schoolsand universities; arranged closed briefings onthe "war danger" for party activists and militarypersonnel; designated a "civil defense" month;broadcast excerpts from Stalin's famous 1941speech to troops parading through RedSquare on their way to defend Moscow fromthe approaching German army; and televiseda heavyhanded Defense Ministry film thatdepicted a warmongenng America bent onworld domination. The Politburo alsoconsidered, but rejected, proposals to shift to asix-day industrial workweek and to create aspecial "defense fund" to raise money for themilitary.

In the months following the September 1983KAL incident, a full-scale war scare unfolded inthe USSR Soviet authorities clearly instigatedthis through a variety of agitprop activities.Even so, the scare took on a life of its own andthreatened to get out of hand before theKremlin took steps in early 1984 to calm publicfears."

" The quotation from Reagan's memoirs is cited inOberdorfer, The Turn, p 6797 See note 38" See, for example, Shlapentokh, "Moscow's WarPropaganda and Soviet Public Opinion," p 88 The authorexplicitly refused to speculate on the ongins and intendedaudience of the public war scare For another example ofa carefully documented account that does not offer muchin the way of explanation, see Elizabeth Teague, "WarScare in the USSR," in Voltech Mastny, ed , Soviet/EastEuropean Survey, 1983-1984 Selected Research andAnalysis from Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty(Durham, NC Duke University Press, 1985), pp 71-76

What were the Soviet leadership's motives?Some observers who have studied the warscare have written it off as political theater—asan elaborate orchestration to release tensionsover KAL 007 at home and promote theongoing Soviet "peace offensive" abroad." Butit clearly was more than that. The leadershipwould not have invoked the memory of WorldWar II—which is emotionally charged and hadan almost sacred significance for the Sovietpeople—solely for propaganda purposes. It

99 One example, among others that could be cited, is JohnW Parker, Kremlin in Transition From Brezhnev toChemenko, 1978 to 1985, vol I (Boston Unwin Hyman,1991),p 295

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War Scare in the USSR

We have been heanng a lot of rumorsabout the possibility of war in the nearfuture. At political information meetingsthey are saying that the United States isgetting ready to attack the Soviet Union,and that we should be prepared for anattack at any moment. From what I couldsee, those who believed these warningssignificantly outnumbered those whodidn't. The simple people are veryfrightened of war.

Soviet citizen interviewed byRadio Liberty (Munich)November 1983

The connectionbetween ignoredwarnings(in 1941] andsurprise attackhas never beenforgotten inMoscow.

would not have fueled popular fears aboutnuclear extinction just to boost morale andinfluence public opinion abroad.

The regime appears to have aggravatedpopular fears of war for a specific purpose: toprepare the population for the possibility thatrepeated promises to raise living standardsmight have to be abandoned in order toincrease defense spending in the face of agrowing danger of a US military strike on theUSSR. ,00 The Kremlin, it seems, had decidedthat the only way to make new sacrificespalatable was to play to the public's fears.10'The ploy was a risky one, not only because theSoviet people had come to expectimprovements in their living standards, but

Oberdorfer, The Turn, pp 64-65, argues that theKremlin was prepanng the Soviet people for a crisis in US-Soviet relations This view seems exaggerated10 One response cited in the Soviet press that may or maynot have been typical was that of a World War II veteranwho said he was willing to go without food if the SovietArmy needed more rockets to defend the country Whetherapocryphal or not, this was the kind of sentiment Sovietdomestic propaganda was trying to evoke

also because developments in Poland at thattime were underscoring how popular unrestcould develop into revolt against a Communistregime.

With the improvement in US-Soviet relationsafter Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in1985, the domestic war scare subsided asquickly as it had emerged. Before it did,however, the leadership apparently feltcompelled to allay the public's fears withassurances that the USSR was in a position todeter war and, if necessary, to defend itself.This was further evidence that the war scarewas genuinely felt among the populace.

The Enduring Trauma of BARBAROSSA

The Soviet Union and the United States bothentered World War ll in 1941 as victims ofsurprise attacks, but the impact of OperationBARBAROSSA—the German codename forHitler's June 1941 attack on the USSR—waseven more of an enduring national trauma thanPearl Harbor was for the United States. TheGerman invasion was the worst militarydisaster in Russian history.'°2 It should havebeen anticipated and could have beencountered by the Soviets but was not, mainlybecause of a failure to interpret indications andwarnings accurately.

The connection between ignored warnings andsurprise attack has never been forgotten inMoscow. For decades after the war, Soviet

102 The defeat inflicted on the Red Army by the Axis in1941 beggars description far more calamitous than theNapoleonic invasion, far more terrible even than thedisasters of 1914-17' Chris Ward, Stalin's Russia(London Edward Arnold, 1993), p 168

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leaders seemed obsessed with the lessons of1941, which were as much visceral asintellectual in Soviet thinking about war andpeace.103

The 1941 analogy clearly had an impact on theway RYAN requirements were formulated andimplemented. The historical example ofOperation BARBAROSSA, moreover, mayexplain the sense of urgency that KGB officerssuch as Gordievsky and Shvets attributed tothe Kremlin even while these officersthemselves discounted the threat. The gap inperceptions may have reflected a gap ingenerations. Members of the Brezhnev-Andropov generation had experienced theGerman war firsthand as the formativeexperience of their political lives. But for theyounger generation born just before, during, orafter the war, BARBAROSSA was historyrather than living memory.

103 The 1941 analogy appears to have influenced bothSoviet intelligence and the high command Even as late as1991, for example, when the deputy chief of KGB foreignintelligence was trying to make his case to Gorbachev forcountenng an alleged US "plot" to dismember the USSR,he wrote a memorandum saying (Dobrynin, In Confidence,p 525)

The KGB has been informing the leadership aboutthis in time and detail We would not want a tragicrepetition of the situation before the Great PatnobcWar against Nazi Germany, when Sovietintelligence warned about the imminent attack ofNazi Germany but Stalin rejected this informationas wrong and even provocative You know what thatmistake cost us (As cited in Andrew, "KGB ForeignIntelligence from Brezhnev to the Coup," p 63)During a visit to Moscow, Dobrynin asked MarshalSerge' Akhromeyev, Ogarkov's successor as Chiefof the General Staff, for a bnefing on Soviet militaryplanning for war "'Soviet military doctnne can besummed up as follows 1941 shall not be repeated,'the marshal asserted"Soviet officials may have used the "1941 shall not be

repeated" theme for manipulative purposes, but theywould not have done so had they not known that itwould stnke a responsive chord with the politicalleadership

The Soviets' intelligence "failure" of 1941 was afailure of analysis, not collection. 104 Stalinreceived multiple, detailed, and timely warningsof the impending invasion from a variety of openand clandestine sources. But he chose tointerpret intelligence data with a best case ornot-so-bad-case hypothesis, assuming-incorrectly—that Hitler would not attack withoutissuing an ultimatum or fight a two-frontwar. Stalin erred in part because he deceivedhimself and in par/ because Germancountenntelligence misled him with anelaborate deception plan. ,05 Possibly becauseof this precedent, Stalin's heirs may havedecided that it was better to look through a glassdarkly than through rose-colored lenses. This, itappears, is why Operation RYAN used anexplicit worst case methodology to search forindications and warning of a US surpnse attack.

RYAN also seems to have incorporated—or insome instances misapplied—other lessonsfrom 1941. Despite the prowess of hisintelligence services, Stalin distrustedclandestinely acquired intelligence, includingagent reporting and even communications andsignals intercepts.'w He did so because hewas convinced that such sources could be

104 For a discussion of the wealth of accurate informationthat was available to Stalin, see John Costello and OlegTsarev, Deadly Illusions The KGB Dossier Reveals Stalin'sMaster Spy(New York Crown Publishers, 1993), pp 85-90The authors had access to intelligence reports in the KGBarchives See also Barton Whaley, CodewordBARBAROSSA (Cambridge, MA MIT Press, 1973), whichlists more than 80 indications and warnings of the Germanattack103 The German counterintelligence falsely portrayed themilitary buildup in eastern Germany and occupied Polandas preparation—at a safe distance from RAF bombers andreconnaissance planes—for an invasion of Britain1 °6 Whaley, Operation BARBAROSSA, p 97, quotes Stalinas saying on June 14, 1941 "You can't believe everythingyou read in intelligence reports" He does not, however,give a citation for the quotation, which may be apocryphalSee note 110, below, for an example of Stalin's rejection ofan explicit warning of the German attack

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The fears thatpromptedOperationRYAN seemedgenuine, evenif exaggerated. controlled by the enemy and corrupted by

disinformation—a belief that led him to rejectaccurate as well as inaccurate information. Heinsisted that Soviet intelligence look instead forindirect indicators of war planning that couldnot be concealed or manipulated. He wentalong, for example, with a proposal by his chiefof military intelligence for surveying muttonprices in Nazi-occupied Europe; theintelligence official thought the Germans wouldneed sheepskin coats for winter militarycampaigning in Russia and, by buying upexisting livestock supplies, would flood themarket with cheap mutton. 107 This deceptivelysimple indicator turned out to be simplydeceptive; Hitler, believing he could defeat theRed Army by the fall of 1941, did not preparefor wintertime operations.

RYAN requirements reveal the same kind ofunorthodox thinking. For example, the KGBresidency in London was instructed to monitorprices paid for blood at urban donor banks.m8The KGB Center assumed that prices wouldrise on the eve of war as blood banks scurriedto stockpile supplies. But there was a problemwith this assumption: British donor banks donot pay for blood—contributions are voluntary.In another such example of RYANrequirements, the KGB residency in Londonwas told to visit meatpacking plants, looking forsigns of "mass slaughter of cattle and putting ofmeat into long cold storage." 109 The parallelwith Soviet intelligence requirements of 1939-41 is close enough to suggest that the KGBwas digging them out of old NKVD (the KGB'spredecessor) and GRU files.

Finally, there was another plausible—althoughunprovable—link between 1941 and 1981. The1941 disaster was Stalin's fault, but he blamedSoviet intelligence This left an indelible stain

IC" Viktor Suvorov, Icebreaker Who Started World War!!?(London Hamish Hamilton, 1990), pp 320-321we Andrew and Gordievsky, Instructions from the Center,p 70I"ibid , p 89

on the Soviet services, and the subject was sosensitive that it could not be discussed openlyuntil the advent of glasnost. 110 One motivebehind Andropov's decision to launchOperation RYAN in 1981 may have been adetermination not to let history repeat itself.Soviet intelligence certainly had a vestedinterest in promoting a dire threat assessmentof US intentions, but professional pride and awish to avoid being a scapegoat may havebeen involved as well.

Conclusion: The War Scare Was for Real

The fears that prompted Operation RYANseemed genuine, even if exaggerated. Ex-Ambassador Dobrynin implied as much to askeptical US television interviewer in 1995.When the interviewer asked whether Andropov"had really believed" that the Reaganadministration might order a first strike,Dobrynin replied: "Make your conclusions fromwhat he [Andropov] said in telegrams to hisrezidents. "111

The alert was a crash program to create astrategic warning system in response to newchallenges the Soviets saw looming on thehonzon. That response was panicky but notparanoid. One historian, rejecting the paranoiathesis that has often been used to explainRussian reaction to technologically supenor

There is an interesting confirmation of this in the KGBmuseum in Moscow, which is now open to the public

On a wall hangs a copy of the message sent toStalin by a member of the "Red Orchestra" spy nngin Germany, giving him a week's notice of Hitler'sintention to invade the Soviet Union Stalinannotated the text with a string of obscenities,dismissing both the intelligence and the sourceSee "Another Country," The Economist,February 24—March 1, 1996, p 58

in This was Dobrynin's response to a question about thewar scare during an interview by Steve Kroft on the CBStelevision newsmagazine 60 Minutes, which aired onOctober 1, 1995

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More Than Just a Scare Tactic

The following remarks were made byformer Soviet Foreign Ministry officialSergei Tarasenko at a 1993 conferenceof former US and Soviet officials:

Around this time [late 19831, [FirstDeputy Foreign Minister Georg]Kornienko summoned me andshowed me a top-secret KGBpaper. It was under Andropov.Kormenko said to me, "You haven'tseen this paper. Forget about it.". . In the paper the KGB reportedthat they had information that theUnited States had preparedeverything for a first strike; that theymight resort to a surgical strikeagainst command centers in theSoviet Union; and that they had thecapability to destroy the system byincapacitating the command center.We were given the task of preparinga paper for the Politburo and puttingforward some suggestions on howto counter this threat not physicallybut politically. So we prepared apaper (suggesting) that we shouldleak some information that we knowabout these capabilities andcontingency plans, and that that weare not afraid of these plansbecause we have taken thenecessary measures. "2

Tarasenko was a senior adviser toKornienko. He was one of the few officialsoutside the Soviet intelligence communitywho had seen the abovementioned KGBpaper. His remarks confirm that theSoviet leadership genuinely believed therisk of a US attack had risen appreciably.

", William C Wohlforth, ed , Witnesses to the End of theCold War (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins Press, 1996),p 71

Western military power, captured the pointwhen he wrote: "At ,various times Russianstrategists were acutely fearful. But thosefears, although at times extreme, werescarcely insane."3

Dobrynin has noted that post-Stalin leadersbelieved the "existing political and socialstructure of the United States was the bestguarantee against an unprovoked first strikeagainst us "", He claims, however, that in theearly 1980s some Soviet leaders, includingAndropov, changed their minds. Why?Dobrynin's reply, quoting Andropov, was thatPresident Reagan was "unpredictable." Thatanswer seems too simplistic—and too "un-Soviet" in that it attaches so much weight topersonalities—although it is vintage Dobrynin,who seems to view the Cold War largely as aninterpersonal interplay among Soviet andAmerican leaders he knew.

To reduce the war scare to Andropovianparanoia and "Reaganite rhetoric" is too facile.Otherwise RYAN would not have outlastedboth leaders, the KGB, and the changes in US-Soviet relations that led to the end of the ColdWar. 115 The Kremlin's thinking was shaped byadverse trends, not just adversarialpersonalities—that is, by its pessimisticassessment of the "correlation of forces" andthe ever-widening gap in the USSR'stechnological lag behind the West. Sovietleaders knew that their nation was no longereven running in place on the treadmill ofhistory; it was beginning to fall back. In this

William Fuller, Jr, Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600-1914 (New York The Free Press, 1992), p 12

Dobrynin, In Confidence, p 523" s The Soviets did not cancel RYAN until November 1991The chief of foreign intelligence noted that even by that latedate the alert still "involved huge matenal and humanresources" and required biweekly reports from KGBresidencies See Bill Gertz, "KGB halts lookout for U Snuclear attack," Washington Times, November 28, 1991,p A9

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In thisatmosphere[of decliningSovietinfluence],Soviet officialsand much ofthe populacefelt vulnerableto the prospectof a US attack.

atmosphere, Soviet officials and much of thepopulace felt vulnerable to the prospect of aUS attack.

Many Western observers dismissed theintelligence alert and the subsequent warscare because they considered its worst casescenario—surprise nuclear attack—as out oftouch with reality or just plain irrational. Theybased their view more on their certainty thatthere was no objective threat of a US attack—Reagan was not Hitler, and America does notdo Pearl Harbors—than on their uncertainunderstanding about how the Soviets sawthings. While Western observers were half-right in questioning whether the Soviet warscare was "objective" or "rational," they werehalf-wrong in writing it off as scare tactics.Even fear based on a false threat can createreal dangers.

Paradoxically, viewing the Soviet war scare asnothing more than a scare tactic may have ledthe West to underestimate another threat—a

Soviet preemptive strike, either as a result ofmiscalculation or by design to reverse theadverse "correlation of forces." Was this reallya possibility? Some observers think so. 116 Forexample, Gyula Horn, Hungary's lastCommunist foreign minister (and current primeminister), claims that Soviet marshals, fortifiedwith a little vodka, openly advocated an attackon the West "before the imperialists gainsuperiority in every sphere." 7 The evidence isanecdotal but plausible. Whether this threatwas real is likely to remain one of the ColdWar's conundrums until or unless stillclassified documents someday provide ananswer

"6 See Lee, The nuclear bnnk that wasn't — and the onethat was," for the "by design" view"7 Horn says he first heard this from a Soviet centralcommittee official, he adds that his own experiences inMoscow convinced him it was true See "Fruhe ZweiferDer Spiegel, September 2, 1991, pp 110-111

,

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Appendix A: RYAN andthe Decline of the KGB

Operation RYAN revealed much about theKGB in the twilight years of Soviet intelligence.The picture that emerges from OlegGordievsky's writings as well as firsthandaccounts by other ex-KGB officers is mixed. Bythe early 1980s the KGB was corrupt andineffective But it appears to have been less sothan many other Soviet organizations. "8 It wasstill regarded by Soviet leaders and otherobservers as an important arm of Sovietforeign policy.

Before being posted to London in June 1982,Gordievsky received a briefing on OperationRYAN from a KGB expert on NATO." 9 Thebriefer paid lipservice to the need to recruit"well-placed agents," but he emphasized thatthe principal method to be employed in RYANwas visual observation of "tell-tale indicators"such as lights burning in government officesand military installations late at night, VIPmovements, and high-level committeemeetings.

The message was clear, even if implicit: themuch-vaunted KGB had become largelyunable to recruit well-placed agents. HavingKGB staff officers serving under official coverdo their own spying, rather than recruitingagents to do it, violated basic rules oftradecraft. Lurking around well-guarded officialinstallations during the night seemed almostcertain to attract the attention of host-countrysecurity services.' 29 The KGB's willingness torisk exposure of its officers in this way reflectedthe urgency of its search for ways to implementOperation RYAN.

"g In a review of Gorchevsky's memoirs, Alasdair Palmerwntes that the "most startling insight to emerge is nothow effective the KGB was, but how bungling,incompetent, and idiotic" Wall Street Journal, March 22,1995, p A16no Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p 5841" Chnstopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, MoreInstructions from the Center Top Secret Files on KGBGlobal Operations 1975-1985 (London Frank Cass & CoLtd ,1991),p 99

Gordievsky and another ex-KGB officer, YuriShvets, note that the KGB in the 1980s washaving particular difficulty acquiring agents inthe United Kingdom and the United States. 121The spy organization's halcyon days ofrecruiting ideologically motivated agentsworldwide were long gone. 122 In the meantime,Western services were recruiting sizablenumbers of KGB officers and receivingdefectors who in turn identified other KGBofficers and operations.'" Western and someThird World countries were expelling KGBofficers in record numbers; the peak year was1983, when 147 intelligence officers, including41 in France alone, were ousted for spying.124

Some observers argue that the increasedexpulsions resulted from the high risks theKGB was taking to collect RYAN-relatedinformation. There may be something to this,but most of the expulsions in the early 1980swere part of a coordinated crackdown onSoviet intelligence operations designed tocollect strategically important Westernscientific information and technology.

Inability to recruit well-placed agentscompelled the KGB to try to exploit itsremaining advantages, such as the relative

121 Shvets claims that by the time he Kilned the KGB in thelate 1970s, one could become a general without "everhaving set eyes on a live agent 'The main advantage ofSoviet intelligence service resides in its newly acquiredability to exist with undercover agents,' ran an old-timers'bitter joke " Shvets, Washington Station, p 25122 Andrew and Gordievsky, More Instructions from theCenter, p 99123 See Nigel West, Games of Intelligence The ClassifiedConflict of International Espionage (London Weidenfeldand Nicolson, 1991), pp 100-101, 145-146, and 195-196.Kalugin notes that, under the tutelage of VladimirKryuchkov, KGB foreign intelligence was more interestedin palace intngue than operational efficiency with the resultthat "in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, we became lessaggressive in our battle with the CIA, while at the sametime the number of KGB defectors soared " Kalugin, TheFirst Directorate, p 248124 See Sallie Wise, "1983 A Bad Year for SovietDiplomats," Radio Liberty Research RL 467/83 (December9, 1990), pp 1-4

The much-vaunted KGBhad becomelargely unableto recruitwell-placedagents . . .Western andsome ThirdWorld countrieswere expellingKGB officersin recordnumbers.

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openness of Western nations and the still-large KGB staffs stationed in many of thosecountries. Operation RYAN was launched onthe assumption that, if the United States diddecide to attack the USSR, it would reveal thatdecision more or less openly—that is, througha vanety of actions it could not conceal. The

troubles enumerated above also prompted theKGB to look at another advantage it stillpossessed: it could draw heavily on EastGermany's formidable intelligence capabilitiesfor help in implementing RYAN.

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Appendix B: TheGordievsky File

Veteran KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky beganspying for British intelligence in 1974 whilestationed in Denmark. He was the primary—and for a long time the only—source ofWestern intelligence on RYAN. Two of hisfellow ex-KGB officers, Oleg Kalugin and YuriShvets, later provided corroboratinginformation.

Gordievsky went to London in June 1982 asdeputy rezident In early 1985 he wasappointed rendent Soon thereafter, based oninformation from Amencan spy Aldrich Ames,Soviet counterintelligence recalled Gordievskyto Moscow on a pretext, put him undersurveillance, and began interrogating him. Inlate July 1985, using a prearranged signal toBntish intelligence, he triggered a plan toexfiltrate himself from the USSR. He returnedto London in September 1985. By this time hewas the highest ranking Western penetrationof Soviet intelligence.

The British soon acknowledged publicly thatGordievsky had been working for them, and hecame under their protection. He became aninformal adviser to Pnme Minister Thatcherand President Reagan and played animportant role in persuading them to takeMikhail Gorbachev seriously as a reform-oriented leader.

two issues—bona fides and credibility—arerelated but not identical There were casesduring the Cold War when a Soviet intelligencedefector proved bona fide (that is, he was whohe claimed to be and had access, to theinformation he gave to Western intelligence),but also lied, fabncated, and exaggerated toplease benefactors, ingratiate himself, inflatehis value, protect himself, or protect his familyif he had left one behind as Gordievsky did.

Many US analysts (including the author of thismonograph) do not doubt Gordievsky's bonafides, and for the most part his credibilityappears solid as well (see exceptions notedbelow). British intelligence debriefed him 150times over a period of several months, taking6,000 pages of notes that were reviewed byanalysts. 126 Everything checked out, and nosignificant inaccuracies or inconsistencieswere uncovered. Gordievsky's informationbefore and after he defected led to theidentification and expulsion of KGB officers,including 31 who were expelled from theUnited Kingdom after he was exfiltrated fromMoscow.' 27 In various books, articles, andinterviews, moreover, he did inestimabledamage to the KGB by revealing its officers,secrets, and operations and by damaging itsreputation.

Gordievsky wasthe primary—and for a longtime the only—source ofWesternintelligenceon RYAN.

Despite Gordievsky's efforts to convince theWest that the Soviet war scare and Gorbachevwere both for real, some skeptics, whobelieved that he was peddling KGBdisinformation aimed at influencing Westernpolicy, question his trustworthiness. Inaddition, neither Gordievsky nor the Britishhave ever offered a convincing explanation ofhis motives for betraying the KGB or thecircumstances of his recruitment, and this toohas prompted some observers to suspect hiscredibility and even his bona fides.' 28 These

125 In his vanous books and articles, Gordievskyrepeatedly claims that his decision to spy was a reaction tothe 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia He does notexplain, however, why it took him six years to make up hismind to approach Bntish intelligence

Gordievsky's track record, although good, isnot entirely unblemished. In 1984, he toldBntish intelligence about an alleged spyworking at a British signals intercept site onCyprus.' 28 The authorities arrested eight

' David Leppard, "The man who panics the left,"Sunday Times (London), February 26, 1995, p 1127 John Lee and Nicholas Dandoff, "Never Ending SpyStory Keeps Unfolding," US News & World Report,September 30, 1985, p 32128 James Rusbndger, The Intelligence Game TheIllusions and Delusions of International Espionage (NewYork New Amsterdam Press, 1989), pp 102-104Rusbndger believes that Gordievsky gave the Bnbsh aKGB cover story designed to protect another source,either human or technical, at the Cyprus installation Hespeculates that Gordievsky may have had doubts aboutthe information, but wanted to please MI6

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President Reagan withex-KGB officer OlegGordievsky Gordievskywas the West's sole sourceof information on the Sovietwar scare during the early1980s.

British servicemen—five in the RAF and threein the army—and detained them for a year.Their four-month trial did not begin until afterGordievsky defected and arrived in London in1985. The Crown's case then collapsed whenGordievsky's information proved wrong.

In several cases Gordievsky has displayed atendency to shoot from the hip, makingaccusations about alleged Soviet agents that

36

Despite thesomewhatmixed picture ofGordievsky thatemerges from allthis, hisinformation onRYAN and thewar scare seemsaccurate andobjective.

were later amended or retracted.'" In someinstances these accusations served to helppromote his publications. He becameembroiled in a legal battle on the eve of thepublication of his memoirs in 1995 when heerroneously charged that a UK Labour PartyMP and a British publisher were Soviet agents.Because most of the people Gordievskyidentified as Soviet agents were Labour Partyleaders and/or leftists, he was accused ofseeking to serve the Interests of benefactors inthe Conservative Party and conservativesympathizers in the intelligence and securityservices. Some Labour officials called fortermination of his British pension.'"

safely and securely. A knowledgeableConservative MP, Lord Bethel!, hascommented that the decision to exfiltrateGordievsky from under the KGB's nose wasmotivated in part by a desire to demonstratewhat British intelligence could do:

A successful operation would dowonders for MI6's credibility in theintelligence world and would leave Britainwith a valuable "property," a storehouseof pnceless information which even theCIA would find useful. It would impressthe Americans, and this is something thatBritish intelligence always likes to do.131

British intelligence has used Gordievsky toreinforce its reputation at home and abroad.Some observers have said the British spyscandals of the 1950s and 1960s did lastingdamage to confidence among Westernintelligence and security services in theirBritish counterparts. Gordievsky was welcomeas living, breathing proof that MI6 was notpenetrated and could run a long-term agent

129 For example, Gordievsky asserted that PresidentFranklin Roosevelt's close friend and adviser, HarryHopkins, was a Soviet agent The allegation was used topromote the US edition of his book on the KGB and a largeexcerpt from the book that appeared in Time, whichfeatured the Hopkins story in a textbox See Time, October22, 1990, pp 72-82, the textbox is on p 72 Gordievskylater withdrew the allegation, saying that Hopkins was an"unwitting" asset, not a recruited agent, and that hisonginal statement was "probably a simplification" SeeLarry King Live, Transcnpt # 160, October 30, 1990Hopkins' son Robert and Pamela Hamman (later USAmbassador to France) rebutted Gordievsky in letters toTime See Time, November 12, 1990, p 12 Author VerneW Newton charged Gordievsky with using McCarthrtetactics to smear Hopkins and to promote his book See "ASoviet Agent') Harry Hopkins? ," New York Times, October28, 1990, p 1913) Leopard, "The man who panics the left"

Despite the somewhat mixed picture ofGordievsky that emerges from all this, hisinformation on RYAN and the war scare seemsaccurate and objective. His 1991 publication ofRYAN cables with commentary underscoredthe credibility of the bulk of his debriefings. Todate no one, either in the West or in the formerSoviet Union, has challenged the authenticityof the cables and Gordievsky's account ofOperation RYAN. Gordievsky may haveexaggerated the gravity of the Soviet reactionto ABLE ARCHER 83 by companng it to theCuban missile crisis, but that was a matter ofinterpretation—intended no doubt to enhancethe importance of his own role—rather than aquestion of fact.

01 Bethel!, Spies and Other Secrets, p 188

37

• BEN B. FISCHER

Ben Fischer is a History Fellow at CIA's Center for the Study of

Intelligence. He presented an earlier draft of this monograph at

the 1996 annual meeting of the Society for Military History, which

the Center co-sponsored. Mr. Fischer has served in the

Directorates of Intelligence and Operations. He recently completed

another monograph, Okhrana: The Paris Operations of the Imperial

Russian Police, and is working on a monograph on the former

East German foreign intelligence service. Mr. Fischer also serves

as editor of the Center's newsletter.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR