War games

By Bruce Kennedy
CNN Interactive

There were two times during the Cold War when the Soviet Union was convinced it was on the brink of nuclear war with the United States. The first was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The second incident occurred in late 1983. But unlike the Cuban crisis, the 1983 escalation of nuclear tensions took place without much of the world knowing.

For much of 1983, it appeared the Cold War would do nothing but deepen. The year began with an attempt by Soviet leader Yuri Andropov to launch a so-called "peace offensive" -- a series of proposals that included a reduction of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe and a summit with U.S. President Ronald Reagan -- that was meant to cool tensions.

But the proposals, wrapped in Soviet rhetoric, were dismissed by many in the West. Not long after, on March 23, Reagan announced America's plans to develop the anti-missile Strategic Defense Initiative that came to be known as "Star Wars."

While "Star Wars" may have been meant as a defensive system, the Soviets saw it as provocative.

"When President Reagan started this program, Soviet intelligence had already obtained information on the 'Star Wars' program, and they were scared," says Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general. "They were convinced they would never be able to match the U.S. program for purely financial reasons."

Global spy campaign

Reagan's hard-line, anti-communist stance had been horrifying the Soviets for some time. In May 1981, Andropov -- then KGB chief -- addressed a secret meeting of the Soviet leadership. He announced that the Reagan administration was preparing for a nuclear attack. Andropov said the KGB and GRU, Soviet military intelligence, were combining forces for a global espionage campaign.

Andropov's project was code-named RYAN -- a Russian acronym for "nuclear missile attack."

"It was a heightened state of intelligence alert, instructing all foreign stations to conduct a constant watch for tell-tale signs of the buildup to a Western nuclear strike," recounts Martin Walker in his book, "The Cold War."

For KGB operatives in NATO countries, RYAN meant endless hours monitoring government buildings -- noting the number of cars coming and going, counting lighted windows at night after normal working hours and other mundane tasks -- looking for any signs of unusual activity.

"We had some clandestine reports that suggested great alarm in Moscow," says Melvin Goodman, a former CIA senior analyst and current professor at the National War College in Washington. "But frankly they weren't taken very seriously by anyone but the analysts."

Crises in the Kremlin

Tensions grew to an even greater pitch on September 1, 1983 -- when Soviet fighters shot down a Korean Airlines passenger jet, killing all 269 people on board. The West was quick to condemn the attack on a civilian plane -- but the Soviets argued the jet was on an espionage mission in Soviet airspace.

At the same time, the Soviet leadership was in crisis. Andropov was spending most of his time at a clinic in a Moscow suburb -- tethered to a kidney dialysis machine. He would be dead from liver failure within months, but at the time he was apparently more concerned by the growing superpower confrontation.

"Andropov was always mistrustful of the West," says Kalugin -- who notes that Andropov, despite his illness, kept the U.S.S.R. fixated on what he saw as a growing danger.

"Don't forget that he would never be challenged," says Kalugin. "He had absolute command over everyone under him. If Brezhnev's word wasn't accepted in his final years, Andropov was never challenged."

It was also during this time that the KGB sent out a "molinya," or flash message, to its operatives in the West -- warning its agents to prepare for possible nuclear war.

Grenada and 'Able Archer'

Two other events, both military, pushed Soviet nerves to the near-breaking point.

The United States, fearing a Marxist takeover of Grenada, invaded the Caribbean island on October 25. The invasion triggered a flurry of coded messages between Washington and London -- as the British government protested America's military action against a member of the Commonwealth.

But Soviet agents, attempting to analyze the sudden increase in U.S.-British communications, may have thought the worst.

And just days after the invasion, NATO began its "Able Archer" war games.

"Able Archer" was designed to test NATO's nuclear-release procedures. It called for temporary radio silence and a shifting of NATO codes and frequencies as the pretend alerts changed from conventional to nuclear.

Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB agent who also worked for British intelligence and later defected to the West, recalls flash telegrams were sent in early November to KGB and GRU residences in the West -- reporting an alert at U.S. bases.

The flash turned out to be incorrect, and KGB headquarters in Moscow conceded that any heightened security at U.S. bases might have been caused by the October 23 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.

But the Soviets apparently believed that "Able Archer" was merely cover for an imminent NATO attack. U.S. "elint," or electronic intelligence, observed at the time a number of nuclear-capable planes being placed on standby at East German bases.

'Turning point'

The original plans for "Able Archer" had called for the U.S. president, vice president and Joint Chiefs of Staff to take part. But Robert McFarlane, the U.S. national security adviser, thought the Soviets might consider such activities provocative -- and decided the top officials would not be included in the exercise.

"The sudden disappearance of such figures, the disruption of usual schedules and the swift movement of the military high command around Washington were precisely the signs the Soviet intelligence had been told to look for under RYAN," Walker writes.

Even after the end of "Able Archer," RYAN remained a high priority for the Soviets. It was only after then-CIA director William Casey flew to London -- for a briefing with the British double-agent Gordievsky -- that the United States realized how dangerous the situation had become.

"That was the turning point," says Goodman. "It paved the way for Reykjavik, toned down our (military) exercises and made Reagan feel that we needed to talk to the Soviets."