For information on our schedule and to give up with the latest history news. Next, nate jones, directory of the National Security archives freedom of information act project talks about his new book, able archer 83. A secret history of the nato exercise that almost triggered nuclear war, he explores ronald s thoughts on Nuclear Energy and jones also discusses ofhe discusses the process declassifying the government materials that were the basis of his book. This hourlong event is hosted by the National Archives in washington, d. C. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, mr. Jones the first place people look in a newly published book is the index. At the library of congress and other Research Institutions we look at acknowledgment pages and the bibliography also. Looking for ourselves. If you look at the able archer book, you will see different offices. The large portion of documents upon which the author based his story came from the Ronald Reagan and George Bush Library and from the National Archives and other National Archive holdings. I am very proud of all of our staff. Some of whom are in the audience today. It is gratifying to see others do,eciate the work to whether it is helping people navigate through our holdings or as nate noted, breaking a classification logjam to release a critical document. We help researchers uncover the stories of our past and those stories, like todays story of able archer, remind us that history is not just what happened 100 or more years ago, as more and more records are processed and declassified we learn more about our past, even events that happened in our own lifetime. It is time for the featured speaker to come to the stage. Nate is the director of the freedom of National Information act at the George Washington university. He oversees requests and appeals thousands of freedom of information act and requests and appeals each year in is a twoterm member of the federal Advisory Committee that will be meeting here tomorrow. He is also the editor of the National Security archives log and writes about newly declassified documents and policy. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome nate jones. [applause] mr. Jones thank you very much. It is great to be here at the National Archives where i have spent a lot of time researching but also working on freedom of information and declassification policy. I was here for the first time on this stage about eight years ago talking about declassification. There is a funny story i would like to tell. Nara and the declassification center were just Getting Started and one of the first projects was the the classification of the pentagon papers which had publicly already been leaked and were widely available to the public. At the time, the archivist had made the joke that there were just 11 words remaining classified. I was a bit taken aback and i came on the stage and publicly said, i could solve that madlib, i will just go to my library and compare the missing words. Lots of laughs. The nara people were not happy. Eventually, it may have worked. Because through foia, the Nixon Library released very quickly, through a emailed to superiors, we found there is in fact another edition, and we should probably release them before someone at the National Security archives goes around and parades them around like a politician on the fourth of july. That was my first experience. The National Archives on National Classification center declassified the pentagon papers andthey went on and on declassified hundreds of millions of more pages and they go on doing it. We will talk more about classification later on. Their indexing on demand should be a model for all industries. It is great. Tremendous progress over the past eight years getting the secrets out. With that thank you lets talk about able archer 83. What was able archer 83 . According to the nsa, not the National Security archive where i work, the real nsa. An excellent volume on the cold war that is one of the best declassified reads ive read. 19821984 was called quote the most dangerous confrontation since the cuban missile crisis. Able archer 83 was the crux of it. It was a native Nuclear Exercise exercise thatr caused unprecedented military actions in the soviet union and and may have put us on a hair trigger with them according to a u. S. Analysis. In other words, one of the two most dangerous moments of the cold war is largely unknown to the public. In my book, i argued that able archer 83 brought the world unacceptably closer to nuclear war and had a key effect on our Foreign Policy and its effect on the danger helped Ronald Reagan lead us to the end of the cold war. Speaking of president reagan, here is one of his famous notecards. You may know that he always had notecards. Prepared by his staff. He used them and used them well. This is a great document from the reagan president ial library. Going back to able archer 83, others have downplayed the danger or said it is simply not even worth studying. One cia analyst wrote at the time, there is no real danger and wrote afterwards that the cias analysis of the war since the agency had so many military that soviet military books it could judge confidently when it might be building up to a real military confrontation or just rattling pots and pans. The response to able archer 83 was just potbanging. Another wise cia analyst disagreed. Robert gates, who was Deputy Director for intelligence. He said after going through the experience at the time, then through the postmortem and now through the documents, i do not think the soviets were crying wolf. They may not have thought the nato attack was imminent but they seem to believe the situation was very dangerous. Rattling pots and pans, crying wolf, the advisor to the soviet union in 1984, do you think the soviet leader really care us or fear us or is all of the huffing and puffing part of their propaganda . President reagan identified the key question and i think he answered it for himself way to run which i will talk about later. This and as we talk about today, this is what we need to keep in mind, were the soviets really scared or were they bluffing . So, to answer this question, what is a historian to do . When i first started researching this there was quite a bit of criticism about able archer 83. Some described the research as an echo chamber of Inadequate Research and misguided analysis. Circle reference divinity with an overreliance upon scanty evidence. Now, i think they were talking about some of my early work at the time and also they had a good point. If you were to read a history, one of the best histories of the cold war, if you go to able archer, you will see a note that says it marked the second most dangerous time of the cuban missile crisis, but if you followed the footnotes it would go to one or two memoirs, perhaps the gates quote i just read, and leave it at that. No primary source evidence. What is a historian to do . Get to the archives, the president ial libraries. Get to the Cold War International history project and get documents from nato adversaries and allies. Use the freedom of information act and mandatory declassification review. Turn the ice cap. Get them to break the logjam. Share the filings. This is what my book tries to do. It is a narrative and analysis of able archer 83 but also includes the very best primary sources for people to read said so they can make their own decision and conclusion about the danger. So, let us set the scene. Here we have the data from the bulletin atomic scientists put together kindly by wikipedia about the Doomsday Clock which is an estimation of how dangerous the world is coming to nuclear war, or now, environmental dastardly. Catastrophe. In 1983 and 1984 was dangerous. Some have called it the second cold war. Others call it the air of renewed confrontation. Ough gore job as described gorbachev has said it was the most explosive, difficult, and unfavorable since the second world war. I will say it was geopolitical, ideological on the one hand but also nuclear on the other, and that is key. Geopolitically, there was the soviet invasion in 1979. President carters focus on soviet human rights abuses. The United States tilt towards china. This was manifested in boycotting the olympics in both 1980 in moscow and 1984 in los angeles. As important as the ideological and geological reasons was the nuclear reason. And this started with the soviet decision to deploy new missiles on their western border which could reach europe and it escalated the arms race. Later on they admitted inasmuch in meetings, saying this was a mistake. A colleague of mine published a great book about this. The soviets began the euromissile race. Nato responded, deploying missiles into europe. Which were deployed in late november 1983, days after able archer 83 had ended. This was extremely unbalancing to the relative geopolitical and nuclear stability. The reason was that now these the soviets believed that the pershing could reach moscow within 15 minutes. It probably could not but the u. S. Was not telling the soviets that. The pershings could reach russia and further deploy soviet troops within 15 minutes. The griffin could reach moscow in under an hour and could not be detected by radar. So potentially, the euromissiles on both sides and the pershings and the griffins changed the balance are soviets were genuinely fearful of the possibility that they could be hit by a decapitating nuclear attack. That is, all of the work they had done to build up Nuclear Parity and stay just behind the United States in the arms race would be obliterated when the intermediate range missiles were deployed to europe. This fear, this did decapitating fear was the primary focus of able archer 83 and also drove on both sides of the consideration of possible application of strategy known as launch on warning. Today in the United States the American Nuclear posture review, unclassified and available on the web, our current posture launch under attack, scary to talk about. If an adversary launches Nuclear Weapons against us, when they are in the air we will launch arts to retaliate and a 1983 with the intermediate range missiles and Response Time of just minutes, both sides considered using an may have used lunchtime warnings, that is, good intelligence, to figure out when your opponent will launch an attack and then preempt the opponent so that you can maybe possibly survive and possibly even win the war. There are many interviews cited. Soviet and american scientists after the cold war, joking with each other that if you say that you did not study that then you are lying and the other side agreed. Launch of warning is another key driver. A lot about u. S. Nuclear drills today but there is one other famous was which the soviet union practiced in 1983 and according to a member of the general staff, this was the First Time Since world war ii the soviets actually practiced a drill of obtaining information stating the adversary was going to attack and the soviets practiced this preemptive strike it included a Preemptive Nuclear strike so this was on the minds and being practiced. This leads me to what i will like to discuss, something r. Y. An. , aation russian acronym. Nuclear missile attack and russian. This document is one of the ones that get your heart beating. It is a kgb document that actually discusses the creation of the operation and it is quote to strengthen our intelligence work in order to prevent a possible sudden outbreak of war by the enemy. What the operation was was a shift from military satellites and other intelligence towards human intelligence with the aim of possibly preempting a Third Nuclear war. It began in 1979 and was announced in 1981 when the head of the kgb announced it. He said it was because the west was actively preparing for nuclear war. The primary accounts of operation r. Y. A. N until recently were from a highranking soviet kgb official, at one point the number one official that the affected in place and gave a lot of good information to the United States and britain. For a long time he was the primary source about able archer. Now, thanks to the work of the Cold War International history project, there is a very good web hosting of hundreds of documents about the intelligence of operation r. Y. A. N. So what do we know about this . It involved over 300 new positions created in the kgb and even more and satellite countries. These positions monitored indicators that their spies abroad reported. Essentially, there was a binder full of 292 indicators that i will talk about in one second. Spies abroad, in addition to their other duties, had to report back on. Some of these were probably smart, like monitoring Nuclear Missiles sites. Monitoring political figures. Others were probably farfetched. Monitoring blood banks, monitoring priests. The thinking was that if you had enough data, big data as early as 1981, you can input this data and determine what would happen. The soviets also, according to the reports credible reports, had a rudimentary Computer System to track this data and what this meant was there was more work for the agents. They did not complain. They reported. One of the interesting things they reported applies do today. They were tasked with monitoring the state of the constitution declaration and other founding documents at the u. S. National archives. The thinking being that if the imperial elect was going to west would launch a Nuclear Strike they would hide their documents first. That is not unprecedented and it did happen during world war ii. These r. Y. A. N. Watchers going through the documents also, two things you can tell. You can tell where they had good sources and agents within the u. S. Government because there is much better reporting. You can tell from the early point they did a good job reporting on continuity of government operations. Essentially, the plane the president would be entering a nuclear war. Ominously, it includes several indicators that would have been included during able archer 83. This Nuclear Exercise. We will talk about it. Including troop mobilization, changes in communication, used to watch Nuclear Weapons and new methods of transmitting weapons. Of course, r. Y. A. N. Was searching for something that did not exist. Plans for a strike were not in the making. Possible reasons for this were bureaucratic expansion, this would not be the first time in Intelligence Agency created a threat for more work or itself. Possibly socialist dogma. Maybe they believed that socialism was going to lose to capitalism and they should go out with a last gasp. Or maybe it was a scheme to inject r d into espionage because soviets were not having Great Success making computers otherwise. But i think the best explanation was coined by a man who called ofa vicious circle intelligence election assessment were soviet operatives were required to report a large amount of information even if they themselves were skeptical of it. After the Moscow Center received these inflated and incorrect but requested reports, they became duly alarmed by what had been reported and demanded more. The day after. Does anybody remember this . Shifting from secret fear of nuclear war to very public fear of nuclear war. The 1980s, i am sure many here remember clearly. It was not just private fear. It was very public fear. This is an american item i chose to symbolize from 1983. This was a very realistic movie about nuclear war that aired on national television. Ronald reagan actually watch this days before it aired. In his diary, he wrote that it was a very well done movie and left him feeling very depressed. I have spoken with reagan watchers and they say it is probably the only or one of the few i could not find any more instances of him writing fear. He also watched a movie that is a little bit more uplifting than this. Matthew rodericks wargames. And he greatly enjoyed that one as well. Talking about movies, there is another one from the committee from 1983 called threat from the u. K. That was also actually based on parliamentary british about what would actually happen after a nuclear war. Essentially, five generations lost. This fear of nuclear war was widespread in the United States. It was also manifested in protest movements that worked well and largely received the achieved the objective, the Nuclear Freeze movement which also had an effect on president reagan. Here is the president speaking to the evangelical association in orlando. So, the president s rhetoric also mattered. He address the British Parliament and said it would put them on the ash heap of history. He gave this one on speech in orlando in march of 1983 although not cleared by the state department or anyone outside of the white house. It was focused on domestic policy. It had a huge impact on Foreign Policy. He called the soviets the evil empire and said they were the focus of evil in the modern world. If you look at the writing on the other side, it had a great effect on the soviet union geopolitically and strategically. I think the best description of this that my colleague and director has written about is called the paradox of Ronald Reagan. One of the best to describe it said itambassador was masterfully explained, the paradox of Ronald Reagan, the president saw nothing contradictory or publicly or sincerely of attacking the evil empire and describing the leadership in those terms and in the next moment writing a personal letter and is on hand to the general secretary of the soviet communist party there he privately expressing his desire for a nonnuclear world, better relations. Reagans vision of a Nuclear Apocalypse and his deeply rooted conviction that Nuclear Weapon should be abolished would prove more powerful than his anticommunism. The 1983 warer scare had showed his strength. Two other brief examples of this paradox of Ronald Reagan. The first was his military buildup. He wanted to get a soviet leader in the room but they kept dying on him. That may be true but on the other hand his actions militarily said the opposite. The soviets were very startled by his rhetoric. I want to mention the use of psychological operations or psyops, which also had a great impact on able archer 83. When he assumed the presidency, Ronald Reagan started secretly conducting bombing raids on soviet territories excuse me, conducting simulated bombing raids on soviet territories. A great declassified piece from a soviet union about that. Sneaking battleships into soviet waters. Flying bombers and sneaking off at the last second to find out where their radars were strong and where they were weak. I think David Hawkins says in the billion dollars by that there is another part of it and reliance on the human intelligence that soviet raters were weak everywhere. They could not detect or protect from american insurgents including Nuclear Strikes. While the president was hoping for the evolution of Nuclear Weapons was hoping for the abolishing of Nuclear Weapons, he was also publicly calling them the evil empire and secretly having secret military actions against the soviet union. The fear was not just in america, it was in the soviet union, too. One very interesting declassified memo from the Reagan Library from the u. S. National security advisor was written in december, 1983, is describing the six months previous said that for the past six months there was a fear of war that seemed to affect the elite as well as the man on the street. According to a well respected source. A growing paranoia among soviet obsessed with the fear of war. The nonrationality and unpredictability of the soviet officials not seen since 30 years previously. The danger of the fear of war and the fear of preemption can actually be seen in a conversation between then general secretary Yuri Andropov and one of the few meetings with a u. S. Envoy who had previously negotiated with stalin. He was a democrat. Unofficially sent by the Reagan Administration as a private citizen but the documents show he traveled with a state Department Translator and was prebriefed and debriefed by the state department. Ining his conversation, august 1983, harriman said andropov said there was a risk of nuclear war through masculine. He warned that they were moving towards the dangerous redline of nuclear war. Amid these pledges of destruction of the evil empire, the danger of a launch on warnings, the quiet operation of ryan and the fear of war affecting the men on the street and the elites, the soviet union shot down a u. S. Civilian airliner that had mistakenly strayed into soviet airspace. This ended any hope of improved relations. Which were dim. It ratcheted up the fear of war even further. Here is what Ronald Reagan wrote about the shootdown. In his memoirs. If i some people if asked some people speculate the soviets mistook the airliner for a military plane, what kind of imagination did it take to think the soviet military man, with his finger close to a nuclear pushbutton could make an even more tragic mistake . As some of you guys know, mistakes like this happened multiple times throughout the cold war. We can talk about it during questions but i will not go into it now because mistakes by pushing the button is a bit different than war through miscalculations. A month after this, able archer 83 began. So, again, able archer 83 was a fiveday nato exercise conducted at the end of autumn forge 83. A little hard to see but have any of you guys watched the recent tv show deutsche land 83 . A good show. It is a german show. They contacted me and i help ed them get their facts straight. A very cool easter egg is that each of these episodes of the serial come from an opposition an operation. Northern weddings. Summer jump. You can see a display determination of others. A cool easter egg i would like to share with you. To understand able archer 83 at it is very key to understand what exactly it was. Each year, there was an annual able archer exercise and an annual autumn forge exercise. It was how nato prepared for war against the 17. Soviet union. Autumn forge was large. It had about a dozen exercises under a preparing troops and lots of places. About 20,000 troops, including some 16,000 american troops that flew over. This was practicing conventional war and went on for months. Able archer 83 with the last was the last final exercise of this, essentially practicing the shift from conventional war to nuclear war and how to fight it. This is important because there was history of soviet generals saying i never heard of able archer 83. Showing there is no danger. In the same interviews, the general said autumn forge. That was always the most dangerous. Because it was so hard to get this declassified, i would like to share with you how did warear were look in 1983 looked in 1983 . Here is the back story a sudden change of leadership in the kremlin. A new, unstable leadership takes over. The fledgling leadership fight proxy wars in u. S. By providing political and military support is provided and iran, syria, south yemen. This spreads from the middle east to europe. Due to the failing economy, the soviet union was unable to provide support to its satellites. While the Eastern EuropeanEconomic Situation worsened, the military preparedness improved. Frequent field exercises were conducted, equipment was stockpiled. Factories produce material around the clock. Then, in this back story, august 1983, requesting economic and yugoslavia shifted towards the west, requesting economic and military assistance from several nato countries. Fearing other Eastern European states would join the west, the warsaw pact invaded yugoslavia. The ground war broadened. Soviet forces invaded finland october 31. Next day, norway. The next day, they attacked germany. By november 4, soviet and warsaw forces invaded west germany. They had bombed its entire eastern border. But because nato forces provided strong resistance, soviets begin launching chemical attacks. Nato responded in kind. That is the back story. Now, this is the part that american and European Nuclear officers on the ground in europe began practicing. When conventional and chemical war turned nuclear. Unable to repel the soviets ground advance nato attempted to send a message to the warsaw pact, the destruction of one city to avoid total nuclear war. I talked to the ambassador to nato and he said that in this scenario, this city was usually key. The soviets usually responded. They would usually respond with boston. On the morning of november 8, nato requested permission for initial limited use of Nuclear Weapons against preselected target. The western capital granted nato permission to destroy the Eastern European city with a nuclear attack. The use of Nuclear Weapons do not stop the aggression. The next day, the leader of nato requested followon use of Nuclear Weapons. Washington and other capitals approved this request. On november 11, Nuclear War Broke out. That was able archer 83. Heres president reagan. Of course, great one iron the iron the irony was that while nato was practicing a long, slow, drawnout transition from conventional to nuclear war, the soviets were fearing able from the blue as such, misreading indicators. In able archer 83, it did have indeed many special wrinkles that other able archer exercises did not that could have been misreported by indicators to the west. I want to talk about gordievsky. President reagan met with him and wrote about him twice in his journal, both times inquiring about his wellbeing. After providing information to the british, in london, he was in all likelihood betrayed by aldrich ames and was eventually recalled to moscow, probably to be debriefed and executed. He wrote a good book about this. He was ultimately able to escape across the finish border in the trunk of a car, and eventually made it, that with reagan and did a large tour around the u. S. He is still alive. He was also the first person that sounded the alarm during able archer 83. Here are some wrinkles of able archer 83. This could have been picked up during r. Y. A. N. Testing of new communication methods for nuclear release. I spoke with nato officers on the field that said they had just been trained on new encryption techniques to launch these new missiles during able archer. That could have and what have been reported by r. Y. A. N. Nuclear release procedures, including practicing. The fact that some u. S. Aircraft practiced Nuclear Cannon procedures, including taxiing out of hangers carrying realistic dummy warheads. The 170flight radio silent of 16,000f airlift soldiers to autumn forge 83, of which able archer was the final component. This would have been reported. During able archer 83, the shifting of command from permanent war headquarters to a field headquarter simulating the destruction. This was an indicator agents were tasked to look for. According to one document declassified by the u. S. Air force, sensitive political issue of slips of the tongue. The stories were mistakenly referred to as Nuclear Strikes over open radio, which on the u. S. Side climbed the ladder as reporting of danger, even without knowing of r. Y. A. N. These wrinkles caused both the kgb and eru to send telegrams to residencies in eastern europe. Reporting an alert on u. S. Bases. The flash telegrams implied that one of several possible explanations for the alert was a countdown to Nuclear First break first strike had actually begun. So, for years, you only had this one account. That may have been the echo chamber of evidence people speak of. Just last year, here people at the National Archives finally broke through the logjam and declassified another key retrospective account. This is probably the most comprehensive of all sources. It has seven codewords on the top. Most of the stuff leaked by snowden only had three. It was in all source review and that is where the information came from. There has been some declassification by British Intelligence describing what they saw but essentially what we now know through declassification is that this is what the soviet reaction was in addition to the memo. They were unparalleled in scale and included transporting Nuclear Weapons by helicopter. Suspension of all Flight Operations from november 4 to november 10, probably to have available as many aircraft as possible for combat. Initiated unprecedented technical collection against able archer 83, including city 36 overflights, significantly more than previous exercises. Soviet air units in each germany and poland went on alert in what was declared to be a threat of possible aggression against the ussr. And warsaw pact countries. Nuclear weapons were transported from storage sites via helicopter. As the cia director wrote in 1984 to Ronald Reagan, the behavior of the armed forces is perhaps the most disturbing. From the operational employment deployment of submarines to the delayed troop rotation. There is a theme of not being strategically vulnerable, even if it means taking some risks. The military behavior involves high military cost, adding a dimension of genuineness that the soviet expressions of concern that are not accurately often reflected in intelligence issuances. Beyond that, a series of interviews with soviet generals and members of the staff saying that soviet Nuclear Forces did go on alert during able archer 83. There were reports that the situation was monitored from a bunker outside of moscow. And, right after you read some of those, there is a good page and a half that remains redacted so possibly even more. This is funny and maybe we will get it in questions, but i want to wrap up. This is an example of declassification, not usually not as good as what is usually provided by the National Archive. During my research, i did a freedom of information act request to the National Security agencies for documents about able archer. They said we have 83 documents, and we will give you one of them. The one they gave me was this one, a printout of the wikipedia article that was processed and declassified. The worst punch in the gut was i spent a lot of time actually being the guy who edited the wikipedia article. [laughter] mr. Jones but that was early, and i got so upset and angry by this that i was more determined to file the foias, and work my way up to ice cap, which we can talk about later, which ultimately got this document released. The key document. So it was a blessing in disguise. All right, so, wrapping up and then we can talk about other things in discussion. The danger of able archer 83, according to all the information we have now, and it ended when a young air force officer in charge of able archer 83 minimized the risk by doing nothing in the face of evidence that part of the soviet armed forces were moving towards unusual levels of alert. The officer is on the left. His action to do nothing is described not glowingly as fortuitous, if illinformed. These officers out of instinct acted correctly out of instinct, not informed guidance because the years leading up to able archer, they received no guidance of the possible significance of the change of the soviet military. I want to quickly walk through what the u. S. Intelligence Community Learned in that debate, which has now come on to the scholarly committee, communities, and the public. The first to report able archer 83 was the british. There were dia report at the time, but they missed it. They said there was increased soviet surveillance. But they did not get the other stuff. The key report is the british report entitled soviet Union Concern about a surprise nato attack. This combined reporting with afterthefact satellite intelligence and human intelligence. According to sources i have spoke with, it was written by a man named harry burke. Unfortunately, this key first report of the danger remains classified. I did a long fight through the british system and lost. The american system is better in this case. But this information did make it to the u. S. By may of 1984, the cia uses this intelligence from a report of recent soviet illegal activity, best political activities, but they concluded there was no danger of nuclear war through a miscalculation. The opposite of what the british concluded. There is even after the british report, Margaret Thatcher even instructed her and intelligence ministers to her to urgently consider how to approach the americans and ameliorate the risk of war. Through nuclear miscalculation. This emissary was essentially brushed off by the state department. But this report downplaying the dangers was written. But in june, a month later, director casey wrote the memo saying there was indeed danger. The next day, the cia wrote a the dia wrote a memo to him saying do not tell the president that, retract it. Maybe this Nuclear Danger would a blip if not for the general. After his service in europe, he joined the dia, eventually becoming the director of the defense Intelligence Agency. When he retired in 1989, he wrote one final swansong, a memo that the dia still is not declassified. It describes what happened to him during able archer 83, the danger, the anger and concern that this danger was hidden and not analyzed properly. He sent it to the central Intelligence Agency where it was buried and received almost no response. He also sent it to the president s foreign intelligence advisory board, which was a board that independently advised the president. They took up the issue. Nina stewart, pictured there, wrote the report, interviewed over 100 participants during able archer 83. As you saw in the classification markings, had essentially all access and wrote, what i think, is close to the definitive review of the danger. Eventually, existence was leaked to historians, and eventually other historians, even myself, followed the footnote and filed mdrs for this document. It took about 12 years because the bush president ial library, under nara, great people there, but they dont have the authority to declassify. They have to get authority from 12 agencies. One of the agencies, the cia, they didnt do any action. It was stuck there. Thank goodness there is one last body at the National Archive, called ice cap. It is set up through executive order, it still stands. It states that when an agency cannot declassify something, taking too long, a panel of experts from other agencies here can review the document and release what no longer would harm National Security. They did. And the public now knows. Thank goodness. Finally, three points in my conclusion. I think the first is the power of leadership. President reagan ultimately understood that a world on a hair trigger is unacceptable and continued to wind down the cold war. Upon learning the danger of able archer 83, reagan has pride in expressed surprise in describing the event as really scary. He also learned, in his memoir, he answered the question that he asked in that note card we showed earlier. He wrote in his diary just after able archer 83 and changed it in his memoir a bit later, that three years have taught me something surprisingly about the russians. Many people at the top of soviet hierarchy were generally afraid of america and americans. Perhaps this should not have surprised me, but it did. I think many of us in my administration took it for granted that russians, like ourselves, considered it unthinkable that the United States would launch a first strike against them. But the more experience i had with soviet leaders and other heads of state who knew them, the more i began to realize that many soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries, but has potential aggressors who might hurl Nuclear Weapons at them in a first strike. The president then, in tandem with gorbachev, eliminated an entire class of intermediate range missiles. Including the pershings, and great things. Thats griffins. Next, the two negotiated arms a strategic arms reduction treaty which reduced the number of warheads and icbms to 6000 and 1000 respectively. The mutual trust generated was key to helping the two leaders attained the peaceful end to the cold war. The 1983 war scare served as a reminder of the worst days of the cold war to the best cooperation since world war ii. The second lesson is the lesson that the cold war was a dangerous era that we were lucky to have survived. It was not a long piece. The study of the previously secret history of the 1983 war scare forces the reevaluation of one of the cold claims the score claims of cold war historiography. The one that the cold war was slowly bound down after the cuban missile crisis. The threat remain constant and at times escalated. The fact that it unacceptably higher risk of nuclear war in able archer 83, 21 years after the cuban missile crisis undermines the nuclear deterrent. And the idea that because world war iii was avoided, the cold war had prolonged peace. As both sides continue to increase Nuclear Weapons, their own vulnerability increased. Despite the protests and advocates of socalled nuclear learning antics planning on nuclear game theories, both superpowers became more unsafe as the cold war progressed. While the United States and soviet union maintained Nuclear Parity, each lacked nuclear security. The explanation to this Nuclear Paradox is simple theories do shape the course of human events, people do. Finally, i believe able archer 83 has lessons for today. The best way to ensure the danger of nuclear war continues to decrease is not hide it. Reagan depended upon classified information unavailable to the public to understand the Nuclear Arms Race in the 1980s. It is difficult to justify the initial concealment of how potentially lethal able archer was, much less now 30 years after the fact. 33 years. Finally, after long freedom of information act battles, and documents declassified by people in this room, most but not all of the u. S. Documents are declassified and other countries are trickling out to the public. The continued studies of the 1983 war scare will help avert current and future nuclear standoff, reduce the probably of nuclear war through miscalculation and battle against dangerous ideas held by some keepers of the key. Soviet and american pershings have been removed and retired. The cold war has ended, the soviet union no longer exists. 30 years later, a fuller picture of the dangers of able archer 83 emerged. The lesson is sobering way clear. Throughout the cold war, one misstep could trigger a great war. We cannot return. Thank you. [applause] mr. Jones id be happy to answer any questions you may have. Please ask at the microphone. Thank you very much for the presentation. As you described, as maybe expanding on the air force officer who did nothing, there was a russian officer that saw satellite data that showed five of the missiles coming his way that were clouds that reflected the sun. Im curious from that incident as well as others that historically have happened, what procedures obviously, getting rid of the Nuclear Weapons is a good step, but the red phone aspect occurred for the higher ups that hold the keys. What procedures might have changed from that incident of able archer 83 . Mr. Jones first, a mention on the general who essentially there was working soviet satellites that sent the information that a nuclear were warhead was coming his way. He too did nothing. He told his superiors it was a false alarm. According to the reporting by david hoffman, he says trust me, its nothing. My gut says they would not launch one missile and i know the satellite does not work. There is another in a great document, a soviet document, it was said we could be annihilated by an american drone. Drunk. Pushing a missile. There is a story many people know that there was a call that 4000 icbms were on the way. He was calm for one minute and got another call saying dont worry, somebody put in a training tape. These happen over and over again. The only real solution im aware of the best solution, is reducing Nuclear Weapons. Taking Nuclear Weapons of hairtrigger posturing, which they still are. The nuclear telephones that we now have actually solved during stalled during the Reagan Administration and was greatly expanded after. That is one safe measure. But, the greatest absent of having fewer Nuclear Weapons is having them off hairtrigger alert. Thanks. Thank you for this quite interesting presentation. Im not from america, i am from the caribbean. We had the cuban missile crisis, obviously. I was very small. I do remember sitting with my parents, listening, although they claimed i had made it up. That i have a good imagination. I was a very smart kid. Na small kid. I remember them sitting on the porch and listening to the soviet ships coming closer and closer. The ships were stopping. Im trying to figure what is this what can how to make sense of this and the only thing i could do is think of some kind of hellish activity. I do have experience. I grew up in the netherlands and was part of the demonstration. A few questions because what you do here is quite important, especially with more and more countries are coming online that are becoming more and more powerful, right . China, india. The Nuclear Weapons, the nuclear problems potential problems between india and pakistan, right . What level of control do these people have over anything . What level of assistance do they have to be able to do this . Do you know anything about that . Has there been talk about that what to do about this issue. And also, i think what helped tremendously with stopping a nuclear war from happening between the soviet union and the United States was that during the very beginning, the first words of oppenheimer, i have become death. The dissident i forgot his name he saw this explode. This is nonsense. But, think about it. If it was a competition between the United States and, say for example, china, where we have a few hundred million is no problem to us. The issue is that if both intellectual classes, military classes do not read this thing the same way. It is a security dilemma. A security dilemma is a horrific, dangerous thing when you have Nuclear Weapons. So how do you see these things play out . I totally agree with you that we need a new movement. A proper Movement Across the world to really putting an end to the Nuclear Weapons, and now we have a new guy saying he may be going nuclear. So how do you see this thing playing out in the future . The last question, you talk about the issue of getting documents. We have known over the last few years in different presidencies, there have been attempts to hide more documents. How did you see that playing out . Nate so, i would say the big, most difficult answer is the truest risk of nuclear war is not through two leaders pushing the button. Miss cacklehrough asian, war through events spiraling outofcontrol. I think we saw how that could have happened during the cuban missile crisis. So the straightforward use of Nuclear Weapons as they are intended is not the greatest risk. How to combat that . Well, i think my small way is is through writing Nuclear History and trying to get some secret out so the public knows the danger more fully and can rely on Historical Documents instead of memoirs, or an echo chamber, as i say. I love working with the nuclear and my work at the National Security archive. As a historian, that is my way of fighting. Getting the stories out and getting people who have second thoughts in these governments and have said so, secretly, to make this public. The last question about having documents going forward. It is going to be a challenge, but historians and people it is , always a challenge. They are fighters. We know how to fight the department of justice to get documents out. We know how to get mdr requests. People who work in the archives are driven by getting documents out as well. So im optimistic our declassified history will keep flowing. David we are out of time. Thank you. Nate sure thing. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] American History tvs enrichment, virginia. Right now, we are driving to the jackson ward district, a bout about a mile from the capitol building. Up next, we will take you to the home of Maggie Walker and share her real life rags to riches story. Ajena we are very privileged to be in the house