Nathan B. Jones, the FOIA guru at the National Security Archive, wrote the first essay I ever read about Able Archer. It was an unpublished master’s thesis, and when, in 2009, he finished it, it challenged both the views of historians and the government’s official version of Able Archer. He thought Soviet fears were real; almost everyone else assumed they were overstated. Nate has proven himself largely correct. He has done more than anyone to pry loose a number of previously classified documents and has brought together archivists across the world to find many others. Without him, our understanding of Able Archer would be impoverished. This book would look very different. Jones, David Hoffmann, and a number of other researchers used the government’s own mandatory declassification review process to force the release of the 1991 President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board review of the “Soviet War Scare.” For that alone Jones deserves plaudits. (His advocacy on behalf of FOIA is a subject worthy of numerous other positive adjectives). His colleague Thomas Burr pried loose a number of documents about the Ivy League ’82 exercise and numerous other topics. Dr. Bruce Blair remains the essential civilian authority on nuclear command and control. He bravely revealed the system’s inner workings and contradictions when doing so might have cost him his career. He read several chapters of this manuscript and spent hours patiently explaining difficult concepts to me.
Benjamin Fischer, who has served as the chief historian at the CIA, has done path-breaking, rigorous research on the war scare, on CANOPY WING, and on a number of other highly relevant subjects; he is responsible for helping to ensure that the public perception of these events matches the ones told in secret, by the secret keepers. His scholarship is a model.
Beth Fischer (no relation) was the first to link Reagan’s “reversal” to the war scare. I don’t agree with all of her conclusions, but her work is pioneering. Christian Ostermann, director of the History and Public Policy Program at the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center, pointed me in the direction of declassified and translated HVA (Stasi) documents, which filled in numerous gaps in my knowledge and in our history. I am extraordinarily grateful to the men and women who spoke on the record for the first time, including Lee Trolan, Alfred Buckles, Thomas Reed, Nina Tumarkin, David McManis, Dr. Phil Karber, and Steven Schwalbe. Two historians deserve special thanks. Diego Ruiz Palmer untangled the complexities of NATO war plans for me, and James Graham Wilson, whose own excellent work I consulted regularly, helped me more fully appreciate Cold War historiography. Wilson also caught a number of embarrassing typos. Jason Saltoun-Ebin has probably spent more time at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and collected more documents than most historians combined. His annotations are as compelling as the transcripts of National Security Council meetings and critical correspondence he’s obtained. I’m no shill, but if you’re interested in diving into the history yourself, please visit his website: http://www.thereaganfiles.com/. Peter Burt is responsible for the declassification of critical Cabinet Office documents from the time of Margaret Thatcher.
I thank The Week and Ben Frumin for letting me crib my own work for the chapter on the John Walker spy ring.
Thanks to Flashback Television, producers of the 2008 documentary 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse, who provided me with transcripts of their interviews, which allowed me to incorporate more fully the perspectives of Soviet military and intelligence officials. James Mann, David Hoffmann, and Eric Schlosser have written indispensable books on continuity of government, nuclear command and control, and nuclear weapons, respectively. Their work inspires me. There is no better resource on the history of Soviet strategic nuclear forces than Pavel Podvig: http://russianforces.org/podvig/. I check his website regularly.
The research librarians at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library could not have been more gracious and helpful. Thanks, also, to the staff at the George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter libraries. The Central Intelligence Agency has acquired a poor reputation in scholarly circles for being stingy with information; they now deserve credit and praise for setting the standard for declassification and access by making available on their website tens of millions of pages of documents.
Emily, Penn, Moxie, and Zolten Jillette lent me part of their home to write in and made sure I was well-fed and well-watered. Thanks also to Kevin Truong, Christopher Lai, Stacey Scholder, Laura Davis, Ivan Leung, TinTin Vongphrachanh, Rebecca Haggerty, Gordon Stables, Vince Gonzales, Willa Seidenberg, Willow Bay, Noah Oppenheim, Josh Simon, Tara Brach, Sergio Garcia, Noon Salih, Jessica Perez, Gary He, and Patti, Roy, Jessie, Michael, and Eric Ambinder. My husband, Michael Park, is my rock and speaks my language of love. Now, I will have the time to speak his.
My agent, Eric Lupfer, gets triple kudos. He helped me find the topic to explore, helped me secure a contract to write about it, and, most importantly, could have not been more patient with me when my writerly anxieties popped up.
I thank Christian Grier and Paul Lewandowski for critical research assistance. Lewandowski helped me track down several hard-to-find sources. Amar Deol at Simon & Schuster was a helpful steward and guide. Patty Romanowski Bashe found numerous small errors that would otherwise have crushed my writer’s soul.
Ben Loehnen at Simon & Schuster has been an exceptional editor and a great partner on this journey. Like the president at the center of this story, Ben has character, heart, and resilience.
All errors of fact and substance are my own.