About this item
In November 1983, Soviet nuclear forces went on high alert. After months nervously watching increasingly assertive NATO military posturing, Soviet intelligence agencies in Western Europe received flash telegrams reporting alarming activity on U.S. bases. In response, the Soviets began planning for a countdown to a nuclear first strike by NATO on Eastern Europe. And then Able Archer 83, a vast NATO war game exercise that modeled a Soviet attack on NATO allies, ended.What the West didn't know at the time was that the Soviets thought Operation Able Archer 83 was real and were actively preparing for a surprise missile attack from NATO. This close scrape with Armageddon was largely unknown until last October when the U.S. government released a ninety-four-page presidential analysis of Able Archer that the National Security Archive had spent over a decade trying to declassify.
About the Author
Nate Jones is the Director of the Freedom of Information Act Project for the National Security Archive. He oversees the thousands of Freedom of Information Act and Mandatory Declassification Review requests and appeals that the Archive submits each year. A two-term member of the Federal FOIA Advisory Committee, he acts as liaison between Archive analysts and agency FOIA offices, and serves as the Archive's FOIA counselor to the public.
He is also editor of the Archive's blog Unredacted where he writes about newly declassified documents and FOIA policy. He has authored the Archive's past eight government-wide FOIA Audits, including "Saving Government Email an Open Question."
He earned his MA in Cold War History from The George Washington University, where he used FOIA to write his thesis on the Able Archer 83 nuclear war scare. He has also produced The Able Archer 83 Sourcebook, the comprehensive declassified collection of documents on the 1983 nuclear war scare. His book Able Archer 83 examines the intersection of Cold War animosity, nuclear miscalculation, and government secrecy.
He's on twitter as @NSANate
