Robert Gates, secretary of defense under the Bush and Obama administrations, and CIA deputy director during the exercise, later said, “We may have been at the brink of nuclear war and not even known it.” This third part covers the slow realization by western leaders of how scared the Soviets were, and how close we came to World War III. The story of Soviet first strike fears is told in the first part of this series, while the Soviet preparations for a potential first strike during Able Archer 83 are related in the second. “Had Perroots mirrored the Soviets and escalated the situation, the War Scare could conceivably have become a war,” writes Nate Jones in one of three recent histories of the 1983 close call, Able Archer 83: The Secret NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War. A later review by the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) said Perroots decision “made in ignorance (was) fortuitous, if ill informed. He later said he had a gut feeling nothing was amiss. Air Force Lieutenant General Leonard Perroots, NATO deputy intelligence chief, on duty during the exercise, received reports of the activity but decided not to recommend that NATO nuclear forces mirror the increase. Soviet nuclear forces were put on combat alert, bombers were loaded with nuclear weapons, nuclear subs were put out to sea, and mobile missile launchers were dispersed. Soviet leader Yuri Andropov believed the Reagan Administration was preparing to launch a nuclear strike on his country, and that a NATO exercise to mimic a nuclear war, Able Archer 83 taking place in the early days of November, was a cover for the real thing. It was 1983, when tensions between the United States and Soviet Union were at one of the most intense points in the Cold War.

It was an intelligence failure of a scope to vastly exceed all others, when one nuclear superpower perceived the other moving to a nuclear first strike and prepared for war, while the other missed all the signals and believed it was business as usual.

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