Tag

Able Archer

Browsing

Note: The opinions and comments stated in the following article, and views expressed by any contributor to In Homeland Security, do not represent the views of American Military University, American Public University System, its management or employees.

By Dr. Stephen Schwalbe
Faculty Member,
Public Administration at American Public University

What was America’s greatest intelligence failure? That depends on how you define failure.

The most common definition of intelligence failure includes the culmination of an enemy surprise attack, whether from a state or non-state. The most notorious surprise attack in recent history on the U.S. mainland occurred on September 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked four U.S. passenger jets and turned them into explosive devices, destroying the World Trade Center and damaging the Pentagon. This coordinated attack resulted in more than 3,000 lives lost and over a trillion dollars in damages.

9/11 Obvious Example of an Intelligence Failure

Former Senator Warren Rudman, chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1997-2000, said of the 9/11 terrorist attacks: “Of course it was an intelligence failure. By definition, when something bad happens to you, and you didn’t know about it, it’s an intelligence failure … Understand the duties of intelligence agencies. We have to know about people’s capabilities. We have to know about their capacity to injure the U.S. We would like to know their intentions.”

Jeffrey Smith was the CIA general counsel from 1995-1996. His assessment of the intelligence regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks was “[A] terrible failure. The CIA was created in 1948 [sic] to prevent another Pearl Harbor, and their most important job is warning of attacks on the United States. That’s what they spend a lot of time on, and in this case, it was a terrible failure.”

Despite Signs of Impending Attack, No Preventive Measures Taken

In 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (aka the 9/11 Commission) published its final report regarding the terrorist attacks. In it, the Commission discussed its interview of CIA Director George Tenet, who testified that during the spring and summer of 2001, that U.S. intelligence agencies received a stream of warnings that al Qaeda was planning a major attack against the U.S.

Tenet declared, “The system was blinking red.” The Commission concluded that “[N]one of the measures adopted by the U.S. government from 1998 to 2001 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al Qaeda plot. Across the government, there were failures of imagination, policy, capabilities and management.”

Another Candidate for ‘Worst Intelligence Failure’

Despite a failure of the U.S. Intelligence Community to identify an impending threat, fate sometimes intervenes to prevent the attack. Would that make the intelligence shortfalls irrelevant? Of course not.

As such, there is another candidate for the greatest American intelligence failure. Few people are aware of it, precisely because a major attack did not occur. This event occurred at the height of the Cold War at the end of 1983.

To set the stage, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued Presidential Directive 59. It was a top-secret policy that directed the Department of Defense to be prepared to conduct a protracted nuclear war. Once the Soviets covertly acquired this document, they interpreted it as a First Strike policy.

Later, President Reagan publicly rejected the “No First Use” of nuclear weapons policy. He also withdrew the U.S. from the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II negotiations with the Soviet Union.

To show he was serious about the Soviet threat, Reagan convinced Congress to increase defense spending to levels unprecedented during peacetime.

Most Federal Spending Went for Strategic Weapons Systems

Most of the funding went to strategic weapon systems capable of delivering nuclear weapons on targets throughout the Soviet Union. The weapon systems included:

  • A new ground-launched intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the MX Peacekeeper
  • A new road-mobile ICBM, the Midgetman
  • A new submarine-launched ballistic missile, the C-5
  • The B-1B strategic bomber

Reagan also announced the authorization of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, aka “Star Wars”) in March 1983. This space-deployed defensive system, when fully operational, would in effect render all Soviet ballistic missiles obsolete.

Internationally, events also ratcheted up the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. For example, the Soviet Union successfully invaded and occupied Afghanistan for eight years beginning in December 1979. In September 1983, the Soviet Air Force shot down a Boeing 747 Korean commercial airliner near Japan, killing 269 people. In October 1983, Reagan authorized Operation Urgent Fury to retake the Caribbean island of Grenada from the communists. It was the first rollback of the Soviet Empire.

Reagan’s Goal: Write the Final Pages of USSR History

After Reagan declared the Soviet Union to be an “evil empire,” the Politburo became increasingly concerned about an American first strike using nuclear weapons. Reagan first used the term “evil empire” in 1983 while speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida. His ultimate goal was to roll the empire back and “write the final pages of the history of the Soviet Union.”

Tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union reached a climax by the end of 1983. In response to the Soviet deployment of SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) targeted against Western Europe, the U.S. was scheduled in November to deliver the first increment of 108 Pershing IRBMs to West Germany and 464 ground-launched cruise missiles to Britain and Italy.

The Soviets perceived this move by the U.S. as analogous to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when Moscow stationed SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. With the installation of missiles in West Germany, Soviet leadership would have less than 10 minutes to escape death and destruction before the Pershing missiles completed their flight.

U.S. Intelligence Failed to Recognize Increased Tension in Soviet Union

Despite all of these events, U.S. intelligence did not assess that there was any increased tension within the Soviet Union. CIA and the rest of the intelligence community believed that the Soviet Union was just trying to complicate the relationship between the U.S. and NATO with alarmist propaganda.

While the U.S. and the West were operating as normal, Soviet leaders, particularly General Secretary Yuri Andropov and Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, were becoming increasingly anxious about U.S. intentions. They believed the U.S. was preparing for a first strike against the Soviet Union using its strategic forces.

The Soviet Union believed that it would be justified in preempting the strike by launching its own nuclear weapons first. This intelligence failure to appreciate the increasing threat of war by the Soviet Union could easily have resulted in a nuclear holocaust, killing hundreds of millions of people.

The very last thing the U.S. and the West needed to do at this critical time was to conduct a strategic military exercise with a scenario that included a nuclear war phase against the Soviet Union. But that is exactly what happened.

US, NATO Exercise ‘Able Archer’ Gets a Green Light

In November 1983, the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conducted a command post exercise called “Able Archer,” representing the top leadership of the U.S. and NATO. NATO’s Supreme Headquarters in Belgium coordinated Able Archer. The exercise involved 40,000 NATO forces throughout Western Europe, conducting military maneuvers for 10 days.

The scenario for this strategic exercise was a conventional war in Europe that eventually transitioned to a nuclear war phase involving the Soviet Union. This exercise involved the Pershing IRBMs in Europe (not yet deployed) and all U.S. and NATO command centers. It eventually raised the Defense Condition (DefCon) up to 1, the highest level.

Soviet spies incorrectly reported that U.S. armed forces were really at DefCon 1, meaning a real-world attack against the Soviet Union was imminent. In a last-ditch effort to get the U.S. leadership’s attention about the impending nuclear war during Able Archer, the Soviets launched one of its ICBMs from Plesetsk.

The missile traveled not eastward to the normal test facilities across the Soviet Union on the Kamchatka Peninsula, but westward toward the U.S. East Coast. That launch remains unprecedented and the status of the missile launched is still unknown.

US and NATO Should Have Reached Out to Moscow

While this missile launch in 1983 may not be the closest the United States and the Soviet Union came to nuclear war (not including the Cuban missile crisis), it certainly should be considered one of the greatest intelligence failures in American history. It was only in the midst of the heightened tensions in 1983 that U.S. leaders began realizing the position in which it had put the Soviet Union.

Soviet leadership believed it had to use its nuclear weapons to pre-empt an imminent U.S. first strike, before SDI became operational and rendered the Soviet ballistic missile force ineffective (a “use or lose” scenario). Instead of executing Able Archer, the U.S. and NATO should have reached out to the Soviet Union to allay Soviet concerns about a first strike.

The Soviet leadership was very familiar with strategic military exercises transitioning into real war. For example, it used the ZAPAD-83 Warsaw Pact exercise to pressure Poland into implementing martial law to crack down on the Solidarity movement.

Once the U.S. and NATO began Able Archer, the Soviet Union was highly suspicious that a war against it would begin during this military exercise. Once Moscow discovered there was a nuclear war phase in the exercise aimed against the Soviet Union, it raised its alert levels for its military, and its Strategic Rocket Forces in particular, to the highest level.  Any mistake on either side at this point could have triggered nuclear Armageddon.

In general, this nuclear war scare in 1983 was a function of both Soviet paranoia and U.S. hubris. Both of these traits are ingrained in Russians and Americans, respectively. U.S. intelligence analysts should always consider this factor in their analysis for government leaders.

About the Author

Dr. Stephen Schwalbe is an associate professor at American Military University. He is also an adjunct professor at Columbia College and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Stephen received a Ph.D. in Public Administration and Public Policy from Auburn University in 2006. His book about military base closures was published in 2009.