RERELEASE: S1E1: Not All Fun and WarGames

If you’re a new fan of SNAFU and you never listened to our beloved Season 1, then now is the time to tune in for a tale of nuclear dread, traitorous spies, and a war game gone wrong. It was the closest we ever came to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis – and it’s a story with echoes into the present, especially with rising international tension. We’ll be sharing the second episode later this week, along with all the episodes on YouTube for the first time ever. But you can also go back and listen to the audio on any podcast app. This is Episode 1: “Not All Fun and War Games.” See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Ed Helms?

  The scariest part of Halloween isn't the full moon or a chainsaw starting up in the distance. It's running out of Reese's cups. Because when you open the door to four princesses, six superheroes, and three Draculas all reaching for your Reese's cups, things can get scary fast. Especially when you were kind of counting on some leftovers. So this Halloween, buy extra. Because your neighbor Jeff dressed like a kangaroo? That's scary enough. Running out of Reese's cups doesn't need to be.

• 0:34Speaker 02

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• 1:23Ed Helms?

  Hello again, everybody. Ed here, and I'm really excited about what I'm going to share with you today. It's the first ever episode of the very first season of Snafu. I will never forget calling up War Games star Matthew Broderick for that first episode to ask if he had ever heard of the NATO military exercise Able Archer 83. And now I ask, have you ever heard of it? If you're a new fan of Snafu and you've never listened to our beloved season one, then stick around for a tale of nuclear dread, traitorous spies, and a war game gone horribly wrong. It was the closest we ever actually came to a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

• 2:07Ed Helms?

  And it's a story that really echoes in the present moment, especially with the rising international tensions around who has nuclear arms right now and who doesn't. We'll be sharing the second episode next week, along with all the episodes on YouTube for the first time ever. But you can also go back and listen to the audio on any podcast app. Be sure to let us know what you think if you check it out. I'm always so excited to know kind of what the listeners are thinking and feeling about stuff. Now, this, of course, is our very first season, and it's very near and dear to my heart. I'm insanely proud of it. So check it out. Here is not all fun and war games.

• 2:48Ed Helms?

  Did you ever watch a movie as a kid and convince yourself that it was real?

• 2:55Ed Helms?

  That its outlandish premise could possibly come true? I know I did. And for me, one of those movies was War Games.

• 3:07Ed Helms?

  Great to meet you.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  Great to meet you, too.

• 3:10Ed Helms?

  I'm Ed, by the way.

• 3:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:13Ed Helms?

  That's Matthew Broderick. He's a national treasure and also the star of War Games. A movie about an almost accidental nuclear war that I watched maybe 100 times as a kid? Came out in 1983, and it was Matthew's breakout role.

• 3:30Speaker 04

  The fact that I had gotten the lead of a, you know, studio movie was

• 3:34Ed Helms?

  Yeah.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  Incredible.

• 3:36Ed Helms?

  Yeah.

• 3:37Speaker 04

  Absolutely incredible.

• 3:38Ed Helms?

  His character was a hacker, a tech genius. David Lightman was a master at computer games.

• 3:46Ed Helms?

  And Matthew was great in it. I mean, obviously, right? He's an incredible actor.

• 3:51Speaker 04

  Oh, wait, now how do I adjust my volume? Can you speak, you guys?

• 3:55Ed Helms?

  Yeah. Talking, talking, talking, speaking.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  Okay, I'm now nodding because I want to now pretend that it's working.

• 4:02Ed Helms?

  Okay.

• 4:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. So it's perfect.

• 4:05Ed Helms?

  Matthew Broderick is clearly not a tech genius in real life, but that's just further proof what a great actor he is. So in War Games, teenage hacker David Lightman tries to impress a girl at school, Jennifer, played by another 80s icon, Ally Sheedy. Along the way, he accidentally hacks into a supercomputer that the US is using to game out World War III scenarios. Hence, War Games.

• 4:34Ed Helms?

  It gets misinterpreted as a real nuclear attack and almost starts World War III.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  Terrifying.

• 4:47Ed Helms?

  Yeah. I am not charmed by that. I am terrified by that.

• 4:53Ed Helms?

  When I was nine years old, War Games really captured my imagination. In the sense that I became utterly convinced it was real.

• 5:03Ed Helms?

  I even had a breakdown at summer camp because of it.

• 5:07Ed Helms?

  All the other kids were having a grand old time. Meanwhile, I was just terrified that at any moment, we'd all die in a fiery nuclear Armageddon.

• 5:18Ed Helms?

  Yeah, I guess I was a bit of a wet blanket while everyone else was just trying to get pumped up for smores.

• 5:25Ed Helms?

  So why am I talking to Matthew Broderick about War Games? After all, it's just a movie. An outlandish premise of fantasy, right? Eventually, we all grow up and realize that movies aren't real. There are no accidental nuclear wars, right?

• 5:46Ed Helms?

  Well, my friends, imagine my surprise when I learned that the premise of War Games was fucking real.

• 5:55Ed Helms?

  Yeah, it came true, only months after the movie's release. That's right. As it turns out, in 1983, a real-life military exercise, a war game, almost started an actual nuclear war. Just like War Games. This exercise that almost ended it all, it goes by the codename Able Archer 83. And that's what this show is about.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  Wow, that's an amazing story. I, I'm surprised I don't know about that. But I don't think I do know about it.

• 6:31Ed Helms?

  Too bad they don't give out an Oscar for Best Nuclear War Prediction. The War Games screenwriters would have been a shoe-in. It's like kind of a perfect screenplay. I don't think they were too far off.

• 6:43Speaker 04

  No, I guess not.

• 6:45Ed Helms?

  When I first heard the story of Able Archer 83, let's just say my childhood fears were instantly validated. Thinking back on that moment at summer camp, paralyzed by the fear that the outlandish plot of War Games would come true, camp counselors hovering around me, trying to console me, saying, "Come on, dude, it's just a movie. Let's go canoeing. Everything's going to be fine." Well, looking back, I realize now, it was not fine. It was so incredibly not fine. They were wrong, and I was right. I'd just like to say on behalf of nine-year-old me, I fucking told you so. Phew, that felt good. But vindication aside, learning this story still leaves me a little unnerved.

• 7:30Ed Helms?

  Maybe even alarmed? Because if a military exercise almost caused a nuclear war in 1983, and nobody knew about it? What a complete and utter Snafu!

• 7:48Ed Helms?

  Snafu is a military term, first used by soldiers in World War II. It's an acronym, SNAFU. It stands for Situation Normal All Fucked Up. Meaning, this is so fucked up, but then again, isn't it always? That's what this show is about. The gaffes, the disasters, history's greatest screw-ups. This season, the story of Able Archer 83. It's the ultimate Cold War mystery. A stew of espionage, paranoia, shady politics, and dangerous miscalculations. Oh, and a lot of mind games. Put on your hazmat suits, listeners. I'm Ed Helms, your host, and this is Snafu. Able Archer 83.

• 8:51Ed Helms?

  It's just this whole game of deception and counter deception. And who can you trust? America is preparing a sudden nuclear attack on our country. I heard a young father saying, I love my little girls more than anything, and I would rather see my little girls die now than have them grow up under communism. Really, for the first time in my life, I felt like there could be nuclear war. It wasn't a question of would it happen? It was a question of when was it gonna happen? We were preparing to fight Armageddon. That's what we were told. That's what we believed. We were training to fight the end of the world.

• 9:34Speaker 04

  It was a week, just like every other week. Able Archer 83 was not anything out of the ordinary.

• 9:40Ed Helms?

  This is Gene Gay. He was a participant in the 1983 Able Archer war game. Gene, like a lot of men who participated in Able Archer that year, recall it the same way, which is to say they don't really recall much at all.

• 9:53Speaker 05

  Nothing to me from that exercise at the time, you know, jumped out.

• 9:58Ed Helms?

  That's Colonel Spike Callender, and he says the same thing. Nope, nothing of note.

• 10:04Ed Helms?

  To these men, that week in early November 1983 was just a week like any other week. Just another week of standard military exercises, practicing how to fight the end of the world, as one does.

• 10:17Speaker 05

  The whole purpose of Able Archer was the emphasis on the practice of the nuclear weapons release procedures.

• 10:24Ed Helms?

  Able Archer was a NATO exercise. In November of 1983, the Able Archer players sat in a bunker in Belgium, practicing how, if it came to it, they'd fight a nuclear war against the Soviet Union. It's like a soccer team doing drills, but instead of training for a game, they're training for Armageddon, which, like a soccer game, you can't use your hands because they got blown off.

• 10:49Speaker 05

  The whole idea was, if you ever had to do it, you know, you didn't want to do it for the first time.

• 10:55Ed Helms?

  When Spike says "do it," he's referring to the task of launching planet-destroying weapons. It's an example of how military professionals are weirdly cavalier when they're talking about their work. It's kind of shocking how something so gnarly can sound so routine.

• 11:12Speaker 05

  How do you look at what the requirements truly are, you know, for those weapon systems and the numbers of them? So it would be a matter of bean counting in some respects. If you have a Soviet division, what is the number of weapons that might be required to reduce the effectiveness of that division to where it was no longer military capable?

• 11:35Ed Helms?

  See what I mean? My point is this: To men like Gene and Spike, there was nothing exceptional about gaming out a fictional war during Able Archer. It was routine. But a few decades later, Gene and Spike would learn that Able Archer 83 was anything but routine.

• 11:56Speaker 05

  I was in my own little world. I hate to use the word oblivious, but I've used that word before.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  It was many years later that I found out about it, that anything other than the exercise took place in the real-world situation that occurred during that time, I was not aware of that until years afterwards.

• 12:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I never heard of anything more, you know, about this exercise until, what, 20 or 25 years later?

• 12:24Ed Helms?

  What Gene and Spike would come to learn is that while they were sitting in their bunker back in 1983, rehearsing the end of the world,

• 12:34Ed Helms?

  the Soviets were listening. And they seemed to be convinced it was not a rehearsal at all. Soviet missile commanders were placed on high alert. Soviet leaders retreated to their bunkers, fingers hovering over the proverbial big red button. And NATO had no idea.

• 12:55Speaker 06

  I mean, it is a miracle we did not all die. Like, it's just goofy.

• 13:01Ed Helms?

  This is Jeffrey Lewis. He's an expert on nuclear history and geopolitics. And he finds the whole story of Able Archer, what he calls "the war scare," to be sort of funny.

• 13:11Speaker 06

  Almost all of the war scare is totally self-inflicted, which makes it, like, really darkly comic.

• 13:17Ed Helms?

  I have to agree. There's an old saying that tragedy plus time equals comedy. Well, if that's true, then a story about a nuclear near-miss plus about 40 years should be fucking hilarious.

• 13:28Speaker 06

  Because if you step back, it sounds crazy, right? It sounds crazy that we could have had a serious nuclear crisis that nobody knew about. Like, that's nuts.

• 13:36Ed Helms?

  It is nuts, Jeffrey, because it's not just that Able Archer participants, like Gene and Spike, didn't know that a nuclear crisis was unfolding under their noses. No one knew.

• 13:49Ed Helms?

  Let that sink in for a second. If it's possible that a nuclear crisis could unfold right under our noses, that we were in danger without knowing it, does that mean it's still possible?

• 14:03Ed Helms?

  All right, let's set the stage a little bit. It's the 1980s. There was certainly a general and very pervasive anxiety about nuclear weapons. Pretty much everywhere you looked, you'd find nuclear paranoia. It wasn't just war games. It was all over pop culture.

• 14:20Ed Helms?

  This delightful little number is "99 Luftbalons" by Nina. It's about 100 red balloons accidentally inciting a nuclear war. Kind of heavy for a kitschy pop hit. The 1983 Bond film had a nuclear plot.

• 14:36Ed Helms?

  Dr. Seuss was feeling the heat.

• 14:42Ed Helms?

  Even Sting chimed in.

• 14:49Ed Helms?

  Personally, I love that song. And I just love that Sting threw his hat right in the middle of an international conflict. Anyway, when it comes to examples of nuclear anxiety in 1983 pop culture, there's actually one that stands above all the rest. It was just a made-for-TV movie, but it became a cultural event. And it would actually play a role in our Cold War mystery. It was a movie like no other movie, and it had a profound impact on New York. That story next. We'll hear from people who, like you, watched the ultimate disaster movie. "The Day After," a movie that would scare the living shit out of America.

• 15:31Ed Helms?

  More than 700 people packed Riverside Church tonight to watch "The Day After." Many said they came here because they were afraid to watch it alone. Everyone, and by "everyone," I mean 100 million people, almost half the US population at the time, gathered around their TVs on the evening of November 20, 1983, and tuned into ABC to watch it.

• 15:55Ed Helms?

  Before the movie begins, we would like to caution parents about the graphic depiction of nuclear explosions and their devastating effects. In a moment, "The Day After." Gather round, kids. Time to fill your innocent little heads with deep reverberating trauma. Pass the popcorn.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  I tried to do my part in making people keenly aware of what the real consequences would be.

• 16:20Ed Helms?

  This is Ed Hume. He wrote "The Day After." The film is set at the border of Kansas and Missouri. That's where the US nuclear missile silos are. The main characters are average townspeople in the American heartland.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  A bunch of people living in the Midwest, doing ordinary things.

• 16:36Ed Helms?

  At first, the whole nuclear war thing isn't really front and center. It just kind of blurks in the periphery. But even as it creeps in, the characters can't accept their fate.

• 16:46Speaker 04

  What was it, this one scene where a woman is so in denial that she's running around making beds as they know that missiles are being launched? You don't father with a bed just now. Eva, we've got to get down below. Listen, those missiles are all gone off.

• 17:11Ed Helms?

  Oh my gosh. Wow, she really wants to make those beds.

• 17:15Speaker 04

  And then it happens.

• 17:17Ed Helms?

  It happens. The heartland is evaporated.

• 17:26Ed Helms?

  The rest of the film is stomach churning, to put it lightly. It showed what a nuclear war would actually look like. Flashes of light, lives instantaneously incinerated. But the whole explosion part isn't the worst of it because you get to see what happens the day after. Nuclear fallout, radiation poisoning, blistering skin, and dying organs, piles of bodies in rubble, looting, hoarding, and everyday Americans turning on each other. I mean, all jokes aside, this is grim fucking stuff.

• 18:00Speaker 04

  The general public, they were, pardon my language, but they were scared shitless.

• 18:06Speaker 07

  I, for one, felt that it was devastating. Like every horror story you've ever read rolled into one story. We got a glimpse of what is really at stake in a nuclear war.

• 18:18Ed Helms?

  Just wanna go die with the blast and not have to live and start all over again. Okay. Didn't heed the parental advisory. This is how that clip makes me feel.

• 18:36Ed Helms?

  Okay, so yeah, in 1983, there was a general sense of nuclear doom. Hell, it's why I had a mental breakdown at summer camp. But we didn't know that there was a specific crisis to be afraid of. We didn't know that we might have almost had a nuclear war during NATO's annual Able Archer exercise. So then the question becomes, why not?

• 19:01Speaker 07

  There is, and you probably need it about now, there is some good news.

• 19:06Ed Helms?

  This is Ted Koppel from Nightline. He's hosting a live panel about The Day After, right after the movie aired.

• 19:12Speaker 07

  If you can, take a quick look out the window. It's all still there.

• 19:16Ed Helms?

  Wow, deeply reassuring, Ted. Anyway, celebrity scientist Carl Sagan was there, telling an already nauseous audience that he thought the film's portrayal of nuclear war was actually not as bad as it would be if it really happened. Oh, boy. Henry Kissinger was there, too, probably talking about feasting on the souls of innocent children or something. But before the panel began.

• 19:40Speaker 07

  Joining us live from his home in suburban Washington is the Secretary of State, Mr. George Shultz.

• 19:46Ed Helms?

  Ted Koppel brings out US Secretary of State George Shultz, President Reagan's right-hand man. He was a serious man, loyal to the president, famously bragged about enjoying staring contests with the Soviets, waiting for them to blink. Comforting. And so, mere minutes after the American public watched this horrifying film, hearts still in their stomachs, the man who would be standing next to the button pusher-in-chief answers the burning question at the front of every viewer's mind.

• 20:17Speaker 07

  The future as we've just viewed it tonight, is that the future as it will be, or only the future as it may be?

• 20:24Speaker 07

  Neither. That is not the future at all.

• 20:29Speaker 07

  The film is a vivid and dramatic portrayal of the fact that nuclear war is simply not acceptable. And that fact and the realization of it has been the policy of the United States for decades now, the successful policy of the United States.

• 20:50Ed Helms?

  If you watch the clip, George Shultz is shifty as hell. His eyes keep flickering just to the right of the camera and then back again, like he's reading cue cards. He looks scared. Ted, seasoned journalist that he is, smells a little bullshit. He presses George.

• 21:09Speaker 07

  Mr. Shultz, that is the answer of a Secretary of State to a reporter, and that's fair enough, because that's what you and I respectively are. But what would a George Shultz who is talking to a member of his family say in response to the same question? Same answer? Well, I would give the same answer.

• 21:26Ed Helms?

  I'll tell you why I think George is nervous. It's because 11 days before this interview, Able Archer 83 could have caused a nuclear war. A man in Shultz's position would have known about that, right? Surely, he was shitting his slacks for the past 11 days, trying to figure out how such a colossal fuck-up could have happened. Now would be a great time to come clean, to say, yeah, we're gonna shake things up with our nuclear policy, because the movie's right. This is scary shit. And yet, after watching The Day After, George Shultz, Secretary of State, assures the American public that the administration's status quo is effective in preventing nuclear war.

• 22:10Ed Helms?

  11 days after a nuclear war scare.

• 22:19Ed Helms?

  Pumpkin carving sounds fun, until you're elbow-deep in pumpkin guts. There's an easier pumpkin tradition: Reese's Pumpkins. No seeds, no giant kitchen knife, no pressure to create a masterpiece that's just gonna shrivel up on the front porch three days later. And if something goes wrong, just eat it. Every mistake is still pretty delicious. So this Halloween, skip the mess of pumpkin carving and stock up on Reese's Pumpkins.

• 22:49Speaker 03

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• 22:58Speaker 05

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• 23:28Speaker 05

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• 23:49Speaker 02

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• 24:52Speaker 05

  It's a very different kind of crisis because it's so clumsy.

• 24:58Ed Helms?

  Here's Jeffrey Lewis again.

• 24:59Speaker 05

  You know, this is more like two drunks in a bar circling one another. And it's not so much that anybody would deliberately choose to start the war, it's just that things would spiral out of control.

• 25:14Ed Helms?

  The two drunks here are, of course, the United States and the Soviet Union. Their drink? Bombs. And I'm not talking Jäger.

• 25:23Ed Helms?

  Here's the part of the show where I give you a crash course on the Cold War. Get out your pencils, kids. Welcome to Arms Race 101.

• 25:31Speaker 07

  An atom bomb destroys or injures in three ways: by blast, heat, and radioactivity.

• 25:37Ed Helms?

  The OG atomic bomb was invented by the Americans in the 40s. You know the one. Hiroshima, Nagasaki. It only took the Soviets five years to figure it out for themselves. And once they had the bomb, too, it began a decades-long race for bigger and better death machines.

• 25:53Speaker 05

  The fun thing about the Cold War is that there were a huge variety of nuclear weapons and nuclear yields.

• 26:02Ed Helms?

  Jeffrey and I have very different definitions of fun.

• 26:05Speaker 05

  So pretty soon after the end of World War II, the United States developed a much more powerful nuclear weapon than even the city destroyers that we saw dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And these were called thermonuclear weapons.

• 26:18Ed Helms?

  This is the early 50s. A thermonuclear weapon uses the radiation from the initial blast to ignite an even bigger blast. A bomb within a bomb. The result is a warhead that's about the same size as the atom bomb, but way more destructive. Like, a million tons of explosive power instead of 10,000. In other words, it was economical. A bigger catastrophe for a smaller cost. You can't argue with savings like that.

• 26:46Speaker 05

  Once the United States, followed by other countries, developed thermonuclear weapons, there was no limit to how large a nuclear weapon one could make. The phrase that came to be used about the amount of nuclear destructive power was "overkill", because each side was worried that the other side would-

• 27:04Ed Helms?

  would strike them first, so they needed to have backups and redundancy and more than you needed. And so in practice, what that led to was each side having the capacity to destroy the other many, many times over, to make the rubble bounce, in one particular phrase. Back in the 60s, the US had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the Soviet Union 50 times over. You know, just in case some little cockroach escaped, the first 49 blasts, which set the table quite nicely for this.

• 27:38Ed Helms?

  Good evening, my fellow citizens. That's John F. Kennedy back in 1962, telling the world in a televised speech from the White House that a nuclear crisis was unfolding in Cuba. US biplanes had discovered that the Soviet Union was building nuclear missile sites on the Caribbean island nation, a little too close to the United States for comfort. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere. The US Navy set up a blockade, trying to prevent any Soviet ships from bringing their nukes anywhere near the island. The Soviet ships approached the blockade, nuclear weapons in tow. It was a full-fledged nuclear standoff. The news coverage of the Cuban

• 28:23Ed Helms?

  Missile Crisis was impossible to ignore. A major world event became television drama. For 13 days, Americans sat glued to their televisions, until finally, it was over.

• 28:37Speaker 05

  Under aerial surveillance, the missiles that had threatened the United States went back where they came from.

• 28:43Ed Helms?

  Everyone breathed a sigh of Marlboro-smoke-filled relief. And did we learn our lesson? Did we scale down operations at the bomb factory and literally cool our jets? No, no, my dear listener, of course, we didn't. In the late 60s and 70s, the US would build more weapons. The Soviets would build a lot more weapons. We'd get rid of some and then build some more. By the early 1980s, our nuclear fruit basket contained big nukes, small nukes, extremely precise nukes. And so the question naturally arises, like, why the hell did we do that? And I think the answer lies in the fact that we didn't have a better idea. I'm just going to build as many nuclear weapons as I can to keep the bad guys away from me. How am

• 29:27Ed Helms?

  I going to think about it any more than that? And that's a very powerful, simple idea. Wrong, but incredibly powerful. And it's how you end up with two countries with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at each other, ready on a moment's notice to end civilization as we know it, you know, over who controls Berlin, which admittedly is a very nice city.

• 29:54Ed Helms?

  And that just about sums up that successful nuclear policy George Shultz was talking about earlier.

• 30:00Speaker 07

  The successful policy of the United States.

• 30:03Ed Helms?

  Each side made a gamble, that if they could just build enough weapons, their adversary wouldn't dare test them. So they didn't need diplomacy. They were bound by the contract of mutually assured destruction.

• 30:19Ed Helms?

  It was a horrific game of nuclear chicken, and it would lead right to Able Archer 83, which some say is the closest we came to a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. But here's the thing, Able Archer isn't anything like the Cuban Missile Crisis. In fact, it's not like most crises we've experienced, not just because no one knew about it, but because it was completely unintentional. A mistake. It's not like, I don't know, the Vietnam War or Russia's insane invasion of Ukraine today. During Able Archer, two countries with absolutely no desire to get into a nuclear conflict may have almost started one in spite of themselves.

• 31:04Ed Helms?

  If the Reagan administration nearly sleepwalked into a nuclear war, that suggests those people shouldn't be let anywhere near positions of power. And if the intelligence community missed the fact that the Reagan administration was sleepwalking toward nuclear war, that suggests we need different analysts.

• 31:20Ed Helms?

  If all that's true, then it makes perfect sense the Reagan administration would not want to leak a snafu this massive. So the public would never hear about Able Archer 83. Instead, it would become nothing more than a Cold War rumor, a myth, only whispered about in the back hallways of the Pentagon. And it might have stayed that way if it wasn't for Nate Jones.

• 31:48Speaker 07

  Walking through, this is the vault. It really looks like the warehouse at the end of Indiana Jones, of just boxes, boxes, boxes. Sometimes I used to come here and just do a little bit of work because the atmosphere of thousands of boxes looming over me helps me work.

• 32:03Ed Helms?

  This is Nate Jones, an historian. Actually, he's really more of a sleuth, like a history detective, who has dedicated almost 20 years of his career to uncovering what the hell really happened during Able Archer 83.

• 32:18Speaker 07

  My desk is overrun with FOIA requests. It looks like at least 10,000 pages of FOIA requests and responses. So it's definitely a tree unfriendly business, but the government works on paper, so we got to work on paper.

• 32:33Ed Helms?

  This FOIA that Nate is talking about, like everything in government, it's an acronym. It stands for the Freedom of Information Act. And if you can't tell, it has dominated his life for the past decade. For 10 years, Nate worked at the National Security Archive, where he and his colleagues used the Freedom of Information Act to pry classified information about Able Archer 83 out of the government's claws. I like to picture them wrestling with a very stubborn bald eagle. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. At one point in time, Nate was like most people. He didn't know about Able Archer 83, until one day in 2004, a professor of his uttered a few words that totally changed the course of his life. He

• 33:16Ed Helms?

  said, hey, Nate, I heard about this nuclear fuck-up in 1983 called Able Archer. Why don't you look into it?

• 33:22Speaker 07

  And he said, I really think this is an unsolved mystery of the Cold War. And I was pretty hooked right there.

• 33:27Ed Helms?

  Like me, Nate heard about the mysterious Able Archer 83 story and asked himself, why doesn't anyone know about it? If we narrowly escaped nuclear Armageddon, shouldn't there be a national holiday or something? We should have Able Archer Day, a day that commemorates our wonderful avoidance of nuclear annihilation. I'm not just saying this because I want an extra Monday off work. Not dying? That's cause for celebration. All jokes aside, Nate was seriously concerned. I mean, if something like Able Archer can happen, what does that say about how precarious our situation really is? Is the world safe? One thing is clear.

• 34:09Ed Helms?

  If we're going to learn anything from this, we got to know exactly what happened. Thank God for Nate Jones.

• 34:17Ed Helms?

  At first, there just wasn't much out there as far as sources go. Anybody who knew the details of the crisis wasn't talking. There were a few mentions of a 1983 crisis in various memoirs from retired politicians and so forth, but it was all so vague. I'll let Nate paraphrase.

• 34:33Speaker 07

  We're not exactly sure, but it was a very tense situation, and we were worried.

• 34:38Ed Helms?

  There was only one primary source available that even mentioned Able Archer 83 by name, a CIA document written shortly after it happened.

• 34:48Speaker 07

  So here we have. So this is implications of recent Soviet military political activities. And this is the first CIA report on what happened during the war scare and what happened during Able Archer.

• 35:05Ed Helms?

  This document is a crucial piece of the Able Archer puzzle, because it reveals what the CIA thought about the crisis at the time. And it provides a hint as to why the public wouldn't learn about it until decades later. Classic CIA bullshit. I mean, they still haven't told us why they killed Kennedy. It was written in May of 1984, six months after Able Archer, and it says, yeah, during the Able Archer 83 exercise, it sort of looked like the Soviets were getting battle-ready.

• 35:36Speaker 07

  And it lists all these alarming things, but it came to the conclusion that, quote, "We believe strongly that Soviet-

• 35:44Speaker 03

  Actions are not inspired and Soviet leaders do not perceive a genuine danger of imminent conflict or confrontation with the United States.

• 35:52Ed Helms?

  The report said, yeah, sure, it looks scary, but in hindsight, we don't think the Soviets were actually going to do anything.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  So the conclusion was that the war scare is not real.

• 36:03Ed Helms?

  That's right. The reason nobody knows about the Able Archer war scare is because for decades, the CIA would deny that anything dangerous happened during that exercise. But rumors still swirled in the intelligence community. Maybe there was more to the story, which you've probably guessed because there's a bunch more episodes left in this podcast. Nate Jones, fresh out of college, had a hunch that he could piece together the truth about Able Archer, given access to the right records.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  We couldn't really tell a good history without the records, and we couldn't get the good records without a fight against the government.

• 36:39Ed Helms?

  Oh, it's on. Now might be a good time to introduce another main character.

• 36:51Speaker 05

  I don't know whether you know it or not, but I have a new hobby. I am collecting stories.

• 36:56Ed Helms?

  Ronald Wilson Reagan. The man knew the power of a good anecdote. I mean, the guy could really spin a yarn.

• 37:03Speaker 05

  But I remember the story of a fellow, which makes me think of a story. Everything makes me think of a story. I wanted to tell a story, whether anything reminded me or not.

• 37:13Ed Helms?

  He also famously loved movies. No surprise there. He was a movie star, only president ever to make a movie with a chimp. To be fair, Calvin Coolidge was in a play with a baboon once, but it's not the same thing, and it's also not true. Where was I? Reagan hosted regular screenings at Camp David throughout his presidency. In fact, he loved movies so much, he used to write film reviews in his diary.

• 37:37Speaker 05

  Saturday, February 14th, 9 to 5. Funny, but one scene made me mad. A truly funny scene if the three gals had played getting drunk, but no, they had to get stoned on pot. It was an endorsement of pot smoking for any young person who sees the picture.

• 37:56Ed Helms?

  Yeah, so that's actually a totally real Ronald Reagan diary entry. I shit you not. The man took movies very seriously and really overestimated the influence of a stoned Dolly Parton. Ronald Reagan's presidency was like the plot of a movie, and he was the hero. An American cowboy with a white hat fighting his nemesis, the evil communist menace. And he played the part beautifully.

• 38:23Speaker 05

  When action is called for, we're taking it. Our response can make the difference between peaceful change or disorder and violence.

• 38:31Ed Helms?

  In fact, he played the part so well that he may have pushed it a little too far. Now, if you ask just about anybody how the Cold War ended, you'll get one of two answers. Either A, Ronald Reagan was strong, showed those Soviets who was boss, and they backed down. Or B, Reagan was just lucky enough to be the guy sitting in the White House when a young Soviet leader stepped in and reformed the joint. But what if there was an entirely different reason the Cold War ended? What if the Cold War really ended because of Able Archer?

• 39:07Speaker 02

  He was Ronald Evil Empire Reagan, talked a tough game against the Soviets, engaged in a military buildup.

• 39:14Ed Helms?

  Meet Beth Fisher. She's an historian and author of a book called The Reagan Reversal, where she writes about a drastic shift in Ronald Reagan's attitude towards the Soviet Union. And listeners, that shift has very interesting timing.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  I was doing my doctoral research, and it was on US foreign policy, and I was going through a lot of speeches from the Reagan administration, from the early 80s.

• 39:39Ed Helms?

  Beth says that Reagan's speeches were pretty consistent from 1981 to about October 31st, 1983, just before Able Archer.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  The Reagan administration was pretty confrontational. They charged that the Soviet Union was immoral. They lied, they cheat, they were the greatest source of international insecurity.

• 39:58Speaker 05

  Born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights and the value of human life and seeks constantly to expand and dominate other nations.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  The next major speech came on January 16th, 1984.

• 40:13Ed Helms?

  In his first major speech since Able Archer, Ronald Reagan steps on stage and the American public meets a very new president.

• 40:22Speaker 05

  During these first days of 1984, I would like to share with you and the people of the world, my thoughts on a subject of great importance to the cause of peace, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Just suppose with me for a moment that an Ivan and an Anya could find themselves, say, in a waiting room or sharing a shelter from the rain or a storm with a Jim and Sally. And there was no language barrier to keep them from getting acquainted.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  President Reagan told this little story about these two couples, Ivan and Anya, and Jim and Sally.

• 41:01Ed Helms?

  Ivan and Anya, a lovely couple from Moscow, and our beloved Jim and Sally from, I don't know, Toledo. They just feel Midwestern to me.

• 41:13Speaker 05

  And as they went their separate ways, maybe Anya would be saying to Ivan, wasn't she nice? She also teaches music. They might even have decided they were all going to get together for dinner some evening soon.

• 41:24Ed Helms?

  Aw, dinner. How cute. Two months ago, Reagan would have ended that story with Jim poking Ivan's eyeballs out and Sally shoving Anya in front of a bus. For freedom.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  And it was really different. It was different in tone, it was different in substance.

• 41:40Speaker 05

  We do not threaten the Soviet Union. Our two countries have never fought each other. There's no reason why we ever should. Let us begin now.

• 41:53Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 41:57Ed Helms?

  The media picked up on Reagan's shift. The Ivan and Anya tale would go down in speechwriting history. But when Beth came across this speech, what caught her attention was one sentence. So slight, so discreet, that if you didn't know what to listen for, you might miss it altogether.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Uh, let's see, I have the quote here. "We need to find meaningful ways to reduce the uncertainty and potential for misinterpretation surrounding military activities." I eventually learned that early drafts of the speech had been circulating within Washington in mid-December.

• 42:30Ed Helms?

  And remember, the old Reagan, the tough guy, was still giving hard-line speeches right up until November 1st.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  So my question became, what happened between November 1st and mid-December? And that's when I discovered Able Archer.

• 42:44Ed Helms?

  Two months ago, a very secret nuclear near-fuck-up may have unfolded during November's Able Archer exercise. And then, all of a sudden, this very aggressive, very anti-communist president is talking about Sally braiding Anya's hair. All of a sudden, he's worried about reducing the potential for misinterpretation surrounding military activities? Pretty interesting timing. I mean, I'm no Hercule Poirot, but uh, seems like there might be a connection here.

• 43:12Speaker 05

  To reduce the uncertainty and potential for misinterpretation surrounding military activities.

• 43:18Ed Helms?

  And boom. Did you hear that? That's Able Archer, right in the speech.

• 43:29Speaker 06

  Pumpkin carving sounds fun, until you're elbow-deep in pumpkin guts. There's an easier pumpkin tradition: Reese's Pumpkins. No seeds, no giant kitchen knife, no pressure to create a masterpiece that's just gonna shrivel up on the front porch three days later. And if something goes wrong, just eat it. Every mistake is still pretty delicious. So this Halloween, skip the mess of pumpkin carving and stock up on Reese's Pumpkins.

• 43:59Speaker 03

  Picture this: You're the owner of a plumbing company, descending into an 18-inch crawl space to hydrojet a sewer line. Don't ask.

• 44:08Ed Helms?

  Oh, boy, this is tight. I knew I shouldn't have had that extra helping of mashed potatoes last night.

• 44:15Speaker 03

  Now let's say your phone rings.

• 44:18Ed Helms?

  Uh-oh.

• 44:20Speaker 03

  It could be a lead on a very big job.

• 44:23Ed Helms?

  I better get that.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  Or it could just be a spam call.

• 44:27Ed Helms?

  Oh.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  But thanks to Ruby's call screening and seamless integration with the CRM system you already use, by the time you come up for air, your next job will already be waiting.

• 44:38Ed Helms?

  Oh.

• 44:41Speaker 03

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• 44:59Speaker 06

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• 46:01Ed Helms?

  Over 20 years after Able Archer, Nate Jones began his quest to find out what really happened. As a student of history and a living human being, he was more than a little concerned about how a nuclear near miss was just a rumor in academic circles. Was George Shultz hiding something when he spoke to Americans during that panel? And is it just a coincidence that Reagan changed his tune so dramatically only months later? Nate started at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. It's a massive building overlooking mountains and the Pacific Ocean in the heart of Simi Valley, California. Inside, the Reagan Foundation has completely reconstructed Reagan's Air Force One, which

• 46:44Ed Helms?

  sits perched above a giant souvenir shop. Nancy and Ronald Reagan are even buried there. At the library, not the souvenir shop. Hard to buy a fridge magnet when the great communicator's corpse is staring right at you. And a couple of floors down, in the basement, there's an archive. And that's where Nate begins his fight.

• 47:05Speaker 06

  I go to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and go through all the boxes.

• 47:11Ed Helms?

  Looking through reams and reams of paperwork from our government's past, hoping to discover some shred of evidence amongst the redactions for anything to do with Able Archer 83. The National Security Advisor's files, US military documents, documents from our allies, anything that could paint a picture of how a NATO exercise might have changed the course of history. And as you might assume, the archive isn't small. Presidential libraries contain a lot of stuff.

• 47:38Speaker 06

  It really essentially is a dumping ground.

• 47:41Ed Helms?

  But hidden amongst all of it, there could be a needle in the haystack.

• 47:45Speaker 06

  Well, when I was there, my spidey senses went up.

• 47:48Ed Helms?

  Nate finds a box. He blows off decades of cobwebs. He opens it, swats away the moths as they see light for the first time in 20... No, I'm being dramatic. The point is, the box is important. It's labeled NATO Military Exercises, November 1983. Jackpot.

• 48:09Speaker 06

  So I go through that and pull out the folder, open it up, and it has this, I believe it's a green card that says, "Every historian's nightmare: withheld, classified." Go to the next folder, same thing. So it's a little bit heartbreaking.

• 48:25Ed Helms?

  But this young historical treasure hunter will not be deterred.

• 48:29Speaker 06

  But I go to the archivist on duty and say, "Hey, what's the mechanism for getting this withheld stuff released?" And I still remember, he kind of gave me a kind of a mean laugh. He said, "Well, you could file a FOIA or a review request, but don't hold your breath. You can file, but you'll never get it."

• 48:50Ed Helms?

  What? A motherf***ing, god*** bureaucratic, piece of s***, self-righteous, do***ag, mother***er. Am I right? Did I go too far? I went too far.

• 49:07Speaker 06

  I felt that we had a right to know what happened. It's possible that it shows this danger, unacceptable danger of nuclear weapons. And if they're that dangerous, and the world was that dangerous then in 1983, and might still be that dangerous now, that danger shouldn't be hidden reclassification. And that right there got me a little bit angry and said, "You know what? I'm gonna fight this until the end, and I don't think the government should be keeping this secret. And I'm gonna learn about FOIA, and I'm gonna learn about appeals, and maybe even sue because the government's telling me, 'No, you can't have the documents,' and I want the documents."

• 49:45Ed Helms?

  Here's a message to that asshole who worked as the archivist on duty at the Reagan Presidential Library in the year 2004. Our fearless FOIA warrior, get the DAX. And what would they show? A very alarming account of what really went down in 1983. Spurred by intelligence failures, reckless policies, failed diplomacy, and outright arrogance. Buckle up, boys and girls, it's gonna be a terrifying ride. Over the rest of the season, we'll spin a yarn so nuts that it would have Reagan himself shitting in his 10-gallon Stetson. We'll tell you how 1983 was a truly batshit year for the human race.

• 50:28Ed Helms?

  Complete with fake military invasions, a commercial airliner full of passengers shot down, and a calculator right out of a spy movie that might have saved the world. And all that craziness would set the stage for the big Snafu, a close call with nuclear war that would be kept top secret for decades. Next week on Snafu, we'll get into the minds of the button pushers themselves. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. Two men whose provocations and paranoia would push the world to the brink. It did give me a real understanding of the communist menace.

• 51:08Speaker 04

  Ronald Reagan, having campaigned on being tough, is not going to stand up and say, "Oh, that was just for the cameras. I'm actually an old softie. I love Borscht."

• 51:17Speaker 00

  Really, for the first time in my life, I felt like there could be nuclear war.

• 51:24Ed Helms?

  Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. Our lead producers are Sarah Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our producer is Carl Nellis, associate producer Tori Smith. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo, Andy Chug, and Whitney Donaldson. This episode was written by Sarah Joyner, with additional writing from me, Elliot Kalin, and Whitney Donaldson. Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis. Make the rubble bounce. Olivia Canny is our production assistant. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Additional research and fact-checking by Charles Richter. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Original music and sound design by Dan Rosado.

• 52:07Ed Helms?

  Some archival audio from this episode originally appeared in Taylor Downing's fantastic film, 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse. Thank you, Mr. Downing, for permission to use it. Special thanks to Alison Cohen and Matt Aizenstat.

• 52:30Speaker 06

  The scariest part of Halloween isn't the full moon or a chainsaw starting up in the distance. It's running out of Reese's cups. Because when you open the door to four princesses, six superheroes, and three Draculas all reaching for your Reese's cups, things can get scary fast. Especially when you were kind of counting on some leftovers. So this Halloween, buy extra. Because your neighbor Jeff dressed like a kangaroo? That's scary enough. Running out of Reese's cups doesn't need to be.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  Halloween's almost here, and I've got plans. My first stop is Total Wine & More for cold beer, ready-to-drink cocktails, and a bottle of wine to share. And I know I'm getting the lowest prices. Get the fun started at Total Wine & More. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. B21.

• 53:15Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.