Archive Publishes “War Scare” Documents Deleted from State Department History
Newly Declassified Documents Focus on Soviet Military’s Fear of U.S. First Strike During Exercise
Washington, D.C., November 14, 2025 - The State Department quietly deleted important archival records from an official history detailing how a 1983 NATO war game could have led to a catastrophic nuclear exchange, according to new reporting from the Washington Post. This is the first known instance in which the State Department has removed previously declassified and published documents from one of its Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) volumes, according to the report.
Today, the Archive is publishing copies of the records that were censored by the State Department, along with a selection of the most revealing war scare records. These include a report from the CIA’s Office of Soviet Analysis on “Warsaw Pact Military Perceptions of Nuclear Initiation,” which is published here for the first time.
A State Department official confirmed to the Post that the Department republished the FRUS volume without the records after the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2024 upheld a CIA decision to deny a 2021 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the National Security Archive. The FOIA sought the declassification of an important retrospective analysis of Able Archer 83 written by U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Leonard Perroots, who served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from 1985-1989. Written as Perroots was retiring from public service in January 1989, his “End of Tour Report Addendum” warned that the military exercise could have led to “a potentially disastrous situation.”
Because of its importance, the Archive wanted a copy of the original document in addition to the transcription that was first published by the State Department in the February 2021 FRUS volume, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981-1988, Volume IV, Soviet Union, January 1983-March 1985.
The State Department told the Post that it removed the documents because the Archive’s FOIA case “was litigated in District Court and the Court of Appeals and [b]oth courts upheld withholding the information.”
Although the authors of the FRUS volume thanked CIA staff for “arranging full access to CIA records,” U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg—after reviewing in camera declarations from CIA and State Department security officials—ruled that an original copy of the record did not have to be released to the Archive because the CIA “was not properly involved in the document’s disclosure.” The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling but said nothing about removing the already published record—much less additional records and analysis not at issue in the lawsuit—from the FRUS volume.
Asked why 15 pages on Able Archer had been removed from the history without explanation, the State Department official told the Post that “[t]he Department was not required to provide public notice.”
While earlier accounts of Able Archer 83 have focused on Operation RYaN, the Soviet intelligence initiative to predict a U.S. first strike, and the role of Soviet spy Oleg Gordievsky, the new evidence published here today highlights the genuine fear among the Soviet military leadership that the Soviet Union was vulnerable to a preemptive nuclear strike from the West during the war scare.
National Security Archive director Tom Blanton said that the unprecedented deletion of declassified historical records from the State Department volume on the war scare echoed similar efforts in the Soviet Union where, as author David Remnick writes, the “censors went through the libraries with razor blades and slashed from the bound copies of Novy Mir” (“New World,” a Soviet-era literary magazine).
“Today, in America,” Blanton said, “the censors just have to press delete.”
Document 1
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume IV, Soviet Union, January 1983–March 1985, pp 1420-1434.
Central Intelligence Agency, National Intelligence Council, Job 91B00551: Speeches, Lectures, Briefing Files (1988–1989), Box 1, Folder 2: C/NIC (Ermarth) Chrons March 1989.
Central Intelligence Agency, National Intelligence Council, Job 91B00551: Speeches, Lectures, Briefing Files (1988–1989), Box 1, Folder 2: C/NIC (Ermarth) Chrons March 1989.
Central Intelligence Agency, National Intelligence Council, Job 90T00435R: Chronological Files (1988), Box 1, Folder 12: C/NIC Chrono for December 1988.
The now-censored 15-page appendix includes declassified records and editorial material. The most important of the records is an “End of Tour Report Addendum” circulated throughout the government in January 1989 by U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Leonard H. Perroots as his “parting shot before retirement.” The Addendum reported that, in response to Able Archer 83, U.S. signals intelligence reported that the Soviet 4th Air Army issued an alert which “included preparations for immediate use of nuclear weapons.”
Perroots warned of the “ominous picture” presented by the nuclear tension and questioned, “What might have happened that day in November 1983 if we had begun a precautionary generation of forces” against a Soviet alert in response to the Able Archer 83 NATO nuclear release exercise?
He argued that “[t]he position … taken again and again that had there been a real alert we would have detected it … may have been whistling through the graveyard” because Western intelligence collectors did not adequately account for the Soviet military’s fear of a Western nuclear first strike. (See here for further analysis of the Perroots “End of Tour Report Addendum.”)
Also included in the appendix is the CIA’s response to Perroots. Unlike some previous CIA reporting which downplayed the war scare, two senior CIA staffers described the Soviet reaction to Able Archer 83 as “a worrisome episode in which Soviet Air Forces in Central Europe assumed an abnormally high alert posture in early November 1983 in response to a routine NATO command post and communications exercise.”
The memo concluded that “Perroots’s concerns about this episode are legitimate to the extent that they deal with Washington’s support to the US military commands” and surfaced a “long-standing warning problem, i.e., the need for the Intelligence Community in Washington to provide more timely, discriminating, and accurate warning in support of the theater commander.”
“Without these, another officer in his position might recommend a precautionary US Air Force alert in Europe that could have serious escalatory consequences[.]”
The third record included is a moderately redacted 1988 memorandum for the record recounting National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane’s thoughts on the influence of Soviet KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky’s reporting on President Reagan. McFarlane recounted that he reported Gordievsky’s intelligence to Reagan “in the course of numerous discussions extending throughout1983 and part of 1984 about the apparent anxieties” of Soviet leadership.
According to McFarlane, Reagan understood Gordievsky’s reporting “in the larger context of a Soviet ‘war-scare’ campaign.” McFarlane wrote that, in the president's view, “either the Soviets were paranoid in strange ways we could not let bother us, or they were fabricating the appearance of fear to intimidate and sway us, which we should even more be prepared to ignore.”
McFarlane’s analysis is contradicted by President Reagan’s own contemporaneous diary from November 18, 1983, which stated:
“[Secretary of State] George Shultz & I had a talk mainly about setting up a little in house group of experts on the Soviet U. to help us in setting up some channels. I feel the Soviets are so defense minded, so paranoid about being attacked that without being in any way soft on them we ought to tell them that no one here has any intention of doing anything like that. What the h- -l have they got that anyone would want.”
The CIA has not responded to FOIA requests for original copies of the McFarlane memorandum or for the CIA response to Perroots.
Document 2
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume IV, Soviet Union, January 1983–March 1985, pp 456- 461.
“10182 PAPER USSR/UNITED KINGDOM” from the Reagan Library in Jack Matlock Files, Intelligence Reports [pre-1980, May 85-Jan 86].
After the State Department republished Volume IV, Soviet Union, January 1983–March 1985 in 2025, it changed a reference in its front matter that previously pointed to the now-deleted appendix. That reference now points to a shorter editorial note on the Able Archer 83 War Scare.
It is eyebrow-raising that this note, which was not censored, publishes what appears to be British intelligence discussing changes to the nuclear communications used during Able Archer 83. This intelligence likely contributed to Soviet fears of a Western nuclear strike.
“In a March 1984 report, the British Head Office summarized the exercise as follows: ‘Able Archer 83 which took place from 2–11 November was an annual command post exercise designed to practice NATO nuclear release procedures. It differed from previous exercises in the series in a number of ways which made it of considerable interest to the Soviet authorities. In 1983, the detailed NATO procedures and message formats used for the transition from conventional to nuclear war were substantially changed. The 1983 exercise featured increased emphasis on headquarters-to-subordinate-echelon messages. Unlike previous Able Archer scenarios, in which NATO forces remained at General Alert from the beginning of exercise play throughout the exercise, in 1983 there were pre-exercise communications which notionally moved forces from normal readiness through various alert phases to General Alert.’”
This intelligence is likely included the record entitled “10182 PAPER USSR/UNITED KINGDOM” from the Reagan Library in Jack Matlock Files, Intelligence Reports [pre-1980, May 85-Jan 86].
However, when the National Security Archive requested a copy of this record, noting that had been declassified and published in the FRUS volume and was available on the State Department website, the archivist at the Reagan Presidential Library said that the Archive would nonetheless need to ask for the document via Mandatory Declassification Review, which would place the declassification petition at the end of a backlog that is 6,000 requests deep.
Document 3
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume IV, Soviet Union, January 1983–March 1985, p 744.
Central Intelligence Agency, National Intelligence Council, Job 88T00528R: Policy Files (1982–1984), Box 1, Folder 1: VC/NIC Chron January–March 1984. Top Secret.
Another record which remains in the volume is a March 1984 memorandum from Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council Herbert E. Meyer that circulated throughout the CIA leadership. The highly redacted memo reveals that as early as spring 1984 there were signs that the U.S. was concerned about the Soviet reaction to Able Archer 83 and that some in the national security community thought it wise to warn the USSR of future nuclear exercises.
In 2013, the National Security Archive published a memo about another military exercise, Night Train 84, written by Gen. Colin Powell, then military assistant to the Secretary of Defense. In that memo Powell warned that, “Conduct of a worldwide nuclear exercise could show strength of purpose. On the other hand, it could be perceived as showing an intent for use of nuclear weapons.”
Document 4
George H.W. Bush Library, Reports to the President-War Scare Report 1990 [OA/IDCF01830–020]; originally posted in National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 533, October 14, 2015
Perroots’s addendum sparked a full, all-source investigation of the Able Archer 83 War Scare by the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), but it was not known that the addendum existed until after the declassification of the PFIAB report in 2015. The National Security Archive won that declassification after a 12-year struggle waged through an interagency appeals panel.
The detailed, 94-page PFIAB report—based on more than 75 interviews—concluded that the U.S. “may have inadvertently placed our relations with the Soviet Union on a hair trigger” during Able Archer and commended Perroots for avoiding any escalation.
Six years after the events of Able Archer 83 the PFIAB report concluded: “There is little doubt in our minds that the Soviets were genuinely worried by Able Archer” and that it “appears that at least some Soviet forces were preparing to preempt or counterattack a NATO strike launched under cover of Abler Archer.” The report said that, “The President was given assessments of Soviet attitudes and actions that understated the risks to the United States” and that the U.S. Intelligence Community made the “especially grave error to assume that since we know the US is not going to start World War III, the next leaders of the Kremlin will also believe that.” (See here for further analysis of The Soviet “War Scare” report by the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.)
Document 5
Colonel L. V. Levadov, “Results of the operational training of the NATO Combined Forces in 1983,” Voennaya mysl’ [Military Thought], no. 2, February 1984, 67. Feb 2, 1984
Soviet and Eastern Bloc sources further support the idea that the Soviets feared a Western first strike, as revealed in—and removed from—the FRUS volume. (See here for The Soviet Side of the 1983 War Scare.)
One such record is a previously confidential Soviet General Staff analysis of NATO exercises in 1983 which opened with a quote from Minister of Defense Dmitri Ustinov that “it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish [NATO exercises] from the real deployments of armed forces for aggression.”
The analysis underscored Ustinov’s stated concerns: “In 1983, [the exercises] took place on such a scale and were so close to the real combat situation that… it was difficult to catch the difference between working out training questions and actual preparation of large-scale aggression.”
The article stated that, beginning in 1983, NATO increased the rehearsal of “limited” nuclear war, “practiced deep strike air ground operations,” and “in some cases, [NATO rehearsed conventional attacks that] were preceded by a massive nuclear strike.”
Document 6
Central Intelligence Agency Mandatory Declassification Review
The now-deleted appendix states that Gordievsky provided U.S. Intelligence officials with reports and “documentation from KGB headquarters” which were used to create a report titled, “KGB Response to Soviet Leadership Concern over US Nuclear Attack.” Troublingly, the CIA has responded to multiple National Security Archive records requests by stating that its searches cannot locate such a record.
However, the Archive did obtain this revelatory report which describes how nuclear war between the Soviet Union, the U.S. and their allies would unfold. According to the report, which is replete with mentions of “Sensitive Pact writings,” the Soviet Union indeed employed a doctrine of nuclear Launch on Warning. (For more discussion, see Document 24 here.)
“The key tenet of Soviet doctrine for nuclear war holds that delivery of the first massed strike provides a decisive, potentially war-winning advantage. Consequently, Soviet military doctrine is preeminently concerned with first use and has a strong bias for preemption on a massive scale.”
The record does have a highly redacted half-page inset discussion of “The Soviet ‘War Scare’ 1981-1985,” which concludes, “We do not know to what extent the ‘war scare’ was created or used by different elements of the Soviet national security apparatus to further their own ends, nor to what degree it represented a real fear of imminent nuclear war.”
However, an appendix states that the introduction of fast-striking, intermediate-range Pershing II missiles to Europe changed the strategic nuclear balance and “provided[ed] an additional incentive to launch a preemptive massed nuclear strike when NATO nuclear use is assessed as imminent.”